We are used to reading about endangered animals and plants species throughout the world. But how many of us have thought about the traditional skills that have been practised throughout the last few hundred years.
We have an incredible range of heritage craft skills in the UK and some of the best craftspeople in the world. But many of these skills are in the hands of an ageing population.
A heritage craft is defined as ‘a practice which employs manual dexterity and skill and an understanding of traditional materials, design and techniques, and which has been practised for two or more successive generations’. The research focuses on craft practices which are taking place in the UK at the present time, including those crafts which have originated elsewhere, and on those aspects of each craft with a high reliance on hand-work and which involve high levels of hand skill.
The Heritage Crafts Association carried out research to try and establish which crafts are in danger of dying out completely. In March of this year a major update was published, increasing the number of crafts examined to 212, with one new extinct crafts, 16 new critically endangered crafts and 20 new endangered crafts added.
Whilst it is not possible in this Journal to look at the complete list, a few examples may be of interest.
Extinct skills
Crafts classified as ‘extinct’ are those which are no longer practised. For the purposes of this research, this category only includes crafts which have become extinct in the past generation.
Cricket ball making
Gold beating
Lacrosse stick making
Mould and deckle making
Critically endangered skills
Crafts classified as ‘critically endangered’ are those at serious risk of no longer being practised. They may include crafts with a shrinking base of craftspeople, crafts with limited training opportunities, crafts with low financial viability, or crafts where there is no mechanism to pass on the skills and knowledge.
Some of the more quirky skills.
Devon maund making
The Devon ‘maund’ is an assembled basket made of wooden splints attached to a wooden base. The base was traditionally made of elm, but following the arrival of Dutch elm disease has been made from other woods. The basket is held together by nails and ash bands, and the two end staves form the handles. This type of basket was traditionally used in the fields, to take feed to cattle and to collect potatoes and apples after harvesting. Maunds were made on a jig to five standard sizes.
Jack Rowsell was one of the last people to make Devon maunds, having learnt the craft from his father. He died in 1997. Rowsell made the baskets in his spare time (rather than as a primary profession) for over 40 years and made about 25-50 a year which he sold.
Parchment and vellum making
Parchment, which is sheep and goatskin, and vellum, calfskin, have been used for manuscripts for thousands of years. The Codex Sinaiticus is a fourth-century vellum bible now in the British Library, and its pages are flexible and can still be turned easily. As a writing medium, when it is properly prepared, it surpasses any paper, and lasts far longer. Animal skin is also used for drums, book binding and in conservation.
There used to be a parchmenter near most larger towns, using the skins which were a by-product, but now there is only one manufacturer of vellum and parchment, William Cowley or Newport Pagnell. There are two skilled masters and one apprentice.
Clay pipe making
Tobacco was first brought to England during the Tudor period, and was smoked in a clay pipe. Clay tobacco pipe making began c. 1580-1585, probably in London, and spread across the country, springing up in the main cities and towns and especially those with access to suitable clay. Over the next 250 years, almost every city and town and many villages had a clay pipe maker.
The clay pipe industry peaked c.1700, after which snuff-taking became more popular with the upper classes, but the production of clay pipes continued and peaked again in the early-nineteenth century. Until this time, only England, Holland and Germany were making clay pipes but by the 1840s, France had also become world leaders in the craft, and pipe makers also operated in America and Canada and a few other places. In the second half of the nineteenth century the larger, more prosperous firms took most of the business and so the industry became more concentrated in cities and established towns and the cottage industry died out. London, Bristol, Manchester, Broseley in Shropshire, Stockton-on-Tees, Glasgow and Portchester were centres of pipe making.
The onset of World War I brought cigarettes and with wooden pipes and cigars becoming more popular at the end of the nineteenth century only a few clay pipe makers continued into the next century. By 1960 there were only a couple of makers left in England. During the 1970s the collectors boom created an opportunity for one family firm, Pollocks of Manchester, to rekindle interest in clay pipes as collectors’ items. This family firm had operated non-stop since 1879.
Alongside Pollocks others revived old tools and some created a modern rebirth of the craft using a mixture of traditional and modern techniques, bringing the craft into the twenty-first century.
However, some of these valuable people have passed away in the last few years and there are only three clay pipe makers left in the UK, none of whom are getting any younger and there is need for the craft to be taken up by younger people.
Today, the main market for clay pipes is for film and TV, re-enactments, smokers and collectors.
Coopering (non-spirits)
Traditionally there were three types of coopering: dry coopering, white coopering, and wet coopering. The first was the least skilled, the last the most skilled. Within wet coopering, a distinction is made between coopering for beer and for spirits. Coopering for beer is more highly skilled because the casks must withstand the pressure of the fermenting beer.
Split cane rod making
Split cane rods were developed in the USA in the 1870s. Until this time rods had been made from whole cane or solid wood, and the split cane rod was a big improvement due to its lightness and flexibility (the ‘carbon fibre of the day’). Fibreglass rods were developed post-World War II and until the mid-1960s split cane and fibreglass rods were produced side by side, with split cane rods dominating the high end of the market. However, by the late 1960s fibreglass had improved and carbon fibre was introduced in the 1970s, marking the end of the split cane rod. Nevertheless, as long as it is the right type of rod, split cane can be just as good as carbon fibre, and for some specific purposes can even have an advantage.
Today, split cane rods are a luxury good, but they still need to have all the performance that split cane rods had in their heyday.
Fore edge painting
Fore edge painting is the craft of applying an image to the pages of a book. The page block is fanned and an image is applied to the stepped surface. If the page edges are gilded or marbled, the applied image disappears when the book is relaxed. When refanned, the painting reappears.
Earliest examples of fore edge painting are credited to the Royal binders Lewis Brothers in 1660, with a renaissance in the second half of the eighteenth century, circa 1760-1800 with the Edwards Bindery in Halifax and London. A recent revival saw more work in the late 1900s.
Further details of the crafts that are on the danger list please refer to the Heritage Crafts Association website.