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This week’s #craftfocus is sporran making.

The Scottish craft of sporran making incorporates a range of skills to create the traditional pouch worn with a kilt. These include leatherworking, hand sewing, belt making, taxidermy, metalwork, horsehair work and cantle making.

First, a pattern is cut for the body, which includes a front and back panel with an attached flap, and a long, thin strip called a gusset. Next, stitching holes are punched along the edges and a belt loop or D-rings are attached to the back panel so the sporran can be worn. These pieces are then sewn together by hand.

Finally, finishing touches are added, such as a closure (button or stud) and other embellishments on the front (tassels, fur or metalwork).

Sporran making is classified as endangered on our Craft Inventory. Threats include a lack of training opportunities and a difficulty accessing raw materials on a small scale in Scotland.

While the basic skills of sporran making, such as leatherworking, are easily accessible, the higher level skills of working with horsehair, skins and mixed materials are specialist and can only be learnt on the job with a skilled sporran maker. The market is also affected by competition from sporrans made cheaply overseas.

Image: Kate Robertson @robertsonkiltmakers

#heritagecrafts #craftfocus #sporranmaking

We are profiling the recipients of our latest round of Endangered Crafts Fund grants.

Mark Rochman, from Leeds, has been funded to gain bicycle frame making skills from Ellis Briggs Cycles and add bicycle making to the offering of @leedsbikemill, a workers cooperative currently offering bicycle repair and maintenance.

Mark’s grant is funded by an anonymous donation to the Endangered Crafts Fund.

Mark said: “I will be training to become an experienced bike frame builder with Paul at Ellis Briggs in Shipley. I hope to acquire the necessary tools to create a space to practice these skills here at Leeds Bike Mill, an organisation that is well-embedded in the Leeds cycling community. I hope to instill others with the same passion, curiosity and interest in steel bike frame building that I have, and perhaps one day create an inclusive and accessible space in Leeds for budding frame builders to share and practice their skills.”

This week’s #mondaymaker is Adam Cox @cavendishpianos – a piano maker.

Adam undertook a piano technology course at Leeds College of Music in 1993 and began building seriously in 2012, now running Cavendish Pianos in the Yorkshire Dales. Adam’s favourite part of his work is sitting down and playing a newly finished piano, as well as receiving customer satisfaction.

If you want to read an exclusive interview about Adam’s work, become a member of Heritage Crafts and learn more in the members portal: https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/join-us/

#heritagecrafts #pianomaking

We are profiling the recipients of our latest round of Endangered Crafts Fund grants.

Seth Kennedy @sk_mechanician, from Hertfordshire and London, has been funded to refurbish and provide storage for specialised tools, to be used to teach horologists and silversmiths to become watch case makers.

Seth’s grant is funded by the Julia Rausing Trust.

Seth said: “This endangered crafts funding is going to be instrumental in helping me to pass on my working knowledge of traditional watch case making to the next generation. In recent decades only a handful of practitioners have carried out this craft and it is critical to its future, and to the wider restoration of antique watches, that newcomers pick up these skills.”

📷 @paulreadphoto

We are profiling the recipients of our latest round of Endangered Crafts Fund grants.

Jessica Light @jessica_light_, from London, has been funded to train apprentice @annarayart in the craft of passementerie, and together explore new routes to market.

Jessica is the last working passementier left in the East End of London, one of the craft’s historic areas for production. She’s known as ‘The Tassel Queen of Bethnal Green’ and she brings a ‘measured couture-crafted anarchy’ to her passementerie where tradition meets modernity.

Jessica’s grant is funded by an anonymous donation to the Endangered Crafts Fund.

Jessica said: “I see myself as a link in a long passementerie chain that goes back centuries, and hopefully this funding will help ensure I won’t be the last link and the chain can continue growing. This funding will help widen the exposure of this endangered craft and push the creative possibilities by working collaboratively with artist Anna Ray.”

📷 @kristinperers