Gardeners turning to the rural craftsmen to sweep away gloom

This article was published in The Times on Saturday (25 April 2009), by Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor.

The worst recession in 60 years might have hit the City hard, but the world of traditional country crafts is enjoying something of a boom.

Across Britain craftsmen who have been honing their skills without fanfare for years have experienced a sudden demand from people keen to hark back to bygone days.

A new awareness seems to be developing of the need to protect the environment, buy local and support traditional tradesmen, who make quality goods that are built to last.

Among the beneficiaries are John Rudd, 70, and his son, Graeme, 38, the last commercial rake makers in Britain. They have barely noticed the economic downturn and make up to 1,000 rakes a month at their workshop in Dufton, near Appleby, Cumbria, where four generations of the family have carried on the craft since 1890.

A hay rake made by them should last at least 30 years. Some rakes are still used for haymaking but most are used for collecting garden cuttings or sweeping gravel on drives and paths.

Mr Rudd senior, who has been making rakes for 54 years, is thrilled that he has seen off modern competition, though times were tough in the 1970s, when rakes were mass produced in aluminium and plastic.

He said: “We are lucky because golf clubs like them to clear bunkers and they are used for the sand on athletics tracks. Lots of people have bought them this year because of the snow. We just keep going and we are the only people producing them. We sell through wholesalers and they go to ironmongers and agricultural merchants, where they sell for about £20.”

Little has changed since Mr Rudd made his first hay rake as a six-year-old boy. Even the design with 16 teeth is the same. The fashion for allotments is also helping Kevin Skinner, 57, from Hailsham, East Sussex, who is inundated with orders for garden trugs.

“I have not been affected by the downturn. Gardeners could just use a plastic tray for weeding but trugs are something people adore. I am making 50 a week. People are also buying them for picking fruit and vegetables, collecting eggs and laying flowers. I have even sold them to pubs and restaurants to store napkins or cutlery.”

The past three months has also lifted demand for traditional brooms, or besoms. Mark Cottrell, one of the last traditional makers, who runs Oakwood Sawmills, near Reading, said: “I have done so well since Christmas I have sold right out of stock.

“I have hardly noticed the recession. There is definitely a trend for an original broom. It’s nothing to do with the Harry Potter effect. People just want the real thing to sweep up leaves. With all the interest in growing vegetables, the other side of my business has gone ballistic. I have never sold so many bean pods and pea sticks.”

Scythes are even fast replacing strimmers. There is no traditional scythe- maker left in Britain, but they are becoming so popular that Simon Fairlie, of South Petherton, Somerset, is importing them from Austria. “Scythes are cheaper than strimmers. With global warming, people are trying to cut down use of fossil fuels. Strimmers make a lot of noise and break down a lot. If everyone owned a scythe we’d get much quieter Sunday afternoons.”

Meanwhile, the decline in the use of plastic bags is driving sales of willow baskets at P H Coate & Son, of Stoke St Gregory, near Taunton. The company, which started in 1819, is based in the Somerset levels, which provides ideal conditions for growing willow.

Jonathan Coate, a director, said: “Business is very upbeat, especially for the wicker shopping trolley on wheels. People are going off the plastic ones and we think more people are shopping locally instead of using the car. We are noticing that people don’t mind paying a little extra for something grown and made in the UK.”

Tom Perkins creates logo for the Heritage Crafts Association

Tom Perkins is an Honoured Fellow of the Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society who is a world-renowned letter cutter and designer, and whose work has graced a number of public buildings. He was the first choice of designer as someone who would be able to create a forward-looking logo for the Heritage Crafts Association, and who also encompasses all the elements of a skilled craftsman at the very top of his profession.

Tom's letters are always hand drawn. For the Heritage Crafts Association logo, Tom started by just doodling and playing around with the letter-forms. These particular letters didn't create too much of a problem, as the ascender on the letter 'h' and the last letter 'a' could both be flourished (sometimes the letter configurations are very challenging).

These were then worked up into thumbnail sketches, and Tom created quite a few for the committee to choose. In the end, they chose the one which had an extension to the letter 'a' that encased the three letters HCA to look a little like an @ symbol. Tom then worked this up to a full design, which will be used on all Heritage Craft Association literature.

Tom's other work:

• The letter 'd' is a piece now in the Fitzwilliam Museum Collection of Contemporary Calligraphy in Cambridge, and is reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics.
• The shining letters are stainless steel, cast from letters designed by Tom for St Martin-in-the-Fields.
• The roundel with gold letters is a v-incised and gilded Welsh slate.

Closure of the Textile Conservation Centre

The Textile Conservation Centre was founded in 1975 by Karen Finch OBE and was based at Hampton Court Palace for nearly 25 years. It is of international importance having trained over half of the textile conservators working in the world today.

In 1998, the Centre merged with the University of Southampton, one of the UK’s top research-led universities, and in 1999 relocated to a purpose-designed building on the University's campus in Winchester. Now, less than ten years later, it is set to close.



