Small is Beautiful? Project

Futuremenders

2012-01-25T01:49:00.001-08:00

Another kindred spirit:

"Futuremenders is fun and deadly serious art activism. It sidesteps the traditional art world, cutting to the real business of art in an age of crisis – to futureproof our lives. It prepares us for barely imaginable but plausible futures where forgotten skills are vital for survival. Futuremenders is the lifelong project of UK artist Jonnet Middleton who took a pledge in 2008 to acquire no more clothes, ever. The monumental scale of the Futuremenders mission is to subvert our addiction to short-term shopping by spreading the joy of making and mending together."

Object Ethnography Project

2012-01-18T01:36:00.000-08:00

If you happen to be in NYC, an interesting object-opportunity:

"The Object Ethnography Project investigates how objects accumulate stories as they move from one life to another. We are looking for donations of objects—any kind of object—and the stories that come with them. Members of the public will then adopt these objects during a week-long event in March, 2012. Participants will explain how they will use their adopted object in its new life before they take it home. Each story will be recorded, and the final online exhibit will include a photograph of the object, biography, and its adoption story."

Parting shots: the death of a factory in pictures

2011-12-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

Wonderful series here from photographer Chris Coekin. Staging the shots in a Russian constructivist style is certainly an interesting take on a well trodden path (which we tread too, of course).

Photograph above: © Chris Coekin

Field frame #12: Michael Fook Small Engine and Bicycle Repair

2011-12-16T06:10:00.000-08:00

Site: Michael Fook Small Engine and Bicycle Repair
Location: South Molton,Devon
Date: 30 November 2011
SiB Team: CD and SB
Image: Spares

Farley Water, Hawkridge Ridge, Halscombe, Whiterocks, Veraby Brake, Venfield Common. An Exmoor geography dangles from each antler, marked on a neat white tag. The stags drop their antlers in March and April, and Michael Fook tries to be there to retrieve them. He can tell the stags apart, and recognise the distinctive patterning of each individual’s antler structure from year to year. If only one antler is dropped he will wait, and search for the missing mate. Sometime he finds it miles away, and once he swapped with a local acquaintance years later to make two matched sets.

The antlers return, in pairs and singly, to Michael’s shop in South Molton, Devon. In the front of the shop a dozen prime specimens are mounted (on fibreglass skulls) around the walls, sharing space with spare bicycle tyres and rims. More cluster around the edges of the floor space, the handlebars of parked bicycles echoing the antler forms to odd effect. In the high-ceilinged workshop at the back antlers hang above the strimmers and mowers in for repair. And in the attic, up a steep flight of stairs and through a hatch door, the dim light discloses more antlers, in serried rows alongside boxes of spare engines and salvaged parts.

How Americans build

2011-12-14T05:12:00.000-08:00

In 1960, the Chevrolet division of General Motors and the Handy (Jam) Organization produced American Maker a half-hour film about craftsmanship, creativity and how Americans build. More than a mere vehicle of patriotic propaganda, the film is beautifully shot and offers stunning footage of life and work in that era for a fascinating cultural contrast to the “Swinging London” of the 1960, going on at the same time across the pond.

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Apt for quite a few reasons, here's something very interesting that our ever-discerning friend Jestonbury came across.

Too many shops?

2011-12-13T08:44:00.001-08:00

'The High Street', that catch-all term for the trading places of a town. Now, to me, it suggests as much as anything else a counter to the 'out of town' trading places that have sprung up over the last decade or so. Lots of changes have happened, lots of changes on the way no doubt. Our project is somehow bound up in these changes. Heard this today on the radio, an interesting viewpoint from one 'retail expert'.

Four candles

2011-12-05T05:48:00.000-08:00

Recommended now by two people (one of them my aunt, a linguist with a professional interest in non-disambiguation), so here you go. And you're right, Jon, they could be in Biggleston.

Field frames #10 and #11: Barnstaple

2011-11-30T22:56:00.000-08:00

Sites: New Life Upholstery and The Cycle Centre

Location: Cross Street and Bear Street Arcade

Date: 10 October 2011

SiB Team: CD and SB

Images: Light and Leaf

Perhaps it says something about both of these places that they are known not by their business name, but by the name of their sole-proprietor. We met both Mike and Gordy on a grey day in mid-October. Mike was waiting for us in his tiny workshop, which is wedged in under the wing of a former church, now antiques shop. The sign out front said 'Upholsterer, Mike Tulk', in white on red. And other teapot-shaped sign said 'Tea Room: Sorry no tea, but upholstery gladly done'. Mike was having a slow week, his 'bread and butter' business of recovering motorbike seats having temporarily dried up. He showed us the tools of his trade: a pair of pincers to loosen the seat cover staples, a screwdriver to pry them out, and two venerable sewing machines. The one in the image above is a crank-operated Jones model from the 1930s. Mike has fixed a £1.99 torch onto the working end so that he can see the piping foot clearly as he stitches up seams, but the light flickers and fades. He thinks it may be the damp in the stone-floored room.

Gordy's work space is also occasionally damp, though it's a damp of a different order altogether. He works outside, in all weathers and all seasons, on the pavement in front of a shop premises so clogged with bicycles and bicycle parts that there's only a tiny clear space left by each door. Gordy has been fixing bicycles in Barnstaple for 47 years. He started out at the age of 11, after the Lynmouth floods left an array of parts and bicycles strewn along the riverbank when the waters receded. He taught himself how to assemble a working bicycle, and took on an apprenticeship in a Barnstaple shop when he was 15. Now the local 15 year-olds hang around his en plein air workshop on their bikes, watching Gordy fix other bikes. A collection of frequently-used tools leans against the curb, and a leaf drifts down to keep a ball bearing company.

Tools for living

2011-11-27T01:56:00.000-08:00

Many years ago I saw a poster with the most amazing paper-cut illustrations on the wall of a friend's house. It's since become a bit of a tradition to gift Nikki McClure's creations to family and friends around this time of year. The above is a new one with particular relevance here. I hope the artist doesn't mind. You can find such loveliness for yourself here.

