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…
‘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…
The Heritage Crafts Association have been working with Government to highlight some of the issues facing craftspeople in the UK. The Skills minister John Hayes and his officials have been very receptive. HCA have now organised a craft skills forum where craftspeople of all different disciplines can come together to discuss issues facing the sector and feed directly into the…
Good sharp tools are essential for woodworkers and learning to take a blunt piece of metal and get it to razor sharp is a very empowering experience. There is often a lot of mystery involved but there should not be, sharpening is simple and it all hangs on proper understanding and learning of basic techniques.In my experience most woodworkers study…
Very nice article on heritage crafts in the current issue of Permaculture Magazine by Beth Tilston. Click on the images and hopefully they will appear large enough to read.
How about this. Floorboards without the straight lines. I love it. These are made in Finland using computer CAD/CAM by Bolewood Modern life is so full of straight lines a wavy line brings a bit of nature into the home. This is the high tech way of doing it, I do it with a saw and by eye in the…
A none wood, non craft post. This is more about me trying to balance life out a bit as an antidote to too much time recently at the computer. Friday night my friend Chris and I drove up to the Lake District fish and chip dinner in Windermere then set off up the hill in the dark. We pitched tents…
For years Bucklebury has been a little known spot in rural Berkshire but it was once rather famous and it seems it is about to become so again. When HV Morton set out “in Search of England” in 1927 he drove out of London looking for the soul of Englishness. The very first place he stopped was Bucklebury; “I would…
