Making homeware at rehab centre where I learned to kick drink

A WOODCRAFTSMAN will be exhibiting his work this weekend at the place where he was successfully treated for alcoholism.

Steve Hedger is now a site manager at Yeldall Manor, near Wargrave, a residential drug and alcohol treatment centre for men established in 1977 by a Christian family.

He looks after the Coach House, an open studio in the grounds where he and three other creatives, a painter, an embroiderer and a ceramicist, will be showing their pieces.

His wife Sue is Yeldall’s head fundraiser and administrations manager.

Steve, 67, was treated there for alcoholism when he was in his forties and after his recovery set up Chissock Woodcraft on the site of the manor in Blakes Lane.

The barn, where Steve displays the tables, lamps and stools that he has made, was opened by Maidenhead MP Theresa May in 2011. He made a sideboard for her when she was prime minister.

Steve says: “I came here in 2006 and the place was falling apart. In 2009, I set up a social enterprise, running this site within a sister relationship with Yeldall Manor.

“The courtyard was created and we finally got planning permission with the help of Theresa May. We built the barn on the base of an old greenhouse.”

The barn and coach house studio spaces are sublet to small, independent businesses with a “social conscience”, explains Steve: “We have a tenant’s covenant, so people can help in all different ways, either as a volunteer giving their services or supporting our fundraising.

“What’s interesting is that rehabilitation in general has become more and more therapeutic. Whereas we used to be a lot more work-based, we’ve become much more therapy-based.

“If you can give someone who’s in recovery from drink and drugs an interest while they’re here, that can give them an activity for once they’re out in the big wide world.”

The studio was a venue on this year’s Henley Arts Trail for the first time.

Steve says: “It was very successful for us and it was a lovely way for people to discover Yeldall.

“What is beautiful is that so many people have come here and said things like, ‘Wow, there’s been a drug and alcohol rehab here for 46 years? I never knew — why haven’t we noticed more crime?’

“They’ve got this on their doorsteps yet we are tucked away in 38 acres, quietly getting on with it.”

Steve, whose father was a toymaker, works exclusively with reclaimed timber.

He says: “I’ve always been fascinated by recycling stuff and my mother said I used to do it when I was 16.

“The problem with reclaimed timber is that instead of you telling the timber what you’re going to make, you have to let the timber tell you what it’s going to make and there’s a subtle
difference.

“Sometimes you get enough to make a dining table and other times you can only do a small object.

“I really enjoy that process so I might live with a piece of wood for quite a while before I go, ‘Aha, I know what you’re going to be’.

“Recently, I’ve been making a series of lamps as it’s a beautiful way to use up exotic hardwoods. I also went down to the old Jackson’s shop in Reading when they were selling all the fixtures and fittings and I managed to buy all the racking in the
basement. I made box seats and then upholstered them in nice material.

“Now I’m producing a Shaker work stand entirely out of reclaimed pine from Jackson’s cutting room up in the roof.

“I had some very old curtain rails and some old pitch pine that came out of Clewer Church in Windsor, so I made some rustic stools.”

Landscape artist Claire Howlett moved to the studios in June after exhibiting during the arts trail.

She says: “I was invited to exhibit out of the blue and accepted but I didn’t know where it was and who they were. I tootled along and had a lovely time. It’s just such a fabulous location. It’s also such a happy place to be as there’s so much charity. There is a really good atmosphere with good vibes and good people doing good things.

“Us four creatives are trying to take it down a more creative path so we can provide some art therapy and something positive for the guys at the manor.

“Also just for us to have a lovely place to be and for people to come and see artists at work and buy it if they so wish.

“All my work is all inspired pretty much by the Cornish coastline. It’s never a specific place.

“I tend to walk with my dog around most of the coastline, generally from Hale and St Ives, round Cape Cornwall. Then I come back to the studio and those memories I guess are what creates the paintings.

“They’re more an interpretation of a feeling and, I suppose, an emotional response.

“It’s about light, about weather, about feeling and being able to connect with that emotion of walking or being somewhere just from that bit of artwork on your wall.”

Embroiderer and artist Ekta Kaul grew up in India and trained at the country’s National Institute of Design.

She came to the UK to do a master’s degree in textiles about 18 years ago.

Ekta says: “My mum was a prolific embroiderer and a knitter and she taught me how to embroider and I grew up surrounded by lots of beautiful fabrics.

“Both my grandmothers stitched. One of them I never met, although I kind of got to know her through her embroidery because there were some pieces displayed in our home. It was important for my mother to have that connection to her mum.

“My paternal grandmother taught me quilt-making, so I began by making quilts but slowly over the years I have moved into more expressive art-making and fibre arts.

“I’ve also started painting abstract paintings so it’s more mixed media now.

“I like that it’s expansive instead of being very focused and at the moment I work with watercolours and cloth.

“I haven’t been at Yeldall for very long. One of my very close friends, Vallari M Harshwal, has been working here for the past year and a half and I just happened to mention to Steve that if ever a space came up, let me know and, luckily, it did.

“I’ve always loved open studios because it’s just such a privilege going to somebody’s workspace and seeing how they create things. I like being nosey.

“You feel like you’re almost lifting the curtain and getting a peak behind it.

“I’ve been writing a book, Kantha, which will come out next summer. It’s on kantha embroidery, which comes from Bengal and was practised exclusively by women using recycled saris.

“It’s highly narrative and they would embroider their stories on it.”

Vallari, 51, trained as a ceramic designer in India at the same design school as Ekta.

She says: “I got a scholarship to study ceramics at Edinburgh College of Art and I’ve been practising ceramics for more than 27 years now.

“I started as an industrial designer so having my own studio was the last thing on my mind.

“Then 10 or 11 years ago I set up a design gallery promoting British and Indian designers between the two countries.

“We’d do shows in London and we had just started doing shows in India when the pandemic hit, so I decided to do pottery full time.

“Actually, I stopped working completely for six months because my 11-year-old son was home schooling and I didn’t know whether I was going to be alive the next day, you know?

“Then I thought, ‘What if I just let this gallery business go and give myself the chance to do what I loved?’ because it looked like the end of the world.”

Vallari’s pottery pieces are handcrafted or made on a wheel and everything is sustainable.

“All the illustrations on the pottery have stories connected to them,” she says. “The first thing that our pottery teacher said was that if you respect your material and tools they’ll respect you back. I even recycle the water I use in my studio as I was brought up in a waste not, want not
culture.”

Vallari was inspired by her grandfather in India, the artist
P H Choyal.

She says: “He was the kind of man who learned to drive at the age of 64. All his life he had a bike but when he retired, he said, ‘You know what, when my daughters and their children come to visit me, I want them to be in a car’.

“So for me he is the benchmark, not to let age be of any constraint in anything I do.”

• The Coach House open studios, with Steve Hedger, Claire Howlett, Ekta Kaul and Vallari Harshwal is at Yeldall Manor in Blakes Lane, Hare Hatch, RG10 9XR tomorrow (Saturday) and Sunday from 10am to 5pm. They will be joined by artist Myron Fastnedge, graphic designer Joseph Hayward, jewellery maker Susan MacLeod and creative wood artist Mike Wilson. Entry is free. There is parking available and refreshments will be on offer with the proceeds going to Yeldall Manor. Blakes Lane is currently closed but the studios can be accessed via Tag Lane and Bear Lane from the A4.