Mouse?

2011-11-24T00:54:00.001-08:00

What would Fritz have made of Steampunk, I wonder?

The man himself

2011-11-23T08:43:00.000-08:00

Although our association with his ideas goes only go so far, E.F. Schumacher, and his famous tome, is always going to be a touchstone for our project. Following on from our April post on the topic, here is a thoroughly interesting look at him and his work in the context of the state of the UK's current political notions. Fascinating.

Field frame #9: The Tool Box

2011-11-10T03:41:00.001-08:00

Site: The Tool Box

Location: Colyton, Devon

Date: 23 September 2011

SiB Team: CD and SB

Image: Apprentice piece

Engineers use scribing blocks like this one to etch lines at set heights and to judge the level of the surfaces they are working on. They fall into a category of ‘tools that are used to make other tools’, though someone needs to make them in the first place. Mike Hill probably made this particular scribing block as an ‘apprentice piece’ during his training.

Many of the tools in this shop are marked with the names of the people who made them (the maker’s mark) and the names of the places where they were made. An idiosyncratic industrial geography can be read in the rows of clamps and planes, chisels and drill bits. The tools carry marks of their origins, and their working lives. They arrive battered and grubby, and undergo a transformation at the hands of Michael in the back room workshop. Repaired and ready on the shop’s display shelves, they await their next posting.

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

Adding value

2011-11-10T02:22:00.000-08:00

To Bridport, with love

2011-09-26T01:21:00.000-07:00

Makers, Menders and Materials: Part 2

2011-09-17T11:12:00.000-07:00

SiB has been resting this summer, but we're about to kick off again with an exhibition at the Bridport Arts Centre. Please join us on Friday, 23 September, for a free-ranging chat with the project team and participating mender/makers.

2011-07-20T07:42:00.000-07:00

This photo of blacksmith Steve Willdig (Field Frame # 2 ) by R. J. Whittick won first prize in a 'Dorset Eye' competition in 1985. Steve shared it with me when I visited a couple of weeks ago. Steve's isn't the first business to have drawn the eye of another photographer--about half of the places we've visited have been previously documented. The attraction, apparently, is mutual.

When is a photography gallery not a photography gallery?

2011-06-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

Gillian Rose, who joined us for the opening events in Plymouth last week (seen holding a photograph in the image below), made some interesting observations about the experience on her visual/method/culture blog.

Please touch

2011-06-27T00:35:00.000-07:00

The box of white gloves just happened to be lying about in the new South West Image Bank gallery space when we hung the exhibition last week. Usually SWIB's volunteers wear them while handling fragile historic photographs in the archive, but last week we borrowed them to place the aluminium-mounted images on their bespoke aluminium ledges. And then, during Friday evening's reception, many of the 40 or so guests wore them as well--photographs were touched, and appreciated as objects. For the next few weeks (until July 22) you too can touch the photographs, at 25 The Parade, in the Plymouth Barbican, weekdays from 9:30-4:30. Let us know what you think.

Going up

2011-06-24T04:15:00.000-07:00

Cabinet of Curiosities

2011-06-09T04:10:00.000-07:00

The couple’s decisions about what to collect are more deliberate than they might seem. “It’s an aesthetic decision,” Ms. Stevenson said. “If it appeals to my eye or my mind, it’s a keeper.” They revel in giving a home to unloved objects, possessions that were once dear to someone and then discarded. “To some people this would be ugly,” Ms. Meyer said. “But to other people, this is kind of earthy and lush.”

One of our fine regular SIB blog readers, J.E.Stanbury, sent us a link to this article in The New York Times. Once again we touch upon the element of this project that is somehow contemporary, almost trendy…

Field frame #8: Star Shoe Repairs

2011-06-03T06:28:00.000-07:00

Site: Star Shoe Repairs

Location: 2 Falmouth Road, Redruth, Cornwall

Date: 11 April 2011

SiB Team: JR and SB

Image: Wren’s shoe polish display case and assorted shoe repair items

Steve didn’t have his best camera with him when we visited Star Shoe Repairs, but his eye was as sharp as ever and the resulting photographs do a beautiful job of evoking a rich working space. In particular they seem to respond neatly to the way this place invites one to pay close attention to details and, above all, to look at things differently: a large pair of scissors secured to back of the side of the worktop by an improvised leather holster; the wire brush drill-bit resting on a shelf; racks of keys and metal cutting blades pinned to a wooden panels; a stripy window display of handmade leather belts; a women’s shoe secured in a home-made heel-clamp. There is so much to look at in this place that it is hard to remember all the details; the photographs show things I had noticed and forgotten, but also things I’d not seen at all. I had spotted the wooden display rack for ‘Wren’s super-wax shoe polish’, with its gold-lettered strap-line: ‘Keeps Shoes Supple’, for example, which resonates with a sense of old-fashioned quality and craftsmanship that permeates everything in Star. But I’d not appreciated the quality of its setting against the pink paintwork, alongside a lonely single shoe, a roll of cotton, and assorted leather bits and bobs, on a high shelf in the corner of the workshop. The photograph conjures up a miniaturised landscape; the wooden sign resembling some mid-twentieth-century wayside advert set in jumbled ground and bathed in the evening glow of a permanently setting fluorescent-light-bulb-sun. Such aesthetic games are of course an effect of the frame imposed by the camera’s operator. But the invitation to play with a sense of scale and perspective comes also from the multi-sensory and visually fecund quality of such workplaces, with their abundance of juxtapositions and associations of shapes, textures, colours and objects.

J. W. Evans Silver Factory

2011-05-28T04:21:00.001-07:00

Look familiar? More images here, and a column in today's Guardian by Ian Jacks.

Show and tell

2011-05-23T09:56:00.001-07:00

Here's the invite for the latest SIB adventure.. an exhibition of our images and texts, at South West Image Bank's gallery in Plymouth. Showing from June 24th – 22nd July. (Click on the image to make it more legible).

2011-05-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

This all looks very interesting...

