John Berkeley

John Berkeley has a simple philosophy which has led to his success and fame as the world’s modern master turner. He has always approached a new challenge with a can do attitude - if you haven’t done something before, you don’t know that you can’t do it, so therefore, you can. His beautiful reproductions of Hoffman era turned puzzles, commissioned and created in collaboration with Donald Goddard of Donay Games, remain the most exquisite examples of these historical puzzles.

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Donay Apple

Last summer I spent a puzzling “sabbatical” teaching classes at the University of Berkeley. The course didn’t take place in sunny California, however; rather, it was located in the English Midlands county of Leicestershire, where master turner John Berkeley resides.

Donay Bottle

“I never see the glass half empty because I drink out the bottle” - Ellen DeGeneres

Puzzle Balls

The “puzzle ball” is certainly one of the oldest known examples of a puzzling object. These ivory spheres were hand carved, with freely moving inner spheres nesting one inside the other.

Berkeley Lighthouse

“Lighthouses are endlessly suggestive signifiers of both human isolation and our ultimate connectedness to each other” - Virginia Woolf

Cannon Puzzles

“The cannon will not suffer any other sound to be heard for miles and for years around it.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Castle Money Box

Treen Castle is not a castle, it’s a jagged rocky promontory of cliffs that sit on the edge of Cornwall, England in the town of Treen.

Barrel and Ball

Small wooden household and domestic objects were referred to as “treen” in the nineteenth century and earlier, a word derived literally from “of a tree”.

Donay Pear

We’re taking a sabbatical abroad this summer at Boxes and Booze to visit England and shine the spotlight on a very special wood turner named John Berkeley.