German Journeyman

Meet Dietrich a German Journeyman.

 His odd costume tells those in the know that he is a fully trained craftsman traveling and looking for work to broaden his experience. In Germany folk instantly recognise this and so it makes life easy to get lifts when hitchiking or folk will simply offer him food and lodgings in exchange for some work. His pack was made by another journeyman and has a steam bent wooden frame with leather straps. He has been traveling for nearly 3 years with just his belongings in this pack.

This is his journeybook a rather wonderful handmade, leather bound book in which the various people he works for make notes. He is not allowed to write in it himself and when in Germany each day he will get it stamped at the local post office to prove where he has been and that he has not gone back to the two areas he is not allowed (his home and the area he did his apprenticeship)

In medieval times crafts across Europe were governed by guilds. The guilds had many functions, they acted as a brotherhood and looked after their members in times of hardship but most importantly they acted as the protector of quality. They managed the schemes whereby folks made the progression from raw apprentice to journeyman to master and they also controlled who could practice and who could sell their products. It was rather draconian with searchers employed by the guilds checking for people selling goods, if they were not guild members the goods could be confiscated, bought at rock bottom rate or if substandard broken up. Apprentices would pay a master to teach them their skills over a 5 or 7 year period then when they became a journeyman they would travel and work in many different master workshops broadening their skills before perhaps taking the tests to become a master themselves.

By the 19th century in Germany like England the guild system was on it's last legs and from around 1850-1870 there were no journeymen. Then the system was revived and ran with small numbers until the 1980s when typically there would be a few dozen journeymen on the road at any one time. Over the last 15 years there has been a tremendous expansion in interest from people who want to really immerse themselves in craft for many years and today there are around 800 journeymen on the road.

It is a very serious undertaking, first there is the three to five year apprenticeship with one master in timber framing, cabinetmaking, blacksmithing or whatever, then you join the journeyman organisation and set out for a minimum of 3 years but often up to 5. Along the way they stay in many countries, meeting and living with the local people, working in exchange for food and taking on occasional paying work to refill the coffers. The main purpose though is exchanging skills, so it was that Dietrich came to me. We carved spoons, turned bowls worked a couple of days on a bridge project and the last day he was here we built a small timber framed gateway together.

And then it was time for Dietrich to pack his bags and head on his way. Next stop Bristol to buy some tools, then briefly to Germany and then some time in Sweden where he is hoping to learn birch bark work. A rather wonderful life for a young man, it is travel but with a purpose and giving as well as taking wherever he goes. He makes me look very small, I am not really Dietrich is very tall. If you see him or anyone else dressed like this on their travels do offer them a bed for the night and a meal.

More about journeymen here and here and here

which is the best axe for carving, bushcraft, general use?

I get asked this question a lot so thought it would be good to make a blog post which I can refer folk back to.

In the world of Bushcraft most folk go for the Gransfors Bruks small forest axe, it is recommended by Ray Mears which no doubt helps it's popularity, it is like Rays bushcraft knife, a bit of a "jack of all trades, master of none" compromise and I personally think there are better options.

Axes always tended to be designed for use two handed and have long (around 30-33") handles or one handed use and have short (around 14-16") handles. One handed axes are often called hatchets whilst the longer handled axes of various designs were for felling, limbing and splitting. The Small forest axe is sort of between these at 19" so you can just about use it two handed though it never feels right or you can use it one handed but the long handle stops it pivoting nicely when held close to the head and used for the sort of controlled carving that I do a lot of.

If I were to only have one axe (a terrible thought) it would be a Gransfors Bruks Swedish carving axe. This axe was designed by Wille Sundqvist the Swedish mastercraftsman who first inspired me in my work and it is specifically designed for one handed carving. It will do everything though. It will fell a tree at a pinch and split it into firewood but if you do a lot of that I would strongly recommend an axe with a 30-33" handle. This one excels at carving objects with curved surfaces like spoons but is also very good at hewing flat surfaces to make beams, given time and a woodland it would be possible to build a house and it's contents with this axe.

It has 3 drawbacks, first it is expensive at around £80, second it needs someone with reasonable forearm strength to use it properly and they don't make a lighter version and third whilst Wille designed it to have a slightly longer bevel on the left side to help control carving and they used to come that way it now comes either completely flat on the left like a side axe or with an even bevel. Out of the two I would favour the even beveled one as the flat sided one tends to dig in a little and be more difficult to carve concave areas.

