Handhewn Bowls - By Rip and Tammi Mann

For the past two decades, our mission has been to keep alive this rare and wonderful art form known as hand-hewing bowls. We have truly enjoyed traveling and showing our work throughout the country, mainly in the East and Southeast, at some of the finest art and craft shows there are today! We have made many friends who collect our work and enjoy helping us preserve this craft. We extend our sincere thanks to you who own one, or perhaps several pieces of our work.

Like many fine craftsmen and artists, who do their work because of a passion for it, we have a whole different set of priorities than most. We work longer and harder creating the very best bowls than ever before in our lives, Many years ago we realized that to truly preserve this craft, we would have to concentrate on quality, not quantity, and that has driven the direction we have gone.

As shown in our logo, we use only hand tools (adz and scorp) to create our wooden bowls, truly making it a "hands on" event. The adz is one of man's earliest tools (we have some in our personal collection dating back over 5000 years). It is fascinating to watch Rip sculpt with his adzes -- he always demonstrates this method wherever we show -- and people love to see the bowls created right in front of their eyes.

We use fine American hardwoods to make our bowls. Cherry, Black Walnut, Butternut and various Maples are our "standard" woods as they offer nice tight grains and are "stable" woods.

The style of bowl we specialize in is the "Appalachian" since we live here in the Southern Appalachian Great Smoky Mountains. This style with straight sides and flat bottom originated with the Scots. Naturally as they settled these mountains, they brought their style of bowls with them, which are now called after the area. The heart bowls we do are also Scottish in origin.

Of course we can and do make other styles (as you can see in our Bowl Gallery). The only limitation is the size log we can find. Some of our newer styles, such as the Lily Bowls and the Anniversary Bowl, are divinely inspired and are among our most cherished.