“Crochet an activity made popular by grandmothers who usually make scarves and quilts, but Olek crochets…….everything” This TV clip is the sort of thing I normally just flag up on the Heritage Crafts Association facebook page but I enjoyed it so much I thought this one deserved a more permanent post on the blog. It’s just 2 minutes and great…
This is a gorgeous hand forged Austrian scythe. And here is my friend Steve Tomlin and his Austrian partner Christiane Lechner, they are visiting Edale this week en route to the West Country scythe festival next weekend where Christiane will be teaching a masterclass. I have been fancying getting into scything for a while and Steve showed me the…
Nice clip of the Balvenie Masters of Craft Awards on NTD TV this clip focuses on Stewart Hearn of London Glassworks who won the ceramics and glass category. It was a fun evening and I was delighted to be presenting awards to such talented folk.
Last night a select group of craftsfolk from around the UK left their workshops and headed to a very posh hotel in London’s Mayfair (yes the one with the most expensive houses on the monopoly board and in real life too) We were at the Connaught to celebrate the winners of the Balvenie Masters of Craft Awards, I had the…
Last week I attended the International Trades Education Symposium at Lincoln. This is run by a US based organisation the Preservation Trades Network a group of primarily hands on, but still intellectually active, tradespeople and educators. Every other year they hold a symposium and ever 4 years it travels outside the US, lucky for me then to find it only…
’I have always held and am prepared against all evidence to maintain that the Cathedral of Lincoln is out and out the most precious piece of architecture in the British Isles and roughly speaking worth any two other cathedrals we have’. (John Ruskin 1819-1900) I spent last weekend at Lincoln, the first time I have visited and I fell in…
Should we the craft community be celebrating the bicentenary of the 1811 Luddite rebelions? In modern usage in the UK to call someone a Luddite can be a slightly derogatory term used to imply someone is against all change and blindly rejects any complex modern technology in favour of older simpler technology. Some people on the other hand are proud…
Last Wednesday 11th May leaders of the UK craft world came together to discuss issues or craft skills training and how to address them, it was an inspiring and positive day. We had over 100 delegates mostly chairs of the various craft organisations from the weavers spinners and dyers, basketmakers and craft potters to blacksmiths and the Royal College of…
‘This is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen that over the centuries have fashioned the manmade wonders of the world…The craftsman’s anonymity I find especially resonant in an age of the celebrity artist.’ It’s not often I look forward to a big London show by a turner prize winning artist but there is a show in October I am…
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } For those that were not at the HCA skills forum at Chelsea College last Wednesday, or for those that were and would like a transcript, this is John Hayes speech. We felt it was enormously positive, at last we have someone in a…
