Cabinetmaker, carpenter or finish joiner, Alex Accleton is less concerned with what he is called than with what he does.
Alex takes traditional wooden forms and accents them with crisp, contemporary details, infusing everything that he makes with quality: ‘If something niggles, I will fixate: why doesn’t that look right, or why does that look amazing? I want to set something in motion: something that exists because someone has thought about proportion, and function, and has used good materials that age well.’
Alex’s workshop is in an old mushroom farm outside of St Ives, fitting his quiet style beautifully. When asked, ‘Where do ideas come from?’ he answers: ‘You’re struck by something, an inward breath, a spark inside the head…’ Characteristically modest, Alex then defers: ‘I found something in a book, and I read it…’
Breathing begins at birth with an inspiration and ends at death with an expiration; so too when we make something we must conceive the influence of forms upon our mind as the initial life giving movement.
– Van der Laan