Today I am cutting winter firewood in the Derbyshire hills, tomorrow I’ll be at Clarance House, home of HRH The Prince of Wales, Tuesday at Department of Culture Media and Sport DCMS all to support traditional crafts skills. First meeting at Clarance House is with Emily Cherrington. Emily is Assistant Private Secretary to The Prince of Wales. The Prince has…
Richmond dock was built at Appledore on the mouth of the River Torridge in 1856 and was said to have been the largest dry dock in all the Bristol Channel ports at that time. By the early nineteenth century much of the timber for shipbuilding in Britain was being imported from North America, the traditional supply from the Baltic Ports…
Last weekend I attended Art in Action a most wonderful show near Oxford. We were offered a free HCA stand after the organisers attended our spring conference at the V&A, we had the usual range of traditional craft items on display with voluntary staff telling visitors the stories behind how they were made. I also did a talk each day…
The Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group is being spearheaded by Vince Cable It has been designed to celebrate the UK’s manufacturing sector by asking MPs to nominate a product made in their constituency – with the ultimate aim of producing an ‘Great Exhibition’ showcasing these products. It would be really nice if some of those products were craft made items or…
When a craft business that has a special part in our history is in danger of closing what should we do? How about buy it and spend large sums of public money on preserving the building, artifacts and accumulated detritus whilst letting the last skilled artisans stop work and walk away? Two years ago I blogged about JW Evans Silversmiths…
Nice vid of Balvenie Masters of Craft. [vimeo 25972144 w=400 h=225]
Yesterday I was in Westminster again for a meeting with John Hayes the skills minister.It is difficult to put into words how positive things are for traditional crafts at the moment. After years of being the poor relation to the innovative artistic end of the craft spectrum it seems things are really changing. The ministers officials are working on a…
For us traditional crafts people it is always difficult when it comes to applying for any grant, award scheme or whatever. The simple fact is innovative cutting edge work gets all the support, in the words of Kim Evans past director of the Arts Council… “You are correct in your analysis of support for innovative craftpractice; this is where nationally…
Just back from Glastonbury which for foreign readers is the biggest music and arts festival in the world and a rather special event. We had a Heritage Crafts Association area which was the nicest spot on the nicest field on the whole site, forget the horrendous mud images of the TV and papers we were camping in style. This was…
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.