Another axe from the Gransfors stable that I rate highly is the wildlife hatchet, these are quite good value at around £50 the handle is 14" same as the carving axe but the head is around half the weight at about 1lb. Anyone can use this axe and it is the only axe I would consider carrying in a backpack. Again it would be possible to fell and limb a tree with this axe though it is perfect for light carving work, such as spoons or tent pegs. When choosing an axe I suggest you use the heaviest axe you can carve with for 20 minutes or so without getting at all tired. If you can manage a heavier axe the weight will do the work and you don't have to swing as much but a lighter axe moves more quickly and lots of small cuts remove wood just as a few large ones do.

This is sounding a little like an advert for Gransfors Bruks. I do like their axes and the beauty of them is they come sharp and ready to use and with a sheath to keep them sharp. There are many much cheaper axes that work very well but I have yet to find one that is cheap and comes well sharpened for carving. One of my favourite cheap axes was sold for a while by Argos and reduced for a while to less than £5. I imagine most of these cheap axes are made in China but all that I have tried have been good steel and well tempered, they have all however come very blunt, not just needing a sharpen but some major grinding work to get them working properly so I tend not to recommend them unless you have a power grinder and know how to reprofile one. Searching the web for the best deals today this Bahco axe looks about perfect, an 800gm head on a 14" handle.

Another nice option is to look round your local car boot fair and buy an old axe. All our grandparents generation had hand hatchets for splitting kindling, at boot fairs they tend to have loose handles and be completely blunt so need a new handle and a regrind but it is a joyful job to bring one of these old axes back to life. Here are a few typical ones.

This is the sort of carving I tend to do with axes, the axe does matter but correct technique is much more important. Video currently without sound but still shows the techniques.

David Nash at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

A grand day out today the the YSP.

We have been regular visitors to YSP since moving to the area 15 years ago. Just 5 minutes off junction 38 of the M1 you will find seveeral hundred acres of rolling parkland dotted with sculptures by Henry Moore, Anthony Claro, Barbara Hepworth and many more. A few years ago they built a new visitor centre with a great cafe and indoor gallery spaces. They have a rolling program of exhibitions, a couple of the most memorable for me have been a major Hepworth retrospective and last years Andy Goldsworthy exhibition.


The current show is the lifetimes work of chainsaw sculptor David Nash. I have never been a big fan of Nash, whereas with Hepworth, Moore, Goldsworthy, Richard Long, Brancusi I find most pieces of interest and maybe one in five are really great with Nash I find the hit rate is rather lower. The work tends to feel a little formulaic and frankly as someone who can use a chainsaw well I generally feel I could, if I chose to, make similar pieces. With Long there is genuine artistic innovation and with Goldsworthy there is just a very high level of craftsmanship and an eye for beauty which is impressive. So I was not expecting to be wowed by the show but always enjoy a walk around the parkland anyway.

I came away far more impressed than I had been previously. Nash has been highly prolific and there were a huge number of pieces, too many in fact and they were crammed in, the good and the average all together. I think if only the best 50% had been shown with a little more space and impact it would have been very impressive.

Here are a few of my favourite pieces. A number of columns carved over several years, click for a larger image, the one in the centre I particularly liked and may even make one for the garden.

These are big. chainsaw carved then burnt, the globe at top of the hill is very big indeed though made up from beams rather than carved from a single lump.

The museum staff were comparing this to a Brancusi, it is an impressive big chainsaw sculpture but it is no Brancusi.

This is a flight of steps, all blackened by scorching and with coal between, my mate Andy is inspecting them with critical eye as he works on the footpath team at the Peak District National Park and installs many steps. We enjoyed the piece being called "an intervention" and will have great fun next time we are bridge building or step building proclaiming ourselves to be making "interventions".

For me though the works that were best were the simplest and with the least pretensions, here a cube, a sphere and a pyramid, carved and scorched.

The best (for me) piece of all is easy to miss. In the bothy there is a video of a wooden boulder Nash carved around 1970. He dropped it into a stream near his home and photographed and filmed it for 30 years as it gradually made it's way toward the sea.

YSP is always worth a visit if you are driving up the M1 and if you need an excuse for a day out then this show is definitely worth going to see.

arts funding cuts, are traditional craftspeople worried?

We all know that as a country we have to tighten our belt and spend less. In Jeremy Hunt's first speech as Culture Secretary he said he could assure the arts community that it would not be a soft option for cuts though he also wanted to promote American style philanthropy within the art world.

There is now a bit of a stir in the arts world as cuts to arts funding in the region of 30-40% are expected. This article outlines what is ahead for the arts as the department of Culture Media and Sport are told to cut their staff by 35-50% (and when I was last there to meet Director of Culture Mick Elliott  I was told half the staff were currently working on the Olympic preparations)

"Arts organisations are bracing themselves for a torrid time because Hunt wants to keep publicly-subsidised free entry to national museums, on the basis that it improves tourism and the wider creative economy. An initial trawl has also found little suggestion of waste or mismanagement in the preparation for the Olympics in 2012. This effectively leaves arts, media and heritage...
Arts Council England, which receives £445m to give out to 850 organisations around the country, has warned that it would have to stop funding for at least 200 organisations."

