About Kenley Barn
Kenley Barn Studios are a well equipped series of workshops and a showroom, dedicated to the making of objects, designs and commissions in wood, metal, ceramics, textiles and sculpture by
Jeffrey Salter,
Pam Salter,
Rowan Bailey and
Pauline Bailey
These media work separately and together through functional, sculptural or decorative objects. They include jewellery, wall hung textiles, cushions, upholstery, sculptural, functional and commemorative ceramics, lighting, wood turning, carving, furniture, and larger scale architectural and garden ornamentation.
We encourage enquiries for bespoke design and making. Price and delivery can be quoted within 48 hrs.
Kenley Barn is an environment friendly or eco-house self built by Rowan and Pauline Bailey. They were given much help by Pam and Jeff Salter with the build and design of the house and interior. Where possible the materials used were ecofriendly.
In our work we try to use as much locally sourced wood as possible. Some even comes from our own land, or we use reclaimed or recycled wood. All lit forms use eco lighting – very low wattage led lamps. All wood coatings are from the Osmo range.
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Jeffrey Salter
As a sculptor, having spent half a lifetime engaged in making public art, Jeff Salter is constantly mindful of being surrounded by the heritage of countless nations, civilisations and tribes leaving their indelible architectural marks upon the landscape, mostly as archaeological vestiges of truimphalism, sanctuary or mortality.
Cromlechs, stone circles, fortifications, palaces, temples, pavilions, holy wells and springs, chapels, mortuaries of long forgotten cults, religions and clans in remote and isolated locations, from which the progeny have moved on leaving an intriguing, if insubstantial solitary mark upon the terrain.
The enigmatic remains from Pyrenean mountains to Iranian deserts have a formality and resonance that repeats itself over time and culture, echoing back through history as the circle, square, cruciform or saltire, which constitutes the basis that informs this body of work.
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Pam Salter
"The thinking behind the work aspires to be an amalgam of long deep seated visual memories, allied to a specific process, throwing.
Tide lines and sand patterns, ploughed landscape contours, flower, insect and marine forms all provide a synthesis of recollections over time and space.
Initially inert, clay through the throwing process offers up form, scale and hollow three dimensions, which then informs further manipulation.
Structural and surface marks evolve, consciously and subconsciously composing form.
It is like drawing in three dimensions, one act defining the next, always another solution to investigate.
The forms are fired to cone 8 in setters to give a dense stone like quality, but also offering areas of delicate translucency.
The porcelain body imposes boundaries of manipulation and scale, complaining loudly when pushed too far, but tantalisingly fluent, tranquil and harmonious when equilibrium is achieved.
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Rowan Bailey
Minarets are a series of hollow forms inspired by a media story about the Swiss parliament banning the construction of minarets on buildings. The series comprises turned hollow forms in Ash, Yew, Hawthorne, Cherry and Apple wood connected by silver bar. The silver bar is a non-tarnishing 925 silver (Argentium).
Following on from this idea are the minaret boxes which have various dome shaped lids and are also turned in a variety of woods on the lathe.
The series of two part pieces are representations of figures derived from the hollow forms turned on the lathe.
The concept for these came as an extension of the minaret series. Their roundness coupled with the hollow form gives a sense of bodies and heads, sometimes the polished bark will give the viewer features to enhance the feeling of a figure.
Bowls are turned on the lathe using various timbers working with the grain of the wood. All are polished either with OSMO wood wax or Beeswax gently rubbed on the bowl during turning.
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Pauline Bailey
My fascination with the sea, waves and caves is the driving force in my work. A wave gathers itself together in a diversity of arcs and ellipses rising in dark slow majestic forms, evolving all the time in a beautiful sweeping upward motion and then curling over, a tumbling mass of foam, spray and water falling through the air. This formation has led me to use stitching, bamboo, driftwood, glazed crochet and wadding to represent the wildness of the sea.
Wood can follow the same form often beginning small and then the grain exploding into a variety of directions, thicknesses and lengths. Like the sea the grain of the wood is unpredictable giving it a wildness found in the sea. The knots and hollows draw the eye in, as do caves, constantly delivering hidden depths.
My working with wool is the beginning of an exploration into textures and patterns bearing in mind the tide on the beach forming small bubbles of foam and water over pebbles, seaweed and sand in very shallow water.