KILBURN, England (Reuters) — Visit a church near this Yorkshire village and you will find people on a mouse hunt, searching altars and choir stalls for the trademark of one of England’s most celebrated craftsmen.Nearly 100 years ago Robert Thompson turned his back on mechanisation and decided to revive the medieval woodworking skills that had inspired him as a young man on trips to nearby Ripon Cathedral.

Working only with British oak, Thompson built a reputation for classic furniture.

He used an adze, a hoe-like tool, to create a ripple effect on the wood surface and added a small wooden mouse, sometimes concealed, as his signature.

“Mouseman” furniture is still produced in Kilburn by the family-run firm relying on traditional Yorkshire values.

Old or new, Mouseman pieces attract high prices and buyers from around the world, with interest fuelled by a growing trend among consumers to turn away from the mass-produced and embrace organic, traditional produce.

“We are still very much based on great-grandfather’s ethics,” Ian Thompson Cartwright told Reuters. “We are not driven by shareholders and accountants, we don’t borrow money.

“Nothing comes on the premises until it is bought and paid for.”

The mouse trademark began as a whimsical idea that underpinned Robert Thompson’s motto of “industry in quiet places”.

His first major commission was a crucifix at a nearby Roman Catholic school which led to a number of ecclesiastical commissions, including from London’s Westminster Abbey.

“My great grandfather was working with a fellow craftsman and they were both as poor as church mice.

“He had this idea of a church mouse gnawing away and no one knew he was there,” Thompson Cartwright said.

“He thought it was befitting to use this as a trademark.”

The family buys back pieces for its on-site museum and is happy to part-exchange new for old. Repairs to Mouseman furniture are also undertaken — it is currently fixing a chair where the mouse was gnawed off by the family dog.

“At the back of people’s minds is the investment value because the second-hand market in Mouseman furniture is so buoyant,” said Thompson Cartwright who works alongside his cousin and son.

New octagonal dining tables cost from $3,369-6,500 and second-hand items from before the Second World War are particularly sought after at auction.

In Robert’s day timber was the highest cost, but in the 21st century this is the 40-strong workforce which includes around 25 woodworkers, many of whom have worked for the company all their adult lives.

The 20,000 people who visit Kilburn each year can watch from a balcony as the craftsmen create chairs, tables, sideboards and church pulpits in the workshop — a dining chair takes about 20 hours of ‘bench time’ to assemble. Before using the adze, the craftsman inspects the wood’s grain and marks out in pencil the directions in which he will chip.

Then he stands astride the wood and swings the adze like a pendulum, rhythmically carving line after line of dimples in the surface.

The same workman works on an item from start to finish and each has his individual mouse sign-off. When a piece of furniture comes in for repair, family members can tell by looking at the mouse who was the original craftsman.

Thompson Cartwright travels over the country selecting between 200 and 500 felled oak trees for the workshop each year.

They are sawn and stored in huge piles in the village to season in the traditional fashion, although they still might not be suitable for furniture because of imperfections or damage.

“Twenty five percent of what we buy, we waste, and that’s built into the price.

“The furniture in the early days used whatever timber was available but everyone wants perfection nowadays,” he says.

“They have to be persuaded to accept knots (in the wood) — they want Mother Nature to create a perfect piece of timber.

“Timber is like a human being, it has blemishes.”