Speaking on behalf of the Foundation, Peter Longman, Deputy Chairman, said ‘this closure will have serious implications for the conservation and museum sector in terms of career-entry education, CPD and research.' The TCC Foundation will continue to make every effort to ensure that the TCC's work, accumulated knowledge and expertise will not be completely lost as a result of the University of Southampton's closure decision.

Time will be made to celebrate the huge achievements of the Centre, and that end the TCC is organising two open days (18 and 19 June 2009) for supporters, former clients, graduates and the Centre's friends to see the work of the current staff and students for one final time before closure. A major reception will also be held in London for those who have funded and supported the TCC over the past 34 years.

For more information about the closure or about the TCC's June Open days please contact Nell Hoare, Director of the TCC, at tccuk@soton.ac.uk.

www.textileconservationcentre.soton.ac.uk

Looking for craftspeople in the North West

In May, Sarah Morton is moving to Morecambe to open a small shop selling arts and crafts of local makers. As well as looking for stock in the shop, she has also been given permission to use all the empty units in the arcade as free display space for arts, crafts and community groups.

This is a great opportunity for traditional craftspeople to advertise and showcase their work. If you are interested, please email Sarah at webfoot@hotmail.co.uk.

Easter hunt for Britain’s master craftspeople

While the rest of the country is hunting for Easter eggs this weekend another search is being launched for England’s disappearing craftspeople. The recently-formed Heritage Crafts Association is putting out a call for all those woodturners, weavers and wheelwrights to join together and fight for this threatened part of our heritage. Its founders would like the public to search out and tell them about people practicing rare and endangered crafts. They are afraid that the centuries of knowledge that helped create the crafts for which Britain was once renowned are in danger of disappearing forever.

The Heritage Crafts Association (HCA) has been formed to preserve the traditional skills that have been passed on through generations. Some of these craftspeople, like sievemaker Mike Turnock, are the last surviving practitioners of trades that take years to learn and perfect.

“Sieves like Mike’s products may be mass produced in plastic or metal for sale in kitchen and garden shops,” says HCA Chair and co-founder Robin Wood, “but they’re generally poor imitations of an original that was woven by hand into a steam-bent wooden frame that will last a lifetime and be a joy to use. If the knowledge behind those techniques is allowed to die with Mike I think we’ll lose something quintessential about what it is to be British.”

Robin wants everyone who practises or cares about traditional crafts to join the Association so they can present a united front to fight for the survival of these skills. “There must be dozens of people out there, working in isolated workshops in villages and cities, knowing they’re the last of the line,” he says. “But they needn’t be the last and it’d be a disaster if they were.”

Robin and his colleagues argue that the current economic downturn is a perfect time to nurture traditional skills which form a vital part of Britain’s heritage. Many of those artisans who do survive have thriving businesses and products that are valued at home and abroad. For example, Robin, who makes hand-turned wooden bowls, has a healthy trade with America, as well as providing the genuine article for living history exhibitions and domestic dinner tables.

The HCA will be campaigning for greater support so the current masters can pass on their knowledge. It wants more help to create the conditions necessary to maintain Britain’s reputation for a ‘living heritage’ that is practised in the midst of our communities. “We have English Heritage to look after our old buildings and Natural England to care for the landscape,” says Robin. “Who will nurture the skills and occupations that are our living heritage and could form the bedrock of a resurgence of a creative and profitable cottage industry?”

The HCA has launched a website at www.heritagecrafts.org.uk for anyone wanting to pledge their support for traditional crafts and as a showcase for these crafts. They’re encouraging anyone who cares about or practices traditional crafts to join the campaign for the benefit of their own industry – and the country’s cultural heritage.

Note to Editors:

The HCA can suggest some craftspeople they have already found who are willing to be interviewed and photographed in their workshops.

For further information please contact:
Robin Wood (HCA Chair): 01433 670321
www.heritagecrafts.org.uk

Traditional wheelwright wins Best Traditional Business

Last month, on the eve of the Countryside Alliance awards, Christopher Middleton from The Telegraph mets a wheelwright who is keeping an ancient tradition alive:

"Step inside the workshop of the Wellington Carriage Company, and you enter not just a different century, but a different world, with its own private language and its own dusty rhythm of doing things.

"The walls are lined with rows of primitive iron tools, the floors are heaped with sawn-up lengths of oak and ash, and on every work surface little solidified mounds of wood-shavings bear witness to work done many long months ago.

"It’s the kind of cobwebbed kingdom you imagine some Harry Potter-type wizard to inhabit, and in some ways what happens here is indeed a kind of lost magic.

"The entire enterprise is the creation of softly-spoken, faded-blue boiler-suited Philip Holder, who, at 66 years of age, is not only the firm’s founder, managing director and sole employee, but also one of the few old-fashioned wheelwrights still working in this country. For 50 years, he has operated from this same little warren of sheds in the middle of rural Shropshire, quietly building up his reputation as repairer and constructor of horse-drawn coaches. Now, at long last, his talents are to be trumpeted further afield, with the news that his one-man carriage-building operation has been named winner of The Daily Telegraph-sponsored Best Traditional Business category, in this year’s Countryside Alliance Awards..."

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