Craft Land

Britain was once a craft land and for generations what we made with our hands shaped our identities, built our communities and defined our regions. Historian and fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, James Fox travels the length of Britain to seek out the country’s last great craftspeople in Craftland and chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that used to govern every aspect of life on these shores. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and Coopers, thatchers, bellfounders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life, one that is not yet lost and might still shape our future.

In the last chapter, “Crucible” focuses on three London-based artisans: Jewish scribe Bernard Bennaroch, Ka Ching Ip, a Chinese potter, and Gambian born drum-maker Moussa Dembele, who survived a childhood of enslavement to rediscover his calling as griot- a hereditary position in west African society that combines musician, storyteller and historian.

Fox also meets a quilt-making group, Highland thatcher Brian Wilson who builds roofs out of heather and hazel.

We learn that one of the rare practitioners of English rush basketry, Felicity Irons, was nudged towards her career by a car crash in the Australian outback. We hear also how one of Sheffield’s few remaining knife makers, John Adams, produces a blade specifically for use on oil rigs, the blade is rounded to prevent stir-crazed oil rig workers from stabbing each other. 

Craftland visits the world of British craft – drystone walling, watch-making, thatching, stonemasonry, pottery, hedge-laying and woodworking. Holding a Willow crab pot Fox explains that its maker David French has produced a work of art.

Fox reveals that Britain is still a craft land, if only we have eyes to see it. Craft is all around us, hiding in plain sight, animating even the most ordinary things.

Craftland: A Journey Through Britain’s Lost Arts and Vanishing Trades by James Fox, Bodley Head £25, 368 pages.