Michael Faulkner biography

MICHAEL FAULKNER

the blue cabin website

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about me

Although born and brought up in Northern Ireland, I have spent most of my adult life in Scotland.

After qualifying in law at Aberdeen University I joined the Edinburgh firm of Brodies, WS, serving my apprenticeship there before joining their litigation department – for me, the most interesting and rewarding area of legal practice. However, a back injury sustained during a judo competition at university meant that courtroom benches and long periods behind a desk became intolerable, to the point where I decided to quit law and become self-employed. I bought, renovated and resold flats in Edinburgh for a time, learning the basics of plumbing, joinery and electrics in the process; and in due course started a furniture business, progressing from stripped pine in the 1980s to the design, manufacture and retail of the UK’s first comprehensive range of Southwestern, or Santa Fe-style furniture in the 1990s.

Lynn and I were married in 1990 and in the same year we moved into a farmhouse and steading in Kinross-shire which was in need of some modernisation. We spent the best part of two years gutting and remodelling it, and as I say in The Blue Cabin, it became the only stone-built, slate-roofed Santa Fe-style farmhouse east of Santa Fe… Lynn is a professional artist and it was in large part due to her eye for colour, composition and space that the renovation was so successful. The house was featured in numerous magazines and on television, and we still come across photographs of the interior from time to time in the most unlikely places, most recently The Book of Zen!

The furniture business prospered for many years, but over-expansion in the late 1990s brought crisis, and eventual collapse. We lost both the business and the house, so 2001 is not a year we remember with nostalgia.

With the business gone we were in need of a base from which to regroup and restart. The Blue Cabin tells the story of our move to the otherwise uninhabited island of Islandmore in Strangford Lough, and the steep learning curve which island life presented to two landlubbers accustomed to central heating and a car at the front door…

In challenging circumstances, Lynn’s art career continued to flourish after coming to Islandmore - her studio is just a few feet from the water’s edge, and unsurprisingly her work acquired a maritime flavour and a tendency to reflect the changing seasons. I took to writing about island life, and The Blue Cabin – Living by the Tides on Islandmore, which was published by Blackstaff Press in 2006, was followed by the more heavily illustrated hardcover Still On The Sound – A Seasonal Look at Island Life in 2009. Links to both titles are in the sidebar to the left.

I maintain a daily blog on island living and other interests at: ISLAND LIFE – The Blue Cabin Blog

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