It was a bit of a contrast to the rest of the day the Heritage Crafts Association held our annual conference at the V&A in London. There was me in my best suit and Jeremy West shoes on the podium, after a long but inspiring day I took the train homewards to Macclesfield where there was no snow at all. As I climbed further into the hills the snow got deeper and deeper.
There was no turning back by this point and I finally got stuck for the night. Handy to have a camper van, shame I didn't have a sleeping bag. I was woken at 10.30pm by some police who were very keen that I should not spend the night there in case I died, not only did I have half a tank of diesel and a heater, I had gas and cooker, there was also a house 250 yards away, when they had gone I brewed up hot chocolate before crashing out again. It was cold and I didn't have enough insulating material so I slept 2 hours, ran the engine for 20 minutes to warm up then slept 2 hours all night. At 9 in the morning a JCB and snowplough arrived digging the road out. I have to confess to being slightly disappointed the night before I had been told there had been a JCB fast track with a snow blower on the front clearing the road and I was really looking forward to seeing it blast it's way through.
Backing out, it was pretty deep by UK in late March standards.
I headed back to Macclesfield and after trying all the lower routes and finding every road toward Edale was blocked I drove to New Mills dumped the van and got the train. Edale itself is pretty snowy too. This is the road outside my house.
What I find interesting is that having heard about this most folks reaction is "Oh no how terrible". Yet to me direct experience of the natural environment is one of the things I crave and miss most, the whole thing was a wonderful adventure, at no stage was I ever in the slightest danger and only marginal discomfort.
William Morris is often sited as an inspiration for the first Labour Party Manifesto. Today many of us working in the traditional crafts feel as if we have been overlooked yet there are potentially great times ahead, hence the need for a Manifesto for Making. Not a manifesto for designing or innovating or being an artist simply for making. Yesterday at the V&A the spring conference of the Heritage Crafts Association centred on the theme manifesto for making. We had great speakers and also participation from the delegates to help create our Manifesto.
Our first speaker was David Hieatt, someone I have long admired but never met. He is making jeans in Wales, his dream is to get 400 people their jobs back and put soul back into a town.
I scribbled notes furiously as he shared gem after gem of wisdom about making and marketing. Here are just a few
"People don't dream about quality, as craftspeople quality should be a given. People dream about changing the world. Sell the dream, your customer wants to be part of the change you want to be in the world."
"LOVE....you get 86,400 seconds a day from the time bank, they are non returnable, use them wisely. Do the thing that matters to you most."
"The best way for your customers to love your work is for you to love it first"
"Embrace Selling, there is no point making gold and selling it as silver"
We followed with a great talk from TV presenter and HCA patron Paul Martin who is passionate about crafts and really wants to get more craft on tv, he encouraged the audience to engage with him through HCA to help pitch ideas to the BBC for better craft shows than have been done in the past.
We had 4th generation wheelwright Phil Gregson running us through his family's history with the trade and the processes of making a wheel.
Deborah Carre gave a great talk explaining the various aspects of her business making the very best bespoke shoes and we were told that if we only remembered one thing it should be that she was a cordwainer not a cobbler, the difference being that she makes best quality shoes from new leather where a cobbler cobbles together and repairs shoes from second hand parts.
The day finshed with Mila Burcikova a dressmaker and expert on William Morris, we could not have a manifesto for making without mentioning Morris.
Mila brough great insights into Morris from different perspectives to those we normally read. One quote from Morris and Co seemed to be rather a theme running through the day,
"It is believed that good decoration, involving rather the luxury of taste than the luxury of costliness, will be found to be much less expensive than is generally supposed”
Good work may apear expensive but if it lasts and does not end in landfill in a coupe of years then it turns out to be good value.
Middleport Pottery is one of the best craft experiences I have had and a fascinating insight into a craft evolving into industrial manufacture. The pottery has a long history which is well documented, it was faced with closure and in 2011 was saved by the Prince's Trust for Regeneration. The idea was not to keep it as a museum but to regenerate the business and keep alive valuable work in an area that badly needs it. There is much info online about the buildings I am going to show you the craftspeople and the pottery processes.
I visited with the management team from Portland works a cutlery works in Sheffield facing very similar issues. This is the main yard with the surviving bottle kiln, these were last fired in the 1950's I remember seeing many of them as a child driving through Stoke but there are not many left now.
