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From Heritage New Zealand, Autumn 2005Labourers of Loveby Alice ShoplandIn an age when everyone wants everything done faster, small but devoted groups of craftspeople are keeping the old, slow traditions alive. Meet five of them here ....Guy Garey, blacksmith
It’s a common misconception that Portobello blacksmith Working metal successfully isn’t just a matter of shaping the “If it’s 25 millimetres thick, there’s no problem working
it by Making “a complete hash of things” initially didn’t put him off. “Iron is a stubborn material, but you just have to be more stubborn than it is!” His description of iron’s allure makes it sound like the uptight Although he’s largely self-taught, Guy (who has dual Blacksmithing is one of the few crafts to use a living tool – that is, fire – and Guy reckons that’s part of its fascination for worker and watcher alike. He has a constant stream of visitors to his forge at the Otago Peninsula Museum and Historical Society, and he was amazed that 1000 people turned up to the opening day at his new forge two years ago. Guy works on a coal-fired forge, but most of the time he’s Guy makes industrial and artistic (or architectural) work.The You can see examples of his work at the Stone Store in Chestnut Tree Forge, Hatchery Road, Portobello, Dunedin.
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| Woodworker
Heather Jennings. Photo: Darryl May |
By using traditional woodworking techniques,Heather Jennings achieves
a quieter and less dusty work space for herself – and is able to
work in harmony with her environmental beliefs.
Heather trained as a conventional joiner in England in her mid-20s, but
always loved working with hand tools. A course in
traditional timber framing at the Centre for Alternative
Technology in Wales provided her with new skills, including
mortise and tenon joints, and working with green (unseasoned) timber.
Her dream, on returning home to New Zealand in 1998,
was to be a self-employed furniture maker, using the traditional techniques.
But, when she and her partner decided to live in a house truck and travel
with a gypsy fair for a couple of years, that plan had to be amended for
reasons of
sheer space.
“So I built myself a pole lathe – a traditional foot operated
woodturning lathe – and I started making kitchen woodware like spurtles,
spoons and spatulas.”
While all of those were good for cash flow, it has been the spoons that really fascinate her, and she has become a spoon specialist.
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| A
selection of Heather's spoons. Photo: Darryl May |
She makes olive spoons with a little hole for draining off the oil, pouring ladles with spouts on both sides, scoops for caddies, love spoons and marriage spoons, using a mixture of turning on the pole lathe and carving.
Love spoons were traditionally given in Europe by a man to a woman he wished to court (hence, perhaps,“spooning”?). Marriage spoons are also traditional, comprising two identical spoons joined with a wooden chain.
Although Heather creates her own designs rather than copying traditional
examples, she uses only time-honoured
techniques and hand tools, including spoon bit gouges, chisels, drawknives,
chip carving knives, spokeshaves and cabinet scrapers.
She cuts all her own timber, and cuts it radially (that is, in wedges
out from the centre rather than planks of even
thickness) because it’s stronger and less likely to split.
Heather loves to work with fruit and nut timbers, because their rich
colours and dense grain make them perfect for fine work. Being in Otago
means there’s a steady supply.
“I only use wood which would otherwise be firewood,
and I like woods from orchards because I know they’ll be
replanted.Turning that old wood into something of lasting
value is very rewarding.”
It’s rewarding for those who watch her work, too. Unlike many modern manufacturing processes, this is quiet and safe enough to get close to.
“People are fascinated to see somebody actually making
something, and they’re amazed that I can produce such
fine work on my clumsy-looking pole lathe! Children love
to see the shavings come flying off; some are absolutely
open-mouthed!”
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| Cooper
David Bain at work Photo: Simon Baker |
Don't ask David Bain why he chose to become
a cooper – it was his mother’s idea.“In the 1960s,at age
15, you did not say,‘No,’ to your mother.You did what you were
told!”
To become an apprentice cooper in Scotland, you must
have a blood relation in the trade, David says. He was
following in the footsteps of his late cooper father.
His mother would never have dreamed that his five year
apprenticeship with Edinburgh brewery William Younger & Co would eventually
lead to her son making hundreds of movie props and even a native American
drum!
He moved here with his New Zealand-born wife in 1983. Since 1987, he
has had a cooperage at Ferrymead Historic Park in Christchurch. Barrels
are the stock in trade of the cooper. David makes them from French or
American oak, ranging in size from two to 100 litres, mostly for vineyards.
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| David
finishing a piece. Photo: Simon Baker |
But he’s also been involved in work for the Historic Places Trust
and the film industry. For the restoration of Pompallier House, he made
nail kegs, jets, buckets, quenching kegs, depilation vats and tannery
vats.
“Pompallier was a major challenge for all concerned,
because the original products had long since rotted away to
almost nothing. However, Fergus Clunie and his team somehow managed to
piece the whole lot together and
come up with some drawings for me. My biggest challenge was that I had
to make the vats a perfect size to fit into some hole waiting in the North
Island. My fear continued as we loaded them onto a truck, and I crossed
my fingers that I had it right.” (He did: they were a perfect fit.)
