Rollo's workshop unfolds in the remote, rugged expanse of Snowdonia north Wales, where he lives with his artist wife, Freyja Lee, and their young children.
From his earliest years, he learned to measure time not by hours but by walls rebuilt, beams raised, and doorways reimagined, guided by his father, who nurtured his curiosity for creating.
He grew up understanding the quiet rewards of making: learning to trust instinct, to see the potential in raw materials, and to follow the slow, satisfying rhythm of creation. He began his career in high-end interior decorating in London, working on prestigious projects across the city, mastering the art of polished plaster and decorating the walls of Claridge's Hotel.
The practice and discipline of precision and repetition gave him confidence, but his instinct called him back to the slower rhythm of living and working in the countryside. In the years that followed, Rollo trained as both a cabinet maker and potter in Dorset and the Cotswolds, serving two apprenticeships that honed his eye for form, touch, and raw material.
After completing his apprenticeships, Rollo spent several years travelling and working across the UK, Europe, and beyond, gaining further experience in a variety of disciplines and crafts. He built high-end interiors around Oxford and London before, in 2020, returning to the Cotswolds, where he bought and
restored a mid-century showman's wagon.
Living off-grid with his wife Freyja, with an open fire and a kitchen under the sky, he immersed himself in a slower way of life. During this time, Rollo began restoring other wagons, taking on just one or two each year due to the painstaking care they required, bringing the same attention to each as he had to his own.
Word of his work spread, leading to commissions from private collectors and clients such as presenter Ben Fogle and musician Ted Dwane of Mumford & Sons.
Wagon restoration taught him the language of bygone practices, old timbers, layered paint, and the balance between tradition and quiet invention, lessons he carried into his future work. While he still restores special wagons, Rollo's main work now lies in designing and building cabins, pavilions, and bespoke timber structures from scratch, where his full creativity comes alive.
Now settled in North Wales, in his home and workshop, a farmhouse that has been in his family for over fifty years, Rollo works much as his forebears did. Once belonging to his grandfather, the writer and publisher Tom Stacey, the house sits beside a medieval pilgrim route.
The house's hearth has burned for centuries; its yard has witnessed the comings and goings of farmers, families, laborers, and travelers for many generations.
This deep sense of history and continuity infuses Rollo's practice. Clients and champions of Rollo's work today include Lulu Guinness, Prudence MacLeod and Alexandra Tolstoy, among others.
His craft blends practicality with poetry, rooted in the vernacular forms of barns, sheds, and agricultural buildings, yet alive with imaginative detail. His workshop is a trove of timeworn old timbers, rusted wriggly tin, and scrapyard oddments, many of which wait years before finding their place. With skills spanning furniture-making, woodturning, hand-carving, metalworking, and specialist paint techniques, he builds structures that are functional, yet romantic, one-off living works of art designed to endure. For Rollo, craft is not a profession but a way of life. Each building carries with it a thread of nostalgia, with a nod to the past, built to last for decades to come.
From September 2026 Rollo is exited to launch his first limited collection of beautiful oak pieces for the home available for pre order. every piece decorated with chip carving inspired by his wagon work, his travels through rural Transylvania and the wooden sculptural work of Brancusi. the Ojects collection explores the interplay between the useable everyday things we use and love and tactile art, pieces that can be passed down from generation to generation
Rollo also undertakes on larger furniture commissions inspired by his collections
For all media and partnership enquiries please contact Kat Billings
kat@nova-agency.co
For all work enquiries please contact Rollo
rollo@rollodunfordwood.co.uk