Interiors: The house of craftsman Tim Stead is a fitting tribute to his creativity and hard work

Tim Stead was no stranger to taking his work home with him. The farmhouse the craftsman shared with his wife Maggy is a testament to his vision

There are craftsmen worldwide who became inspired to work with wood because of the late Tim Stead. When the internationally-respected furniture maker and artist died in 2000, his wife Maggy decided to keep his business going by maintaining his workshop, and keeping on the staff Tim had trained. She also chose to remain in the Borders home they had created together 20 years earlier.

However, despite having lived with Tim’s legacy for so many years, Maggy has decided it is time to move on – as well as unveiling the very last annual “Workshop of Tim Stead” summer exhibition in Blainslie Village Hall earlier this month, she has chosen to sell the house and hopefully find someone to continue the business.

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The village of Blainslie, near Lauder, has been home to Maggy and Tim since 1980 when they bought the 16th-century farmhouse. Tim knocked down walls and completely restructured the interior to suit the couple’s lifestyle, and that of their children, Sam and Emma. As well as converting adjacent stables into his workshop, Tim used the interior of the house as his own personal studio, trialling all his new ideas and techniques in the property – these are still evident in every room, from the handmade four-poster beds, to the hand-carved wooden wash-hand basin, the spiral staircase made from ash, elm, walnut and sycamore, and even the chess table and 7ft-tall grandfather clock.

“Tim was a big man and liked space, so he pulled down a few walls and basically gutted the place,” recalls Maggy. “From the outside the house looks like a fairly normal Borders farmhouse, but inside it was Tim’s playground. We wanted to use the thick-walled shell to make a house inside to suit our needs. It was all experimental. Every time Tim had an idea for a piece of furniture, he would try it out in the house first and then take the idea to the workshop. That’s why I’m surrounded by all these treasures.”

Tim was highly respected for his work and notably carved the throne used by the late Pope John Paul II on his visit to Scotland in 1982. He was also involved in creating the Millennium Clock in the Museum of Scotland, and crafted the furniture for Glasgow’s Café Gandolfi.

In the aptly named “The Steading”, the ground floor is dominated by an open-plan kitchen, dining and sitting room, with doors opening into the sun lounge, as well as a snug, study and two bathrooms. The staircase leads up to the family bathroom, sauna and bedrooms. The couple extended the house in 1988, adding another wing – they used this opportunity to install the work of other local artists, such as stained glass door panels by Liz Rowley and a fused glass window in the sitting room by 
Annica Sandstrom.

It was Tim’s love of wood that formed the overall theme in the house, though. The kitchen alone is a tribute to his craftsmanship with cupboards made from iroko, mahogany, elm and ash, with handles elegantly formed to fit the hand. He ingeniously constructed the kitchen floor using offcuts, creating the rich underfoot tapestry that we see today. Naturally, the dining table and chairs – including the pendant light shade above – are all products of his imagination too.

In the sun lounge, he created a breakfast table using a barrel with a circular glass top that covers the opening of the original farm well. Clever storage and bookcases were built into the walls circling the stairwell, while every piece of furniture – including the fireplace – was made by Tim.

“The house grew organically,” recalls Maggy, who was born in Luxembourg. “When the children were young, I would take them away for a month during the summer to visit my mum, and Tim would work on the house. We would come back not knowing what changes he would have made. It would always be a surprise. Tim had a love of economy – in both the use of materials and space. And he saw corridors as a waste of space, so when making the spiral staircase he built a cupboard under it and fitted drawers beneath the treads.”

Both of the couple’s children were married at The Steading – Sam, who is a sculptor and manager of the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, and his wife now have a nine-month-old son Nathan, and Emma and her husband, who live in Italy, are expecting their first baby this month. Becoming a grandmother has clearly altered Maggy’s outlook on life and has helped her come to the conclusion that she should sell the house and business, although it was a deeply challenging decision.

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She has held the final annual Tim Stead exhibition in Blainslie, and is preparing to put the house up for sale. All existing and new workshop commissions will be honoured during the next year. She hopes to hold an exhibition of Tim’s sculptures in Glasgow or Edinburgh during the coming months too. The house – without its contents – and the garden have been valued at £400,000. Though the workshop and business will be sold separately, Maggy hopes that some like-minded person within the art world may be in a position to keep the house and workshop together.

“The house is too big for me,” she concedes. “I am now a grandmother, plus my mum is now in a home in the south of France and suddenly I am too dispersed. I have to retire sometime. I built a house in Ille-Sur-Tet, in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France in 2002 and hope to move there – I can’t afford to keep both houses when I retire. My children are completely behind me in this decision.”

She adds: “Somebody will buy the house because they love Tim’s work, or they will gut it and put in a fancy kitchen they never cook in. I feel the house should have children running on the lawn again as it is an idyllic life here. It will be devastating for me when I finally leave here as the house is Tim’s biggest legacy – leaving here will be like burying him for a second time. But I have lots of happy memories from the house and nobody can take those away.”

• For more information about Tim Stead’s work, to discuss a commission, or to view the house, contact Maggy Stead on 01896 860266, or visit 
www.timsteadfurniture.co.uk

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