craftspeople are you selling your heart and soul?

I think it is common for craftspeople to have very ambivalent feelings about selling their work. On the one hand it can be a wonderful experience when we meet someone who really apreciates what we are doing and will enjoy the objects we make, on the other it can leave us feeling cheapened, as if our work has been turned into a mere commodity. Most craftspeople find it difficult to actively sell their work.

What is the problem?


I think it comes down to what we put into the work.  Louis Nizer said.

"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist”

Thanks for a great 2010 and best wishes for 2011

The Heritage Crafts Association year in brief – 2010

2010 has been a fantastic year for traditional crafts and for the Heritage Crafts Association in particular. We would like to thank you for your support and share a few of the highlights.

We started the year with the prediction on our blog that 2010 would be the year that traditional crafts became recognised as part of our heritage and ended with John Penrose the Heritage Minister giving us a statement recognising “crafts which are valuable parts of our heritage”.

In January we became a registered charity. That month we also sent out an online survey for traditional craftspeople which resulted in valuable information about the state of the industry. This was later used in a BBC news item. HCA were delighted that distinguished craft writer Professor Tanya Harrod joined the committee, and Professor Ted Collins joined us as a Patron.

An HCA highlight was in March when we held our official Launch and Heritage Forum at the V&A with chairs of many craft guilds and societies coming together to discuss how we could work together for a vibrant future for traditional crafts. We were joined by many of the mentors from the Mastercrafts programmes and inspirational speeches by Ewan Clayton and Phil Harding were given. If you missed it details, results of everyone's input and transcripts of speeches are all online

Alongside many other meetings with various influential people, we met with Jeremy Hunt (now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport) and Mick Elliott (Director of Culture at DCMS). Both recognised that traditional crafts were falling through the gap between heritage and arts organisations.

Crafts were in the limelight on TV with Monty Don fronting Mastercrafts and HCA Patron Alex Langlands co-presenting Edwardian Farm.

Direct HCA successes included helping the country’s last sievemaker find a successor before he retired, thus saving the craft from extinction and, working with others, saving the respected NETS course at Hereford. In June we launched our Craft Map, a free service that allows craftspeople to input their data, and customers to find local craftspeople. This will soon be updated with a searchable database to make it more accessible for people wanting to find the best traditional crafts online. HCA also worked with CCSkills to write the National Occupational Standards for craft, and are helping them to take these forward. This is the first stage in a long process towards getting funding for accredited training and apprenticeships.

In July we publicised the book by Matt Crawford Shop Class as Soul Class later published in the UK as “the case for working with your hands” This book has since been mentioned by no less than four government ministers. It may be expected that the culture ministers would be interested, but John Hayes and David Willetts both in the Department for Business innovation and Skills have also quoted from it. John Hayes went as far as calling for a new Arts and Crafts movement. He has agreed to meet with HCA early in 2011.

In November The UNESCO world heritage list was much in the news despite there being no examples of living heritage from the UK included. This again highlighted that UK heritage policy is lagging behind world heritage policy.

Lord Cormack has taken up the HCA cause and arranged a meeting at the Athenaeum in February to discuss heritage crafts with key invited guests.

We were delighted to be supported by the Headley Trust who have agreed to fund a part-time administrator for two years. HCA received an amazing and welcome 241 applications for the post and appointed Sally Dodson to start in January 2011.

We also received generous and welcome donations from the Association of Pole Lathe Turners and Green Woodworkers, The Fletchers Trust and the Dorset Coppice Group as well as many individuals. Since March individuals and groups have been able to join the HCA Friends scheme and have been very generous in their support for our work, which has been much appreciated. See our friends here

We continue to gather examples of crafts under threat such as the historic boatyard at Faversham where the buildings are listed but the boatbuilding skills are not to wonderful examples of vibrant traditional crafts, such as saddle making in Walsall or riving slate at Honister in Cumbria.

In September following an HCA initiative Sheffield Council set aside funds and staff time to research into the skills of the City metal trades; this is a six month project with results due in spring 2011. The more evidence we can gather, the stronger case we can make to government.

So 2010 has been quite a journey, and 2011 promises even more progress. We have exciting things planned, such as our Spring Conference at the V&A on Saturday March 19th, and there is a great deal of work going on behind the scenes – more to follow in the new year. We continue, though, to look for ‘start-up’ or day-to-day funding, as the lack of this greatly restricts what we are able to do.

We try not to email our supporters too often with spam but if you would like more regular updates keep an eye on our blog which is updated regularly or join the HCA facebook group  and follow us on twitter.

We very much appreciate the support of all our friends and volunteers in 2010, and send our best wishes to everyone for the festive season. We look forward to working with you all to make 2011 an even better year for traditional crafts.

