Craftspeople whose knowledge lives in their hands
Thatchers, hedgelayers, flint knappers, dry stone wallers, swill basket weavers. Practitioners of Heritage Crafts Red List skills with fewest remaining nationally. The knowledge is embodied, not written down. It dies with them.
The makers documented in the archive so far. Each is a full documentary record - photographs, field notes, the trade in their own words.
Letter Cutter and Stonemason
Steve Roche cuts letters and carves stone at Stag Works in Sheffield, the studio he runs and shares with the sculptor Lily Marsh. He came to the trade after a single month in 2008 cost him his job and a broken leg, retrained on a craft bursary, and now works on public lettering and stone commissions across the city.
Stone Sculptor
Lily Marsh carves stone in a shared studio at Stag Works in Sheffield - a sculptor who came to the trade after a psychology degree and a spell working in a prison, and who works alongside the letter cutter and stonemason Steve in the room they share.
Scissor Maker
Grace Horne hand-makes scissors in a former Victorian public toilet in Sheffield - a cutler, corsetiere and PhD who learned the trade at Ernest Wright and works without the old industrial machines. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Leatherworker
Kevin Wilebore hand-makes leather bags, belts and sheaths - and the pouches for Ernest Wright's scissors - at Portland Works in Sheffield, the birthplace of stainless steel.
Pocket-Knife Maker
Kylie Cocker hand-makes pocket and pen knives as a mester at Joseph Rodgers, in the workshop inside Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield. Folding knife making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Scissor Polisher
The polisher at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, with thirteen years on the wheel. Sabino works the polishing machine - buffing mops on a spinning spindle that take a finished pair of scissors to its bright final shine. It is dusty, exacting work, the last skilled hand a pair passes through before the maker's mark. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Scissor Maker
A scissor maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, about six years into the trade. His station is the grinding and finishing machines - the wheel and the abrasive belt that bring a forged blade up to its edge - and the work is the same exacting, spark-and-steel routine the firm has run for over a century. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Scissor Grinder
One of the newer makers at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, and the workshop's grinder - about eighteen months in. His station is the grinding wheel, where a forged blade is taken down to its hollow and its edge, the spark-throwing stage that turns a rough forging into a blade that will cut. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Scissor Maker
Production manager and a putter at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. Trained by two of the country's last master-putters, Jonathan is also the workshop's public voice - the one who gives the talks and interviews about a craft Heritage Crafts classes as critically endangered. About seven years at the bench.
Putter-Togetherer
A putter-togetherer at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902 - and the first trainee of the firm's current era to qualify fully as a putter, the five-year-apprenticed craftsman who marries the two blades of a pair of scissors so they cut. About ten years at the workshop, he does the defining job of the trade: hammering the curve onto each blade and setting the two together by hand and eye until the pair rides true.
Scissor Maker
The senior maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. A putter-togetherer trained under Eric Stones and Cliff Denton, Neil now runs the floor and has trained the rest of the makers in the workshop. He took the archive through the whole craft - the grinding of the blade's hollow and twist, the hardening, the rumbling, and the marriage of the two blades, where the gap between them is the secret of a clean cut.
Founder of Chimo
The man who built Chimo. A Yorkshire-born Merchant Navy officer who came home to take over his family's Sheffield silverware business, in 1989 he gathered a set of independent cutlery, silver and pewter trades under one roof at the White Rose Works and kept their historic names alive. Appointed MBE in 2018 for services to exports and investment in Sheffield, Master of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers in 2020, and chair of the Work-wise Foundation - he is one of the last custodians of a Sheffield trade running short of the next generation.
Die Engraver
A die engraver at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing who has cut steel dies for forty-five years - the only trade he has ever worked. A customer's artwork is worked up into a master pattern, traced on a pantograph die-sinking machine that cuts it into steel at size, and hand-finished; the finished die is the master tool that stamps a crest, a monogram or a mark into the cutlery and silverware the rest of the works makes. Hand engraving sits on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Cutler
A cutler at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing for fifteen years, running the knife-finishing section - drilling and heat-setting the tang into the handle, then grinding, edging and polishing the finished knife. He came to the trade from dye printing and other work, apprenticed for four months, and stayed. He now leads apprenticeships at Chimo, and the larger part of that job, he says, is keeping a young person interested in a repetitive craft long enough to be good at it.
