Robert Thompson (1876-1955) was the son of a North Yorkshire joiner, also called Robert Thompson, whose forward-thinking mind inclined him to send his son to serve an engineering apprenticeship in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire.  At the end of five years young Robert nevertheless joined his father’s business as a carpenter, yet his heart was in studying and practising the craft skills he’d discovered in the medieval woodwork of Ripon Cathedral during his travels between his home village of Kilburn and the West Riding.

Robert aspired to the ideals of craft production and disliked the mechanical rigour of industrial design.  Alongside the business of serving his clients’ practical requirements in an agricultural community he quietly built up the means to pursue his craft, laying down oak timber to be seasoned in the old way in the fresh air for up to five years.

One of the most distinctive features of his work is the use of the adze, rather than a modern plane, to create a distinctive dappled effect on timber surfaces.

A commission from Father Paul Nevill of Ampleforth College for an oak crucifix for the college cemetery (1919) established his reputation for ambitious woodwork of fine quality.  From the initial commissions that followed he quickly adopted his trademark of carving a tiny mouse in some unobtrusive part of each piece, representing his motto of “industry in quiet places”.

There are Robert Thompson mice all over North Yorkshire and much farther afield, on furniture and fittings in churches, pubs, commercial buildings, houses, schools and colleges.

Roy Hattersley, writing an obituary for another outstanding craftsman, David Mellor (1930-2009), quoted William Morris’s precept “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”

Robert Thompson lived his life on the basis of that principle, and left a business that continues to thrive in the hands of four of his great-grandsons.

If you’re in the region of the Hambleton Hills, find your way to Kilburn and take a look at Robert Thompson’s workshop, still in production:  Home (robertthompsons.co.uk).

And if you think to look at the price-list, sit down first:  Ecommerce Price List (robertthompsons.co.uk).

You get what you pay for.