Food is love in action. That’s what Tom Muir’s mum used to say. And she’d be right. For Tom and his partner Louise Armstrong, handcrafting kitchen utensils from salvaged and rescued wood puts their skills at the heart of that action.

From their workshop in Te Miro (population 500), they send out hundreds of individually shaped spoons, spatulas, bowls, boards, platters and choppers – little missives of made wonderment.

Wandering the shore of Lake Rotomā as a six-year-old led Tom to this place. He was fascinated by the sculpted pumice stones on the water’s edge. “My dad also had some Māori adzes – their shape and the fineness of the blade-edge made a lasting impression on me. Functional art!”

Although his whittling career began in pumice, it landed in wood when in 2011, needing a seachange, the couple began the creative process that would later become Kitchen Artefacts.

The provenance of the raw material is paramount and the backstory of these culinary instruments is sometimes dramatic, arising from major events in the history of the land. Post Taupo eruptions, trees from the forests that died en masse were washed down steep slopes by torrential rains into river beds and buried by volcanic debris for thousands of years. Black maire is a favoured wood for spatulas. It’s dark, waxy and strong and Tom likens it to wooden steel. While he takes on the more physical activities in the workshop, Louise is chief finisher, working quietly in a room set aside in their 1928 villa to give the item a final sand and oil, write its provenance tag and package it off. She is also a sounding board. Her wise counsel turned Tom’s early spatulas – big, chunky objects for big, chunky hands – into something more refined. Now the spatulas have heft (but not too much) and there are more than 20 different models for specific tasks.

Among the couple’s loyal following is chef Ben Bayly; Kitchen Artefacts supplied table tops, platters, bowls and other custom-made items for Ahi. Their wares also prove popular with international travellers wanting to take home something small, beautiful, useful and uniquely Kiwi.

One of their earliest designs – their wooden chopper – is still going strong. It is sharp, useful for chopping soft herbs and cheeses, cutting dough and pastry, stripping corn kernels off the cob, and chopping tomatoes in a container, so you can keep the juices.

Both nearing their 70s, Tom sometimes wishes he hadn’t left his run so late. Louise, on the other hand, thinks far better late than never. kitchenartefacts.co.nz CLAIRE MCCALL