Best wishes Robin

Robin Wood
Chair Heritage Crafts Association
www.heritagecrafts.org.uk

Ed Vaizey in praise of craft

Article in Dec 2010 GQ by Arts minister Ed Vaizey.

HCA met Ed November 2009   when we presented the case for traditional crafts, perhaps we planted a few seeds.

"Nudge is no  longer the hottest book in political circles.  Policy wonks now eagerly discuss The Case For Working With Your Hands by the American academic philosopher Matthew Crawford. Crawford, who also runs a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia, has penned a nostalgic/futurist homage to the virtues of craftsmanship, the joys of making things and fixing things. It's a riposte to what he sees as an increasingly remote society, where jobs are offshored, one-to-one customer care is processed and automated and the computer says "no" far too often.

Crawford's book is one of a number of recent works that have taken the same line, from Richard Sennett's The Craftsman to Alain de Botton's The Pleasure And Sorrows Of Work. Tangentially, a book with more subtle cultural focus is the potter Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, a family memoir that brings alive the history of Europe from the end of the 19th century to beyond the end of WWII. De Waal's ancestor, Charles Ephrussi - a friend of Proust and one of the models for Charles Swann in A Remembrance Of Things Past - bought 264 Japanese netsuke (exquisitely carved objects of wood and ivory), including the hare of the title. The netsuke hold De Waal's tale together, as he charts the rise and fall of his family. They remain the only survivors of the family fortune, hidden from the Nazis by a family retainer as the rest was expropriated, travelling back to Japan, and eventually being passed down to De Waal.

De Waal and his contemporaries should be much better known in a country that has always celebrated craft. Maybe they will be. Craft is enjoying a bit of a Zeitgeist moment. Global brands are acknowledging this: Camper with its Extraordinary Crafts campaign, Levi's with its Craftwork campaign and Louis Vuitton's plans to have craftsmen working in selected stores to convey the craftsmanship of the brand.

The Victoria And Albert Museum in London has recently refurbished its ceramics galleries, with the "Signs And Wonders" installation by De Waal as one of its centre pieces. (You'll have to look up - it's a series of pots on a shelf just below the gallery's rotunda.) The V&A is the world's greatest museum of the decorative arts and was founded in London specifically to educate people about crafts.

The School of Design, which had been located at Somerset House, London, was transferred to the new museum and renamed the Art Training School. Today it is the Royal College of Art, training everybody from studio ceramicists to painters to jewellers to industrial designers and it is still in a fruitful relationship with the V&A - the RCA's rector is a trustee of the museum, and a joint history of design course exists. It remains one of the foremost design schools in the world. Queen Victoria, in her last public appearance in 1899, took part in a ceremony to rename the South Kensington Museum as the Victoria and Albert. The London Gazette reported that the V&A would "remain for ages a Monument of discerning Liberality and a Source of Refinement and Progress".

As David Hockney (who made the newspapers when he graduated with the gold medal from the RCA in 1962, aglow with brilliant-yellow hair and a golden suit) said, "You can't teach the poetry, but you can teach the craft." And it was the socialist polymath - designer, poet, writer, businessman, dedicated to the making of things - William Morris who said, "If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Morris was the central figure in the Arts and Crafts movement (praised by Crawford in his book), which flourished in this country at the same time as Ephrussi was buying his netsuke. His company, inspired by Ruskin, made wallpaper, textiles, furniture and stained glass, and inspired architectural and design movements that still resonate today.

If you ask most people today what they think is meant by "crafts", you would probably get a scornful reply. Yet the most celebrated architect in the world today, Frank Gehry, for all his computer-aided design, starts off playing with bits of paper, the Japanese craft of origami, to shape and visualise his early inspirations. Craft resides in white-cube spaces as much as it does in local knitting groups. One of the UK's leading ceramicists, Clare Twomey, created the installation "Trophy" in 2006 where she filled the cast courts at the V&A with 4,000 Jasper Blue ceramic birds and, in 2009 for the Possibilities And Losses exhibition at mima (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art), she created "Monument", an eight-metre high mountain of thousands of pieces of broken ceramics cascading from the gallery ceiling.

In a country which celebrates its huge leadership in design, from the iPod to the Aston Martin, it is worth remembering that it all begins with the craft, the object, working with your hands. There are 35,000 craftsmen working in Britain today; they turnover £1bn a year. Serious people take the crafts very seriously.

So when the kids turn their hand to woodwork, and those lumps of Plasticine, remember it all does start with the handmade: craft, and the making of the well-made thing is what distinguishes us from other life forms. Take the crafts seriously, too. The market for craft is growing with the Crafts Council's annual fair Collect at the Saatchi Gallery, generating huge sales each year. Go out and buy a pot, and show you're part of the Zeitgeist."

