Gianluca Caregnato, from near Milan in northern Italy, first came to the Chippendale school last April on one of our introductory courses.

These one week courses give keen hobbyists a new range of skills to take their hobby to another level, but also give others the chance to consider whether a long-term career in woodworking is the best option for them.

Gianluca originally studied agriculture at technical school in Italy because of his love of nature but, having attended that introductory course, decided to make woodworking his chosen career.

Gianluca has proved an outstanding student, winning a school prize for his first-term project, a pine bedside cabinet, veneered with rosewood.

His other outstanding piece was an ash rocking chair that, initially, didn’t quite rock as expected, and which needed a bit of Italian design flair – adding another section into the base of the chair to give it more weight and balance.

Gianluca has now completed a beautiful art nouveau-inspired desk in oak with walnut veneer, decorated with an ash tree motif that he will incorporate into all his pieces.  The main part of the desk required 54 intricately-formed pieces of veneer.

However, the main design challenge was, at the corners of the desk, to find a way of joining three angles of wood together.  Each joint had to offer a precise angle for each piece of wood, and the joints had to be absolutely robust.

It was a challenge that Gianluca had to experiment with to reach a design solution, and then a precision task to ensure each three-way joint was strong enough.

Gianluca has come a long way since that one week introductory course, although it’s a journey we warmly endorse.

Not only does it give prospective students a real taste of what a career in woodworking involves, the one week course fees are deducted in full for those students who do then enroll on our professional course.