A tree goes into a building and it stays there. Families come back to it, and the people who work there walk past it every shift. Everything we make is shaped around that one fact.
Three reasons a leaf goes on
Somebody remembered. Something worth marking. And the quiet minute in between, which is the one people use most.
Remembrance
A name cut into solid copper, and a place to stand where it hangs. Grief has nowhere to go. A tree gives it an address, and it is still there years later.
Celebration
A leaf does not have to be for somebody who died. A birth, a recovery, a retirement, a fiftieth year. Joy has nowhere to go either, and it deserves somewhere too.
Reflection
The one nobody asks for and everybody uses. In a hospital the people who stand at it most are the staff, on their way past, in the middle of a shift.
The Tree of Life
Made for the organ donation service, and standing out in the open air. Copper oak leaves on a steel trunk, in a garden people cross on their way somewhere else.
That last part matters more than it sounds. The trees that get used are the ones people walk past without meaning to.
See the projectsSpecial trees for special places
From a small one for a mantelpiece to a full height tree standing in a courtyard.
Sapling
Small enough for a shelf at home
Royal Oak
The largest of the table trees
Heritage Oak
Full and wide, for a hall or a foyer
One leaf, one word
A leaf can carry a name, a date, or a single word. It is cut clean through solid copper, so there is nothing sitting on the surface to wear off.
Families choose what goes on. Sometimes it is a name and sometimes it is not, and both are right.
What we makeDifferent places, the same care
What changes is who it is for, and what they need from it.
Hospices and Hospitals
A tree of remembrance for the building, and a leaf added every time a family asks for one. It is never finished, and that is the point of it.
For hospices and hospitals →Organisations and Trade
Heritage sites and schools with a lot to raise. A tree keeps earning for them a leaf at a time, long after the day it arrived.
Organisations and trade →Weddings and Celebrations
A tree as a guest book, a keepsake for the top table, and gifts that are not thrown away in a fortnight.
For weddings →Schools
Legacy walls, leavers trees and anniversary pieces. A school can keep adding to the same piece year after year.
For schools →The forge came first
FORJD began at the fire, not at a commission. The trees are what it grew into.
Copper is used because of what it does with time. It arrives bright and it darkens slowly, so a leaf hung ten years ago does not look like one hung last week. The tree keeps a record of itself, and nobody has to write it down.
The shapes are not invented. They are taken from the tree itself, and the marks of the work are left where you can see them.
More about the craft
Made in our own workshop
Bar stock, a fire and a hammer. Everything that goes out of here was made here.
Not only trees
We are asked for one off pieces as well. For a foyer, for a garden, or for somebody who wants something that is not on a list.
Born Free
A tree bent right over in the wind, in polished steel, on its own base.
Scorched Earth
A copper world held inside a cage of steel.
Mirrored Heart
Hundreds of small mirrored plates, so it takes the colour of whatever room it is standing in.
Standing where it was meant to stand
Real work, installed. Hospitals, hospices and public spaces across the UK.
BabyBeat, Royal Preston Hospital
A special place at the maternity unit, for families and for the staff who walk past it every day. The staff call it a calming place of reflection and wellbeing.
Willowbrook Hospice
Out in the grounds, with seating round it. It is there for everybody.
The tree stays. So do we.
A tree is not a job that finishes. It stands for many years, and every leaf that goes on it belongs to somebody. Families use it. So do the people who walk past it every shift. We are still here for all of them.
Talk to us about a tree