One pair
of hands.

Turps Wood Design is James Turpin. Every piece that leaves the workshop in Lostwithiel is drawn and made by him, by hand.

Handmade benches and tables lined up on gravel in front of the workshop in Lostwithiel — the workshopall built here

The story

It started with a table.

It started in lockdown with a table for our own garden. People kept asking who'd made it. Six years on, I'm still the only one making anything here.

That was 2020. Stuck at home like everyone else, I made a table for the garden. Friends and neighbours asked who'd built it. One table became a few, and Turps Wood Design grew from there.

I trained in product design, and I come from a family of woodworkers. That mix is the whole thing really. The discipline of drawing something properly, and the love of making it by hand.

James

The way I work.

Made by me: No production line and no middlemen. You deal with the maker. The person who quotes your job is the person who builds it.
Drawn first: Everything starts as a pencil drawing on the bench. You see what you're getting, with an honest price, before I cut anything.
Straight answers: Heavy-duty tanalised timber and solid joinery, quoted straight. I'll tell you what's worth doing and what isn't.
Built to be handed on: I'd rather make one thing that lasts decades than ten that don't. Look after it and it'll outlast all of us.

Two new tanalised timber garden chairs against a slatted fence — tanalised right through

Why tanalised

Protection right through to the core.

Everything I build starts with heavy-duty tanalised timber. It's pressure-treated, so the protection runs right through the wood instead of sitting on the surface. That green tinge on new wood? That's it working.

It's what lets a piece live outside through Cornish winters and come back every spring. It isn't the cheapest way to build. It's the way that lasts.