Callum Robinson

A debut that’s both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavours.

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. Robinson is poetic about the pageant of ash, beech and pine but also pragmatic.

A gem of a book ... a hymn to family and living a life you love ... Callum is the virtuoso with words that he is with woodcraft. His book is intimate, elegant and soulful; it is an ode to nature’s gift of wood and how the deftness of the artisan can shape it into something wonderful.

When [Robinson] rolls out the names of trees ... it's as mesmeric as Edward Thomas listing wildflowers. Which is apt, because Robinson is a fine writer, sometimes poetic

A ‘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.

Natural, never over-polished, accessible, and finely wrought.

Ingrained is a beautifully written memoir which sheds light on the delicate skill of a craftsman ... if this makes it sound as if this book is only of interest to carpenters, think again. This memoir is a delightful read, engaging, page-turning and touchingly revealing.

A profound and intimate memoir written in stylish prose that grows on you like the smell of freshly sawn timber. Instantly, it 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

Honest, original and true – written like a good novel, with that very rare merit of exploring the doubt and criticism necessary for any great art or craft, be it writing or carpentry.

Lars Mytting, author of Norwegian Wood and The Sister Bells Trilogy

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

An inspirational story about the meaning of work and making. It is a book that will change careers and lives.

Tristan Gooley, Sunday Times bestselling author of books such as The Secret World of Weather, How to Read a Tree and The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs

This magnificent debut isn't just an ode to the craft of carpentry, but the art of writing. Robinson's chiselled, elegant prose is the sound of a bright new voice in non-fiction. His memoir brings to life the heartwood in trees, families, and a young man making his way in the world with an inspiring integrity. This is essential reading for any artist who might be losing their way.

Sophy Roberts, author of The Lost Pianos of Siberia

Ingrained is a delight to read: deliciously indulgent and a work of pure craft poetry.

Rebecca Struthers, author of Hands of Time

A beautifully cut and crafted masterpiece inlaid with insight and polished with the pure joy of nature.

Chris Packham, author of A Finger in the Sparkle Jar: A Memoir

Original. Rare. As beautiful as trees... A masterpiece

I absolutely love Ingrained. Gorgeous, elegant, wise, cross-grained. I wish I'd written it myself

Bella Bathurst, furniture maker and author of The Lighthouse Stevensons and Field Work

A gorgeous, heartfelt book, shot through with the wisdom and grace of the trees that illuminate its pages. In the age of rampant consumerism, it is salutary to be reminded that there are still craftspeople like Callum Robinson, pouring love into his creations. Like his tables, chairs, cabinets and sculptures, Ingrained is a work of wonder and beauty.

I love everything about this book! The prose is stunning, the imagery glorious, and Callum’s love for his craft is both palpable and infectious. He has a way with words that breathes life, colour, and personality into the timbers he works with, making them as integral to the story as the people he works with. Ingrained is a treat for all the senses, and I will never look at a piece of wood, or furniture, in the same way again.

Brigit Strawbridge Howard, author of Dancing with Bees

A forest gateau of a book brimming with ravishing sentences. Ingrained is a story of setbacks, dedication to perfection, and tenacity, that is full of heart and lovingly told.

Keggie Carew, author of Dadlands and Beastly

I read Ingrained with absolute pleasure. Not a word that was not vital in expressing Callum's deep reverence for his craft; his illustrations of wood so touchingly detailed that I found myself studying my own table, disappointed that it was not a Speyside Malt, Nordic Ice Blonde or Fretful Crimson Cherry, that there were no swirling grains. Callum's writing has the faultless rhythm a Huck Finn float down the Mississippi, reaching its destination far too soon.

Wayne McLennan, author of Rowing to Alaska

As charming and well-crafted as hand-made furniture, Ingrained is a delight to read – a book overflowing with sawdust and soul.

Mallachy Tallack, singer-songwriter and author of books including Illuminated by Water, shortlisted for the Richard Jeffries Award for Nature Writing

Many of us may have realized that wood is a glorious but tricky material to work with. To show quite how glorious, how tricky it can be, here is Callum Robinson’s engaging love song to the trees, the timber yards, the machinery, the people who wrest useable beauty from one of nature’s great gifts to humankind.

Ruth Pavey, author of A Wood of One's Own

Editor's Choice: A paean to the glories of nature: to working with your hands against the grain of our all-too-disposable lifestyles.

Meditative and unhurried, Callum Robinson's debut finds the intersecting point between creativity, livelihood and relationships; each rendered precarious as a creative soul lets go of their safety measures and just...goes for it. 
 
This book made me think about the vital importance of craft in our world, and about the consumer choices we make between the hand-made and the mass-produced. And it made me think about timber: how it frames our lives, from the comforting trees in a forest to the fragrant lumber that awaits the shaping hand, to the object of beauty that will last lifetimes. 
 
While Robinson has written about timber with deep knowledge and affection, he has really told us a story about people and love and work, and it's that story that emerges from the grain under his patient hands.

