From Good Woodworking, Nov 2001 Issue:

Let's start with the bad news. You won't find 'How To ... ' instructions in Celebrating Boxes. No step-by-step illustrations and photographs to take you through a project. Hands won't be held, routers won't be guided. Sorry.Instead you'll discover inspiration, deep wells of experience and exploration from a global community of boxmakers. Peter Lloyd and Andrew Crawford have selected a diverse mixture of artists and craftspeople to feature in their new book, illustrating their work with beautiful colour photographs, and their philosophy with quotes and narrative. Many have taken to boxmaking as a second or even third career. New Yorker William Kelley began by making a box as a gift and was hooked. John Lee from Idaho is a retired vet and uses an Incra jig to assemble his amazing folding treasure boxes. Robert Ingham took to making boxes so he could easily put his work away while teaching students at Parnham. Boxmaking is a fabulous activity, so full of opportunity for precision and imagination, low in material cost but high in technical skill. The book, which coincides with a boxmaking conference and touring exhibition, outlines the lengths to which boxmakers will go for excellence.

"A big problem was encountered on my first gluing ~ attempt," says John Lee of his treasure boxes, "as I could not get the box opened. I decided that was going to be my first and last folding box. But since then I have made 106 of different sizes and designs and woods." If Celebrating Boxes leaves you wanting to find out more, and it may, there are contact details of all the makers at the back. Better still, leave the book in the lounge and take to the workshop.

Nick Gibbs.

From Traditional Woodworking, Dec 2001 Issue:

Somewhere between turning and cabinetmaking lies a branch of woodwork concerned with the pursuit of perfection, almost it seems for its own sake. As Peter Lloyd, co-author of 'Celebrating Boxes', points out, boxes are a luxury. Where a craftsman builds a magnificent chair or table he is turning a necessary object into a work of art; where he builds a box he sets out from the word go to create magnificence through woodwork.

That, at least, is one take on what makes the work in this book so extraordinary. To a great extent, if Lloyd is to be believed, people make boxes because they don't have a big enough workshop to make furniture; because the outlay required on timber and essential tools is minimal; because you can make a box quickly and take it to sell at a craft fair in the boot of your car. Yet, from these prosaic concerns, a community of outstanding talent and imagination has grown. Aside from the skill and creativity that greets every turned page, what's perhaps most noticeable about Celebrating Boxes is that, while woodworking is so often seen as a pastime for retired men, the makers are as likely to be young craftswomen like Sam Gorman or Petra Ohnmacht. And this, perhaps, is why their work is so diverse; it reflects the people who make it. There is something immensely personal about boxes - whose purpose, after all, is to enclose and protect the space within them - and portraits of makers like Ross Kaires and William McDowell give you a feeling of real closeness with the work they produce.

This is not a practical book, at least in the sense that it doesn't tell you how to make a box. But no woodworker could look through it without feeling the excitement of new possibilities - and that in one way is the most practical step of all. Because nothing is more basic than raw inspiration; and there are some for whom picking up Celebrating Boxes will be the start of the rest of their life.