At a champagne “changing-of-the-guard” ceremony held in Bungendore Woodworks’ Octagon Gallery on Saturday, retiring artistic director David MacLaren announced his successor.

Rolf Barfoed, 39, one of the region’s finest wood-makers, will take over as interim director of the gallery in October, allowing himself a settling-in period to understand how it works.

MacLaren, the founder of the gallery, who has been at the helm for 40 years, said he had been holding meetings with “woodies” for the past 10 months with the object of laying out a succession plan and now he had the right person for the job.

Educated at Marist College, Barfoed lives in Kambah with his wife and young son.

He spent many years learning his craft under the influential Queanbeyan furniture maker Evan Dunstone and now has his own thriving business in Geelong Street Fyshwick, with a team of six fine makers working for him.

The occasion doubled up as the opening of ACT III – Scene I of an ongoing exhibition called The Collaborators, focusing on the work of colleagues Barfoed, Nathen Cummins, Steve Giannuzzi, Mitchell McNamara-Rice, Christopher Neal, the late Jim Homann and MacLaren himself.

It gave MacLaren an opportunity to reflect that, as a sufferer from Crohn’s disease, he had always been dependent on the people around him, one of the great things about the community of woodies.

An eloquent speaker who is obviously very good at explaining what he creates, Barfoed demonstrated the intricacies of grain-rotation in a three-legged blackwood table and a chair designed according to principles of the Alexander Technique.

He said he had been humbled by MacLaren’s offer and would work to understand the job and “see what I can do”.

Maclaren, for his part, presented Barfoed with a pre-digital wooden measuring stick, a nod to the old days.

Gallery manager Sharon Rasker, who together with Andrew Oliver, has already taken over day-to-day running of the facility, said that they were behind Barfoed 100 per cent and that they were working closely with all the 167 suppliers and makers who were dependent on the Woodworks. And not just them, she said, “the town needs this gallery”.

The gathering of woodies included furniture conservator and restorer Gary Peters, who said that Bungendore Woodworks was the centre of fine wood-making and finishing in Australia. As for rumours that it was closing, he urged everyone to tell people this was totally untrue.

As Mark Twain might have said, rumours of its demise had been “greatly exaggerated”.

ACT III- Scene I of The Collaborators continues at Bungendore Woodworks Gallery, until September 30.