Memory fragment - The Ash café at the Scottish Storytelling Centre

Memory fragment - The Ash café at the Scottish Storytelling Centre

I met Beatrix Wood at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, for the Edinburgh premiere of her film ‘Tim Stead – Magician in Wood’. She’d asked for a Trustee to help with the Q&A after the showing. When Maggy Stead heard I was going, she was very enthusiastic and told me the following story which I recounted to the audience:

In 2007, seven years after Tim died, Maggy arranged an exhibition of his work at the Scottish Storytelling Centre.

The exhibition would run for over three months. In order to reach the exhibition atrium, you pass through the café area. When Maggy arrived, the chairs and tables were made of some kind of plywood, which provoked a very strong reaction from Maggy, which she expressed in her typical forthright manner, the edited version of which is, “How can you possibly expect people to approach the work of Tim Sead by passing through this stuff?”

After she had calmed down, Maggy came up with a solution. The Workshop of Tim Stead – which was still creating Tim’s designs – would make enough chairs and tables to kit out the café and afterwards would sell them to customers. In that way, the whole Storytelling Centre would be in harmony.

So the Workshop buckled down and produced ten tables, four benches, twelve stools and twelve chairs and the café was complete. After the exhibition, there had been such positive feedback from the public, the Storytelling Centre decided to buy the pieces for themselves, where they remain to this day.

Nearly twenty years on, the pieces are still there and still appreciated, showing the enduring and robust quality of Tim’s work. In this picture you can see Gnasher, Vertebrae and Corset chairs. I think this story demonstrates both Maggy’s relentless energy in promoting Tim’s work and also her entrepreneurial skills.