Corinne Julius: Heritage craft is under serious threat because young people are discouraged from working with their hands
If we don't 'save our skills' we will lose them forever — and that would be a crying shame, says Corinne Julius.
‘Heritage craft’ suggests a bucolic mix of rural skills; corn dollies alongside, perhaps, saddle making, with a touch of blacksmithing; these skills are certainly important, but much heritage craft in fact takes place in cities. Surprisingly, it is here that they are especially under threat, partly due to a decline in available workshops and the spiralling costs of those that do exist.
So what constitutes heritage craft and is it by definition harking back to the past? ‘It's about the making, rather than the object that's produced,’ explains Mary Lewis, head of craft sustainability at the Heritage Crafts Association. ‘It’s about the living heritage of the skills, where they've come from, what they mean to our cultural identity, rather than the objects themselves.’
Once the thwack of a hand-stitched leather cricket ball on willow heralded the onset of summer, yet today there is no one making hand-stitched balls left in the UK. It, along with lacrosse stick making and mouth-blown glass making, is now extinct. On the Red List of Endangered Crafts, published by the Heritage Crafts Association (the only UK UNESCO-accredited NGO working primarily in the domain of traditional craftsmanship,) 72 crafts including horse-collar making, glove making, oak-bark tanning, pleat making, piano making, silver spinning and watch making, are critically endangered, with a further 100 crafts endangered.
The criteria are based on the likelihood that the crafts could continue to the next generation. Most of them are in the hands of individuals, who have for one reason or another been unable to make provision to pass them on. Many are practised in families handed down from father to son, mother to daughter. If there is a next generation, they are not keen to take on hard, often poorly paid work and given the public’s lack of awareness that such skills exist, few potential recruits realise that they offer a possible source of employment.
Young people are often actively discouraged from working with their hands. As a visual arts journalist and curator, I have lost count of the number of times I have heard the comment, ‘people who make aren’t really very bright, and that’s why they work with their hands.’ It infuriates me. Making involves intellectual rigour, skill, knowledge of materials and often powerful stories. As AI reduces job opportunities, one of the few areas likely to be immune to redundancies is making and hand skills.
London Craft Week offers the opportunity to see some of these skills in action and to talk to the craftspeople who practise them. In an increasingly digital world, we have a deep need to relate to the world through touch and practical engagement.
Does one endangered skill matter? According to researcher and traditional ‘West-End hand sewn shoemaker’ (cordwainer), Deborah Carré of Carréducker, it does. ‘None of us work in isolation. We’re all part of specialist networks. In our case farmers, tanneries, last makers, tool makers, box makers, material sources. As crafts shrink, so, too, do those networks, causing pinch points in access and supply — making the craft economy even more precarious. In the other direction, this affects pathways for apprentices and practitioners continuing their career. Often, these are family-run businesses, so there is a wider impact on the economy and local communities.’
We now appreciate ecological systems in nature, but they also exist in making. Those lost skills might also be used in new directions. One reason major British brands in ceramics, glass and textiles declined was that they failed to invest in both design and traditional skills. They failed to support the ecosystem and now have no skills to draw on. A classic example is mould making in ceramics. Only six mould makers exist, because British companies didn’t invest in training.
There has been a stronger tradition of supporting tangible heritage—building skills that help preserve buildings and national monuments. However, heritage craft is about more than being merely instrumental in preserving that heritage. It’s about cultural heritage and cultural identity. ‘It’s more a safeguarding angle rather than a preservation angle,’ says Mary. ‘How do we continue it? How is it relevant for the modern day? How are we continuing this cultural heritage? It's not about just focusing on preserving the past. It's a much more active and future focused, future facing process.’
That includes not only traditional British crafts, but those that represent the diverse nature of Britain’s population. ‘We have lots of different communities with different heritages, and we should recognise those as well,’ Mary adds. ‘Our list includes Ukrainian pysanka and petrykivka, because they're under threat in Ukraine. Cultural erasure in its home country.’
Rattan really is an extraordinary material, stronger and more durable than most other plants used for weaving. Given its robust nature, the making by hand of traditional rattan furniture is a labour-intensive process.
Meanwhile, explains Deborah, ‘cordwaining is an amazing craft heritage. A lot of it has gone and, because it hasn't been invested in, it hasn't been looked after and people haven't been exposed to it, so they don't see it as something that's relevant to them or that they could do.’
That was once true for rattan weaving. In 2010, there were only two craftspeople left weaving rattan in England. When their employer closed, Lulu Lytle of Soane Britain realised that these skills would vanish from the UK and took the bold step of opening her own rattan workshop, now employing 19 rattan weavers.
With little Government support to take on apprentices, training new recruits is complicated and expensive. Couture milliner Giulia Mio, an Italian who moved to the UK, makes hats, but specialises in the spectacular flowers that adorn them. She worries about how to pass on her skill. ‘Being a one-woman band based in Leicester, it is not viable for my business to take somebody on permanently, even if only for a short term. There’s too much bureaucracy, too many complications involved.’
Yet heritage craft skills are relevant now and in the future. ‘Heritage crafts people are entrepreneurial and creative,’ says Deborah. ‘Small workshops stress test materiality, shape, structure and scalability, stuff commercial companies don’t do.’ A point taken to heart by passementerie maker Jessica Light. She learnt her craft (a tradition dating back to the Huguenots), in the East End from Wendy Cushing. Jessica established her own business in 2008, focussing on hand-woven trims, braids, fringes and tassels for interiors and fashion, She is now one of just four individual passementerie makers in Britain and the last left in the East End — its traditional centre. ‘A lot of people don't take it seriously. People are quite rude about it, because it's fancy, it doesn't have a function. If I was an artist using it, people would look at it differently, but I just think I will change your mind. I don't do reproduction at all. My thing is to do passementerie differently. I’m taking techniques from the 16th century and moving them on. That's what they always did. They always evolved and changed.’
Making skills are creative and central to the development of our economy. They can be adapted to ensure a relevant sector for the future. Like plants, once extinct, they cannot be re-established. We need that mixed ecosystem for future prosperity.