The Vault

2011-05-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

Today's topic indeed

2011-05-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

Mary Portas, 'Queen of Shops', is to conduct a review for the government into the future of the local English high street. Here she is on Radio 4's Today programme explains how she plans to bring the bustle back to British retail.

Reskilling for river-dwellers

2011-05-16T07:59:00.000-07:00

We recently spent a Saturday on the banks of the River Fowey building a coracle frame out of hazel rods, inner tubes and baling twine. Now the finished article is sitting in our back garden waiting patiently for its covering of canvas and roof paint. Polwheveral Creek launch date TBC.

2011-05-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

The Owl knows from Steven Bond on Vimeo.

Field frame #7: Honiton Clock Clinic

2011-04-19T02:19:00.000-07:00

Site: Honiton Clock Clinic

Location: New Street, Honiton, Devon

Date: 6 April 2011

SiB Team: CD and SB

Image: Clock on chip-board wall

A dealer brought in this clock and asked that the mechanical workings be replaced with quartz. It’s been hanging on the wall ever since. To restore the movement to the 150 year-old device would cost around £300; the quartz setting would be closer to £30. But it’s not a question of whether the replacement can be done, it’s whether the people who know how to do it are willing to, and they’re not, not really. The clock—an ornate memento of the Crimean War—deserves better. There’s an unwritten horologist’s code of ethics at work here, which values the integrity of the piece more than the potential economic gain in its sale. So the clock hangs on the chipboard wall in one of the middle workshops, above a collection of necessary objects—cassette tape, 9-volt battery, specialist screwdrivers, a phone number.

The juxtaposition of the ordinary and the exquisite is repeated again and again in this space, and it’s one of the qualities that makes the workshop so bewildering. Wild variations in scale add to the effect—the giant long-case clocks stacked three deep in cramped rooms, telescoping down to the screws and chains as thin as pins, their joints and threads only visible with a glass. The temporal scrambling is also unsettling—we were surrounded by dozens of clocks, but when I needed to know the time so that I could figure out whether I needed to go buy a new parking ticket I realised that none of them showed the same time. Cliff consulted a modern clock that seemed to be six hours off. It turns out the minute hand is accurate—radio-calibrated to the atomic clock in Rugby—but the hour hand went wrong some time back, and has never been re-set.

small is beautiful

2011-04-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of weekends ago The Observer published an interesting essay by Robert McCrum on EF Schumacher. The story of Schumacher’s life and the development of his ideas of ‘economics as if people and the planet mattered’, espoused most notably in his book Small is Beautiful, was generally well told. Less convincing, I thought, was McCrum’s account of how Schumacher’s work has been a basis for David Cameron’s concept of the ‘Big Society’, which was explored in a brief but rather uncritical way at the end of the article.

Many readers have expressed their shock and horror that Cameron or his advisors believe their actions are in any way interpretations of Schumacher’s ideas. The general consensus of discussion groups online seems to be that Schumacher would be spinning in his grave at this notion and that were he alive he would certainly not be a supporter of the coalition. His daughter wrote a letter to The Observer the next weekend to point out that her father shared his ideas with anyone who wanted his advice and that he ‘didn’t do cynical’.

I hadn’t appreciated how much was going on about Schumacher at the moment to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth, and it seems that different groups have interests (as McCrum says also happened after his death) in drawing sustenance from his reputation. One main website is: http://www.ef-schumacher.org/. At the same time, like many other university workers, I’ve been following the row over the AHRC’s adoption of ‘the big society’ as a core research theme (see also The History Workshop website). Given that the AHRC funds this project and that its title comes from Schumacher’s best-selling book, should we be at all concerned at being seen as some vehicle of the Big Society agenda, whatever that is? My favourite comment on the idea of Cameron drawing on Schumacher for his concept of the Big Society, and the one probably most apt for this project, said simply: ‘How apt that the idea should be Schumacher’s when most people think it is cobblers’.

Field frame #6: Sew-quick

2011-04-06T09:59:00.001-07:00

Site: Sew-quick

Location: Waterloo Road, Falmouth, Cornwall
Date: 21 February 2011

SiB Team: JR and SB
Image: Shelves

Sew-quick is a thriving industrial and domestic sewing machine service based in Falmouth, Cornwall. Their workshop is to be found in an old light-industrial building, adjoining a small commercial garage next door, on Waterloo Road. Besides Sew-quick’s workshop and the garage, the street is given over to residential buildings and it is tempting to see the workshop and garage as recent industrial intrusions. In fact they are the survivors of a small business community that was once present on the street, including a butchers, a carpet shop and a fancy dress outfitters. Sew-quick’s workshop began in a garage of a house on Waterloo Road in 1986 before being relocated to its current site in 1999. Francis kindly showed me around the workshop and explained the evolution of the business, which he runs with Sue, while Steve worked away taking photographs.

The workshop itself is divided roughly into two separate spaces separated by a thin wall with a large permanent opening to one side. The space at the back of the workshop contains a workbench, shelves of machinery, tools and equipment. It is here that sewing machines are made and mended. The area at the front of the shop is where Sue or Francis (and their dog) greet customers; it is the ‘shop’ bit of the ‘workshop’. A small enclosure to the back right of this space serves as a rudimentary office, with a counter behind which Sue or Francis can use the phone, receive payments and issue receipts or sell small sewing machine parts. It is here that the day-to-day collection or deposition of sewing machines goes on. The space to the right and front of the counter is completely occupied by a number of large industrial sewing machines. The walls are decorated with faded manufacturer’s posters of sewing machines.

To the left of the counter, running along the length of the wall and in front of one of the building's large and drafty windows, are some large wooden shelves on which are stored sewing machines, as well as all kinds of other useful clutter. The photograph here shows a portion of these shelves that, as the bow in the wood testifies, have to put up with visits from some seriously weighty objects. I like this photograph because it captures, in a slice of shelving, just how multi-layered the space of the workshop is. Mostly the shelves contain sewing machines ready for repair, service or collection. The machines are of all kinds of makes and ages. Attached to their case handles are labels with names of owners and instructions. The shelves are also convenient places for everyday workshop items such as the kettle and old drink cups and cans, or a towel. These spaces speak a language of everyday work in which people and objects are entangled in complex ways. Arrangements of objects and spaces are organised less on the basis of visual display (because these are not items for sale?) than on the needs of getting things done.