The Crafts Council are one of those 850 organisations receiving a grant of  £2,808,584 this year. See the other 850 here

The arts community are obviously upset and feel this sets British culture back to the dark days of 25 years ago. This article is typical of the mood though a quick google search on "arts cuts" throws up dozens all saying similar.

And this is the environment into which the Heritage Crafts Association has launched itself and is going looking for funding...hmmmm not very promising perhaps. Having said that I have often prided myself that I survive in my own business with no public subsidy by making things which people like to use in their lives and are happy to pay for. Many traditional craftspeople I talk to have noticed little fall off in sales due to the economic downturn, perhaps folk recognise that it is time to stop buying masses of stuff that will be in landfill in a couple of years and they want fewer things but with a little more meaning.

I feel that recognising traditional crafts as part of our heritage and promoting them a little as such would not only give very good return on the investment and be great for tourism but also bring us in line with international heritage policy. Our current position which only recognises buildings and monuments as heritage is rather an anachronism.

If you like the idea join the HCA as a friend and help us make a difference.

wooden spiral staircases from Morlaix to Esherick

In 1997 I visited Wharton Eshericks house in the USA and was utterly charmed. The whole house is a piece of functional sculpture. Centerpiece is the spiral staircase which has been much copied elsewhere. It is rare for me to find the work of a 20th century woodworker that I admire as much as that of medieval woodworkers but here was one.

that

That staircase lives in my mind and is a great inspiration, I also have a large photo of it framed on the wall. The story told at the Esherick museum was that the design grew from Esherick's sculptures but 13 years later I came across a design of staircase that was sufficiently similar that I can hardly imagine that Esherick was not aware of it. This one dates from 1522-30 France and is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. It has been in their possession since 1909 but I have never seen it before, whether it has been in store or hidden in a gallery I did not visit I do not know but it is superbly presented in the new medieval galleries and I think is probably my favourite object in the world.

I could cut and paste info about it but better to just post a link to the V&A website.

As with Eshericks stair the beauty is in the detail of the execution. The coarse but highly skilled toolmarks, the mark of a master craftsman. working at speed.

And just for fun to see what folk think this video is what brought the staircase to mind today, it only appears in the background behind a modern architect designed tea house. I like the tea house and find it though provoking but can't help questioning the build quality and thinking that the textures are an imitation of the workmanship that I love and will not last.

a new bridge and working with a journeyman

I seem to have had quite a run of bridge building recently, I don't think I ever posted finished pictures of the last one so let's start with that. It has apparently become the place in Bradfield for wedding photos which I find rather flattering. Someone mentioned that a previous bridge at Goldenclough in Edale appeared in a [photography competition in Sheffield.

So when building these bridges I start with a tree, sometimes it takes a long time to find the right tree but in this case the National Trust had just the right tree growing a few hundred yards down the road., they felled it for me in February before the sap rose. And this is Dietrich a German journeyman who spent a few days working with me.

Marking a straight line down the tree.

and cutting along the line freehand with a very big chainsaw.

And the fist slab comes off.

 Cutting the curved profile, the slab from the top will make the matching handrails.

then we winched the main beam down toward the road.

 The idea of being a journeyman is that you travel and expand your skills (Dietrich was a full trained time served cabinetmaker before he started his journeyman time nearly 3 years ago) So as well as playing with some big timber we spent some time in the turning workshop and Dietrich made a couple of nice bowls.

The journeyman structure is very interesting so I shall make another post about that soon.

traditional wood and silver quaiches

I have just finished a little batch of quaiches and am really pleased with them. I first started taking a real interest in mazers and quaiches when writing my book on the history of the wooden bowl. Up to that point I had regarded mazers as overly ostentatious and not my thing. When I started handling original ones in museums everything changed. No one could fail to fall in love with them, they are very, very special.

The quaiches have become a personal favourite and sharing a good whisky with good friends from a communal quaich is a very convivial experience. If I didn't know how contentious whisky was I would recommend single cask Balvenie but I am sure everyone has their favourites and personal taste.

When I first talked to silversmiths about mounting these for me the quotes were in the region of £250 but I found a young Sheffield silversmith Owen Waterhouse who was as passionate about them as me so we visited the museums together trying to work out how they were made. It took a few years and a lot of experimentation but the result is that we can now make them fast enough to be able to offer them at a very affordable price. The perfect thing for a wedding present or special present for a whisky drinker.

See the latest quaiches and a mazer just added to my sales blog here.