Paulownia

Interesting plant Paulownia. In the right conditions, it can grow incredibly quickly and yield timber that has a light, fibrous quality yet maintains its strength. The big challenge these days is to find sustainable materials from which to build boards that work, that last and that still look beautiful.

Friction free

If surfing's 'retro' movement is played out and has become part of the ebb and flow of contemporary things, then we're all very lucky. With creative minds like Tom Wegener creating finless Alaia boards in Noosa for a new generation of surfers looking for an unsullied experience, and people like Derek Hynd promoting the disapearance of the fin as a return to the roots of wave-riding, there's never been a more interesting time to be a surfer. I'll be sticking to my skegs for the forseeable, but take a look at Loose-Fit's nice new site for more inspiration and great pictures of these ancient Hawaiian designs being ridden. Jon and the guys import boards from Mr Wegener himself, as well as Paulownia blanks. More on Paulownia wood later.

Tom Curren

Came across this handmade footage of classic-era Curren. Dig the radical flow in the slop, and the hi-line double pump down the line in the juicy stuff. Dig also the black beauty board and the dayglo panelled spring suits. Curren surfs twenty years ago in a way that would make any WCT surfer today proud. It was truly radical in the eighties. Would love to be able to understand Brazilian Portuguese too.

John Isaac

John Isaac is a Kentish gadget-botherer, procurer of tales and can convince by his presence like no other man on earth. He was the front man for Revolver, the much maligned surf shop that was a proper surfshop and is now sadly passed. For a brief couple of summers, Revolver was the beating heart of a group of friends and a focal point of a lot of good stuff in Cornwall that hasn't since had a centre. The place was like a beautiful lotus flower in the rancid pool that is Newquay. If you were there, then you'll dig what I am saying. Since Revolver's passing John has been having babies, taking pictures, becoming a bit obsessed with odd cameras, English belly boards and tweed whilst purveying fine, often strange custom orders for the discerning resin fetishists of England. He's a pilgrim good and true and his rancid bay births some cool sticks (including a 10-0 pintail speed shape of mine in British Racing Green that flies when it's juicy). We eagerly await the resurrection of the shop. With a little help from his friends, he can make it happen.

Ross Holden

Ross Holden is an old friend and collaborator from way back. I commissioned him to do loads of illustration for adrenalin magazine back in the day. During the invasion of Iraq he started making mandalas from grabbed images of the media. The images grouped together, in geometric form (sometimes horrific images, sometimes challenging images), by the alchemy of the art process, were changed into something intriguing and beautiful. Now he's been commissioned by everyone from Transport For London to KIA cars to put these things together. Tibetan buddhists spend meticulous hours, days, weeks constructing mandalas, these incredibly intricate patterns from coloured sand as a process of meditation. They aim for a kind of stillness-in-movement of mind and body whilst constructing them, before wiping them away with an instantaneous sweep of the hand. Impermanence. In a way, surfers draw lines on waves that celebrate their fleeting form before they disappear forever on the shore. Mandala. Good name for a surfboard label.

Mandala

There's something about pictures of short fat quad-finned beauties like M.Caro's Mandala shapes that brings out the consumer in me. I wonder if they'd work eight feet long, 3 3/8 thick with a 16 inch blunt double end? Answers on a postcard please...

Giacometti

Nice site from MOMA in NYC on Giacometti.