I bought myself a new garden sieve the other day.

My old wooden one had broken, and the metal one is rusting out, and I’m in peak compost-making mode: so needs must. I thought about buying one secondhand, to keep the carbon footprint down. But then I found Steve.

Steve has made me a fine-meshed garden riddle of such beauty that for the first few days I just sat and gazed at it. The curved ashwood is burnished honey-gold, studded with little silver nails, the mesh stretched and tucked under the rim with a workmanship that is just breathtakingly lovely. I know this is a sieve I will use for the rest of my gardening days, and I will always love it.

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Sievewrights are very, very rare. In fact Steve is the only full-time professional sievewright in the UK, and possibly the world (though there’s a cockle fisherman in Wales who makes riddles as a side hustle). Before Steve, there were none, after the last sievewright, Mike Turnock, retired in 2010: the Heritage Crafts Association’s Red List lists sieve making as a critically endangered craft alongside watchmakers, Shetland lace knitters, horsehair weavers and glass eye makers (who knew?).

Steve came to riddle making precisely because there weren’t any left. He used to do a spot of wood turning in his spare time, and he’s a keen gardener so knows his way around a garden sieve; but his main job was restoring vintage cars until he was made redundant. Then, as he was casting about for what to do next, he saw sieve and riddle making had been declared extinct and decided that’s what he’d try next. As you do.

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His workshop is in Langport, on the Somerset Levels. Sieves of every description hang off the walls: they’re not just used to make garden compost, but also to grade shellfish, sieve flour, and sift glaze for ceramics.

Strips of steamed ash waiting to be made into sieves.

He steams strips of ash, beechwood or oak for a few hours inside a steaming chest to soften them, then rolls them round a drum and leaves them to dry. Once set, he tacks the ends together and drills holes round the base for the steel mesh: this is then stretched and fixed inside the rim.

Steve is currently working his way through stacks pre-woven mesh he bought in bulk some time ago, but he’s coming to the end of his supply: the only other source of pre-woven mesh is India, so rather than incur the carbon footprint of shipping it across the world he’s decided to start making the mesh himself, on the grounds that “you can’t have a handmade product with a machine made element.”

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My sieve was quite expensive, but no more than I’d spend on a meal out in a restaurant. Yes, you can buy a cheaper sieve from the garden centre or online, made as quickly as possible out of plywood or plastic before being shipped to you on a diesel-powered cargo vessel. But it will break, quite quickly, in the rough-and-tumble of a garden: and then you’ll have to buy another one, and another, and another. In time you’ll have spent at least as much money, and infinitely more of the world’s precious resources, on your half a dozen cheap sieves as you ever would have done on your single, more expensive, but locally sourced and lovingly hand-crafted wooden sieve, built with care and to last.

Hand-made objects are made nearby: they use sustainably-sourced, home-grown materials like wood coppiced from local woodlands. The only non-British thing about Steve’s sieves is the steel wire used to make the mesh: even so, he had some sieves with mesh made from willow, plentiful in Somerset and not only pliable and strong but long-lasting. I have never seen a sieve made completely from wood before: I’d love to give it a try.

Please do consider getting in touch with Steve if you find yourself in need of a garden riddle, or you’re looking for a particularly lovely present for a gardening friend.

Steve Overthrow, Overthrow Sieves and Riddles, Langport, Somerset

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