Barry Black was born in NSW in 1928 and began his association with woodwork as an apprentice carpenter and joiner. In 1949 Barry took his trade to Papua New Guinea where he lived for the next 25 years. Along the lines of another more infamous Australian, Errol Flynn, Barry tried his hand at crocodile shooting, saw milling, logging, bridge and boat building and rubber, coffee and coconut plantation farming. Barry Black could also match Errol in the swashbuckling department as at 79 he still competes in the sport of Fencing and is an internationally accredited judge right up to Olympic level.

Returning to Sydney in 1974, Barry travelled Australia demonstrating the Dremel, a small electric carving tool. He made hundreds of miniature boots as examples during many years of demonstrating.

On retirement in 1987 Barry applied himself to woodturning. After making a series of exquisite round jewellery boxes trimmed with ebony and whales-tooth he is now specialising in fine wooden pens and pencils and threaded lidded containers made from both Australian and Exotic timbers. And his second bout of retirement sees him embarking on another adventure gaining his pilots licence and purchasing his own light aircraft along with a lifestyle move from the NSW South Coast to the Narromine district.

As a member of the International Wood Collectors’ Society, Barry delights in using rare and beautiful timbers from all over the world. When Barry undertook his trade training he had to do everything by hand - saw, plane, cut mortices and tenons, dove-tails and make mouldings. However, he is not a strict traditionalist and will use a power tool if it produces a good result in a shorter time.

There are 420 boots in the Bungendore Wood Works Collection made from woods from all over the world. There is another collection of 50 in Australia, one collection of 50 in the United Kingdom and one collection of 12 in the USA owned by a member of the IWCS.

The Bungendore Wood Works Gallery’s collection has been valued as high as US$100,000 and the collection was awarded as the winner of the Australian Bicentennial Wood Exhibition in 1988. The collection has been in place in the Gallery since the opening of the new building in 1994. The Gallery purchased the collection in 2000 and has resisted a number of offers from would-be purchasers since. It has become the Gallery’s iconic “wow” piece, visited by over 120,000 people every year. Each boot in the collection is numbered and identified by species name, common name, and origin. and each is a hand-made original. The basic shape of the boot is similar but minor variations in the decoration and design ensure they are unique.

Barry Black’s thanks go to the many ‘woodies’ who have given him pieces of wood, members of the International Wood Collecting Society, in particular Alan Curtis and Rex Vought from the USA, Dick Turner from the NSW Forestry Commission gave him a few very unusual pieces and is always willing to help identify wood species.