Cutler
A master cutler of more than forty years in the trade, at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing. The son of a Sheffield cutlery man, he resisted the factory as a young man and then spent a working life in it - taking a knife from a blank through stamping, grinding, serrating, hafting, sharpening and polishing, and now passing the whole sequence on to the next pair of hands.
Woodturner & Furniture Maker
A woodturner and furniture maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, who came to wood from illustration and printmaking. He trained turning globe stands at Bellerby & Co and produced furniture for the London studio Wilkinson & Rivera before building his own practice - turned bowls and centrepieces, furniture in a Scandinavian and Japanese register, and the bespoke wooden stands that hold Jonathan Wright's globes on the floor above.
Globemaker
A maker of bespoke handmade globes - terrestrial and celestial - and a restorer of antique ones, working at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. He learned the craft over the better part of a decade leading globe production at Bellerby & Co before founding his own studio, took a QEST scholarship and an MA in conservation, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a trustee of QEST. Globe-making by hand is a rare and endangered craft with no formal training route.
Knitwear Apprentice
Genevieve Sweeney's first apprentice, learning British knitwear from the cone up at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. A film graduate who knitted with her grandmother as a child, she came through a four-month course and took to the machines and the linking bench fast - the next pair of hands in a craft the country is trying not to lose.
Knitwear Designer
Knitwear designer and maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Trained in fashion knitwear at Nottingham Trent and shaped by years developing knit for Rag & Bone, Hugo Boss and Burberry, she built her own British label in 2015 to keep the country's knitwear skills alive - naturally dyed merino and lambswool, socks from a family-run Derbyshire mill, and a growing in-house studio where she has taken on her first apprentice, Poppy.
Watchmaker
Watchmaker, case maker and engine turner at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire - an engineer who came to horology with no formal apprenticeship (informal training under an accomplished watchmaker, then tools and methods of his own), and is now one of a tiny handful of people in England making and engine-turning watch cases by hand. A QEST scholar who engine-turned the solid-gold mount of King Charles III's Royal Family Order for the Crown Jeweller. The archive's first horological subject.
Silversmith
Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. David Hart's nephew and William's cousin, son of David's brother Basil. He joined the workshop in 1994, aged eighteen, after two years of motor-vehicle engineering at college - asked in to help with a busy order book while he looked for a job, and at the bench ever since.
Silversmith
Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the only one of the workshop's silversmiths not a Hart by blood. Recruited from Chipping Campden School in 1982 while sitting his A-levels, aged eighteen, and apprenticed to David Hart, taught by David and his father Henry. Forty-four years at the bench.
Silversmith
Fourth-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. Son of David Hart, great-grandson of George Hart of the Guild of Handicraft. Came to the bench from computer science, joining the workshop in 1990, the year his grandfather Henry died, and now carries the workshop forward.
Silversmith
Third-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the last working workshop of Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. Grandson of George Hart, who came to Campden with the Guild in 1902; brought into the workshop by his father Henry in 1956. Eighty-seven at the time of the visit, and seventy years at the bench this July, still raising silver by hand.
Hazel Basket Maker
A working hazel basket maker in Turnham Green Wood, the Herefordshire coppice he established in 2011. One of a handful of working practitioners in the country making the traditional split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches - a craft on the Heritage Crafts Red List of endangered crafts. Reads the stems before cutting (the knobs, the deer marks, the years), cleaves and shaves them into splints, weaves them into round-bottomed baskets that have been made in the same shape since the form was first made. Teaches the craft at venues across the country.
Boat Builder
Founder of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham. Trained at three Surrey Thames yards in the 1960s: Horace Clarke's Boatyard in Sunbury from age 15; Walton Yacht; and George Wilsons Yard in Sunbury, where he completed his apprenticeship. Self-employed from 22. Opened the Laleham yard with his son Stephen in 1988.
Boat Builder
Working principal of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham, Chertsey. Son of Michael Dennett, who taught him the trade from age two. Joined the yard as a partner in 1988 and has worked there ever since. Specialises in the restoration of historic Thames pleasure craft.
