I Didn’t Know Wood Could Do This (10 Photos)

October 17, 2026

By Vidar

Wood with a past

A troll napping under an oak in Iowa wears old lodge flooring as fur. A life-size horse is made of branches that washed up on beaches. These ten sculptures give driftwood and reclaimed wood a second life.

More: From Debris to Masterpiece: 10 Driftwood Sculptures

🐴 “The Eden Horse” — By Heather Jansch in Devon, England, UK 🇬🇧

Every curve of the neck and legs is a branch that washed up on a beach. Heather Jansch (1948–2021) became known for life-size horses made from driftwood. One of them was voted the most popular artwork at the Eden Project in Cornwall and has been known as The Eden Horse ever since. Here it stands in her garden in Olchard, Devon.

💡 Eden Fact: The original driftwood horse at Eden’s entrance has grown so fragile that it went to the foundry to be cast in bronze, so it can be kept.

📷 Photo: Kieronjansch / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

🌿 Driftwood Forest Figure — By Debra Bernier of Vancouver Island, Canada 🇨🇦

A small woman seems to grow out of a weathered trunk, with twigs and roots rising above her head. Debra Bernier works with driftwood, clay and shells. “When I work with driftwood, I never start with a blank canvas. Each piece of driftwood is already a sculpture, created by the caresses of the waves and wind,” she says.

More: 19 Driftwood Sculptures by Debra Bernier

🔗 Follow Debra Bernier on Instagram

🌳 Marwin — By Thomas Dambo in Clinton, Iowa, USA 🇺🇸

Flat on his back under an old oak at Bickelhaupt Arboretum, Marwin keeps his giant feet in the air. His fur is flooring taken from the lodge at Eagle Point Park, his hair is branches collected by Clinton’s city crews, and the structural lumber came from logs milled by the local Sawmill Museum, Eastern Iowa Community Colleges reports.

💡 Troll Fact: Marwin is one of the three brothers in Dambo’s The Tree Thieves, a story built on Clinton’s past as a Mississippi River lumber town. Local partners spell his name Marvin.

More: Three Giant Trolls Followed Their Stolen Trees to Iowa (8 Photos)

🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram

📷 Image via Eastern Iowa Community Colleges

🐎 Driftwood Horse — Newport News, Virginia, USA 🇺🇸

Head down as if grazing, this horse is a tangle of sun-bleached driftwood. Photographer Tony Alter saw it at the Port Warwick Art Festival in Newport News in October 2014 and noted that its maker had built many other animals too.

📷 Photo: Tony Alter / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

🪵 “Hannes” — By Thomas Dambo at De Schorre, Boom, Belgium 🇧🇪

Hannes sits on the edge of a ruined brick building with a string of beads in his hands; in Dambo’s poem for the series he likes “to put pearls on a string for everyone to see.” He is one of seven trolls Dambo built there in 2019, from reclaimed wood from his workshop and wood found in the park itself, over a frame of new treated wood.

💡 Park Fact: The trolls were a gift from the Tomorrowland festival for its 15th birthday. Dambo sees them slowly returning to nature; a full renovation would be costly and only temporary, so the park works to slow the wear instead.

More: This Is a Troll and His Name Is Hannes

🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram

📷 Photo: m.d.w._pictures

🐉 “Wyvern Dragon” — By James Doran-Webb in Churt, Surrey, UK 🇬🇧

A driftwood dragon spreads its wings on top of a domed garden temple at The Sculpture Park in Churt. British-born James Doran-Webb works from Cebu in the Philippines. He builds a stainless steel frame first, then his team bolts driftwood onto it piece by piece.

💡 Studio Fact: In the same interview he says a horse takes his studio about 1,500 hours on average.

🔗 Visit James Doran-Webb’s website

📷 Photo: Michael Garlick / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

🌊 “Mantle” — By Anne Daniel at Hokitika Beach, New Zealand 🇳🇿

A long driftwood arch spans the gray sand, with dozens of beach stones, each wrapped in knotted string, hanging from it. Anne Daniel’s Mantle was a Judge’s Choice winner at Driftwood & Sand in 2023.

📷 Photo: Mike Dickison / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

🚂 Driftwood Locomotive — Emeryville Mudflats, California, USA 🇺🇸

A steam engine pieced together from driftwood, tires and an oil drum stands at the edge of San Francisco Bay in this 1977 photo. The Emeryville mudflat sculptures first went up in 1962, built mostly by anonymous amateurs from driftwood and other material found on the spot. The last ones were hauled away in 1997.

💡 History Fact: California College of the Arts describes the mudflats as an art school experiment that grew into decades of installations by local people, many of whom never thought of themselves as artists.

📷 Photo: George Garrigues / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

🔥 Phoenix Rising From the Ashes — Hokitika Beach, New Zealand 🇳🇿

Fanned driftwood wings rise from a pile of blackened wood. This phoenix was an entry in the 2020 competition at Driftwood & Sand, a beach art festival on New Zealand’s West Coast that began in 2002 as a community project.

📷 Photo: Jonathan Wilson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

🦅 Crested Honey Buzzards — By James Doran-Webb at CHIJMES, Singapore 🇸🇬

Two driftwood birds of prey glide over the courtyard at CHIJMES, lit up at night beside the white chapel. Singapore also has Doran-Webb’s largest public work, The Sculpture Park notes: three life-size galloping thoroughbreds at Gardens by the Bay.

📷 Photo: Sgconlaw / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)