Randon Burns

Woodturner

About

Randon is a London-based woodturner best known for his hand-turned wooden globes. Each globe is inlaid with precious metals or set with gems to trace a single, personally significant journey or mark specific locations of importance. His own journey brought him from New York to London 20 years ago, a line laid across the Atlantic. Alongside his making, he teaches woodturning at West Dean College and at Blackhorse Workshop in Walthamstow, where he first learned the craft.

His work draws on his training in carving, jewellery making, and silversmithing, and on his interest in storytelling, history, and cartography. He is a 2025 Cockpit Bursary recipient, supported by the Worshipful Company of Turners.

  • Turned globe
  • two globes
  • Turned globe inlaid with silver and brass
“"Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you, You must travel it for yourself." Walt Whitman, Song of Myself”

Randon Burns

Process

Each globe starts as a solid block of wood, turned on the lathe to a sphere. It is marked with either the Equator or the North Pole for orientation, but every other geographic detail is left out. The story it tells contains only what matters to the person it is made for: the journey it represents. Locations are mapped precisely onto the sphere before being carved and inlaid with gold, silver, or gems, so the finished piece holds a single journey without distraction. It might be a path of immigration or pilgrimage, the way stations of a life long lived, or where you are right now at this moment in time and nowhere else.

    Awards

    • Winner of Turners’ Award 2024

    What's on

    Maker stories