VILLAGE CRAFTS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 10580, 8 October 1910, Page 3 (Supplement)

VILLAGE CRAFTS.

THE WILTSHIRE INDUSTRIES

(By' MaTgaret Douglas.)

My ;visit" to .Wiltshire 'opened!, with .".

tramp across the downs in the cool twilight before sunrise. The soft, springing turf was-very sweet to the feet "of a Londoner, and as we went through the still silence and greyness, the cold night scents of grass and flower were borne to us ,011 a light slow-moving breeze. 'Under the''.gre'yj spreading film, too faint to be called a mist, the downs rose and fell, slipping away insensibly to the uncertain far horizon, save where a, long screen of beeches outlined some slope with darker shade, and where ahead the ; great pillars of Storiehenge rose black against the first color of the morning. Later, when the sun was high, we forsook the wide down spaces for the stone walls and thickgrowing elms of West Wiltshire, where, here nod! there between the heavy trees, you may see the dazzling blocks of fresh-quarried white Bath stone laid square and trim, one across another, for their six months' weathering, and those ' other piles that grew ever broader and higher of the-white dust and chippings and waste fragments for which no man has found a use.

Coming to live in'this neighborhood a few years ago, Major Milner brought with him two old stone vases for the garden. Pedestals they ka<J -'none, but looking at the beautiful stonework of his new home he-felt confident that the men of Corsham would be able to supply worthy supports for them. But his house had-.been built in 1730, and the descendants of the old stoneworkers had lost the skill and artistic feelings which created beautiful decoration for so many Wiltshire houses. With modern facilities for transport it had hitherto seemed simple to send the stone over,to Belgium to be shaped by the neat-handed foreigner and then brought back. .Fortunately Major Milner took another view. After due negotiations a County Council teacher was procured to hold weekly classes in stone-carving for such men as were sufficiently interested to. give xip their leisure hours. For three years the teacher- came, till in 1907 the" men were skilled enough to produce work of artistic and marketable value.

N,ow, with Major. Milcer's advice and Help in designs, they are .turning out in their spare hours, sundials, vases, garden seats, and door frames'that are worthy of their forefathers' tradition. At the end of a grass walk between high, bright flowers I was shown a semicircular stone scat, supported at each end by winged lions, boldly conceived and carried out, the back of 'the bench swinging gracefully round to meet them. How could such a walk ttiore fittingly eiid, and what could be less artistic, less expressive, in such a spot than the green or white painted bench of commerce?

Tha business side of this venture is no less satisfactory. Under Major Milner's advice • the seven workers have formed themselves into a co-partnership association, and conduct theh\own affairsi In the light summer evenings, when the day's work is done, you may hear the sound of chisel and mallet issuing".from the three little workshops the men have erected! near their homes, and through the winter weeks, when frost leaves the stonemason's hands idle and makes his wife look, anxiously at her stores, these men have worked busily at their new craft, earning steady money, and occasionally even employing one or two simple masons to help in the elementary part of their work. At one end of Major Milper's garden to-day stand the two old vases on their pedestals of stone, plain and square cut, the first work done for him by the men J of Corsham; at the other,-near a wealth of flowers, is a gracefully-carved pillar carrying a sundial, Wreathed about the base with flowers of stone, their tribute of lecoguttion tor increased powers and a new outlook on life. I have given much space to tins Corsham enterprise as being topical of the successful local levival of tiaditional industry and because it combines with this old-time mteiest the modem cooi>erativc method of business so valuable in small undertakings. But Wiltshire is rich in industries. About twentj-five classes of v.irymg sizes die at work 11 diffeient villages and quiet country towns; lacc-making at Malmcsbury; spinning and "weaving at Fisherton-de-la-Mere'and Stockton; carving, smocking, and rug-making elsewhere. Ln George Herbert's quiet study at Beme.r----1 ton, with the window facing the tiny church he loved and the sunshine playing through the leaves, Miss Warre contrives and plans new designs for her village rugmakers, one or two of whom 1 would have been destitute but for the work she has created. In Bradfoid-on-Avon, too, once the home ot many •rteaveis, Miss Burder has recently started a similar industry for Smyrna rugs. Some of the designs ongmated by her father aic particularlj good, and if the industry develops hand-frames will be used instead ot canvas and a quicker pi eduction ensured. And so, swiftly and smoothly, we speed back to Stonekengs and the rolling downs, where in a hollow* filled with high shading trees Miss Lovibond's weaving industry flourishes with an equable prosperity. In summer, before the doors ot their grey-thatched cottages, m winter by the snug fireside, some ot the women of this tiny village of Lake sit spinning the yarn, the pleasant hiim of the wheel spreading an atmosphere of content,, created.in part, no doubt, by the pleasant shillings added thus in odd moments to weekly incomes. In the weaving shed the weaver ,ho.rrows a pair of friendly hands to assist jiim in--the process. of„ beaipmg the warp, and explains meanwhile-the intricacies and histoiy of his craft. Amid the flowers in her gay garden on the hillside Miss Lovibond sits devising a new combination ot colors for her homespun cloths, a new check or pattern for Uie spoitmg waistcoats which arc a special featuie of this industry. At the Olympia Horse Show, where this eiiteipr'sing Lid\ w.i<: exhibiting foi her workers, the vivid canary homespn for hunting waistcoats proved a great attraction, no fewer than eighteen of tho foreign ufficei-s competing carrying off lengths to their respective, tailors at home.

So is the tiny village hidden in the trees Mnked to the great work! outside that roars and hustles, even as the sleepy Avon, in which fat trout lie lazil" finds at last its devious way out to the wide waves of the grey Channel.