About Wrenwood Troll and William Cathey
In the Sixties, I transferred from MIT, leaving behind unrealistic dreams of being Tom Swift. After finishing college, my wife and I settled high in the hills of Vermont “for a long winter’s night.” An article in Vermont Life that portrayed Vermont as an ideal place to be an artist or artisan was responsible for that decision. We built a couple of homes, each unique. Entranced by the myriad ways wood could be shaped to form something from nothing, my pursuits always seemed to end with my working with wood. I designed and built wooden dollhouses. I worked as a carpenter, doing finish work with hand-carved detail. I carved wooden signs. As a furniture maker, I made beds, boxes and bureaus; cabinets, chests and tables, adding elaborate hand-carved details wherever possible. From the beginning of my involvement with wood, I have acted locally to produce beauty where I could.
Most recently, faced with yet one more opportunity to reinvent myself, I found employment making carved, wooden weathervanes. That phase of my life has ended and once again, opportunity knocked. This opportunity sat waiting patiently for a long time. More than a decade ago, a friend gave me a wooden bowl from a local Vermont mill. Ten years later, I decided to carve the bowl and an idea was born.
The Bowls
Vermont made of local wood by a one hundred and fifty year old, family run mill, the Granville Bowl Mill, the bowls are hand-carved with designs I have adapted to fit the bowls’ curves. Fascinated by tribal art, I derive my designs from many sources: the Southwest and Northwest Indians, the Maya and Aztecs, Celtic people, Turkomen, and the natural world. Just as the winter wren returns to the edge of our woods and sings its unique song, beautiful, heartfelt and seemingly without repeat, I have labored with the wood in/of these green mountains; hopefully producing my own songs in wood, with perhaps a small measure of the beauty of that tiny bird’s ephemeral song.