Francis and Sue explain to Steve and me how they have advanced plans to replace this old (and cold) workshop with a new, two-storey, building with a showroom at the front and workshop at the back. I wonder how far the imprint of the old building and feel of the current workshop, captured so nicely in Steve’s photograph, will survive in a new building.

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

2011-04-05T01:09:00.000-07:00

"The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative."

James Agee (and Walker Evans), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Seventy-five years ago, a photographer and a writer, an economic recession and a government grant to document people going about their lives. I'll stop there for now--too dangerous to start to untangle the rest of it; I wouldn't know where to stop.

Report from Honiton

2011-03-15T05:10:00.000-07:00

It's market day, traders lined up along the high street with their goods--fresh fish, printer cartridges, homemade scotch eggs, rolling papers, mismatched dishes, greeting cards, secondhand furniture, vegetables, vintage electronica (Teasmades, etc.), clothes, dog beds. I buy a battered willow basket (£7.50), and a laminate tray with a 'Beautiful British Columbia' map on it (£1). This town has about a baker's dozen each of charity shops and antique merchants, and a few shops occupying the grey zone in between the two ('Gerry's Tat and Treasure', removals and recycling services). I spot two shoe repair shops (including the one run by Norman Sparks, suggested by his customers early on in the project). The old pottery is now a milkshake bar/paint-a-pot craft workshop. The antique toy shop is closed until further notice. The clock and watch repair shop on the corner of Silver and High seems to have recently closed as well. But on the whole the town is hopping, with an overwhelming sense of a place that knows how to take care of itself. I get the sense that not much is thrown away.

After a wander up and down both sides of the high street I stop in to the Honiton Clock Clinic. A sign on the locked door directs me to ring the bell for the workshops, so I do. I'm greeted by a friendly man who says that his brother, the owner, is away on holiday at the moment but he doesn't think it will be a problem at all for them to participate in the project. He takes me back into the workshops for a look round--tiny room after room of clocks, finished clocks and broken clocks, pieces and parts clocks, all snaking back into the rear of the building and other buildings beyond. He says he's been repairing clocks for 16 years, and the business employs four people full-time. I leave my self-winding watch with him for a new pin and strap and promise to be back soon with the camera and Steve.

Job done

2011-03-13T09:39:00.001-07:00

Thank you, Peter, for the screw selection. The shiny new one was a perfect match. For the curious, the imprint on the desk hinge fitting reads 'Process'. See posts from 23 September 2009, 2 May 2010, and 25 October 2010 for some background on the screw source.

The growing family

2011-03-07T08:21:00.000-08:00

Lovely to start putting the collections together. Each field visit is getting - totally unnecessarily in this digital age - their own physical case and cover. Not wanting to overdo the 'family' connotation but it is enjoyable to watch them grow and meet their siblings... and it seems fitting that this metaphor continues within our area of inquiry. There is unsurprisingly a rich vein of 'familial' essence at the core of SIB and, indeed, in the actual worlds in which our subject matter exists.

2011-03-03T03:13:00.000-08:00

Cartoon © The New Yorker, 28 February 2011.

Wanted: slot head 3/4" 6 screw

2011-02-26T00:34:00.000-08:00

There are probably thousands of these little guys rolling around in dusty drawers and jam jar fastener collections, but you can't buy one for love or money in Falmouth on a rainy Friday afternoon. The fellow in the D.I.Y. shop claims they used to be standard, but haven't been made for 20 years (he showed me the tiny drawers where they once lived in the shop). So, calling all home carpenters and retired ironmongers--help?

The needy object is that antique Roycroft desk I mentioned a while back. The repaired lid hinges arrived in the post this week (with a brief delay in the Plymouth customs depot). Lowe Hardware, in Rockland, Maine, did a wonderful job replacing the worn ratchets, and the desk is whole again, except for a single screw that went missing somewhere between Cornwall and Montana.

Brothers & Sisters

2011-02-25T01:52:00.000-08:00

Somethings starting to happen as we collect more images... this is a hammer-head from Thompson Bros many months ago and a weight from the Abrams book binder just a few weeks ago but they are, of course, brother and sister. Lovely to bring them together visually. Looking forward to much more photographic family bonding.

Taking Stock: 'Everyday Objects'

2011-02-07T01:53:00.000-08:00

Six months into the project we're pausing to take stock of the work we've done, and to think about what we need to do next. Sometimes it helps to sort out our research sites by the kind of object they specialise in repairing, mending, fixing or making. So far we've covered (or have plans to cover):

Shoes
Clothes
Books
Sewing machines
Metal and iron objects and implements
Stained glass windows
Household various (supplies for repair of--ironmongers)

The list of other objects we'd like to work with is a bit longer:

Clocks and watches
Radios and televisions
Small electrical appliances
Bicycles
Jewellery
Telephones (mobile or other)
Toys
Furniture
Lawnmowers, small engine repairs
Computers
Musical instruments
Picture frames
Super 8 cameras
Film cameras

We have candidates for most of these (see the Long List) but we're looking to fill out our options before we decide which sites to include in the project. We're only planning on recording 20 sites in total, and we also want to have a reasonable geographical spread across the region (Dorset and West Devon looking particularly thin at the moment). We need your suggestions! Please post here or send us an email. Thank you.

Field frame #5: The Abrams Bindery

2011-02-01T02:50:00.001-08:00

Site: The Abrams Bindery
Location: Tonedale Mill, Wellington, Somerset
Date: 11 January 2011
SiB Team: CD and SB
Image: Weight

If a photograph is always ‘about’ something, then this one seems to be about gravity, and light. The iron weight compresses a book’s newly-fastened boards, the winter sun glances in before heading west.

