MtW Roger Bennett

MtW: Roger Bennet

Roger Bennett is an Irish woodturner who makes distinctive coloured bowls and vessels. These are gracefully shaped, often surprisingly thin, and many of them are inlaid with hundreds of silver dots arranged in constellation-like clusters or formal geometric patterns.

He has also developed a complementary jewellery range – pendants, brooches, earrings, cufflinks. They are in the same idiom as his bowls, coloured wood inlaid with silver, and are wonderfully easy to wear, light and silkily sensuous.

Roger’s work has featured in numerous exhibitions in Ireland, Britain, France and the USA; he has shown at SOFA New York, SOFA Chicago, CraftBoston and Origin (London). Hehas been included in all the editions of the Irish Crafts Council’s Portfolio selection, from its inception in 2006 until the most recent one in 2021, and has twice won the woodturning award in the RDS National Crafts Competition.

In 2016 he was one of the original selections for the Michelangelo Foundation’s Homo Faber Guide.

In 2021 Roger was selected as an ‘Irish Craft Hero’, one of 50 makers selected from the period 1971-2021 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Design and Crafts Council Ireland: “makers whose work has significant legacy, has heralded new approaches or changed the way we look at the world”.

An outdoor touring exhibition and book (to which Roger contributed two essays) were launched as part of the celebrations.

Website: https://www.rogerbennettwoodturner.com/work-and-career