He also made numerous items for the Stone Store at Kerikeri. And, for
the three Lord of the Rings movies, he was commissioned to make
more than 130 items, such as
hobbit-sized washtubs,“all hand-made but also to scale”.
“For the first time, I found myself using a calculator to work out angles and sizes instead of just judging by eye.”
Since then he has also produced items for The Last Samurai, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and River Queen.
But, among the thousands of commissions he’s had over the years, the most unusual would have to be a ceremonial drum of American oak for the Dakota tribe of Native Americans at the personal request of a tribe member.
“At first, I thought I was on Candid Camera, but a second look at this six-foot-tall man with pigtails, craggy face and Indian beads told me it was no joke.”
With their business conducted, Dakota elder Black Elk sat and drank coffee with the cooper, describing his people and the movies he’d been in. David, who had grown up loving cowboy and Indian movies, felt “as if all my Christmases had come at once!”
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| Bill
Blair uses vintage tools to make traditional objects. Photo: Darryl May |
After years of soul-destroying work in slaughterhouses and on off-shore
oil rigs, Bill Blair, of Oamaru, knew he wanted to “make good work”
for himself – to earn his living doing something he’d do even
if he didn’t need the money.
So, in 1997, uniting his love of trees, wood, sustainability and history, he began doing traditional woodwork. His working day is spent using devices such as a shave horse (a wooden, sit-down, foot-operated wood vice), draw knives, spokeshaves, various axes, adzes, hand drills, bench planes, chisels and gouges.
He loves to restore or “resuscitate” old handtools.With this
vintage armoury, he makes hay rakes, pitchforks, besom (twig) brooms,
grain shovels, and trugs (garden baskets). While the grain shovels and
pitchforks are mostly bought for display by collectors, the rakes tend
to live active lives.
"Metal rakes are mostly for cultivated soil; a wooden rake, with
wider tines, works much better for grass, hay and leaves.”
And it’s a shame that the besom broom,made of birch twigs,
has also largely fallen out of use, a victim of fashion, Bill says. He
knows of a besom-maker in an historic French village who makes 3000 brooms
a year for the council because it’s the most effective tool for sweeping
the cobbles.
Bill also has a passion for reviving the use of tree species
introduced in the 19th century, especially oak, ash, elm and
willow.
Bill is heavily involved in Oamaru’s heritage activities. He’s
on the local Historic Places Trust committee, is involved in
preservation group Oamaru Whitestone Civic Trust, is an active member
of the Oamaru Ordinary Cycle Club and of the local regiment of Alf ’s
Imperial Army, the 8th Whitestone Grenadiers!
A chance encounter led Mary-Rose Paynter into saddlery.“I took a bridle, I think it was, to be repaired, and the saddler was very busy and told me how to repair it myself.”
She did repair it, and loved the work,which led to her doing
a one-year course in 1990-1991 at guild college Cordwainers.
“There were other places in the UK I could have learned
saddlery, but I chose Cordwainers because I wanted to learn
traditional handstitching techniques. I wanted to learn the
correct way, and that’s how I work. It’s like driving around
in a Roller rather than a Mini!”
In the days when horses were more common than cars,
saddlery encompassed several different specialities, including
collar making, harness making (for driven horses), bridle work (for riding)
and, of course, saddles.
These days, however, a saddler must be far more versatile.
Now based in Oamaru, Mary-Rose repairs a wide variety of saddles, including
many musterers’ stock saddles, all manner
of riding tack and harness gear. Probably the only saddlery
repair she won’t tackle is anything beyond minor work on a
western saddle.
“I was trained in the traditional English method; I have no training
in the American western style of saddlery, which is
a totally different ball game.”
When it comes to making items from scratch,most saddlers
have a specialist field, and Mary-Rose’s is strap work, which
includes bridles, head collars (or halters), girths, martingales
(which run from the nose band to the girth, to stop the horse
throwing back its head) and breast plates.
All of her work is custom-made, to fit well and “look really
beautiful” – especially important in the show ring.
“The bridles now available are very standardised and
really don’t fit any horse properly. A nice one will show off your
horse’s head to best advantage.”
Rather than a sewing machine, Mary-Rose works with a range of awls and
sturdy needles, the biggest and thickest being for collars. Cobblers’
awls make a round hole; saddlers’ awls make a diamond-shaped one,
she says, and this sets the beginning of one stitch slightly apart from
the end of the previous one.
Sourcing materials can be a challenge, particularly where
they were mostly made for other, now largely defunct,
purposes. Bag hide, for example – a relatively thin leather that
was embossed during tanning and made specifically for doctor’s bags
– was perfect for girths but is now rarely available.
The range of threads is much narrower than in horsier days
gone by. For tasks where safety is paramount, such as stitching stirrup
leather or girth straps, Mary-Rose rolls her own heavyduty thread, using
the required number of strands of singlestrand Irish linen thread and
finishing it with wax.
It’s time-consuming, but extremely strong.
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