AAW June challenge turns to Liam Flynn inspired barrel forms
AAW’s June challenge sends turners after Liam Flynn’s barrel form, a shape built on proportion, a crisp base and a small opening, with entries due June 29.
The AAW Forum’s June turning challenge landed on a barrel form that asks for discipline as much as dexterity. Michael Anderson opened the challenge on June 13 with a nod to Liam Flynn, and he said an Irish turner, John Gibson, had posted one of the forms on another forum and helped make it an ideal subject for the month.
It is an uncommon shape, and that is exactly the appeal. Anderson described it as a form with a large base and a smaller diameter opening, with subtle curves and a flat base that meets the side with a crisp transition. He also set the rules broadly enough to keep the challenge interesting: thinner is better, the wood can be green or dry, and members may leave the piece natural or embellish it as they wish. That leaves room for textured surfaces, color, carving or a clean finish, but the form itself still has to carry the piece.
Flynn is the right name to anchor that kind of test. His work centered on movement, and his website describes his approach to green unseasoned wood as an effort to treat the material as malleable, gently removing excess from the inside and pushing it into fluid forms. The same material also notes that he experimented with open, barrel-like pieces. Flynn, who lived from 1969 to 2017, has work in permanent collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Museum of Scotland and the National Museum of Ireland.
The challenge is also tightly organized. Entries are due by 11:59 p.m. UTC on Monday, June 29, 2026, and participants may post one or two photos, though only one image will be used in voting. Anderson also made clear that entries need to be made after the challenge was issued, and that pieces should not be posted elsewhere until voting has ended and a winner is declared.
That mix of open interpretation and hard boundaries is what gives the challenge its bite. The barrel form is not a bowl, not a vase and not something that can hide behind decoration; it lives or dies on proportion, curve and transition. The AAW challenge is built to expose that, which is why it should draw the turners who care most about getting the shape right.
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