The Birch Lore Drum
14 inch Birch frame drum, with Fallow Deer Stag hide from the Welsh / Herefordshire boarderlands. The handle is woven into a Celtic cross and hand painted on the drum face is a Stag, finished with 18ct gold details.
Read more about this beaut here:
When I first laid eyes upon this hide, I was carried into the hush of winter birch woods, where silver-white trunks rise from the sleeping earth like quiet ancestors. Birch forests have always held a particular kind of magic for me. They ask nothing of us except that we become still enough to notice. Their beauty is understated, yet impossible to forget.
As I sat with this hide, a great stag slowly revealed himself within its markings. Not all at once, but in the way deer often appear in the wild; one moment there is only woodland, and then suddenly you realise they have been there all along. Emerging not through movement, but through presence.
This drum carries that same quality.
It lives in the quiet place between endings and beginnings. The held breath before dawn. The final stillness of winter before the first green shoot breaks the earth. It speaks of thresholds, where one life has been laid down and another waits patiently to unfold.
In the ancient Ogham, the sacred tree alphabet of the Celtic peoples, Beith, the Birch, stands as the very first tree. It marks the beginning of the journey, the first step into unknown country. Birch is the tree of renewal, cleansing and becoming. It is often the first to root in land that has been burned, felled or left bare, returning life where life seemed to have departed. Because of this, it became a symbol of hope, not the loud hope of certainty, but the quiet confidence that life always knows how to begin again.
Across Celtic lands, birch has long been associated with spring's returning light. Its supple branches were carried in rites of blessing and renewal, while its pale bark came to symbolise purity, fresh beginnings and the gentle release of what no longer belongs. It reminds us that every threshold asks for two things: the courage to let go, and the faith to take the next step before the path is fully visible.
There is another presence that walks softly beside this drum.
The stag.
In Celtic lore, the stag is often understood as a guide between worlds, a keeper of the deep forest and a companion of the wild gods. He is the one who appears at the edge of the known world, inviting us beyond familiar paths and into older ways of belonging. His antlers, shed and grown anew each year, echo the same wisdom carried by the birch: that renewal is woven into the very fabric of life, and that what is surrendered is not always lost.
The handle has been woven into a Celtic cross, its four arms speaking of the cardinal directions, the turning seasons and the balance of earth, air, fire and water. At its centre lies the still point from which all movement begins, reminding us that every true journey starts not with action, but with presence.
This drum was born from the hide of a fallow deer whose story continues in another form. Prepared slowly by my own hands, from hide to rawhide, it carries not only the memory of the deer, but the many quiet hours spent listening to what it wished to become.
To me thsi drum carries me where something ancient is remembered, where endings soften into beginnings, and where the wild, patient wisdom of birch and stag still waits for those willing to hear it.
£345 plus P&P , or kerbside collection if you are local to Ludlow
The Birch Lore Drum
14 inch Birch frame drum, with Fallow Deer Stag hide from the Welsh / Herefordshire boarderlands. The handle is woven into a Celtic cross and hand painted on the drum face is a Stag, finished with 18ct gold details.
Read more about this beaut here:
When I first laid eyes upon this hide, I was carried into the hush of winter birch woods, where silver-white trunks rise from the sleeping earth like quiet ancestors. Birch forests have always held a particular kind of magic for me. They ask nothing of us except that we become still enough to notice. Their beauty is understated, yet impossible to forget.
As I sat with this hide, a great stag slowly revealed himself within its markings. Not all at once, but in the way deer often appear in the wild; one moment there is only woodland, and then suddenly you realise they have been there all along. Emerging not through movement, but through presence.
This drum carries that same quality.
It lives in the quiet place between endings and beginnings. The held breath before dawn. The final stillness of winter before the first green shoot breaks the earth. It speaks of thresholds, where one life has been laid down and another waits patiently to unfold.
In the ancient Ogham, the sacred tree alphabet of the Celtic peoples, Beith, the Birch, stands as the very first tree. It marks the beginning of the journey, the first step into unknown country. Birch is the tree of renewal, cleansing and becoming. It is often the first to root in land that has been burned, felled or left bare, returning life where life seemed to have departed. Because of this, it became a symbol of hope, not the loud hope of certainty, but the quiet confidence that life always knows how to begin again.
Across Celtic lands, birch has long been associated with spring's returning light. Its supple branches were carried in rites of blessing and renewal, while its pale bark came to symbolise purity, fresh beginnings and the gentle release of what no longer belongs. It reminds us that every threshold asks for two things: the courage to let go, and the faith to take the next step before the path is fully visible.
There is another presence that walks softly beside this drum.
The stag.
In Celtic lore, the stag is often understood as a guide between worlds, a keeper of the deep forest and a companion of the wild gods. He is the one who appears at the edge of the known world, inviting us beyond familiar paths and into older ways of belonging. His antlers, shed and grown anew each year, echo the same wisdom carried by the birch: that renewal is woven into the very fabric of life, and that what is surrendered is not always lost.
The handle has been woven into a Celtic cross, its four arms speaking of the cardinal directions, the turning seasons and the balance of earth, air, fire and water. At its centre lies the still point from which all movement begins, reminding us that every true journey starts not with action, but with presence.
This drum was born from the hide of a fallow deer whose story continues in another form. Prepared slowly by my own hands, from hide to rawhide, it carries not only the memory of the deer, but the many quiet hours spent listening to what it wished to become.
To me thsi drum carries me where something ancient is remembered, where endings soften into beginnings, and where the wild, patient wisdom of birch and stag still waits for those willing to hear it.
£345 plus P&P , or kerbside collection if you are local to Ludlow
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