Ed Vaizey is the Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries.
Originally published in the December 2010 issue of British GQ.

Wesley-Barrell Craft Awards

                             





Wesley-Barrell is delighted to announce the launch of the third Wesley-Barrell Craft Awards.  The Wesley-Barrell Craft Awards 2011 are designed to put British craftsmanship in the spotlight and recognise the wealth of talented makers that work in Britain today.

Who should Enter
Aimed at established makers who work professionally in Britain.

Categories
•          Furniture
•          Vessels for Interiors

Why Enter
•          Shortlisted pieces will be showcased in a touring exhibition including Art in Action at Waterperry Gardens, Oxfordshire and Wesley-Barrell’s flagship showroom in Wigmore Street during London Design Festival.
•          A cash prize of £2,500 will be awarded to a winner from both categories.
•          Each winner will also benefit from a business mentoring scheme with Wesley-Barrell

Judging criteria
The eminent panel of judges includes Jon Snow – Newscaster, Channel 4 News, Katrina Burroughs – Columnist for the Sunday Times, Peter Ting – Ceramicist, Alastair Graham – Furniture consultant,  Helen Chislett – Journalist and Juliette Barrell – from Wesley-Barrell.

The judging panel will be particularly focused on the use of traditional craft skills utilised in an innovative and contemporary way to create beautiful and handcrafted one-off pieces.

How to enter
Entries must be submitted by Sunday 13th February 2011 .  To enter makers should complete an entry form by clicking onto this link Application 2011 by requesting a hard copy from Ali Griffiths at Wesley-Barrell, Ducklington Mill, Standlake Road, Ducklington, Oxon, OX29 7YR.  Tel. 01993 893108 or email alison.griffiths@wesley-barrell.co.uk.

Winners of each category will be announced at Art in Action 21-24 July 2011.

Walsall Saddlers, Frank Baines

In 1901 there were 6800 saddlers working in Walsall. Little wonder then that the train station is in the saddler centre and the football team are nicknamed the saddlers but how much of the craft is alive today?

This is the workshop of Frank Baines one of the twenty or so saddlers listed in Walsall yellow pages.

This is Frank in the saddle tree room with Carol Robinson a distant relative and trustee of the Heritage Crafts Association.

 The saddle tree is like the skeleton of the saddle, most are made of laminated plywood with spring steel but saddlers are always innovating and experimenting with new materials such as carbon fibre.

There are 5 or 6 tree makers left in Walsall but saddlers need to keep a good stock across a wide range of sizes. Where cheap saddles are off the peg like suits Frank Baines offers the equivalent of a Saville Row bespoke suit. The saddle has to fit horse and rider and spread the weight effectively and comfortably, every one is made to measure.

 

Before we move on from trees I must share this one. This is an old Swedish tree, all wooden, at least 100 years old and it uses a sliding tapered dovetail joint, something I have only seen in Eastern Europe.

 

 Next thing is the pattern, worked up by Frank from measurements carefully taken from horse and rider.

 The whole workshop smells gloriously of quality leather, each saddle uses many different types in different parts.

These are the cutting tools honed to a good edge on a leather strop.

Rolls of softer leather I can still smell it just seeing the pictures.

Cutting out.

 Then follows an awful lot of hand stitching. Each saddler has a workbench and works on a single saddle through all the stages. Frank has his bench alongside and spends more time at the bench than in the office.

 It is clearly hard work on the forearms as everyone had muscles like Popeye.

 This mushroom like tool was used to beat the saddle to help pull stitches really tight.

Like this.

 Now I don't know anything about saddles but last night when I told a horse loving friend where I had been she was very envious, Frank Baines is clearly the Rolls Royce of dressage saddles.

I took a couple of short video clips showing work in progress.

and a view around the workshop.

It was a joy to see Frank and his team at work, the commitment to quality and tradition whilst still being open to change and improvement. This is their website.

Edwardian Farm 5

Guest bloger Nigel Townshend with some background to Edwardian Farm.

Throughout the whole series of Edwardian Farm you get a real sense of a world changing, this was the time when globalisation was emerging and UK cottage industries were struggling to compete with factory produced goods. In Episode five of Edwardian Farm , we were given an insight into the cottage industry of lace making.

Lace making, as we know it today, has been around since the 16th Century and is thought to originate in Venice. Lace was soon being made across Europe, including England. For some reason, and I would be really interested to know why, Devon became associated with quality lace making, in fact half of all inhabitants of East Devon were lace makers. One place in particular that become synonymous with lace making was the town of Honiton, which became world famous for its lace, renowned for its beauty, delicacy and intricacy. 

