Matt Baker on the joy of traditional crafts
If our traditional crafts die out, we won't only lose a slice of our culture, but our connection to the land and the joy of creating items from scratch.
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It’s become something of a running joke in our family, as my dad thumbs through his woodwork catalogues folding the corners to highlight his choice of Father’s Day or birthday present, that over the past few years he has developed a love for all things wooden.
I don’t know if this has something to do with my age but recently, as Dad and I conversed over the growing pile of woodworking books in my parents’ downstairs loo, I too began to feel the embers of a wood-burning stove glow deep in the pit of my stomach.
Perhaps this fire has been fuelled by my job. Over the past 10 years I’ve been extremely fortunate to be able to travel the world and come face to face with some amazing cultures. To capture a sense of where I’ve been I often returned with a little memento and as I write this, surrounded by an African tribesman’s bow, ornate patterned boxes, carved animals, dolls and musical instruments, I realise they are all made of wood and that each encapsulates not just my memories of the place but also the character of the craftsmen that made them. A little bit of their world lives on in my home on the other side of the globe from where the original tree grew.
Forgotten crafts
The following week I found myself making windmill shutters as part of a restoration project on the Norfolk Broads. By now I was well on the way with my heritage apprenticeship, but was yet to face my greatest woodworking challenge. Just a few weeks after I’d first stepped into Brian Willis’s workshop, I experienced the life of a bodger, an artisan who works among the trees producing the turned parts of ornate chairs, deep in the green woodlands of the Chilterns.
