DESIGN MATTERS

Cate Devine meets an unusual craftsman in wood who's glad he found plaid

LEGEND HAS it that for years the world's paint, toothpaste and cosmetics manufacturing giants have been vying with each other to be the first to produce a commercially viable tartan version of their products. So far this particular holy grail has proved disappointingly elusive. Now, however, they have been pipped to the post by an ingenious Scots craftsman who has proved that even if it never comes out of a tin or a tube, tartan now apparently grows on trees.

Ian Grant, a furniture maker from Fochabers who specialises in marquetry, has spent years perfecting the painstaking - and unique - art of making tartan from timber. It has been worth the slog: Grant is now in the proud position of being the only British artist capable of virtually replicating the ancient Scottish patterns in natural solid wood.

Examples are a tartan-bordered coffee table, an extendable dining table, solid tartan photograph album cover and, most recently, a specially commissioned bicentenary console table whose entire top is fashioned into a wooden replica of Johnstons of Elgin Cashmere Mill's own Newmills tartan. This remarkably smooth and impossibly intricate design is all the more outstanding for the convincing way the natural colours of the wood seem to match the colourful tones of the cloth.

''In 20 years of furniture-making and marquetry, I have never done anything quite as complicated as these tartans,'' says the 39-year-old Speysider, who started experimenting with the plaid idea four years ago and admits his designs are increasing in complexity. ''It is an extremely labour-intensive technique and though the finished product is beautiful, actually it's quite frustrating to work on.''

These frustrations arise from the wood itself: Grant has a fabulous range of some 50 natural colours ranging from sycamore, which is quite pale, to ebony - with lots of yellows, browns, greens and reds in between.

Fabulous though they are, however, Grant points out: ''Unfortunately, the colour of the wood is constantly changing. It's one colour when you first cut it, another when you file and work with it, another when it's varnished and yet another when it fades in the sun.'' This means it's very tricky to try recreating established tartans and for Grant it's a challenge he's determined to meet and conquer - even if it takes a lifetime.

''I'm still working on combinations,'' he explains. ''At the moment I have several patterns bleaching out in the sunlight on my windowsill.'' Only when the woods are truly faded does he get an idea of how they will meld together for life. The aim is to get a tartan that looks its best when it's faded.

The whole idea is that the woods will eventually blend and look harmonious so that he can then batch-make his furniture. ''The colours shouldn't clash or jump out at you,'' says Grant. ''The pieces I make need to be able to blend in with people's carpets, curtains and wallpaper. If there are 10 different bits of wood all shouting from one table it's difficult to find a home for it.

''Nobody wants an item of furniture that looks like a dog's dinner.''

The thousands of pieces which make up each design are made of old wood collected from a variety of wonderful sources. Auction rooms and local sawmills are some of them, as are his own 20-year-old collection of ''unusual planks'' and his former woodwork teacher's wood, some of which he has had for thirty years and which it takes Grant all his powers of persuasion to make him part with. His favourite is a single piece of fast-diminishing green canary wood which you can no longer buy new. All pieces are cut to blocks 5mm deep in varying thicknesses according to where they will fit into the designs. Unsurprisingly, some commissions take four months to complete.

Grant's technique, for which he needs a large magnifying glass, follows the seventeenth-century Dutch tradition of using thick blocks of wood to create solid patterns - quite unlike modern marquetry which is so paperthin that it forms only a veneer and gets damaged very easily. ''One of the attractions of the Dutch technique is that the woods shrink slightly at different rates and you start to feel the individual pieces,'' explains Grant. ''What you are getting is a natural living surface which lasts for life.''

So unique is his art, in fact, that at the craft fairs at which he exhibits his furniture people tend to poke, stroke and ponder it. ''They ask if it's plastic, if it's painted on to a computer generated design, even if it's fake,'' he says. ''They've never seen anything quite like it before.''

n For commissions, contact Ian Grant on 01343 880204.