This is the boiler that powered the steam engine that powered the factory into the 1970's
and here's the engine
Now on to pottery, the first stage in production is making an original piece out of clay or plaster. From this master you take a cast to make a mould and use that to cast a long lasting master mould. From this master you cast plaster moulds which have a limited lifespan so this chap is cleaning up a master ready to make plaster moulds, if you see the master to the left foreground it is a design of mug I liked, we will see more of those as we go through the pottery.
This is the master mould maker.
Moulds are stored for future use, there are moulds here of pieces that went out of production over 100 years ago.
This is where the casting takes place. The moulds are cleaned up each day, assembled and set out on the benches, then maybe 120 of them are filled with slip, that is liquid clay.
After an hour or so the plaster has drawn the liquid out of the slip so that a layer of just the right thickness has solidified, the excess slip is tipped out of the mould. When the mould is opened we have a teapot, mug or whatever. Some pieces are simple one piece castings and just need the mould joint lines cleaning up others are made of several castings which are joined together before they dry.
This is skilled work, there is a nice flow to the whole process and the chaps clearly enjoyed it. They do maybe 120 casts in a day depending how complex then start cleaning up the moulds for the next batch.
dry pots.
Now we get on to the sort of work that I really am not keen on. It is called semi-mechanised. This machine churns plates out 1200 a day and I would not like to be working it.
It is remarkably efficient and ingenious but I can't help feeling once you get to this stage you may as well go all the way and fully mechanise with a robot to do the job, it can't be fun standing all day putting lumps of clay on the machine taking plates off and sticking them in the drier.
The machine above leaves a burr round the edge of the plate and this lady cleans them off, 1200 plates a day, it's a job but a bit tedious. I don't know if they swap around machines, that is one way to make this sort of factory work more interesting.
Dry pottery is loaded onto trolleys which wheel straight into the big gas kilns.
Here is one of the kilns for biscuit firing, thats the first firing before the glaze.
After biscuit firing each pot is checked and brushed over this lady checked for flaws by tapping each mug and listening to the pitch of the ringing tone.
Now this is the room I would work in, these girls were having fun. Middleport makes a special type of glazed pottery that no one else makes any more. I can not remember the techincal term but I can explain the process.
It starts here with this lovely old printing machine. A hand engraved drum with a pattern is spread with glaze and prints onto tissue paper. The paper is also coated with a thin layer of hot glue then fed along a moving washing line down the room.
Now you tear off a piece of tissue paper and wrap it around your pot. I can imagine making a complete hash of this if it was a smooth cylinder but wrapping a globular mug or teapot I don't understand how it doesn't just all crumple up, suffice to say it is very skilled work and it looked physically quite hard too the tissue has to be rubbed really hard with a brush to get rid of all creases then the excess at top and bottom is trimmed off. They told me it takes about 2 years to learn to do it but they have all been doing it for ever. The room reminded me of a sewing room at a lingerie factory I worked in when I was 19 in Leicester quite an intimidating environment for the men but a great fun atmosphere too. What made this fun? lots of hard skilled work? no noisy machines so there could be banter?
The next stage is the tissue paper is washed off leaving just the glaze.
Next door another range are being hand painted. William Morris would perhaps prefer this saying that here the workers are expressing their individuality, there is no question though there was much more fun to be had in the previous workroom and no less pride in the skilled job.
Then on to glazing interesting how gender segregated the trade is.
Now another dull job. I hope this poor chap gets a break from this machine. It is printing a standard glaze pattern on, as they come out he has to take them off and stack them with spaces so they don't stick in the kiln, pretty dull.
Middleport is being redeveloped, half the factory will stay in production and open for tours, the rest will be shops, tea rooms and they are planning an area for training people in ceramic skills too. I can not recommend a visit highly enough. And if you can't visit then buy some Burleigh ware online here I bought a couple of the seconds which frankly are more perfect than I would like, they are wonderful mugs and by buying them you are helping preserve a party of our heritage and keeping a lot of folk in work.
Off to London tomorrow 4.30am start to judge the winners of the new national craft awards
Then 3 days carving spoons in front of the masses at the Ideal Home Show and maybe if I am lucky selling some bowls. Come and say hello if you are down that way. If you miss me this weekend I will be there again 28th-31st. The weekend between is the HCA spring conference at the V&A which is going to be fantastic.
Today in the New York Times there is a good article on Philip Clissett Herefordshire chairmaker it gives some of the history but there is more to add so here goes....
Philip Clissett was one of very many country chairmakers. The windsor chairmaking tradition around the chilterns is widely known but there were very many more chairmaking centres and small local makers too. These are wonderfully recorded in Bill Cotton's book the English Regional Chair.
