Alastair Simms cooper in the press again

January 2009 saw a bunch of press articles about “the last master cooper”I put links to some on them in my blog post here.   There was clearly something about a craft which everyone had heard about being potentially endangered that struck a raw nerve and warranted a lot of news coverage, all good news for traditional crafts and shows the…

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Mastercrafts with Monty Don

Over the last week I have been looking over prooofs of the book that accompanies the Mastercrafts series.   I guess the first thing folk will want to know is “is it worth buying” and I would say if you can pre-order it at £14 it looks like a bargain. It’s a lovely looking coffee table book with nice photographs…

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country crafts, town crafts, Paul Felix photographer

The February Edition of countryman magazine features several articles on traditional crafts. I bought it because there is a 4 page feature on my bowlturning work with some nice discussion about the Heritage Crafts Association. There is also a nice feature on the work of Paul Felix who has been photographing traditional craftspeople for 20 years. He has a wonderful…

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how to make a Sheffield pocketknife in 50 pictures

 Last week I posted about visiting a traditional Sheffield pocketknife maker with Jon Henley from the Guardian. Now you can see Jon’s slide show here. Appologies for wrong link posted yesterday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/audioslideshow/2010/jan/26/sheffield-pocket-knife-trevor-ablett  If you like it why not post a comment here or sign up to the guardian site and post a comment below the slide show. The more interest…

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Savile Row Tailoring, part of England’s Heritage?

I just wanted to share with my blog readers a rather wonderful blog by a Savile Row Tailor Thomas Mahon. “The English Cut” This was an early blog post from March 2005 “I do think the institution that has clothed most of the world’s most influential people for the best part of two hundred years deserves Heritage Status. And it…

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2010 the year for traditional crafts to be recognised as part of our heritage

My first blog post of 2009 talked about the need for a traditional craft organisation here. Just a year on I feel so much more positive about the future of traditional craft skills. We still have a way to go but the foundations have been laid for 2010 to be the year when traditional crafts become recognised as an important…

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