I’ve always thought of lace as being incredibly intricate and beautiful, but I had never considered just how much time and work goes into producing it, so I was amazed to learn that to produce just a one inch square piece of lace, it  takes between 9 -10 hours! It was therefore not surprising to learn that lace was considered the jewellery of its day. Lace making was a real cottage industry and every girl in Honiton would be taught lace making, in fact in Devon, lace making was taught as part of the school curriculum up until 1960.

Lace was often made in groups with women sometimes specialising in one aspect of a design e.g. producing flowers, butterflies, etc. the more experienced ladies of the group would then collect and assemble the pieces. There is a wealth of information on the website of the Lace Guild of Great Britain http://www.laceguild.demon.co.uk

This video produced by The Lace Guild of Great Britain illustrates the basics of bobbin lacemaking and needle lacemaking:


In Croatia lacemaking is recognised as part of the country's intangible heritage the list of things the government are doing to preserve and promote lacemaking at the end of this short film is impressive.


In contrast to the delicate lace, the other main focus of the program was on mining.

Morwhellam Quay, which is where Edwardian Farm is filmed, is now a heritage centre  but in the 19 century it was the busiest inland port in Britain, where ships of up to 300 tonnes would visit to pick up copper which had been extracted from the George & Charlotte copper mine. Archaeologist and HCA Patron, Alex Langlands headed down the mine as he and fellow archaeologist Peter Ginn looked at one of the ways farmers tried to supplement their income.

By Edwardian times, rising costs of running the George and Charlotte mine, meant it could no longer compete with cheap foreign copper imports and the mine was abandoned .However, there was still some money to be made be scavenging the spoil heaps. This scavenging for copper, which involved breaking up rocks and looking for the copper ore within them, was known by the rather wonderful term, ‘fossicking’. The income from this was limited and many Devon farmers would also head across the river to Cornwall to the tin mines, Which is what Alex and Peter did.

However, before they could head down the tin mines of Cornwall, Peter Ginn visited blacksmith Simon Summers  to collect a pick axe, which needed repairing and hardening so it could be used for working with stone.

The process of hardening and tempering steel is straightforward but crucial. First Simon heated the tip of the pick till it was very hot – the metal was a cherry red in colour - he then cooled the very tip of the pick, leaving around two inches of steel still glowing red. thios makes the steel tip very hard but brittle (hardening) Simon then watched the colours change in the metal, as the heat flowed back towards the tip. As the steel warms it changes colour and each temperature/colour relates to a specific harness so it is getting gradually softer but tougher (tempering). Simon explained that this process allowed blacksmiths to temper steel at different strengths for different jobs for stone the blacksmith will look for a yellow/straw colour before quickly quenching the steel to stop any further softening.

For more info on blacksmithing including courses etc contact BABA

Working in the mine was a tiring, difficult and dangerous job. While the invention of a drill, that worked by compressed air supplied by a steam engine, speeded up the process (what could be drilled in an hour by hand, could now be done by machine in a minute) the job became more dangerous, due to the amount of dust that was created; this was particularly problematic when drilling through quartz and is why the drill was known as the widow maker.

All this talk of mining reminded of the Free Miners of the Forest of Dean, another heritage industry in danger. http://www.fweb.org.uk/dean/deanhist/miners.htm

250 year old birch bark canoe found in Cornwall

National Maritime Museum Cornwall and one of the oldest, and most influential families, in Cornwall are working together to conserve possibly the oldest Birch Bark Canoe in existence.

Estimated to be over 250 years old, the canoe has been discovered on the Enys Estate near Penryn, housed in one of the Enys family’s barns. 

 

Laid to rest for a number of years, the canoe saw daylight for the first time in decades today when it was moved from its shed to its new temporary resting place at National Maritime Museum Cornwall. The Museum’s boat restoration and curatorial team lifted and transported this rare find to the Maritime Museum in Falmouth where she will be conserved, preserved and put on display to the public before being repatriated to Canada.

Andy Wyke, Boat Collections Manager says: “Moving the canoe is the beginning of a whole new journey back to Canada for this incredible find. For over 200 years, the canoe has belonged to the Enys family having been brought to Cornwall by Lt John Enys after his time fighting in the American War of Independence in 1776.

Lt Enys sailed from Falmouth in a Packet Ship to join his regiment in Canada to relieve the city of Quebec which was under siege from the Americans. He fought many military campaigns and toured the area for his personal interest – discovering this canoe along the way. It’s incredible to think its legacy has been resting in a barn in Cornwall all this time.”

