For 40 years Toby Muir Wilson has carved out a career as a furniture craftsman. As a schoolboy he sold wooden bowls for pocket money; today he creates exquisite functional art from native Tasmanian timbers for clients around the world.

Toby Muir Wilson's love of timber started in the 1960s as 12-year-old working on the family farm just outside Stanley, the north-west town where he now designs and makes the stylish furniture that can be found in museums, homes and corporate offices around the world.

The air in his studio – a converted nineteenth-century barn where his father once taught him to turn timber bowls – is filled with the pungent perfume of the ancient timbers over which he labours.

"It's the evolution of my ideas rather than the physical craftsmanship that gives me the greatest satisfaction," says Muir Wilson, who studied under English wood design guru John Makepeace.

Muir Wilson says he draws inspiration from the landscape he grew up around. "The river that runs through the blanket chest is an emotional response to what a river would look like running through the landscape," he says passing his fingers across the deep pink-red slab of myrtle.

It is now 40 years since Muir Wilson sold his first wooden bowl for eight dollars in 1966. These days his blanket boxes, tables and chairs sell with a few extra zeros added. But each carefully crafted piece bears the marks of an equal number of decades dedicated to his craft.

His works are timeless pieces and celebrate the unique local timbers he favours; one graceful Huon pine chair can take up to nine weeks to perfect.

You can find his works at the Stanley Art Works gallery he shares with Mark Bishop.

More information

Stanley Artworks
15 Church Street
Stanley
Telephone: +61 3 6458 2000