Maybe it is also about time—the time it takes to do a job well, to take a broken thing and make it whole. Weight. Wait. When we visited in January, Alexander Abrams and his son Nicholas were working on jobs that had been brought into their bindery in May of last year. They were rebinding, among other things, Leach’s 1815 monograph on ‘British Crabs, Lobsters, Prawns and other Crustacea’, and an illustrated text on ‘Figures of Mosaic Pavements discovered at Horkston in Lincolnshire’, published in 1801.

They mostly work on rare and collectable books, often for dealers (daughter Emily also works in the bindery). Occasionally people will come in with smaller jobs, ‘odds and sods’—family bibles and old recipe-books, their value more sentimental than monetary. I brought in a few books of my own: E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (given to my mother when she turned 9 in 1952), the copy of Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are that I grew up with (purchased by my mother in 1963 years before she had children), and a tiny spine-less copy of A Hole is to Dig, one of Sendak’s early illustration projects. All of the books had endured generations of tough-love: pages were torn and scribbled-on, boards pulled away from the stitching. I wanted to extend their lives so that my son could appreciate them. Alexander took one look at my little pile and informed me, kindly, that their repair wouldn’t be ‘economic’, and that I’d be better off buying new copies to replace these. I thought about how it would feel to get rid of these books, and decided that I was willing to invest in having them saved.

And then the books underwent a strange transformation on the millboard cutter where they lay. Nicholas mentioned that he’d recently heard of a first edition of Where the Wild Things Are selling for £6,000. Alexander pulled the book back towards him and said he’d do what he could. The Charlotte’s Web was also a first edition, worth several hundred pounds in decent condition (which this one definitely wasn’t). I left the books at the bindery, and when I return to collect them they will have been transformed, their use-value eclipsed by their exchange-value. I’ll buy new copies for my son, and these will live on a precious-things shelf. There is loss in this transformation, and also gain, as the biography of the books becomes bound up with other forms of value--not least value of the skills needed to fix them.

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

Archaeography

2011-01-27T05:39:00.001-08:00

A note on context and connections. One of the things we're trying to explore is how photographs create a space for thinking and working in--image as invitation, not evidence. A group of free spirits in archaeology has been experimenting with this for a while now, and some of their work is represented on the archaeography photoblog.

"Media are material matters. The materialities of media and instruments need to be essential concerns of both archaelogy and photography--photographers and archaeologists need to deal with the way their tools and instruments affect what it is they are looking at. Cameras are clocks for making images that are traces of the past. The photograph itself, computer screen, negative, paper or transparency, is an integral and material part of engaging with what is pictured." Michael Shanks

Image: Alfredo Gonzales Ruibal--see also www.ruinmemories.org

Field frame #4: Biggleston

2011-01-26T15:18:00.000-08:00

Site: Biggleston
Location: Penpol Terrace, Hayle, Cornwall
Date: 14 December 2010
SiB Team: JR and SB
Image: Dynamite boxes

One of the first things you notice about the interior of Biggleston, besides the faint aroma of mothballs and paraffin that infuses all proper and longstanding hardware stores, is the vast array of boxes. Wooden and cardboard boxes of various sizes, containing all kinds of hardware necessities, climb up the shelves that cover the far wall and line all sides of a small room beyond. The most striking of these are the substantial wooden boxes, covered by a flakey, goose-shit-green paint, that sit at head height. The fronts of the boxes carry specimens of hardware as well as hand-written, brown paper labels which hint at each box’s contents: ‘Glass plates’; ‘Rack pulleys’; ‘Fancy Hinges’. The boxes were salvaged in the 1920s after the closure of the National Explosive Works at ‘Dynamite Towans’ on the edge of Hayle, which had employed over 1500 local workers at its height in WW1. The peeling paper labels were written and affixed by Mr Hodge, a previous proprietor of Biggleston. They don’t always predict accurately the box’s contents and some (‘D6’, ‘E3’, ‘F4’) are written entirely in a lost language of stock and storage. Even Ray Wyse, the present proprietor, is uncertain of their meaning. But, as Steve and I discover from our stay in this store, this hardly matters. These boxes, like the shop they fill, are valued less for their utility than for their significance as historical artifacts and carriers of collective memory.

Biggleston was built as an ironmongers shop in 1894 in the front garden of one, and later two, terraced houses in Hayle, a peculiar location caused by the monopoly of the Harvey Emporium on local trade until the late 19^th Century. The double-fronted, single storey building is now Grade II Listed. ‘1894’ is marked in discreet ventilation holes under the doorway. Although most visitors probably don’t notice this detail, the building, inside and out, conveys an unmistakable aura of ingrained memory. Ray, who has run the shop for the past 18 years, has built the business and cemented its place in the heart of the local community by amplifying its reputation as a source of both essential products and necessary knowledge. He has maintained the shop’s original interior design and large stock range because he, and his customers, like it that way. The shop provides a hub for loyal customers and a productive facilitator for local makers and menders. On the day we visit, our conversation is disrupted regularly by phone calls and a stream of customers who enter the shop seeking things (some natural putty; some T-lights; a sanding belt; a galvanized bucket) and, more often than not, advice. Customers invariably discuss local issues and leave with a copy of the Hayle Pump Newsletter in their hand. Biggleston’s front windows frequently carry displays of local historical interest. Ray’s shop counter facilitates the exchange of useful knowledge as much as objects and money. As its proprietor, Ray knows where everything is and his expertise is distributed throughout the store’s architecture and ambience. Biggleston has something of the archive about it; with Ray its affable curator.

Looking at Steve’s photographs of Biggleston sometime after our visit to the shop I am struck by how the colour and texture of the images reminds me not only of the cluttered charm and archive aesthetic of this place, but also its more-than-visual qualities; how cold it was that morning, despite the efforts of winter sunshine streaming in through the double-front windows; Ray’s kind interpretation of its interior landscape, to us and his customers. Looking at the photograph of the store shelves with their green, dynamite boxes, I recall the aroma of the store - and can, for a moment, smell the Swarfega hiding in the bottom right corner in its vibrant red and green pots.

