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Endangered Crafts

posted by martyb on Monday August 14 2017, @08:33AM   
from the craft!=boat dept.

tonyPick writes:

Over at Hackaday is a pointer to The Heritage Crafts Association list of endangered crafts:

The Industrial Revolution brought mechanisation and mass production, and today very few of the products you use will be hand-made. There may still be a few craftsmen with the skills to produce them by hand, but in the face of the mass-produced alternative there is little business for them and they are in inevitable decline. In an effort to do something about this and save what skills remain, the Heritage Crafts Association in the UK has published a list of dying crafts, that you can view either alphabetically, or by category of risk.

It’s a list with a British flavour as you might expect from the organisation behind it, after all for example hand stitched cricket balls are not in high demand in the Americas. But it serves also as a catalogue of some fascinating crafts, as well as plenty that will undoubtedly be of interest to Hackaday readers.

Obviously this is UK specific, as many of these crafts survive elsewhere in the world. However the links to individual crafts provide the history, techniques, and further background on each area. The hackaday comment threads also contain some additional suggestions.

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Original Submission

• Leadworking - they need to crack down (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday August 14 2017, @03:11PM

  by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday August 14 2017, @03:11PM (#553700)

  I saw this interesting bit in browsing their crafts:

  Leadworking [heritagecrafts.org.uk] is listed as endangered on their list. Some of the problems:

  Lack of awareness: The architects, surveyors and specifiers do not understand historic leadwork as they have no training in this niche area.

  Ageing workforce: Within another 5-10 years the senior practitioners who may have had training in traditional plumbing craft skills will have passed away and the skills lost.

  Then farther down:

  Listed buildings are protected by law and plumbing leadwork repairs have to be done on a like for like biases. However, modern lead welding has taken over wiped points and soldering (as few people can do these skills) and this changers the character of the piece, which is technically illegal.

  So "listed buildings" (I assume buildings that fall under historical preservation laws) have to have the leadwork repaired just the way it was before, without modernizing it. But this isn't being done because knowledgable leadworkers in this craft aren't available, so they're breaking the laws. The government needs to crack down on this: the repairs *must* be made in the original way, no exceptions. When they can't find anyone who knows how to do it any more, then it should just sit unrepaired. I really hate it when there's laws on the books that go unenforced; if you're going to have a law, enforce it, or rescind it if it doesn't work any more.

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