ANCIENT HANDICRAFTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 4 March 1943, Page 8

ANCIENT HANDICRAFTS

REVIVAL IN BRITAIN

While Britain’s war production clangs and crashes on its mechanised drive, in rural byways, a revival in handcrafts is harnessing to national service occupations hitherto practised chiefly for the craft’s sake, writes Melita Spraggs, of “The Christian Science Monitor.” Hand weaving, wooden bowl-turn-ing, pottery, basket, making, ropeturning, thatching, smithy-work, and stone- walling are some of the traditional crafts which have received impetus in the past two years through the necessity for restricting imports. Home-spinning and weaving are once more helping to provide clothes for rural Britons. This craft, practised in nearly every cottage home before the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, by 1939 was carried on chiefly by those who did it for love of the work. Now antique dealers are finding a ready sale for old spinning wheels which have long lain idle in their repositories. , . Girls in senior schools are being taught these crafts, and are busy turning out tweeds for scarves, chair covers and curtains, skirts and so forth. Much of the wool used is gathered from the fields and hedge-rows —the tufts left' there by sheep. The combings of long coated dogs are also used in this way. . A move is afoot in the Kentish Weald to revive hand-weaving which 400 years ago after Flemish refugees settled there, was the staple industry. Work in this connection has already begun in the village of Lamberhurst. Premises have been taken for the establishment of a centre where classes can be given to refugees from the continent and to ex-service men. In Herefordshire comforts for the Navy are being made on a 150-year-o’ld loom. Capt. Frank C. Appleton carries on his craft in a convertea barn where he produces a large variety of hand-woven cloth. Comforts for sailors are not his only product. A skirt wrap of heavy tweed which can be hastily donned for use in aii- raid shelters is one of Captain Appleton’s topical designs. Shortage of aluminium and other metals, and restriction of imports ol china and glass, have brought the wooden bowl back into service in Britain. People are now using wooden bowls in the kitchen in which to mix cakes and puddings, and in which io wash and launder clothes The war has thus brought_ great activity to die workshop of Mr. Gcorcc William Lailey, of Turner's Green, Berkshire. Mr. Lailey 'works a primitive lathe with a foot-pedal, at flic same time dexterously shaping a revolving elm block with a sharp bent knife. He prides himself on being the only man in England still practising bowl-turning. He says the craft dates back to the days of Alfred the Great, and gave the village of Turner’s Green its name. “Once upon a time everyone used wooden trenchers, drinking cups and bowls,” he said. “But when pewter became fashionable it superseded ‘treen,’ ” (the name given to wooden ware). But the war has changed things. “I now have orders from Army Messes and have recently supplied the Auxiliary Territorial Services. I turn out between 15 and 20 bowls a day,” Mr. Lailey told a reporter. A Wensleydale hand rope-maker is another craftsman of long-standing reputation whose products have been given increased value by the war. Mr. William Richard Ousthwaite, who for 35 years has made rope and cord of

every kind for halters and a great variety of other agricultural equipment, finds the raw materials more difficult to obtain than before the war. But the Lancashire, cotton mills keep him supplied with cotton waste. This is why his ropes are all of such gay colours. TWO MILES OF CORD. Mr. Ousthwaite estimates he produces about two miles of cord or rope • z-lr>xr nnrl l-WA miict hnUO lllVlfl 11P -

od a' total of 15,000 to 20,000 miles in the course of his career. Nowadays lie is seldom called on to make rope longer than about 80 yards. There lis a ready demand for shorter lengths for agricultural purposes—some only nine inches long. Mr. Ousthwaite claims that with these he can compete successfully with the factories. His hand loom, about 50 years old,- is used for weaving halter heads, and his tools include cows, horns, used for opening the strands of rope. The 530 hand-thatchers who were operating in Britain in 1939 have found wartime conditions have given them far more than they can do. With British farmers growing much more corn and hay than they used to do in peace-time, first-class thatchers find themselves booked up for months ahead for thatching haystacks. Lovers of rural amenities are pressing Ministry of Agriculture architects to take advantage of this increased appreciation of thatching in their post-war reconstruction plans, so that there may be a revival of the craft as after the World War when Norfolk thatch was selected for whole colonies of smallholders’ houses.

Drastic restriction of paper for wrapping parcels, and of boxes for crating goods, has brought about a. great ' demand for home-made baskets, as none can now be imported. The British basket-making industry, therefore, is working fullsteam ahead. On the banks of the River Severn men arc very busy making coalbaskets. The “withies” from which the baskets arc made, grow in large quantifies on the banks of this river and the baskets are made by hand on the banks.

Soldiers convalescing in hospitals also are taught basket-making to fill in the hours.

Shortage of timber and material for making concrete walls has brought back into greater service the old English craft of stone-walling. No cement or other material of this type is used. The stones are just placed together on top of each other. The walls have always taken the place of wooden fences in parts of Wales, Derbyshire, Cornwall, Devon, and the Lake District, but these essentially English structures are now appearing in many other countries. The British blockade which has prevented Italian firms from sending instrumental strings abroad has brought new customers to James Kelway Toms, who for nearly 50 years has been making violin strings in ills workshop in the country town of Wellington, Somerset. In the shadow of the Quantock Hills come letters and cablegrams from musicians in many parts of the world ordering strings for violins—instruments which have cost thousands of pounds. Kreisler, Suggia, Marie Hall and many other famous violinists or ’cellists are using strings made from the gut of Scottish or Welsh sheep instead of from Italian sheep. The reason is- that Mr. Toms, unable to obtain supplies of the Italian gut, has worked out a new process which is said to render instrument strings from the “homeproduced” gut almost as serviceable.