Victor Branagan, furniture maker
I bought my house in 1990 in Graiguenamanagh, Co Kilkenny. It had some land, and there were elm trees which must have been planted with the house around 250 years ago. I had to do a huge amount of work; the main house had to be rebuilt. I basically took it down and put it back up again. The trees were dead but there were a few good branches left and, rather than just put them on the fire, I decided to make a bed.
I had worked as a crafts maker. I was a roof thatcher, and that involved coppicing woods in a sustainable way, so it wasn't a complete leap into the unknown to make furniture. Making rustic furniture is different to cabinet making because the timbers are unsawn and in the round, so you're using six-inch nails and big coach bolts rather than cutting with mitres and dovetails. Rustic furniture is a bit of folk art. In the US you see lots of rustic wood mixed with modern materials, such as a chair made with unsawn wood and a Perspex seat.
Now I work as a business consultant so the furniture making is my hobby. I would only make something for other people if there was a story to it. If you're doing it as a 40-hour week you lose the grá for it. The posts in the bed I made are the elm branches and the white-painted wood is ash. I got the idea from a bed I saw in the film Paint Your Wagon. It was in one scene in the corner of one of the tumbledown cottages.
I planted 2,500 trees myself during the winter under the native woodland scheme. The trees are mostly oak, so I won't live to see them mature. After spending 15 years working on the house it has been great to do some outside work. It would take two lifetimes and three Lotto wins to finish it all. When I bought the land I wanted to leave it in better condition than when I got it.
I don't know what will happen to the trees I've planted and who'll take care of them. You do it in trust really, the same way as the people who planted the elms probably never dreamt they'd become a bed.
In conversation with Catherine Cleary.