John Richardson rush seated chairs

Another fine craftsman at Linacre was John Richardson chairmaker. He makes fine ladderback chairs in the arts and crafts tradition. John lives on a narrowboat in Leicestershire and has a second boat as a workshop, this keeps his overheads low and his chairs are very reasonable though he is really semi retired now and does not make so many. I love rush seating, the colours are equally beautiful when first woven and when old and mellowed. Here he is rushing an old chair for a client.


The trick with rush seating is to twist it well and pull it tight. A good tight weave will last for years without sagging. I think there is a certain beauty in old craftsmen's hands worn through years of tough work.


And here is the finished chair, I feel you should never judge a chair before sitting in it and I can assure you this one is very comfortable.

Patterson's spade mill

I first heard about Patterson's many years ago whilst I was still working for the National Trust as a forester. It was an unusual property for the Trust to take on because it was relatively modern industrial heritage.

On Tuesday I finally got to visit. I was in Northern Ireland partly to work on the forthcoming National Occupational Standards for Craft and partly to meet traditional craftspeople there to find out if they are facing similar issues to those this side of the water and to see if the HCA can be of benefit to them. Tuesday morning was my only free time and I was very disappointed when I discovered it was the only day of the week that Patterson's was closed. Tom Mahon opened up specially for us though and gave Joe Kelly, director of Craft Northern Ireland, and myself the VIP tour.


The current guide book introduces the property by saying in the mill "are represented elements which are intrinsic to the culture and heritage of this part of the world..The craft was carried out by the fifth generation of a family, the last remnant of an industry, which was once widespread. The industry produced a product that was pervasive in Irish culture, an essential part of agricultural life, illustrating the diversity of countryside and custom, and enshrined in the vitality of language and phrase, in song and in literature."

Perhaps what is most special about Patterson's is that it is not just a static museum the Trust have continued spade production. Not at a commercial level perhaps but at least at a level that means that the skills must be preserved and passed on and the machinery maintained.

I had no idea that a spade would be forged from a single smal block of steel 3"x4" as seen on the right here.


The shoulders are forged first then a spike is pressed down into the near white hot metal to open the slot where eventually the handle will go. This hole is then filled with ash and closed up whilst the spades blade is forged out. Before finally being reopend at the end.


The place is full of big boys toys (sorry tools) like this big hammer.

For me though the highlight of a visit there must be the tilt hammer. I have worked in the forges at Abbeydale industrial hamlet in Sheffield where they have 2 old inoperative tilt hammers but I have never seen one working. A tilt hammer is simply a huge hammer fixed on a pivot near the end of the giant handle, a cam on the driveshaft from the waterwheel hits the end of the handle downwards which flicks the hammer up in the air and it then falls under it's own weight. I had always imagined it would be enormously noisy, clattery and difficult to control but actually it was somehow quite soft gentle and controllable whilst still having a lot of power. I can imagine how much a skilled man could produce in a day working on such a tool. Tom told us that during full production in the past the mill would produce an average of one spade per man per hour.

Handles are cut from locally sourced ash and rounded in this huge pecil sharpener like machine.


This copy lathe makes the handle tops.


When the handle is fitted it gets rolled in this roller which presses the metal flanges into the wooden handle so they are smooth to the touch.

Tom could talk about spades all day, today most spades are pressed out of a single thickness of plate but a forged spade can be thick where it needs extra strength and thin and light where it doesn't. The "spring" is important, I know a clogmaker who uses exactly the same term to mean just the same thing. It is the bend in the blade, that means that when you have cut the spade into the ground you can use leverage to lift the soil, it is particularly important in clay soils where you need to break the suction of the clay.


Tom said they have recorded over 150 different types of spade all slight regional variations to suit the local soil conditions.

So how much does a quality forged spade cost? About £65 which has to be a bargain for the amount of work involved. On this trip I couldn't bring one home with me but I will be back.