Wendy Fowler, a descendent of the Enys family, whose records date back to the 13th century, called the Maritime Museum to request they look at the canoe lying in the Estate’s barn. She says: “The Estate is very special to us and holds many secrets but I believe this is the most interesting to date. The Maritime Museum are brilliantly ensuring and repatriating another element of our great family history and I’m most grateful that my great, great, great, great, great Uncle’s travels have led to such a major chapter of boating history being discovered in Cornwall.”

Captain George Hogg, Archivist and Trustee of the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, says: “When we received the call from the Enys family to identify their ‘canoe in a shed’ we had no idea of the importance of the find. We knew we had something special, but having worked with the British Museum on the artefacts and the Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ontario, we now believe that this is one of the world’s oldest Birch Bark Canoes. This is a unique survival from the 18th century.”

Prior to her arrival at the Museum, the canoe was digitally recorded by the curatorial team and during the canoe’s time at the Museum, teams will be researching her history, conserving the remaining wood and preserving what’s left as well as preparing her for the trip back home and representing what she might have looked like over 250 years ago.

After September, the Native American canoe will be repatriated to Canada where the Canadian Canoe Museum will extend further research to see where the boat may have been built and by which tribe. Curators from the Canadian Museum are especially excited to receive this rare and unique part of their history as rarely do they have ‘live’ historic canoes of this far reaching history to help them reveal their own past.


The Birch Bark Canoe is planned to go on display, with supporting artefacts, in the Main Hall of National Maritime Museum Cornwall from late January to September 2011.

My favourite craft film ever is of 67 year old Cesar Newashish building a birch bark canoe, 57 minutes of pure woodworking bliss, simple tools and knowledge of materials to create something of great beauty and utility. view it free online here  http://www.nfb.ca/film/Cesars_Bark_Canoe/

traditional pottery in Korea Onggi jars

A 7th generation Onggi pottery operated by the Kim family and lead by Kim Il-Maan, a Korean National Cultural Treasure, filmed by Adam Field who was apprenticed there for most of 2008


This is the first stage, though if you were watching closely you will have seen this in the background of the previous film.



Glazing big pots, hard physical work but they are very efficient.




The kiln


These films were uploaded to youtube by Adam Field, this is him making a pot start to finish timelapse, a fun film. I really appreciate him putting this material in the public domain. I also really like his pots.

Edwardian farm crafts

It has been a pleasure to watch Edwardian Farm. HCA Patron Alex Langlands has been trying out more crafts this time joining Nigel Legge lobsterpot maker, artist, fisherman. He seemed like a lovely bloke with a fine accent. He also seems to have a perfect lifestyle with a mix of making lobster pots, painting and taking holiday makers on boat trips. Next time I am down that way I shall definitely look him up. Alex said "Nigel was a top chap - really understated his skills - a great painter too. It was one of those magical days spent down there in Cornwall."

The pots worked too.

 I was envious of Peter Gynn too visiting the wonderful J &FJ Baker oak bark Tannery. Here is owner Andrew Parr the tannery has been in the family since 1864 and is one of the last tanneries in the UK still using oak bark, I loved the water powered bark grinder. My friend Owen Jones the swill basket maker who was featured in Victorian farm supplies them with some of their oak bark.

It was a very photogenic place, first the hide was soaked in lime, then the hair scraped away. Then it was immersed in vats with oak bark for a year.

Finally it was oiled, dried and finished with dubin.

Whilst I am posting I'll include a couple of links from episode 2 which I missed at the time. Peter went to St Fagans in Cardiff to meet a cooper. Shame they didn't know about Alistair Simms the last master cooper of Wadworth's at Devises.

 I was pleased to see Alex with his Sussex Trug, it seemed appropriate since he has light Sussex chickens and trugs were mass produced and sold around the country.

The fencing on the right is also a Sussex specialty but one which has only recently traveled further afield as horsey folk can afford to have the heavy sweet chestnut rails transported. It still looks better than the tanalised softwood fence on the left though. I find it interesting that fencing is seemingly invisible to people. Few folk would notice this modern fence and I wonder if the production company decided to let it go whilst going to great lengths elsewhere to keep as much as possible true to the Edwardian time frame.

riving slate in Westmorland

This is Englands last working slate mine at Honister, a real good news story. The notes below are taken from their website. 

 In 1986, after three centuries of near continuous slate mining at Honister, the mine closed down after a protracted period of decline. With it, it seemed, went the last vestiges of traditional extraction and finishing techniques, as well as more than twenty local jobs. For the next ten years, any attempts to revive the industry were vexed by legal and financial issues and there was a real danger that the mine would fall into irreversible decay.