Lettercutter
Lettercutter at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Eight years at the bench. Roxanne Kindersley's longest-running apprentice and the cutter on the Storm and the Calm After the Storm memorial pillar.
Designer & Lettercutter
Designer at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Younger son of David and Lida Kindersley, husband of Roxanne. The design hand of the workshop - most pieces begin as a sheet of paper and a pencil at his bench.
Lettercutter
Working head of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. She has taken over the running of the workshop from her mother-in-law Lida and now teaches apprentices, directs commissions, and keeps the 700-year-old craft of English stone lettering alive for a new generation.
Lettercutter
Matriarch of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Widow of David Kindersley. A typographer and stone letter-cutter in her own right who has run the workshop for thirty years and still comes in every day.
Millwright
A working millwright who has maintained and restored historic windmills across Norfolk and Suffolk for decades. The mill at Toft Monks works because Paul Kemp exists. That is not a small thing.
Names, Numbers, and the Knowledge That Cannot Be Copied
A deep exploration of the people whose knowledge cannot be written down, cannot be filmed, cannot be archived in any conventional sense - because it lives in their hands, and when they stop, it stops.
Read the full post →
A tradition older than England itself. The men who still build and fish from coracles on the rivers of Wales and the border counties - and the question of what happens when they stop.
The definitive list of endangered heritage crafts in the UK - the making traditions most at risk of disappearing within a generation.
Makers A working millwright who has maintained and restored historic windmills across Norfolk and Suffolk for decades. The mill at Toft Monks works because Paul Kemp exists. That is not a small thing.
Makers Matriarch of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Widow of David Kindersley. A typographer and stone letter-cutter in her own right who has run the workshop for thirty years and still comes in every day.
Makers Working head of the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. She has taken over the running of the workshop from her mother-in-law Lida and now teaches apprentices, directs commissions, and keeps the 700-year-old craft of English stone lettering alive for a new generation.
Makers Designer at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Younger son of David and Lida Kindersley, husband of Roxanne. The design hand of the workshop - most pieces begin as a sheet of paper and a pencil at his bench.
Makers Apprentice Lettercutter at the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop, Cambridge. Eight years at the bench. Roxanne Kindersley's longest-running apprentice and the cutter on the Storm and the Calm After the Storm memorial pillar.
Makers Working principal of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham, Chertsey. Son of Michael Dennett, who taught him the trade from age two. Joined the yard as a partner in 1988 and has worked there ever since. Specialises in the restoration of historic Thames pleasure craft.
Makers Founder of Dennett Boat Builders, Laleham. Trained at three Surrey Thames yards in the 1960s: Horace Clarke's Boatyard in Sunbury from age 15; Walton Yacht; and George Wilsons Yard in Sunbury, where he completed his apprenticeship. Self-employed from 22. Opened the Laleham yard with his son Stephen in 1988.
Makers A working hazel basket maker in Turnham Green Wood, the Herefordshire coppice he established in 2011. One of a handful of working practitioners in the country making the traditional split-hazel Whisket of the Welsh Marches - a craft on the Heritage Crafts Red List of endangered crafts. Reads the stems before cutting (the knobs, the deer marks, the years), cleaves and shaves them into splints, weaves them into round-bottomed baskets that have been made in the same shape since the form was first made. Teaches the craft at venues across the country.
Makers Third-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the last working workshop of Ashbee's Guild of Handicraft. Grandson of George Hart, who came to Campden with the Guild in 1902; brought into the workshop by his father Henry in 1956. Eighty-seven at the time of the visit, and seventy years at the bench this July, still raising silver by hand.
Makers Fourth-generation silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. Son of David Hart, great-grandson of George Hart of the Guild of Handicraft. Came to the bench from computer science, joining the workshop in 1990, the year his grandfather Henry died, and now carries the workshop forward.
Makers Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden - the only one of the workshop's silversmiths not a Hart by blood. Recruited from Chipping Campden School in 1982 while sitting his A-levels, aged eighteen, and apprenticed to David Hart, taught by David and his father Henry. Forty-four years at the bench.
Makers Silversmith at Hart Gold & Silversmiths in the Old Silk Mill, Chipping Campden. David Hart's nephew and William's cousin, son of David's brother Basil. He joined the workshop in 1994, aged eighteen, after two years of motor-vehicle engineering at college - asked in to help with a busy order book while he looked for a job, and at the bench ever since.
