We all start somewhere, and in our case Santa was busy getting his hands dirty…
The Carpenter &
We are a cosy team of two who discovered a mutual love of making pretty things and sharing them with the world. One bum at a time.
The first Medusa paddle was shaped by The Carpenter as a joke for a dirty Secret Santa. The reactions were not the intended laughs, but many joking-not-joking enquiries of ‘um..are you making any more?’.
So more were made.
But it wasn’t until The Creative stumbled across the paddle stash and shot a secret, but oh-so-saucy shoot, did Medusa come to life.
The Creative
Timber-
it’s important!
Rimu is one of Aotearoa’s most popular native timbers. It is strong, workable, and incredibly beautiful. The native timber has long and diverse history rooted in Māori culture.
In the late 19th and early 20th century, European settlers extensively and unsustainably harvested the Rimu population to be used to build low-cost houses in England, California and NZ. Now, a hundred years later these houses are being torn down and a large amount of Aotearoa’s beautiful timber is being poured into landfill.
All the Rimu we use for making Medusa Paddles has been rescued from the landfill pile and given a third life. A FAR more interesting life let’s be honest.
curves
Curves demand
In The Carpenter’s humble home workshop in Tāmaki Makaurau the Rimu is milled down, cut to size and shape and hand-crafted into the smooth and curvy paddles we get to send out to you. They’re finished with a food-grade mineral oil and a coat of NZ bees wax for extra shine and polish.
Each paddle started life hundreds of years ago as a little sapling somewhere in this country’s pristine landscape. And though it’s had a hard hundred years of sitting in a wall, we like to think it’s now breathing a happy third-life sigh as it joins you for a bit of fun.
