An Evening with Callum Robinson

Join craftsman and author Callum Robinson for a conversation about his nature memoir, Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman, winner of the Indie Book Award 2025 and shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing.

Date: Thursday, 25 September

Time: 7-8.30pm

Tickets: £7

Tickets can be purchased in the shop or here via Eventbrite.

Refreshments will be served.

Our Guest

Callum Robinson makes all manner of things from all manner of woods for some of the most influential brands in the world. He is creative director at Method Studio, the company he established with his wife, designer and lecturer Marisa Giannasi, almost fifteen years ago.

Taught by his father – now one of the UK’s foremost ‘Master Woodcarvers’ – his work has been exhibited widely. He works and writes from a studio and workshop in a forest, beside a loch, nestled in the Scottish hills.

About the book:

Ingrained is a love letter to trees, timber and craftsman - and how to find your voice. The eldest son of a Master Woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood absorbing craft lessons in his father’s rural Scottish workshop. As he grew older his passion for creating exquisite bespoke objects led him to establish his own workshop; to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects, to business meetings, bright lights, and to losing touch with his roots. Until the devastating loss of one major job threatened to bring it all crashing down. Faced with the end of his business, his team and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most.

Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the joys and challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on inheritance, community, and the beauty of the natural world.

Praise for Ingrained:

Longlisted for the 2025 Carnegie Prize for Excellence.

A New Yorker 'BEST BOOK OF 2024' : This memoir honors not just the art of carpentry but the passion of labor itself …a call for all of us, whatever we do, to do it with passion and care.'

A gem of a book ... a hymn to family and living a life you love.' Daily Mail‘A debut that’s both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavours.' Observer

'Mesmeric.' Spectator

'Consistently lovely.' New Yorker

'Robinson’s prose is humorous and macho, taking its lead from the gruff, sensual delivery of food writer Anthony Bourdain… But wood, in all its facets, remains at the heart of his writing.' Financial Times

'A beautifully cut and crafted masterpiece inlaid with insight and polished with the pure joy of nature.’ Chris Packham, author of Fingers in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

'Original. Rare. As beautiful as trees... A masterpiece.' John Lewis-Stempel, author of Meadowland, The Running Hare and The Wood

'A book that is covertly a love poem disguised as a father-and-son story, an apprentice’s learning of an exotic craft, a hymn to the eternal mystery of trees, and a tribute to the flat-out joy of gifting. Enchanting.' Bill Buford, author of Heat and Dirt

'A delightful book about the art of craft; a hard-carved woodworking romance written with tenderness and an almost sensual attention to detail. I can smell the resin and the soft, fresh sawdust. I can feel the bite of dense grain beneath the blade. Quite magical.' Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment

'Instantly deserves a place among woodworking classics like The Village Carpenter, The Wheelwright’s Shop and Woodland Crafts in Britain.' Robert Penn, author of The Man Who Made Things Out of Trees.