However, in 1996, its fortunes suddenly changed with the arrival on the scene of Bill Taylor and Mark Weir, whose respective father and grandfather had worked at the mine for many years. The two men secured the lease and developed a plan to start up production again under the banner of a heritage enterprise that would combine commercial extraction and tourism. Over the course of the next year, a tremendous amount of work was devoted to restoring the mine workings, repairing the buildings and constructing display areas for visitors. Dormant machinery was brought back into operation and, in December 1997, eleven years after the mine’s closure, slate production began again.

Since then, Honister Slate Mine has become a highly successful enterprise. It is once more producing slate in significant volumes, it is preserving and applying age old skills such as docking, riving and dressing, and it has given rise to an extremely popular visitor attraction. These are all achievements of which Mark Weir is very proud:

"The closure of Honister Slate Mine was like the right arm being missing from the valley,” says Mark.
“Restoring the mine and reviving the local industry has been a very positive and rewarding process. Being born and brought up in Borrowdale, we wanted to create real jobs for local people; people who feel privileged to keep traditional skills alive and be proud of where they came from.”

And if you have never seen slate riven this film showing the old techniques being used today is a joy.

Period footage of the quary in 1926

To my mind this shows how with imagination traditional industries can be revitalised, mixed sympatheticaly with a tourism/heritage package and bring life and work to communities. I guess this one works particularly well having been initiated from people who have family history in the mine and really understand it's place in Westmorland culture. How wonderful it would be to see this model replicated with cutlery in Sheffield, pottery in Stoke, boatbuilding in Faversham etc.

end of the line for historic boatbuilding in Faversham?

This is Standard Quay in Faversham

It remains a working quay and home to historic craft particularly Thames sailing barges. The fabric of main wetherboarded building is listed for it's historic value, the grazing marsh around is protected as a RAMSAR site but the crafts and trades which have centuries of unbroken history are not recognised in the same way as being part of the heritage of the area so they have to compete in hard financial terms. The owners of the buildings are likely to make more money if they could evict the craftsmen and convert the buildings to luxury homes. That looks likely to happen in 2011 and the council appear to be supporting development.



So what crafts go on here? Boatbuilding including a scheme with 4 apprentices learning traditional techniques and a working blockmaker (I would be interested to know how many of those are left in the UK) The quay is one of only two yards left specialising in the repair and maintenance of Thames barges and is in continuous demand. Here is blockmaker Colin Frake and a link to his website

This short film is a trailer made on low budget by people who care passionately about the key
The Quay (trailer) from Richard Fleury on Vimeo.

learn more about the film project here. http://www.thequayfilm.net/?page_id=116
Learn more about the quay or get involved in the campaign to save it here. http://standardquay.com/ 


A very similar campaign has been highly successful at  Portland Works in Sheffield, there too the building was protected but not the wide range of craft skills going on inside, the landlord saw it only as a potentially lucrative development.



Around the world other countries are signed up to the UNESCO convention on intangible cultural heritage which recognises that heritage is more than just bricks and mortar, that living history of practices that have gone on in a place for centuries that are equally important parts of our heritage.

Edwardian Farm episode 3

This blog by HCA supporter and guest blogger Nigel Townsend

It was interesting to see on Edwardian farm, episode three, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w6lm6  how human and horse power was being replaced by the internal combustion engine.  Below are my highlights, but it is definitely worth watching the whole thing. A programme that covers ploughing, steam powered saw mills, forging using water power and includes the sight of a man carrying a bowl of freshly squeezed trout eggs through a wood to his home built hatchery can’t be bad.

By the beginning of the 20th Century, farms increasingly had to become profit making rather than just being self sufficient.  In addition cheaper imports from abroad meant that British farmers and land owners had to get one step ahead of the game to keep up with these new markets. Jobs had to be completed quicker and more efficiently, this meant taking advantage of new technology and mechanisation. A theme that runs through this episode of Edwardian Farm.

For centuries, ploughing  was done by a team of men and shire horses:



As Peter Ginn said, “[ploughing is] an art, a skill, a science, in a word a way of life.”  Ploughing was skilled work and when done properly, every furrow would be cleanly cut and  be like turning a page in a book.  It was a real contrast then to watch the Ivel tractor use brute power to relentlessly push through the soil. Gone was the skilled work of the ploughman, who used his brain and brawn to overcome inconsistencies in the land, instead it had been replaced by the noisy, heavy, internal combustion engine, which meant that twice as much work could be done in half the time.

In Edwardian times there were a million shire horses working in the UK, just fifty years later shire horses were nearly extinct in Britain.

