The last person making really good mazers was the celebrated silver smith Omar Ramsden. His mazers were not aiming to be close to the originals but a modern twist on the old theme. They were however nicely made and now command good prices in the silver trade. This one was made in 1924 and recently sold for £2850. I have…
I am sat up late for the third night in a row doing the first sift on applications for our Heritage Crafts Association administrators job. We shortlist on Friday but have 250 applications so we are doing a pre sift before meeting. Just reading through 250 applications takes a lot of time but we want to do everyone justice. All…
I was first introduced to split wood basketry by my friend Owen Jones who makes oak swills. Also Lluis Grau in Spain. I have some lovely split wood baskets made in Eastern Europe too but I think some of my favourite split wood baskets come from the various North American traditions. I want to share some films of three split…
HCA committee are incredibly hard working and achieving a lot but much of what we do isn’t stuff that is easy to put out in the public domain. I do a chairs report before each committee meeting and thought it might be interesting for our supporters to see these too. I’ll copy the last two here in the hope that…
There seems to be a real movement gathering momentum asking questions about how we live our lives, particularly looking at the benefits of working with our hands and making things whether as a profession or as a hobby. Tomorrow a new book is released in the UK written by Mark Frauenfelder the founder of the most popular blog in the…
This week is half term so my son Ollie has been helping out on my bridge at Padley Gorge (someone must have had a vivid imagination when they names it) Here we have just fixed the handrails on using copper boat nails. and the lower rails mostly fitted. I had a day cutting bowl blanks too, thought I would…
How is this for a gorgeous collection of old Japanese axes. As regular readers will know I fell in love with the Japanese carpentry tools on our recent tea house building project particularly the axes and adzes (ono, masakari and chouna) At the end of our Japanese trip we visited the tools shop but new tools were way out of…
John Hayes speech mentioned this painting by p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } Daniel Maclise of Peter the Great, Tsar and founder of modern Russia. Peter is not the posh gent to the right that is the English King William III, the scene is the shipyard at Deptford and…
Here are a few quotes from an important speech given the the Royal College of the Arts yesterday, I am so excited by it, much of it could be the Heritage Crafts Association manifesto, our message is clearly getting through. “Show me a society where everyone has the opportunity and the desire to seek out new knowledge and new skills…
Honest pots is a wonderful exhibition on currently at York Art Gallery, and the pot above is my favourite in the show. A glorious 18th century slip decorated dish, if I could find someone who could make one of these today I would love to use it for lasagna, pasta bakes or pies. The idea of the show is to…
