The Humphry Repton Wood

From Hertfordshire, England to Manchaca, Texas

The wood currently stacked against a wall in the Blast Cult TX workshop took an extra-long chainsaw, years of drying, and a trip across the Atlantic to get there.

Jason Burns traces the bulk of this collection to the former estate of the Earls of Clarendon in Hertfordshire, England, near Watford. Its grounds were architected by Humphry Repton, one of the major names in English landscape design more than two centuries ago.

The man with the landscape plans

Repton began his professional landscape career in 1788, following the generation of Lancelot “Capability” Brown. His work covered entire estates: approach roads, lakes, open parkland, woodland, and the views connecting them.

He showed clients his proposals in illustrated Red Books, combining written observations with maps and watercolors. Some paintings had hinged overlays: lift a flap and see a road disappear, a view open up, or new planting change the scene. Before-and-after pictures - with a considerably longer wait for the “after.”

Thomas Villiers acquired the estate in 1753 and became the first Earl of Clarendon in 1776. Shortly thereafter, Repton was tasked by the duke to design the layout of Hertfordshire, which included the placement and planting of the trees.

Chainsaw first, then patience

Jason recovered and milled the Repton-planted trees from the estate's grounds himself, cutting slabs roughly three inches thick. The collection includes birch, beech, and oak, with figured grain, spalting, and natural voids. Getting it ready for an instrument meant more than five years air-drying outside, followed by ongoing years indoors.

A long time to keep stepping around a future guitar.

As the wood dries, it moves, shrinks, and sometimes cracks. Once it settles, each slab presents its own decisions. Grain influences where a body gets cut. A split can rule out a section. A natural opening might be something Jason chooses to keep visible.

Those choices give the wood a say in the finished instrument.

The move to Texas

When Blast Cult relocated from London, these slabs came with the machinery, tools, parts, and projects needed to get the Manchaca workshop running. Years of work were already tied up in that wood. There was no way Jason would leave it behind.

Humphry Repton planted the trees more than two hundred years ago in England. 

Today Jason is working out where to put the pickups in Texas.