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

Amend, mend, end

2011-01-23T23:39:00.000-08:00

I picked up this card in Falmouth over the weekend from a rack outside a gift shop specialising in 'shabby chic' tat. It would be hard not to notice that there's been a revival of austerity-Britain iconography of late. The brisk on-line trade in retro 'make do and mend' postcards might have something to do with the V&A's exhibition a few years back, or to a surface sense of cultural symmetry between that era and our own (the usual explanation). But of course it's all for sale--you can buy your thrifty mantra, if you don't have time to live it. If you do have a spare Thursday morning and happen to live in London you can go along to a 'Mending Morning' at the Idler Academy and learn how to darn a sock (for a £5 donation). The Fixer's Collective in Brooklyn has moved on to Aiwa tape decks. What's going on, and how is our research implicated in this?

Following in fine tyre tracks

2011-01-13T03:30:00.001-08:00

I see the name Nick Hand, a designer and photographer from Bristol, in a lot of fine places... the credits of Howies catalogues, in the bicycle magazine Boneshaker, and on Slow Coast, his wonderful account of his bike tours. And it's his great photo essays on the many many 'artisans' he meets along the way that grab SIB's attention. Have a look at the impressively broad selection here. A fine act to follow.

Image above: Paul F Kelly, Gold and Silversmith © Nick Hand

Hand, Head, Heart

2011-01-08T00:07:00.000-08:00

The spectre of William Morris in Steve's year-end post reminded me that my own early exposure to a peculiarly American Arts and Crafts movement probably has something to do with the work we're doing here. The story starts in East Aurora, New York—hometown to both my parents, Fisher-Price Toys, and a Morris-inspired reformist crafts community led by a man named Elbert Hubbard. The Roycrofters, as they were called, were makers and menders of the highest order—bookbinders, letter-press printers, stained-glass artisans, copper and blacksmiths, and furniture makers. The history of this place is much too dense to get into here, but suffice to say that their creed was 'Hand, Head, Heart'.
I grew up visiting my grandparents in East Aurora, and can speculate that some of Hubbard's philosophy rubbed off on my parents (with their decade-long back to the land experiment in Vermont) and then was handed down to me. I also inherited a Roycroft writing desk, where I work at home. Or I try to work, but it's difficult because the hinged lid that doubles as the writing surface has been detached from the desk for several years now while I try to find a craftsperson who knows how to repair (or recreate) its intricate brass hinges, which have worn down and don't hold the lid properly anymore. And here lies the irony. The Roycroft campus still exists but the workshop where the desk was created is now a museum. A master-craftsman in Montana offered to help but he decided the job was beyond him. For a couple of years the hinges have been with a company in Maine that makes metal fittings for boats, but they've stopped returning phone calls. So my work surface is a bit cramped, but good for thinking with. Especially as we plan our next excursion to a semi-derelict Victorian mill complex outside Taunton where we'll visit a book-bindery and a stained-glass workshop.

Field frame #3: R. Paveley Tailor

2011-01-04T05:22:00.000-08:00

Site: R. Paveley Tailor

Location: Fortuneswell, Portland
Date: 7 December 2010
SiB Team: CD and SB
Image: The cutting table.

The receipt book lay at the edge of the cutting table, in a drift of short threads and fabric scraps. Regency House Fashions (16 St. Albans Street, Weymouth) closed down in around 1990, when Reg Paveley’s tailoring empire (which once stretched to Birmingham as well) contracted to the storefront at the crook of Fore Street, Fortuneswell, Portland. The sign out front says ‘established 1946’—the year Mr. Paveley set himself up in the trade, at age 20, though far from this bulky isle.

Other things on the cutting table—three pairs of jeans in for taking up and hemming; ‘donkeys’ (fabric-covered boards, used for pressing); two massive pairs of steel shears (made in Newark, New Jersey and Sheffield).

Other hazy things on the table as well—I realise something about our project here, and our emerging collaborative practice. Left to my own devices I would have taken clumsy survey photos of the whole shop, middle distance attempts at comprehensive capture. These photos would act as my prosthetic memory when I later came to write about the place, as I do now. But this project is different, and I don’t hold the camera. I search the blurry edges of Steve’s images to build up the detail that lies outside the frame, and fail. I’m brought back to the curve of the measuring tape, the table's cornflower blue, a blank dateline (197…). The images pull me back into the tone and the texture of these places, and talk back to the old documentary impulse, reminding me that we only ever have pieces of the imaginary whole— short threads—to work with.

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

Under the pursuit of a craft aesthetic

2010-12-30T05:22:00.001-08:00

Reading material here for these days in between the fast and important bit at the end of one year and the potentially burgeoning and important bit at the start of another.

The great William Morris (above), John Ruskin et el and the whole Arts & Crafts movement have always attracted me, but I am aware of all the potential over-romantic elements that will, and do, no-doubt seduce me. Somehow or another though, I'm sure a closer look at this man will be worthwhile whilst we consider our relationship to nostalgia and try to look clearly at our subject(s) without any hint of a dangerous but attractive tint-of-rose.

Not quite made to measure

2010-12-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

Wonderful trip to a Dorset tailors this week, way out over the narrow causeway of Chesil Beach to the lump of limestone that is Portland. Here are his scissors, which were a good 14 inches long.

On a photographic note, it is interesting to consider how much we will be posing our models and staging our scenes. This trip reminded me of the frustration that comes from missing a shot and the temptation to stop and direct what is in front of you (if you can) in order for you to get what you wish for. Shooting in the low light of his workshop, I didn't manage to record the wonderful hands of this Master tailor smoothing over the material of something he had made. There was a moment and then it was gone. The classic phrase of the frustrated photographer. A shame. Still, that area of the world has cast a bit of a spell over the SIB team, so another reason to return there at some point would be most welcome.