This you tube clip looks a project which celebrates traditional farming methods:


Hedges are an important part of stock management and land enclosure. The use of hedges meant that stock could be confined to one area and rotated onto fresh pasture, enabling a constant source of feed throughout the year. A vital part of ensuring that your hedges remained effective barriers to wandering sheep, was hedge laying the best source of info is the National Hedge Laying Society
http://www.hedgelaying.org.uk/styles.htm

In order to do the hedge laying HCA patron Alex Langlands required a bill hook and headed to Finches Forge http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-finchfoundry a national trust property in Devon. Here Alex watched Simon Summers work a tilt hammer to forge a traditional Devon billhook. Billhook patterns were often shaped differently in different parts of the country and there are around eleven main bill hook patterns of which in turn there are many variations . 

Forging using water power was common place in the 18th and 19th century – and was still in use during the first half of the 20th century This film (filmed in colour in 1941), shows Clay Wheel forge in Sheffield :
  you can see just how powerful the large tilt hammer was, and while I didn’t count, it certainly looks like the hammer falls at least at the rate of 240 beats per minute!



If you are in Northern Ireland you can visit Paterson’s Spade Mill, now a national trust property http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-pattersonsspademill  and watch red hoot steel be turned into spades by the power of water, in fact Robin visited Patterson’s last year:  http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/2009/08/pattersons-spade-mill.html


So what were your favourite bits? I'm always keen to see  films of traditional crafts being done well, so if you know of any post here or add a link to our facebook page

HCA has a new administrator

The Heritage Crafts Association has a new administrator. We were overwhelmed with the number (241) and quality of applicants. We interviewed five excellent candidates and appointed Sally Dodson to start in mid January. Originally trained as a silversmith Sally worked at the Crafts Council running and improving their database of makers and has since been involved in promotion and events management at the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths. We are thrilled to have such a talented and committed new member joining the HCA team and very much appreciate the grant from the Headley Trust that made it possible.

Crafts are valuable parts of our our Heritage

Meet John Penrose MP for Weston-super-Mare and minister for Heritage and Tourism.

Following our meeting last week John Penrose has sent us the following message of support.

“ The Heritage Crafts Association has brought together a fine range of different living crafts which are valuable parts of our heritage. The Association’s commitment to supporting small businesses all over the country producing useful, functional and decorative objects in traditional ways is truly impressive. I hope the increased public interest in these hands-on crafts will lead to many more people exploring and deploying these skills so that they are not lost to future generations. The fact that the BBC has given 12 hours of prime time tv to “The Edwardian Farm” is a measure of the public’s enthusiasm. “ 

This may seem like a simple little statement but it means so much to those of us who work in the traditional crafts to finally gain some degree of recognition. My first blog of 2010 was titled "2010 year for traditional crafts to be recognised as part of our heritage"  Once we are recognised as being important we can begin to work on addressing some of the issues the sector faces but for many simply having recognition for the years of hard work mastering difficult skills is enough.

Just to compare how big a step this is have a look back at a few blog posts showing attitudes to traditional crafts from just last year.

This was the adjournment debate we initiated last year. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2009-06-25c.1036.0

and a blog post from Jan 2009, it seems incredible that we have come so far so quickly. http://greenwood-carving.blogspot.com/2009/01/campaign-for-traditional-crafts.html

special Christmas present?

Do you know anyone that sews or does embroidery and apreciates lovely handmade things?
Then how about these for a gorgeous Christmas present.

Hand made in Sheffield gold plated and they work perfectly. They come in a leather sheath and presentation box delivered to your door for just £20 which I think is a bit of a bargain but then you are buying them direct from the makers. Ernest Wright of Sheffield.
Here is Cliff setting a pair of  tailors shears.

 And demonstrating setting the embroidery scissors at the V&A at the HCA launch event last year.

The gold plated ones suit small hands for larger hands like mine the slightly bigger "antique" finish polished steel ones work best.

Here are their contact details, they are nice folk and it's easy to order by phoning and posting a check or you can use the website. I suspect if you want to order multiple pairs for more gifts there would be saved post costs. They do great tailors shears and kitchen scissors too.



Tel :  0114 273 9977 (with answering facility, should we ever not be in the office. Please remember we are a small company.)

Email: enquiries@ernestwright.co.uk
Website: www.ernestwright.co.uk

more craft videos

This time signwriting canal boat style



and on a nice old Morris van



And Saville row tailors trying to protect their name.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFPHW_mIcmo

and last one spinning and dyeing in Peru

Ai Weiwei sunflower seeds and amazing pottery skills

Some videos today, first potters in Pakistan. The skill, dexterity and effortless speed of production is impressive. At 7.40 he throws a pot in 5 seconds, that is mind boggling.




and another from India, I don't know that much about throwing pots but I imagine throwing very tall thin forms like this is not so easy and they are incredibly consistent.