HCA in Craft and design magazine

Nice article out today in the September issue of Craft and Design magazine. The editor Angie Boyer has been very supportive of the Heritage Crafts Association and following this article we hope to run a series on traditional craftspeople with one featured each issue, so if you know of someone doing a traditional craft that could do with a bit of extra free publicity do let us know.

Libby Purves on making stuff

I have long been a fan of Libby Purves, midweek presenter, author and Times columnist.

This article I just came across written in the Times on 27th July really struck a cord.

Full article here, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article6728120.ece

Here are a few extracts.

"To feel good about your work, as an individual and a society, to be
both emotionally satisfied and economically safe, you have to make
stuff. Put things together, improve them, sell them to admiring
customers. Ask any caveman rolling his first wheel; ask any small
child trotting home from school with an eggbox model. Then ask the
same child ten years later how satisfied he or she is with what passes
for physical creativity in the modern risk-averse classroom: the
desktop-published folder of design and technology, chronicling a
project never actually made; the “food-tech” folder with cutout
pictures of flans and lists of cooking temperatures, which somehow
never led to an actual pizza."

Mr Reece speaks to my soul. Just as Tony Benn did in 1990, when he
said that Thatcher’s Britain had “an utter contempt for skill. If one
talks to people who dig coal and drive trains, or to doctors, nurses,
dentists or tool-makers, one discovers that no one in Britain is
interested in them. The whole of the so-called entrepreneurial society
is focused on the City news that we get in every bulletin ... Skill is
what built this country’s strength, but it has been treated with
contempt.”

"No, to hell with avatars and iPhone apps — bring back the moving
parts, the beauty of machinery; bring it to every level of education
and national awareness; celebrate makers, enthuse a generation to
solid creativity."

English Heritage, traditional crafts and Birmingham's Jewelry Quarter

English Heritage recently bought a silversmiths workshop in Birmingham

Simon Thurley was quoted as saying "We have stepped in to save JW Evans because it is one of the most important Victorian and Edwardian manufacturies in existence. Its loss would not just be for Birmingham but the world. We now need to secure its long term future as a business and as somewhere people can learn about the source of goods, with which Birmingham supplied the Empire. It is rare to find a country house in desperate straits these days, but the big challenge of the next few years is looking after our industrial heritage. That is much less secure,'

At the start of the English Heritage video here http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.19256

The commentator says "at the heart of this decision is the desire to safeguard a skilled craft which is seriously under threat."


Birmingham City Council also recognise the importance of the living craft skills to the character of the Jewelry Quarter. The area is designated as a conservation area and is a proposed World Heritage Site. The council's management plan highlights the significance of the
area due to "The substantial survival of an historically important manufacturing trade within a distinct urban area." and "A viable level of specialist skills traditionally employed within the core trade." and concludes "The Quarter is unique within the local, national , and international context, for it's high concentration of craft industry with associated trades in one small area....As such it is of major significance with no imediate parallels in Britain or overseas."

This is wonderful to see the recognition of the importance of the craft skills to the heritage of the area and a stark contrast to the situation in Sheffield. With all this stated interest in the skills one would expect significant investment in ensuring their survival. There is recognition that cheap workshops are vital to that survival of the skills and that with prices for residential land eight or nine times higher than industrial use that "if left unchecked, residential developement could overwhelm the quarter." threatening it's survival.

Whilst there follow excelent policies for the preservation of the special buildings of the area there apears to be no specific plan for the support of the special skills which have been highlighted as being of such importance to the character of the area. Under the heading "Grant Aid" we read The highest priority is to secure funding for repairs to buildings at risk."

Recognising the importance of these skills is an important first step to preserving them for future generations we now need to work out what the major threats to the skills are and find ways of ensuring they are passed on.

More info on the Jewelry Quarters website here including a video here

buy a piece of Sheffield history for £20

Yesterday I visited the kutrite scissor works in Sheffield, I have written about them before here and here, they are wonderful chaps, the three guys working there have 150 years experience of the cutlery trade between them. This is Cliff, the "putter togetherer" that is the official job title that you would advertise in the days when there were 60 scissor firms in town.

