About.

I’m Dan Riggott, a whittler based on the Gower Peninsula, Wales, in the UK. I create weird and, I hope, sometimes wonderful little characters from wood using just a knife (mostly of the pocket variety).
I graduated with a 1st class degree in design communication in 2004 before working in graphic design, web development and photo retouching for the fashion industry. But by 2017, I’d become quite disillusioned with the grind of working in front of a computer screen. During a break, late into the night, from a particularly frustrating project, I had a mini epiphany (ok, perhaps a little dramatic..) when I noticed the wooden character sitting on my shelf next to the computer. My grandfather had carved it from a chunk of mahogany some 45 years earlier. I’d played with the piece as a young child, and it had been left to me when my grandfather passed away 25 years ago. Holy shit! How cool was it to still have this beautiful, tangible object made by the hands of my long dead Grandad.

I wondered how difficult it might be to make something like this? Would it be expensive? Would it be fun? And would I need to stock up on elastoplasts?...

So on a whim, I decided to buy myself a cheap knife, a few blocks of wood, and embark on a truly middle age hobby...