About Us

This webstore is owned and maintained by:

Jean Turner
The Drey, Allington Track, Allington, Salisbury, Wiltshire, SP4 0DD
email: jean ((a t)) jeanturner ((d o t)) co ((d o t)) uk

I welcome the genuine buyer of quality hand made goods.

This is exclusively an online shop - no shop floor, no visitors, no callers.

What is listed here is what I have to offer at this time. Making these things gives me pleasure and keeps me occupied, the person who buys them enables me to continue to entertain myself as I gracefully age.

As I am now semi-retired I no longer make to order, I do not give discounts, and I do not buy in to resell.

The History:
Born and raised in South Africa, I initially worked for IBM SA where I met my late husband Rick. We married, moved to the UK and raised 3 sons, 2 dogs, 3 cats and hundreds of other small beasties including chickens. As Rick worked very long hours in the IT trade and traveled a lot for his job I needed something to keep me busy and so I started making things.

Very soon I found people wanted to buy the things I made and so in 1999 (32 years ago!) JeanTurner.co.uk was born and I started using my squirrel logo.

As the boys grew and became more independent I started fly fishing, which led to fly tying. I was determined to catch fish exclusively on my own tied flies and was soon tying patterns for others to order and selling them through ebay.

Painting and art is in my family's blood, but I willingly acknowledge that as the throwback when it comes to artistic talent, my dabbles are just that.  Despite this, some people want to own what I draw and paint and so I do.

One Christmas Rick gave me a tiny little modular lathe as my gift and that started the wood turning part of my life. After a couple of years someone told me my turning was better than the guy who had the stall at the local craft fair and I started offering my work for sale. I focused on lace making items as initially I owned a very small lathe.

From then on, when an item was good enough to sell, it was given a unique number and a few years later I started photographing each item. Twenty-two years later, I am at jbt11185 and still counting...

In order to fairly evaluate my turning skills, I applied to be examined by the Register of Professional Turners (as supported by the Worshipful Company of Turners, London) and was invited on to the register.

To help me sell my work, Rick agreed to help me create my very own no-frills, no-ads online shop when web-shops were very much the domain of large companies and professional programmers. He wrote the absolutely fault free code that controlled inventory and payment and I did the look-and-feel front end. There, I offered my own hand made goods as well as beautiful wood for people to use as handles on hand made cutlery.

At about the same time as I was invited onto the Register of Professional Turners, I discovered antique and Victorian circular sock knitting machines. I eagerly followed that path as I  personally hate tight fitting socks. Fourteen years later - I still make and sell socks and other things that I make on machines which Rick and I restored back to working order.

Very sadly my Rick passed away suddenly in September 2020 and I find myself in need of full time entertainment again as I (hopefully not-so-gracefully) descend slowly into happy retirement and old age. And so jeanturner.co.uk is once again resurrected by virtue of the time and efforts of many people who have developed and made freely available the open source package called OpenCart. As I grow my store, hopefully I will be able to contribute in some small way too.

As it grows, the web-shop and what I offer for sale in it will change, so please keep coming back. Thank you for reading this, and welcome to my store.

And now - back to turning and making...

"An artist with a penchant for wood..."
When I make something I aim at perfection. The egotist in me would like my creations to land up in a museum when I'm long gone as examples of a high standard of work. The realist in me says this is unlikely to happen, but I will do my best so that they could, if they did.