Clissett was one of these and his name along with the rest would hardly be known if it was not for a chance meeting with Scottish architect James MacLaren who encouraged the Art Workers Guild to commission Clisset to make chairs for their meeting rooms in London. I took this pic when I visited in 2009.
Anyway the NYTomes finishes the story with Ernest Gimson learning the trade and he popularised the design to such an extent that this design is often generically refereed to as a Gimson chair.
Gimson in turn taught Edward Gardiner who in turn taught Neville Neal who in turn taght his son Lawrence Neal. I visited the workshop when Neville was still alive and weaving seats, maybe around 2000, today Lawrence still turns out great chairs at very reasonable prices. He uses Gimson's original shave horse to shave down the parts with a drawknife.
This is a lovely video of Lawrence going about his work. and this is his website http://www.lawrencenealchairs.co.uk/index.html There are many people running chairmaking courses now but Lawrence is the only person I know who makes a full living from just making chairs. Probably the best known of the course providers is Mike Abbott who learnt much of what he knows about ladderback chairmaking by visiting Lawrence's workshop so a long unbroken tradition being revived in the 21st century.
Wooden bowls are very simple things but they also have the capacity to be very meaningful. This bowl was made by George Lailey "the last bowlturner" who died in 1958 and was the inspiration behind my work. It is a joy to use and all the nicer because it has already seen 60 years hard use. Wooden bowls when made for use like this age beautifully, no bowl made on an electric lathe, sanded and sealed will have the vitality that this bowl has. This is what I am seeking in my work and hoping that my customers will enjoy using their bowls every day and seeing them develop in their character.
Here are a couple of porringers sent out in the post yesterday, I have recently changed my packaging, after 17 years of recycling wine boxes from the supermarket I have realised that a 40p new box makes people feel very different about the contents and that is important. There is a bit of me that still struggles with the fact that there is too much discarded packaging in the world but I have to make a living and the fact is folk feel very different having spent £70 on a pair of bowls if they open this package than if they open a scratty wine box. I pack them with wood shavings.
This is how I hope they will be used, a gorgeous photo sent to me by a customer a few years ago now, wonder how that bowl and owner are getting on now.
I was just sent a link to this blog talking about a glass bowl, some of the words I thought were wonderful and I wish had been written about my work, here they are;
"Suh’s vessel is to my mind a perfect response to our contemporary condition, in which so much of what we experience is offered up as fleeting images accessed with our fingertips through glossy glass surfaces. Now more than ever, we need fully-formed, three-dimensional objects such as this that we can engage to remind us that we are human, and to connect us with the gestures of our distant past."
If you are inspired to try using wooden bowls like this link will take you to bowls I currently have available.
I believe that music, dance and creativity should all be part of everyday life, not just as a passive audience but something you do. In some ways I feel recording whilst it has given us all easy access to great music has maybe cut the link from live performance and just doing it. The internet seems to be breaking down and democratising performance, anyone can play and upload you don't need a record company deal to get your stuff out there, it can be a positive sharing place, the modern day equivalent to playing down the local pub?
Edale is a tiny village but we have a lot of very talented young musicians and it makes me really happy to see folk playing like this.
This one is Billy and Peter who have been playing for ages and are now gigging with their band I set the Sea on fire. To me though this is where music is at, when you are just playing together at home.
Danny Wallington is a very serious classical musician but he also plays and sings in dub reggae band Kalichakra
This is Bella Hardy, a neighbour from Upper Booth Edale and winner of lots of awards in the folk music world.
Just lest you think it's only worth playing if you are good, here is Danny's dad Mark showing that anyone can perform and share the fun, Mark is an author and went on tour doing open mic sessions with his ukelele for his latest book The Uke of Wallington
As for me, I grew up in a non musical family and never played, in my teens I got into music at a time when kids were not playing, post punk, pre brit pop the 80's were pretty dire. Me and my mates listened mostly to hard rock and old blues. I played harmonica, it was easy and you didn't have to read music. I still play an ocasional guest slot with the local old farts R&B band the Elderly Brothers, you can read Mark's humorous write up of the band here we have fun.
Look at these beauties that arrived int he post today.
George Lailey was known as the last bowl turner. He worked at the small Berkshire village of Bucklebury and before Kate Middleton was probably the most famous person form the village. He made bowls up to his death in 1958. Lailey's lathe and tools are on display at the Museum of English Rural Life at Reading and were my original inspiration to rediscover the lost craft. What a pleasure then to be able to buy these lovely old bowls from someone who bought them and used them for over 50 years. The one on the right is a particularly sweet one and I think I will use it in my own kitchen. What a great link with the past.
