Tim Stead

A second volume of poems light & dark was published in 2002.

Tim Stead MBE (March 1952 – 21 April 2000) was a British sculptor and furniture maker who worked primarily in wood.

The first volume of his poems (Towers published posthumously in 2000 ) – all written between 1998 and 1999– deal in part with Stead's chosen sculptural medium:wood.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Tim and a group of artists and makers: Eduard Bersudsky (of Sharmanka Kinetic Gallery), Annica Sandström and Jurgen Tübbecke made a proposal to the National Museum of Scotland to make a marker and memorial for the year 2000, a great Millenium Clock.

In 1992 the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh gave Stead a 50-meter high, nearly two centuries old ash tree to 'explore'. He took this as an opportunity to reveal and display the inner life of this great tree. The resulting work The Botanic Ash was exhibited the following year in The Caledonian Hall alongside Explorations in Wood- an exhibition of sculpture and furniture in Inverleith House both at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

The work in the touring exhibition 'Layers' represented a fundamental departure for Stead in a number of respects. This was the first exhibition composed exclusively of non-functional, sculptural pieces- and in a gallery setting. 'Layers' was first shown at the Compass Gallery, Glasgow in 1990.

In 1990 Stead exhibited at the McLellan Galleries' 'Scotland Creates' exhibition which celebrated 5.000 years of art and design in Scotland. The organisers, Barbara and Murray Grigor, invited Stead to re-create one of the houses in the Neolithic Orkney village of Skara Brae, in the main service-lift shaft in the gallery. Stead's Skara Brae was more of an interpretation of the original than a replica. It consisted of thousands of stone-shaped blocks of split wood – mainly elm.

In 1989 Stead was commissioned by the North Sea Oil Industries to design and make the fittings for a new Memorial Chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen. This originally involved forty chairs, a lectern, communion table and a minister's chair. Later this extended to include a screen which would divide the chapel form the rest of the kirk. The communion table, made in ash and walnut has a slightly ovoid shape representing the bow of a ship and a plough, and has inlays related to Christian symbols such as the fish and the cross. For the chairs Stead used ash and sycamore for the frames and a whole series of woods- walnut, rowan, maple, beech and yew- for a series of slats at the back of the chairs which spell out (if you know what the woods are and write down the initial letters of their names) 'We Remember Yew'.

His most famous commission is the Papal Chair he made for the visit of John Paul II to Scotland in 1982. The Pope celebrated mass at Murrayfield Stadium in July and Stead's chair was the centrepiece at the ceremony. It was commissioned privately by the Polish priest Ryszard Haluka. The commission required the representation on the chair of the four gospels of the New Testament -Matthew, Mark, Luke and John- by their respective symbols: the lion, the angel, the eagle and the bull. The chair, made from elm, was inlaid in a form of marquetry with various other woods.

At Glasgow School of Art while studying for his post-graduate diploma, Stead met lain Mackenzie who was then working in the photography department. After leasing the derelict Old Cheesemarket offices in the then run-down Merchant City area. Mackenzie asked Stead to build and install all the components necessary for a complete refurbishment – chairs, tables, an eight-seater bench and a bar. Deriving its name from the famous Gandolfi Brothers cameras, the café opened in 1979.

Tim Stead was born in 1952 and brought up near Helsby one of four brothers, in rural Cheshire. He was educated at Heronwater Prep School [now Coed Coch] and The Leys School, Cambridge. He attended art-school at Nottingham Trent University, School of Art and Design and undertook a post-diploma course at Glasgow School of Art. After living in Glasgow for a period, he moved to Harestanes in the Scottish Borders and then to Blainslie near Lauder which was his home until his death in April 2000. Stead's house The Steading’ was also home to his wife, Maggy, and their children Sam and Emma.