Whittler's News
Heston Blumenthal's Christmas programme.
Spoons where whittled from a few branches from a Myrrh tree.
After geting a very unusual call one morning from a Jenifer Forde and who did not ask the usual questions about how I whittled birds but came out with "Can you whittle me 6 spoons from myrrh branches? For a person and I don't know if you now him he is called Heston Blumenthal and he is doing a Christmas show in November for the BBC".
Not the normal request I get every day so take a look and see what unfolds from this telephone call and meeting.
Jennifer turned up at the bird whittling studio carrying a small bag and introduced herself and then followed to tip out a small amount of myrrh branches on the desk (not the size of branches I deal with) these where more like twigs and then gave me a small tea spoon and said that is what we want, can you do it and can you leave some twig bits on the end?
Take a look at the branches from a Myrrh tree below.
As you can see from the picture above it would not be an easy job to whittle 6 spoons out of the small amount of wood available. An added problem that came to light was the spoon itself would have to be on the thicker part of the knot and also allowances made for the angle of the spoon stem on the thicker part of the branch.
This picture shows the limited amount
of myrrh wood available for the spoon.
There was no room for error and I did
not want to phone Jennifer and
ask her to go back to Oman to collect
some more. It was very important to
keep checking with the spoon template
to eliminate mistakes.
Individual editions of whittled spoons as seen in Heston Blumenthal's BBC Christmas
