Root craft

Our dolls are made of branches and roots, the kind that you trip over in woods, and otherwise tend to ignore. Both branches and roots often grow in extraordinary shapes, lending themselves to being turned into amusing or decorative objects, if you have a creative mind, the eye to spot the right shapes, and clever hands to do something with them.

Many famous modern sculptors use the waste products of our industrial age to make unusual and much coveted sculptures using wire, springs and screws, or metal pipes. They are inspired by the very nature of the materials they are working with, and the bizarre shapes which they are twisted into.

Knotted wood, twisted branches and roots have something of the same feeling with the extra charm of natural coloring and "feel". Walk along a wood really looking around and you will see branches which look like witches, snakes and crocodiles in the convolutions of a root, birds and dwarfs in pieces of oddly-shaped bark. Sometimes bark is so beautifully shaped that it makes a piece of decoration on its own. These are rare finds beautiful enough to hold their own with the best of man-made art.

Even a simple piece of hollow bark can be used in many ways. As a container for dried flowers, a feeding place in winter for the birds in your garden, by filling the hollow space with seed and strips of fat, and as a seedbed for cress in the spring. To use it as a seedbed simply fill it with compost, sow the seed and keep it moist — soon your bark will grow a green lining.

Wooden dolls
Our wooden dolls have painted faces, and cotton wool gives one white hair; bits of lace, old collars and scarves, scraps of material from the rag-bag make their clothes. One has hair with a purple rinse — a mass of silken threads in grey and mauve, glued on! You can paint the features on with gloss paint (more durable on wood which is an absorbent material) or better still cut the features out of paper and glue them on. Your dolls can be as bizarre as you like — we gave one of ours a hat of plaited ribbon and dried flowers — another has long ears of copper beech leaves.

You can turn your wooden dolls into puppets if you leave enough branches at the bottom to be able to hold them like hand puppets. They then become the performers in a home-made theatre. You can write a simple play round them, use them to tell jokes, or make them dance to the strains of your favorite record.

A doorway becomes a marionette theatre. Pin a cloth half way up the door, so the children operating the dolls are hidden from view. Hang a piece of washing line across the top, and from this hang your actual curtain, which can be opened and closed at will!

If you are patient, skilled and have more time, you can go a step further and instead of dolls make a series of marionettes. This is a more ambitious exercise and you will need some simple tools. A handsaw to cut long, thick branches; a tenon saw with a miter box will help you to saw bark straight. Use a hand drill for drilling holes in the wood which, connected with screws, will make the marionette's jointed limbs; a sturdy pocket knife always comes in useful, a hammer, screwdrivers, nails and screws, fine wire and glue and a pair of pliers complete your equipment.

To decorate your marionettes and give them character you will need paints, scraps of material, lace and beads, scraps of wool, leaves and grasses, feathers and seeds. The more material you have the more imaginative your finished marionettes will be.

As the basis of your figures choose finely-made sturdy branches, in good shapes and colors. The head and body are connected with a screw-hook, while the movable joints are connected with screws or pieces of wire.

The legs, arms and head of your marionette are all on strings which in their turn are tied to a piece of wood which you hold to control the movements, by literally pulling each string on its own or with others. You will need a little practice before you are really in control.

The more imaginative your figures the more fun you will have. The flying creature in our photograph is painted bright blue and has a head-dress of leaves and grasses. The head, wings and body are all fitted together but move independently on wires.

Working with bark
Bark has the advantage of being very easy to work with a sharp knife. It has many uses — use it to make a boat or for your Christmas crib; you can make the stable from it and even the floor of the whole thing; charming candle holders can be cut from it, or colorful masks with a hole for the nose and eyes!

Long, strong branches can be turned into walking sticks and spears or shaped into bows, with finer ones as arrows. You can cut your initials to personalize your walking stick, or make a top for it from a round brass handle or anything else which is nice to hold and looks decorative.