Makers Watchmaker, case maker and engine turner at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire - an engineer who came to horology with no formal apprenticeship (informal training under an accomplished watchmaker, then tools and methods of his own), and is now one of a tiny handful of people in England making and engine-turning watch cases by hand. A QEST scholar who engine-turned the solid-gold mount of King Charles III's Royal Family Order for the Crown Jeweller. The archive's first horological subject.
Makers Knitwear designer and maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, Hertfordshire. Trained in fashion knitwear at Nottingham Trent and shaped by years developing knit for Rag & Bone, Hugo Boss and Burberry, she built her own British label in 2015 to keep the country's knitwear skills alive - naturally dyed merino and lambswool, socks from a family-run Derbyshire mill, and a growing in-house studio where she has taken on her first apprentice, Poppy.
Makers Apprentice Genevieve Sweeney's first apprentice, learning British knitwear from the cone up at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. A film graduate who knitted with her grandmother as a child, she came through a four-month course and took to the machines and the linking bench fast - the next pair of hands in a craft the country is trying not to lose.
Makers A maker of bespoke handmade globes - terrestrial and celestial - and a restorer of antique ones, working at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham. He learned the craft over the better part of a decade leading globe production at Bellerby & Co before founding his own studio, took a QEST scholarship and an MA in conservation, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a trustee of QEST. Globe-making by hand is a rare and endangered craft with no formal training route.
Makers A woodturner and furniture maker at Grandeys Place near Much Hadham, who came to wood from illustration and printmaking. He trained turning globe stands at Bellerby & Co and produced furniture for the London studio Wilkinson & Rivera before building his own practice - turned bowls and centrepieces, furniture in a Scandinavian and Japanese register, and the bespoke wooden stands that hold Jonathan Wright's globes on the floor above.
Makers A master cutler of more than forty years in the trade, at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing. The son of a Sheffield cutlery man, he resisted the factory as a young man and then spent a working life in it - taking a knife from a blank through stamping, grinding, serrating, hafting, sharpening and polishing, and now passing the whole sequence on to the next pair of hands.
Makers A cutler at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing for fifteen years, running the knife-finishing section - drilling and heat-setting the tang into the handle, then grinding, edging and polishing the finished knife. He came to the trade from dye printing and other work, apprenticed for four months, and stayed. He now leads apprenticeships at Chimo, and the larger part of that job, he says, is keeping a young person interested in a repetitive craft long enough to be good at it.
Makers A die engraver at Chimo Sheffield Manufacturing who has cut steel dies for forty-five years - the only trade he has ever worked. A customer's artwork is worked up into a master pattern, traced on a pantograph die-sinking machine that cuts it into steel at size, and hand-finished; the finished die is the master tool that stamps a crest, a monogram or a mark into the cutlery and silverware the rest of the works makes. Hand engraving sits on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers The man who built Chimo. A Yorkshire-born Merchant Navy officer who came home to take over his family's Sheffield silverware business, in 1989 he gathered a set of independent cutlery, silver and pewter trades under one roof at the White Rose Works and kept their historic names alive. Appointed MBE in 2018 for services to exports and investment in Sheffield, Master of the Worshipful Company of Pewterers in 2020, and chair of the Work-wise Foundation - he is one of the last custodians of a Sheffield trade running short of the next generation.
Makers The senior maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. A putter-togetherer trained under Eric Stones and Cliff Denton, Neil now runs the floor and has trained the rest of the makers in the workshop. He took the archive through the whole craft - the grinding of the blade's hollow and twist, the hardening, the rumbling, and the marriage of the two blades, where the gap between them is the secret of a clean cut.
Makers A putter-togetherer at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902 - and the first trainee of the firm's current era to qualify fully as a putter, the five-year-apprenticed craftsman who marries the two blades of a pair of scissors so they cut. About ten years at the workshop, he does the defining job of the trade: hammering the curve onto each blade and setting the two together by hand and eye until the pair rides true.
Makers Production manager and a putter at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902. Trained by two of the country's last master-putters, Jonathan is also the workshop's public voice - the one who gives the talks and interviews about a craft Heritage Crafts classes as critically endangered. About seven years at the bench.
