Giving Tim Stead a definitive label is difficult. His life's work extended to many areas, blurring the lines between furniture design and sculpture, business and conservation, peotry and teaching. Until his death in 2000, at the age of forty-eight, he worked tirelessly sustaining his various and diverse projects, which extended from the founding of the Border's Community Woodland to the establishment of Woodschool, near Jedburgh, a centre designed to cultivate talented young woodworkers in the use of the rich resources of the Scottish forests. However, Tim was most famous for his own striking sculptures and furniture pieces created from a mixture of mainly elm, oak and ash. His inspiration was drawn from these materials, resulting in gloriously organic celebrations of the natural world.

This book, published to coincide with a retrospective of Stead's work at the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh and introduced with a foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales, aims to bring together all the different strands of Stead's career. A collection of memoirs, interviews, poems and essays, lavishly illustrated in colour throughout, With the Grain is a fascinating and fitting memorial to an inspirational man whose deep love and understanding of nature touched every aspect of his life and shines through every chair, poem and pupil left behind.

Tim Stead created the doorway to the Education Centre and his final work the frame for Millennium Clock Tower within the Royal Museum