Now Ai Weiwei and his sunflower seeds. I watched this film last week and then went to see the seeds on display at Tate modern. It's a real shame you can't walk on them as the artist intended but I was most impressed by the film and the meaning behind the making. Having done a bit of web searching about his other work and political meaning I think Ai Weiwei is rapidly becoming one of my favourite artists. The film starts slow and is 15 minutes long but it really is worth it and for folk who are more into craft than art, don't worry there is plenty of craft.




This is what it should have been like, and was on opening day/

UNESCO world heritage list recognises Peruvian scissor dancers but not Sheffield scissor makers

This week UK news is reporting the UNESCO world heritage list. Radio 4 Today program this morning and
Telegraph 1
Telegraph 2
Surprisingly non of these pointed out that there are no UK examples of living heritage on the list. This one is better.
Guardian
One humorous one from Scotland
Herald
The world heritage list recognises important parts of our cultural heritage that are at risk. The world heritage sites such as Stonehenge are well known, but there is increasing recognition around the world for living heritage. So we have the Peruvian scissor dance and Chinese wooden junk (boat) building, but we don't have examples of UK living heritage such as bonfire night or the Sheffield cutlery crafts. So whilst the scissor dancers achieve world heritage status

 the scissor makers are completely off the radar.

John Penrose Heritage Minister

Yesterday it was off to Westminster to meet John Penrose the minister for Heritage.

Ministerial diaries are busy and it is not easy to get a meeting at this level and when you do you rarely know how long you will get beforehand, it can be anything from 20 minutes to rarely as much as an hour. When we arrived the minister was deeply engrossed in telephone conversation with Simon Thurley of English Heritage and we could feel the clock ticking, thinking if this was eating into our 20 minutes it could end up being a long journey for a few minutes meeting.

It turned out to be a very positive meeting however. John Penrose was sharp, attentive and interested in what we had to say. We also had Annabel Houghton, DCMS heritage adviser and Jon Hoare deputy director DCMS and everyone was constructive and looking for ways to improve the situation for the crafts. One meeting will not solve any issues but the more people that become aware of the issues facing working crafts people the more likely we are to see positive. The heritage team are going to look at the issues we raised and suggest potential partner organisations we should talk to. We also hope for a statement from John Penrose saying that he recognises crafts skills as part of our heritage.




Yesterday Westminster, today back to the workshop.

traditional crafts on BBC Edwardian Farm

The BBCs Victorian Farm program was described as a "surprise hit" and the team are back now for Edwardian farm. We will be updating information about the crafts and craftspeople shown in the program and of course we are delighted that Alex Langlands one of the shows presenters is a patron of the Heritage Crafts Association. Alex will be speaking about Edwardian Farm at the HCA spring conference at the V&A in March.

So in the first installment we visited stonemason Ian Piper on the edge of Dartmoor where he works the local granite.

Ian showed Peter Ginn how to split the granite using plugs and feathers.

It was a joy to see such simple technology work so well. in the hands of skilled craftsmen.

We also met the only operational Tamar barge the Shamrock. 
and met her skipper and restorer Peter Allington who says of sailing her "I hate to shatter people's illusions, but to be honest she's actually abysmal to sail. I can only describe it as being like trying to push a large and loaded shopping trolley across a slope"

Built in 1899 by Frederick Hawke of Plymouth for Tom Williams, SHAMROCK is a sailing ketch built for cargo work on the River Tamar and estuary in South West England. Her construction was of pitch pine and oak.

From 1899 to 1962 she worked as a barge plying her trade though with several changes of ownership. In the late 1930s she moved from Plymouth to the Truro River where she operated in several Cornish ports. In 1962 she was sold as a diving support vessel and later became a salvage vessel between 1966 and 1970 when she fell into disrepair.

The National Trust acquired her in 1974 and she was towed up the River Tamar to Cotehele Quay for restoration. This was a major joint project between the National Trust and the National Maritime Museum. SHAMROCK is the centrepiece of a display at Cotehele from where she makes occasional voyages on the River Tamar.

I am always interested in old wooden boats and how each region had their own design to suit the local conditions and uses. Boats like this are recognised as part of our national heritage but the skills to build them are not. I suspect it is many years since the last Tamar barge was built and probably no one remembers the subtleties of how it was done. In Japan and France there are schemes to make sure the skills to build new boats as well as repair old ones are passed on so every 20 years or so a new boat will be commissioned built from scratch allowing the older generation to pass the skills on.

On the domestic side of things Ruth made a rag rug and as a more industrial craft we had a really good demonstration of lime burning. This was a real eye opener for me as I know many derelict lime kilns locally and my workshop along with most of the old stone buildings around here is built using lime mortar made in exactly this way.