Shopping in the middle of nowhere
This time three weeks ago I was on holiday by Loch Tay, Perthshire and it looked like this.
Those big oversized cow parsley looking plants are, I think, wild Angelica. They were everywhere, I wanted to get my spade out to bring one home, but we were flying to Italy from Scotland so it didn’t seem like a wise move.
Not far from this place, still pretty much in the middle of nowhere, was a shop I made everyone stop their cars for. It’s the only shop as far as I could tell, on the only road that runs along the south edge of the long (14.5 miles), thin loch, in between the villages of Kenmore and Killin. I’ve been rubber necking it since we started going to the area a few years ago.
Horn Craft. I can’t find much about it online, but I think it might be called Lawers Horn Carver – it is just below Ben Lawers mountain – and a found a tiny review on it that suggested the proprietor is John A Lacey and that he’s been here for 30 years. Whatever the story, the showroom was full of all things horn (maybe not all things). There were spoons, cups, walking sticks, funny penguins that were a bit reminiscent of the Iittala Toikka Birds, shoe horns (obvs), ships. In the tiny review, Lacey said his egg spoons are still the most popular item though.
Check out the grumpy wee man on this walking stick…
Next to the showroom is a house with an open garage and work space, which I couldn’t resist having a quick peek into – the actual horn carver being nowhere to be seen.
That little workspace, just seen bottom left, was covered in an amazing layer of dust, presumably from filing down all those antler horns.
An unexpected little find, but a nice one. Made me want to move up there, take over a garage and start making stuff.
That grumpy little man is the “Rhynie Man”, a carving on a 6ft stone found in the village of Rhynie, Aberdeenshire 35 years ago. He is about 1300 years old and there’s a local bloke with a tattoo of him on his arm.
Interestingly, Rhynie is also notable (notice I said “notable” not “famous”) for the Rhynie Chert, which are the oldest fossils of land plants ever found ie about 410m years ago. Prior to that, all the action was in the sea.
Not a lot has happened since.
Hi Vicky, that’s brilliant thanks for letting me know – I had no idea. Clearly. Away to do a little more googling on the subject.
I visited this wonderful shop in 2015, whilst staying in Killin. I found the shop very interesting and full of wonderful hand crafted horn items. Many of my souvenirs for friends and family came from this little shop. The carver’s wife was in the shop that day and was lovely.