On November 13, Tamara Harding (nee Morin) will turn 41. She has chosen this earth date to launch her new business line MaraMade Designs 

(www.MaraMadeDesigns.com). It is one of the most anticipated business events of the season and is likely to establish her as the preeminent Jamaican designer of local furniture and wood ware.

Harding is a petite 5’7”, but her personality punches way above her height and weight class. She clearly has a solid work-out regimen that gives her body a strong sinewy structure. She emanates an intensity and focus that is rare in Jamaica. There may be a million things going on, but she is not distracted, always remaining present in the task at hand. She doesn’t do weakness or “healing”; she will take the punch and simply start again. She is vintage Scorpio, through and through. Her ability to prioritise and organise is world-class. She has an unqualified intelligence and seems to reach seamlessly from all aspects of her life experiences and extensive readings as she explains her story. She is articulate and clear. Over many hours of discussions over several days, she rarely pauses or reaches the unsure “ahms” in her conversation. She has a heightened self-awareness that comes from a lifelong hunger for knowledge, and a self- confidence that allows her to speak easily across social classes, from her workmen to her largely upper-class clientele.  She seems cut from the same cloth as that now nearly-extinct self-assured Jamaican woman from the 1970s, like a Beverly Rousseau, a Blossom O’Meally-Nelson or an Audrey Hinchcliffe…. Women who can run with the wolves.

A St Andrew/Belair High girl who went on to study retail management at Sheridan College in Canada, Harding found herself largely focused on developing a “left brain” business career inside concrete walls.  Among other things, she worked with Kimani Robinson to help build IMEX, started her own training company My PC Tutor, which taught office software like Word and Excel, and she did a long stint at the American International School (AIS) in administration.  A few “right brain” creative endeavours came her way, like when AIS moved locations, and she was given the charge to transform an old carriage house into a functioning office over a summer. She started her own full-service renovation and construction company in 2010, only to have to shutter it when her husband Zachary Harding needed her help with the administrative side of his ad agency business. But the call of the right brain and the natural outdoors was strong.

A critical breakthrough came when she did one of Sharon McConnell-Feanny’s detox programmes in 2013. After committing to eating high-vitality food, deep self-reflection and group sharing allowed her to see that what she percewed as limitations were simply a mirage. One exercise from the programme that was particularly powerful was the instruction to write and post a letter to herself in which she outlined her dreams and fears and made a commitment to stop the self-sabotage. The mix of tools from the programme gave her the confidence to move into her truth.

MaraMade Designs’ mission is to breathe new life into wood that is slated to be discarded. Harding wants to create beauty and pieces that inspire out of something unwanted. “No wood left behind” is her motto. When confronted with a large piece of wood she communes with it for a few days and waits for the inspiration to come. Michelangelo had a similar process with marble, in which he insisted that his sublime sculptures already existed in the marble and he was merely God’s tool in making the invisible visible. So, too, Harding wishes to find soulful renderings in wood created at any time on her own terms. She can’t do make-to-order as it violates her natural process. She would much rather her clients see the extraordinary beauty in a piece and feel “yes, yes, that belongs to me”. Her creative autonomy is paramount.

A dying poui tree from her childhood ends up as a wall-hanging in the entrance area of her house.  Her first cocktail table was from a piece of wood she found on the side of the road, which she insists spoke to her of her destiny. If you ask her where she got her training, she will say YouTube and her dreams. She is constantly looking around at what is, dreaming up what’s possible and then YouTubinn ways to make it happen. A self-described tool fanatic, she scours the aisles at Home Depot and hardware stores, asking anyone who will engage her on what each tool does. While working on a house renovation for her aunt, she watched a workman using an angle grinder on some tiles. She asked if that same grinder could be used on wood and he insisted it could not. Undeterred, she TouTubed “uses of angle grinders” and found that, with the right attachments, currently manufactured in Australia, she could in fact use the grinder on wood. She now uses this tool for a lot of her carving needs.

If a lot of this discussion sounds like new age mumbo jumbo, Harding is deadly serious about the significance of getting one’s spiritual mindset right, in work and in life. She speaks of her marriage to the tall, svelte, handsome Zachary Harding in a similar vein. According to her, there is a “rope from his heart to mine. I feel as if we were “two spirits meant to find each other”. They were very good childhood friends without any notion of romantic entanglements. When Zachary first made a move, she rebuffed his attempts at transforming their relationship. Eventually he gave up, and it was at that point that she came to realise that there was something extraordinary about the connection they shared. They were married only a few months after they became romantically involved.  A late-August romance led to an April wedding.  After almost 20 years together and two daughters later, Tory (19) and Zara (16), they still exude a passion for each other. And perhaps equally as important, they have supported each other through various professional and personal journeys. As of this date, the entire ground floor of their house and yard have been given over to MaraMade Designs.  Zachary does not seem to mind too much and seems equally surprised by and proud of his wife’s journey.

A few weeks ago, Harding posted a few of her pieces on Instagram, which piqued my curiosity. When I finally arranged to meet her, I was stunned by the high-quality works that she had already created. This was a line of furniture and wood accessories that could easily stand in the design district of Miami. Exhilarated by the line, I acquired one of her floating shelves for my bedroom. Art and utility converge beautifully as I use it as the stand to display my Latin American chalice. In addition to a high-end furniture art line, Harding eventually wants to develop a mass-produced accessory line out of the small pieces of wood left over from manufacturing furniture.

So many of us get stuck living lives which, in our hearts, we know are not our own. We erect barriers to our growth which assure that we don’t live out our dreams.  “One day I will” quickly ossifies into “never.” And then it’s over with the coulda, woulda, and shoulda.  On the eve of her 41st birthday, Harding begins again and discovers that she can indeed live the designing creative life that she has always dreamed of. We are both awed and inspired by her journey of self-discovery through wood. She reminds us that there is so much possibility for creating in this country, but we need to move past the negativity to see the natural magnificence around us. Get on the invited list for the launch; a superb new Jamaican talent has emerged.