Image: They were heavier than a wardrobe

Shop class as Soulcraft

2010-11-30T02:16:00.000-08:00

UK edition preface from The Case for Working with your Hands by Matthew Crawford:
-
This book was originally published in the US with the title Shop Class as Soulcraft: An inquiry into the Value of Work. The term may require some explanation for readers outside the United States. Deriving from "workshop", it means training in things like woodworking, automobile repair and metal fabrication. "Shop class" was once a standard part of American school curriculum, but is less so today. The original title was intended to suggest that such technical training, though narrow in its application, may be understood as an element of education in the broadest sense: intellectual and moral formation.
-
Image: 1939. Anacostia High School, Washington, D.C. "Carpentry shop." 5x7 nitrate negative, National Photo Company Collection. Source

Field frame #2: Castle Forge

2010-11-18T05:24:00.000-08:00

Site: Castle Forge
Location: Sherborne, Dorset
Date: 2 November 2010
SiB Team: CD and SB
Image: Steve, a blacksmith from Sherborne, shows us his apron cuts.

Now we're started to get images together our thoughts about the exhibitions are coming to life. Not that we're getting ahead of ourselves, just that once the material is starting to gather the shape of what you can make with it becomes a question to ponder, possibilities to explore.
– SB

One of the things we're beginning to realise is that this project is about stories as much as it's about things--or it's about the ways things need stories, and stories need things. SB captured the image above while Steve the Blacksmith was telling us a story about King Solomon. It went something like this:

King Solomon brought together all of the guilds to determine who was the best craftsman in the land. The tailor was chosen, and the blacksmith left town in protest. In the blacksmith's absence the community began to unravel--the tailor couldn't sharpen his shears, the farmer's tools weren't mended. St Dunstan was sent out to find the blacksmith, and at a banquet the smith was named 'craftsman of all craftsmen'. During the meal the spiteful tailor snuck under the table and cut a fringe on the edge of the blacksmith's apron.

Steve's hands, the apron, the fringe, a story that loops around to make the world hold together.
– CD

Image © Steven Bond/University of Exeter

Mark Rattenbury

2010-11-11T01:03:00.000-08:00

Met this amazing man on the train, who was, brilliantly, called Davy Jones. Worthy of his name so he was. I'm always going to remember him because he said 'Good morning' when I sat down on the seat next to him. No-one does that, do they? We got talking, I told him about SiB, and he bought up his frind Mark Rattenbury, who he said was photographing similar subject matter in North Devon. After searching on-line I found this book - interesting. Worth trying to meet up with Mark when we're exploring his neck of the woods. A lovely town called Roadwater, on the North edge of Exmoor National Park would be a good place to start.

Made well

2010-11-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

CHOP (preview) from BEST MADE on Vimeo.

I was sent a link to this film because it reminded the sender of SIB. Nice that we are already being associated with things that are made well; be they pieces of art or pieces of machinery. (Or perhaps that distinction is unnecessary?)

This company, Best Made, makes axes amongst other things. It also has a lot of other things going on if its web presence is anything to go by. The 'Projects' site shows much that is cut from the same cloth as us. [Another phrase to explore].

On an aesthetic note, the places that we are visiting in our little corner of the UK are crying out to be photographed but they are also so conducive to moving image. The actions and sounds of the making, the mending - the crafting - all wonderful material. Watch this space.

"This exchange"

2010-11-08T01:24:00.001-08:00

The New York Times ran a profile on the work of photographer Corrine May Botz this weekend (thanks for the tip, KPSD). She comments on her habit of "collecting with photos". The author of the article writes, 'This exchange — of the image for the object — circles in and out of her work'.

Field frame #1: The Menders

2010-11-04T07:12:00.000-07:00

Site: The Menders
Location: Crewkerne, Somerset
Date: 1 November 2010
SiB team: CD and SB
Image: Ali and the Finisher

The finisher dominates one wall of the cramped workspace at the back of the shop. Ali spends most of his time back here while Simon works the front of the shop. Shoes begin in the 'day boxes'--a rough system for sorting out work by day of the week. The 'benching' process follows on, with any stitching or replacement of material. Once the major work is done the shoe goes in the 'benched up' box, before moving on for buffing and brightening on the finisher. The easy conjunction of man and machine in this image captures something of the spirit of work in this place, Ali's body held against the functional curve of the bulky device, in his element.

A Menders glossary: long soles, short soles, insoles, outsoles, "pleather", combinettes, blakeys.

Postscript: There are some photos from our trip to The Menders up on Steven Bond's website here.

Talking shop

2010-10-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

A friend just sent a link to a project that shares some of SiB's preoccupations and sympathies--artist Alice Angus has been commissioned by Mid Pennine Arts to explore the issues and history surrounding independent shopkeepers and retail in Lancaster. She talks about the project and shows some of the work she's developing out of it on her blog, As it Comes.

Photograph: Alice Angus

Bits and bobs

2010-10-25T01:44:00.001-07:00

I quite like these floating objects, and like even more where they came from.

Hardy country

2010-10-23T02:58:00.000-07:00

Both in terms of Thomas and 'robust'. Full of literary overtures and The Archers theme-tune seems to play in the air, but there really is a genuine sense of community - small independent shops and weathered people going about their day - a day that somehow seems to include physical toil, and dirt, and kicking mud from shoes on entering houses warm from open fires. Whimsical words from a short trip to the Bridport area I know but I'll be darned if it didn't have a distinct flavour that isn't so overt in the other three of our county quartet that I actually know far better. I put up some of our postcards on the public notice boards as well as the library etc. When we go let's remember to go on a Wednesday or a Saturday - market day. And not just any old market day - holy moly, it's vast.

Plus, Bridport Arts Centre had a wonderful exhibition on (which I'll put up on a separate post) and it would indeed be an excellent place to have our Dorset based exhibition. And there was a fantastic cafe by the bus station but those photos will go up on my own website - though we could easily argue that a cup of tea is the most common form of making and mending that there is!

Homo reparens

2010-10-18T02:38:00.000-07:00

"What, then, is to be gained from an exploration of the projects and habitats of H. reparens, from watching all that fixing and mending, from observing how much of the life of Homo sapiens involves judging what it is possible and desirable to repair? Such judgments disclose in an intimate way what we do and do not value about ourselves and the people and things around us. For though we do not repair everything we value, we would not repair things unless they were valuable to us, and how they matter to us shows up in the forms of repair we undertake..."