Jock Serong, author of The Rules of Backyard Cricket, The Settlement and forthcoming Cherrywood.

Ingrained is a magical love letter to the material of wood. Written with clarity and honesty, it is a fresh and much needed perspective on craft and community. It has the power to change the way we see furniture, the humble stack of timber and the trees it came from, forever.

Rebecca Smith, author of Rural: The Lives of the Working-Class Countryside

Wonderful things can happen when you put faith in the journey and submit to the mysterious flow of life's grain. A hugely inspiring and reassuring book - Callum is clearly a master with both chisel and pen.

Ingrained is a lyrical love letter to wood as well as a propulsive memoir by a great new talent. Robinson is one to watch

For several entranced hours I eavesdropped on this conversation between father and son and between wood and the woodworker's hands. Robinson teaches us about dignity and kindness, and no lessons are more urgent. Robinson's writing is as finely turned and richly grained as the oak in his workshop.

Charles Foster, author of Cry of the Wild

I didn’t think it possible to blend the tones and sensibilities of James Herriott and Anthony Bourdain, but Callum Robinson has managed to do it! 
This wise and wonderful book takes the lucky reader as deeply into the grain of Britain’s primal medium as it does into the psyche of one of its most gifted practitioners.

“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.”--

A must-read for any woodworker, craftsperson or artist on the highs and lows of being a creative in 
the modern world. But its appeal goes further. Humorous and heartfelt, and at times achingly sad and sorrowful, it's a compelling tale that combines nature writing and memoir in a deeply personal and memorable way.

His journey, the creations that have emerged from it, and his early memories of his father’s workshop are vibrantly captured in his memoir, Ingrained...It is also a love letter to his father who ingrained in him his values and set him on the path to master craftsman.

A compelling memoir that speaks to our connection to nature and its gifts

Engrossing…has the power and pace of a novel

A rare confection of a hymn to artisanry and a coming of age story about Callum Robinson's break for freedom from his Dad, only in so doing to discover himself and his great love and respect for his Dad. It has the lightness of touch of A Year in Provence in Tartan colours and flavouring. I would recommend it to anyone with a romantic heart and a hunger for craftsmanship mixed with a hint of jeopardy. A unique book.

[A] Sensually written, impeccably detailed memoir. . . [Robinson] is equally skilled at turning a phrase as turning wood. For him, going out on his own was about ‘getting out of my father’s considerable shadow. About showing him, everyone, and perhaps most of all myself, that I could stand on my own two feet, blaze my own trail.’ For readers, Robinson’s metamorphosis into a man in charge of his own destiny is no less meaningful.

Charming . . . Some of [Robinson’s] best prose attends to the natural world, and to the way our manufactured world makes use of and mimics it. . . . Extraordinary precision is Robinson’s forte: a necessary gift for his career, and a boon to his writing. . . Consistently lovely. . . He is eloquent not only on how he makes the things he makes but on how he himself was made—the tender if thorny relationship between father and son; the stabilizing yet propulsive forces of marriage …”—

A lovely meditation on growth and resilience.

What a joy this is. I love its epic quest, the wry humour, total graft, risk-taking and downright scariness of Callum's bold adventure. Utterly life-affirming.

A Scottish writer and fine-furniture craftsman notches a first-rate memoir about understanding his master woodworker father, running a business, and – at the edge of financial disaster – reorienting himself to nature, beauty, and objects that last.

This magnificent debut isn't just an ode to the craft of carpentry, but the art of writing. Robinson's chiselled, elegant prose is the sound of a bright new voice in non-fiction. His memoir brings to life the heartwood in trees, families, and a young man making his way in the world with an inspiring integrity. This is essential reading for any artist who might be losing their way.

The making of a craftsman

Ingrained is a love letter to trees, timber and craftsmanship – and to finding your own voice. 
The eldest son of a Master Woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing craft lessons in his father’s workshop, playing amongst the sycamore, oak and Scots pine that bordered his home. In time he became his father’s apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path led him to establish his own workshop; to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects, to business meetings, bright lights and bureaucracy, to lose 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. 
In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop, and to the wood; to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it, and then pass it on to the next generation – antidotes to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature, and to the physical act of creation. At the same time, we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son. 
Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world – one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.

Callum Robinson

Praise for Ingrained

A debut that’s both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavours.

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. Robinson is poetic abo ...

A gem of a book ... a hymn to family and living a life you love ... Callum is the virtuoso with words that he is with woodcraft. His book is intimate, elegant and soulful; it is an ode to nature’s gift of wood and h ...

A debut that’s both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavours.

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. Robinson is poetic abo ...

A gem of a book ... a hymn to family and living a life you love ... Callum is the virtuoso with words that he is with woodcraft. His book is intimate, elegant and soulful; it is an ode to nature’s gift of wood and h ...

A debut that’s both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavours.

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. Robinson is poetic abo ...

A gem of a book ... a hymn to family and living a life you love ... Callum is the virtuoso with words that he is with woodcraft. His book is intimate, elegant and soulful; it is an ode to nature’s gift of wood and h ...

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