A new upgraded workshop is almost complete with pictures coming soon. We had a great space to work with, an old photo processing room, transformed into a designated carving room. Yet to integrate the dust extraction system to the whole workshop, and with new tools and machines on the way, we had to build a wood storage area and move the stacks/piles of wood out of the main space. We are very proud of how it is turning out.

 

Travis is busy in the new cambium workshop making a range of products from extremely seasoned Gidgee from western Queensland, hard but marvelous. Beautiful black wattle and iron bark spoons, spatulas and chopsticks and plates of red cedar and mango root and more.

 

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About cambium

Hello and welcome to cambium.

 

cambium is the creation of Travis Jones, a passionate woodworker based in South-East Queensland. Travis makes handcrafted wooden homewares from salvaged and locally sourced wood. A respect for the country and nature itself fuels Travis' creative fire. Every tree and the inherent properties of each piece of timber, milled or natural, perfect or blemished, gives Travis inspiration and directs cambium's distinctive design.

 

In the scientific world, cambium refers to the cellular plant

tissue from which phloem, xylem, or cork grows by division, resulting (in woody plants) in secondary thickening. This name was chosen for Travis' wood crafting as it is a reflection of the organic and responsive process of making each bespoke

piece — a process that is filled with decisions made instinctively and in the moment.

 

 

About Travis

My journey into woodworking, like most journeys, was not a straight and narrow path but wide and full of twists and bends. It started at age five when I was in pre-school and made a car out of some random chunks of wood nailed together with bottle caps for wheels. I remember being so proud of my little creation, however simple it may have been, and even when I look at it now I still am. However, this was not the seed that grew my love of woodcraft.

 

In my early twenties I dabbled with clay to create complex, rounded, fluid and ergonomic shapes. I always thought of these as purely art pieces — objects upon which to rest the eye, reflect, and to find solace. I enjoyed this additive form of sculpting and the malleability of the medium, and continued to play and experiment to no end.

 

After a five year jaunt in Melbourne studying multimedia, I returned to my family farm to lend a helping hand. I had always been captured by the history of the place and the relics of days gone by that I would find in the old structures scattered around the property. Mostly it was the wooden pieces that held my attention — doors, tables and chairs. I started cleaning and restoring some of the pieces including a 100-year-old red cedar door and family cradle.

 

My love of wood grew and before long I was amassing piles of it, from old weatherboards and rotted fencing poles and palings, to pieces of felled and fallen timber from the black wattles and red cedars on the farm. They all became part of my bounty. I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do with them, but appreciated the aged beauty, texture and character of every piece. I soon found myself talking about wood, a lot, so much so that people were keeping, offering and delivering pieces to me. Around the same time I started crafting small pieces of furniture including side tables and coffee tables.

 

On my birthday I attended a local wood working trade show with my father and it was here that I saw Arbortech mechanical wood working tools in action for the first time, and everything fell into place. I had never seen anything like it before and instantly saw the potential to use these tools to create fluid and organic forms like the clay pieces I had made some ten years earlier but this time in a reductive way and out of wood.

 

I took my first Arbortech tools home that day and not long after, cambium was born.