It’s always a pleasure to see what our intermediate students can design and make in just a month of tuition.

But under the expert eye of Alan McGovern, who has over 30 years of woodworking experience and is the principal tutor on the course, everyone seems to excel in woodworking skill and design creativity.

One student who completed the course last week was Fiona Davis from Edinburgh, recently retired from a career in financial services, and who thoroughly enjoyed the Chippendale experience.

Her project was to design and make a burr elm escritoire, complete with drawers, shelves, and a secret compartment.

Fiona, who has a self-confessed stationery fetish, can now keep all her pens, ink, paper and envelopes in one beautiful and practical place.

She is a keen woodworking hobbyist who first came to the Chippendale school on one of our one-week introductory courses, and may decide on a further course at the school.

The great advantage of the intermediate course is that we only take a maximum of two students at a time, and therefore maximising the time for one-to-one tuition.

Start and finishing dates are built around each student, and we’re also happy for students to complete the course in stages, without having to commit to a full month.

We only introduced the intermediate course this year, as a stepping stone between our one-week introductory course and nine-month professional course.

Our December introductory course is now full, but places remain on our 2019 courses, the first being 18th to 22nd March.