Makers Apprentice One of the newer makers at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, and the workshop's grinder - about eighteen months in. His station is the grinding wheel, where a forged blade is taken down to its hollow and its edge, the spark-throwing stage that turns a rough forging into a blade that will cut. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers A scissor maker at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, about six years into the trade. His station is the grinding and finishing machines - the wheel and the abrasive belt that bring a forged blade up to its edge - and the work is the same exacting, spark-and-steel routine the firm has run for over a century. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers The polisher at Ernest Wright, the Sheffield scissor makers founded in 1902, with thirteen years on the wheel. Sabino works the polishing machine - buffing mops on a spinning spindle that take a finished pair of scissors to its bright final shine. It is dusty, exacting work, the last skilled hand a pair passes through before the maker's mark. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers Kylie Cocker hand-makes pocket and pen knives as a mester at Joseph Rodgers, in the workshop inside Kelham Island Museum, Sheffield. Folding knife making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers Kevin Wilebore hand-makes leather bags, belts and sheaths - and the pouches for Ernest Wright's scissors - at Portland Works in Sheffield, the birthplace of stainless steel.
Makers Grace Horne hand-makes scissors in a former Victorian public toilet in Sheffield - a cutler, corsetiere and PhD who learned the trade at Ernest Wright and works without the old industrial machines. Scissor making is on the Heritage Crafts Red List.
Makers Lily Marsh carves stone in a shared studio at Stag Works in Sheffield - a sculptor who came to the trade after a psychology degree and a spell working in a prison, and who works alongside the letter cutter and stonemason Steve in the room they share.
Makers Steve Roche cuts letters and carves stone at Stag Works in Sheffield, the studio he runs and shares with the sculptor Lily Marsh. He came to the trade after a single month in 2008 cost him his job and a broken leg, retrained on a craft bursary, and now works on public lettering and stone commissions across the city.
The Sussex trugg - a garden basket woven from sweet chestnut and willow. One man still makes them by hand on the Suffolk coast.
The wherrymen of the Norfolk Broads - the cargo sailors who kept the waterways alive, and the handful who still maintain the last trading wherries.
The Thames punt - a flat-bottomed boat that has been part of the river for centuries. One workshop in Henley still builds them by hand.
From the Cotswolds to the Yorkshire Dales, England's dry stone walls are built without mortar - stone on stone, shaped by hand, standing for centuries. The wallers who build and repair them carry knowledge that cannot be written down.
The perry pear trees of Herefordshire take a generation to fruit. The families who tend them are custodians of a patience that modern agriculture has abandoned.
The hedges of the Welsh Marches are living structures - laid by hand, maintained across generations. The hedge layers carry a craft that shaped the English landscape.
The Somerset Levels were built on willow. The weavers who still work the withies are maintaining a craft and a landscape simultaneously.
The thatchers of the Cotswolds - the craft of covering a roof with reed and straw, a skill that takes a decade to learn and a lifetime to master.
A plain-language guide to exposure, metering, and the Zone System for both film and digital photographers - from the basics of light to placing zones in the field.
The Cotswolds are defined by oolitic limestone - one material that creates dry stone walls, stone slate roofs, and ashlar buildings. The few remaining quarrymen, stone slate roofers, and masons speak a language the stone dictates.
English stone letter-cutting from the Trajan tradition through Eric Gill and David Kindersley to the Cardozo Kindersley Workshop in Cambridge. The craft, its history, its living lineage, and the state of the discipline in 2026.
The Thames pleasure-craft tradition from the Edwardian slipper launch through the mid-century Surrey yards to the restoration workshops carrying the trade forward today. The Dennett yard at Laleham as the living lineage.
Makers Ernest Wright has made scissors by hand in Sheffield since 1902 - the last hand-scissor workshop in the centre of a city that once had a hundred. Founded by five generations of one family, brought to the edge of extinction, and rescued in 2018 by two men who would not let it die, it is now one of England's most quietly iconic workshops. A morning inside, from the red door on Broad Lane to the putter who marries the blades.
“The knowledge is embodied, not written down. You cannot learn it from a book. You learn it from doing it ten thousand times, with someone standing next to you who has done it ten thousand times before you.”