Anyway after my previous posts about them some people have asked about buying a pair of their wonderful scissors. They normally only sell to trade but have agreed to do a mail order service for my blog readers and supporters of the Heritage Crafts Association. We chose one of their most popular lines 8 1/4" dress making shears, I think these tools are at once a mini sculpture and a gorgeous piece of engineering. The cost is just £20 plus £5 P&P.



The difference between these and a cheap pair of scissors is that these are drop forged out of high carbon steel then hardened and tempered to give a very tough and hard long lasting tool. The other big difference is the setting. On a pair of cheap modern scissors the two blades never actually touch they lie parallel to each other and do not cut as a pair of proper shears do. The two blades are skilfully ground and set in a slight curve so that they always touch just at the point you are cutting.



The effect of this is a gliding slicing cut that just feels wonderful. Why 8 1/4" and not 8"? Well back in the days before VAT there was a thing called purchase tax which applied to scissors but not tools. Shears over 8" were tools and so you will never find a pair of traditional English shears at just 8".


So here we have the perfect gift for anyone who has ever been frustrated at the lack of quality in modern tools. For just £25 inc P&P you can have a little bit of Sheffield history and help to keep this wonderful trade going for a little longer.

How do you buy them?

Sadly they don't do paypal or credit card payments so it has to be an old fashioned cheque made payable to "Kutrite of Sheffield Ltd" include your address and a note asking for 8 1/4" dress making shears. Post it to

Kutrite of Sheffield Ltd
Kelham Works
72 Russel Street,
Sheffield
S3 8RW

meetings with English Heritage, NADFAS and ICON

Tuesday was another meetings in London day. We had excellent meetings with English Heritage, NADFAS and ICON all of whom are supportive of what the Heritage Crafts Association are trying to achieve. We were given some good new contacts and ideas. One particularly interesting idea was looking at how English Heritage are already begining to use heritage crafts skills (and not just building crafts) in their work. I have been working on a project this week carving a big dish for Dover Castle, this is part of a major project using many craftspeople to recreate the interiors as they would originaly have been. I have already supplied bowls and mazers, this one is going to have a boars head served on it, it took me a while to find any useful reference to copy and the nearest we could find in the end was a rather nice though smaller and earlier dish I saw several years ago in Oslo, it was found with the Oseberg ship burial.

We particularly liked this dish as it had a chevron pattern chip carved around the edge, a symbol that survives on contemporary stonework nearby and which we used on the mazer rims.

I had to grind an old chisel to a skew angle and narrow edge to do the chip carving but once I got it right it worked really well.


In the evenings I have been working on a huge birch soup ladle.





It seemed everyone in the heritage world was waiting this week for the big announcement today of the Heritage Lottery Fund's next major skills funding project.

They announced today

• £2.3m will be invested as an extension of HLF’s successful £7m Training Bursary Programme

This is great news for the heritage building and conservation crafts, the bursaries have been a tremendous help in training in these valuable skills.

• £5m will create a new programme, entitled ‘Skills for the Future’, to launch towards the end of the year. This will offer new work-based training in the skills that are needed to look after our buildings, landscapes, habitats, species, and museum collections.

Again this is good news for conservation of our physical or tangible heritage of things. What we need to see next is an equivalent scheme to protect the intangible or living heritage. All these projects concentrate on protecting things and the skills are seen as a way of doing that, the HCA believes that crafts skills are an important part of our cultural heritage in their own right. We should train blacksmiths not only because they help repair old buildings but because we were once a nation of smiths, it is our most common surname. Once we acept this then we can start to asses what we have such as the remains of the Sheffield cutlery industry, sadlery in Walsall, shoemaking in Northamton.

English Heritage recently bought a wonderful old silverworks in Birmingham, JW Evans, full story here the story reminded me very much of the scissor factory in Sheffield which I shall be visiting tomorrow. The problem is the building and tools are only a part of the heritage value of the place, the skills and accumulate knowledge of generations of craftspeople passed down through the generations is important too.


http://www.hlf.org.uk/English/MediaCentre/Archive/Funding+for+heritage+skills.htm