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allotmentgirl
Regular Member


82 Posts
Posted -  27/02/2010  :  22:28
Has anybody been watching Mastercrafts on BBC2 with Monty Don? It is so nice to see the old crafts being kept alive.I particularly liked the episode about making the chairs out of green wood. I love to see good workmanship. It's a shame we don't buy Handcrafted furniture /articles that have been made and meant to last a lifetime,it would help keep these skills alive if we did buy them instead of this rubbish from Ikea that will be in a skip in 5 years time. It's a shame that we feel the need for new this, new that all the time, I would much rather pay  more for something thats been well made and have it for 20 years or more..
Last week I saved a lovely 1920/30s cupboard from someones back yard that was going to be burnt on their fire and I love it.
Anyone else seen Mastercrafts?


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thomo
Barlick Born Old Salt


2021 Posts
Posted - 17/03/2010 : 09:20
A bit too old now wendy, Stanley, that place was like an Aladins cave, a bit gloomy but packed with stuff made for the job over a long time, I have often wondered when passing, what it is like in there now.


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Tizer
VIP Member


5150 Posts
Posted - 17/03/2010 : 09:37
I've got a head full of metals at the moment because I'm reading a little 1950s Pelican book `Metals in the Service of Man' written by two men who were leaders in the metals industry in the 1940s. What strikes me most is that it's as if alchemy has been brought into the 20th century - not lead changed into gold but the ability to alter the properties of a metal by alloying it with a smidgeon of another metal is magical. Aluminium must have seemed like a magic metal when it first became available. Kings and queens served their most prestigious guests with food on aluminium plates and you had to pay exorbitant rates if you wanted to transport aluminium by rail compared with say iron because it was so precious. The Zeppelin company in Germany moved heaven and earth to get more aluminium made in World War I. Then someone added a bit of copper and bingo - magically altered properties, lighter aeroplanes. Then next it was magnesium instead of aluminium - another magic material.

Stanley, you said above how weavers could deal with very complicated tasks. How that differs from now, when you can't get people to understand a message with more than a sentence in it or asking more than one question (as I've mentioned elsewhere in the Flying Machine thread). Perhaps we should teach weaving in schols?


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belle
VIP Member


6502 Posts
Posted - 17/03/2010 : 13:07
Yes! and always music, apparantly music does something to a growing brain that makes it work better (how unscientific was that!?)


Life is what you make itGo to Top of Page
Stanley
Local Historian & Old Fart


36804 Posts
Posted - 17/03/2010 : 16:28
It's  a nice thought but unfortunately we are rearing a generation that are used to miracles in a cardboard box rather than making something. True there will be the odd exception but on the whole the ability to concentrate and think logically about manual tasks is waning rapidly. I feel sorry for the kids who never experienced the joys of making tanks out of a bobbin, a piece of candle end, a match and a laggy band. What would they make of Meccano? Would they even know what they were seeing if they saw a lathe? They are the losers and we have encouraged it. It's sad but we have manufactured a generation of consumers not makers.


Stanley Challenger Graham




Barlick View
stanley at barnoldswick.freeserve.co.uk Go to Top of Page
Tizer
VIP Member


5150 Posts
Posted - 17/03/2010 : 20:11
I remember in my last class at primary school we used to make things out of cardboard and we had scalpels to do the cutting - can you imagine that being allowed now? But it was good for me, I still often use a scalpel rather than scissors to get a neater cut on paper, cardboard etc.


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allotmentgirl
Regular Member


82 Posts
Posted - 21/03/2010 : 16:02
I've just watched the weaving and the stone masonary Mastercrafts and enjoyed them both. I wish the world would go back to these ways. I know what it is like to work with my hands and create things . I can knit and sew and I love looking at something that I have created from nothing. I feel a pride inside . But I know I am in a minority amongst my age group and it is sad that people don't appreciate good craftsmanship. I have a handblown vase I paid a lot of money for I love that vase , it is unique and the vase has brought me so much pleasure over the years it is tactile and it tells a story. I try to encourage my children to appreciate handmade things and not to be greedy and materialistic but society is starting to get it's greedy grip on my eldest and it saddens me.


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