Elizabeth V. Spellman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World

The Short List

2010-10-13T02:21:00.000-07:00

The list of the businesses that have been 'green flagged' and agreed to participate in the project. Blue flags are pending investigation; red flags have been (reluctantly) removed from the list.

CORNWALL

Stick of Lostwithiel, Lostwithiel. Shoe and leather repair.
Sew Quick, Falmouth.
Biggleston, Hayle. Ironmongery, hardware, advice.

DORSET

Castle Forge, Sherbourne. Blacksmithing and metalwork repair.

SOMERSET

The Menders, Crewkerne.

We will mend him, we will tend him

2010-10-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

I think we should ask Professor Yaffle if he'd like to join us on the project team.

Skills

2010-10-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

The other day the National Trust magazine arrived with an article about a new initiative to train apprentices in traditional skills like tool-making, fine carpentry, textile conservation, and stone masonry. The handful of businesses that we've talked to so far all mentioned their own troubles finding people who want to learn their trade--be it sewing machine repair or leatherwork. They have plenty of business, but they don't have anyone to pass their knowledge on to. Made us think that maybe we should start a UK branch of the Fixer's Collective and do some matchmaking.

Project Press

2010-09-30T02:41:00.000-07:00

This went out on Wednesday--hoping for some good responses, and some additions to the Long List.

Study to focus on making and mending trades

In today’s throwaway culture of mass production goods, the practice of making and mending everyday products is a dying art.

However, a new research project led by the University of Exeter is aiming to track down and document some of the surviving businesses which are keeping alive these skills.

The team behind the study are appealing to people to let them know about workplaces which continue to carry out small-scale repair and production activities in their local communities.

Dr Caitlin DeSilvey, lead researcher for the project, said: “We want to find out about places in the South West region that still maintain the art of making and mending everyday objects — like shoes, clothes, tools, toys and small appliances. These kinds of ordinary 'hands-on' businesses are becoming increasingly uncommon. They are often taken for granted until they disappear. We’re asking people to suggest places they value – either for the services they provide or for their contribution to local history.”

Each of the workplaces featured in the study will be visited by a professional photographer who will create a series of images to document the character and history of the individual shops. A series of exhibitions and public events will showcase the pictures and engage communities with the project.

At the end of the project the images will become part of the South West Image Bank (SWIB) based in Plymouth, which is a partner in the study. The research project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Anyone who wants to nominate a place of work or business in their local community can contact Dr DeSilvey on 01326 254161 or email her at c.o.desilvey@exeter.ac.uk

Fieldwork Friday

2010-09-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

Reading List

2010-09-18T07:16:00.001-07:00

Because links make chains, here's one to connect us to some people who are talking about E.F.'s theories of beautiful smallness (I hereby begin the project reading list--Amazon marketplace has eleven used copies of the original text for sale for 1p each). I'm sure there's something in there we can use to think with. Yesterday's trip to our first two sites had us all musing about emotional economies, and moral mending.

Fabric on the rocks

2010-09-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

Noticed this today on the BBC. 893 rural pubs closed last year. Quite relevant for us in a way. It seems our project will always be intertwined with local economies, and the recession will feature heavily in the worlds that we enter. This news made me think of the importance of pubs in the make-up of a village or a town, in the social fabric that binds a community together. Perhaps we should consider - perhaps with half a tongue in our cheeks - the humble public house? It would be a stretch of language: 'mixing' drinks and 'mending' broken hearts perhaps? Silly as this would be, they do lie at the heart of the issues that we will be considering. A note to self for field trips: yes to the pasty at the local baker but perhaps yes to the lemonade at The Losthwithiel Arms.

Photograph: Chris Etchells

SIB info postcard

2010-09-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

Current design for our info postcard. We've used one of the first photographs from our inaugural trip to Spellers Cobblers in Cornwall. Click on the image to show larger.

The superstore dilemma

2010-09-08T02:17:00.000-07:00

We've come up with a possible gauge for deciding whether an object is sufficiently 'ordinary' to interest us. If you hold the broken thing in your hand and ask yourself, "Should I buy a new one for £7 (or £70) at ASDA or find someone who can fix this?"--then the object makes the cut. Clocks but not cars. Clothes but (probably) not computers. Toys but not tractors.

Paying attention

2010-08-31T00:50:00.001-07:00

Just to discuss a little further the WB posting below. The words are wonderful and I think they may carry through the whole project. But more than that, they made me think about my photography and in particular a series I'm working on called No Small Matter. So these little photographing figures don't speak of the things one finds perhaps, but rather the nature of looking, which W.B. muses over. And talking of nature, these do concentrate a little too narrowly on the natural world for our purposes, but hopefully the essence of the images fits in nicely with the aims we have to pay attention to the worn-out details and to celebrate the unnoticed.

Spinning Yarns

2010-08-30T05:30:00.000-07:00

Apart from the clear social and political timing of this project, for me there is air of fashion involved. These three might actually, on reflection, all be linked. (As perhaps they always are). This image is from the latest catalogue from Toast, a fairly high-end, quality clothing manufacture. (If you want to see it more clearly, go here). Like similar labels- Howies, Patagonia, they are playing the 'craft' element quite heavily. It is at the forefront of their campaigns. Whether they put their money where there mouth is, is another matter.

I wonder how much of our project is going to turn out to be overtly linked to sustainability, to the clash of modern living with old ideals of work and of quality? I suppose that, to a great extent, is down to us.

we calmly and adventurously go traveling

2010-08-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

'By close-ups of the things around us, by focusing on hidden details of familiar objects, by exploring common place milieus under the ingenious guidance of the camera, the film, on the one hand, extends our comprehension of the necessities which rule our lives; on the other hand, it manages to assure us of an immense and unexpected field of action. Our taverns and our metropolitan streets, our offices and furnished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have us locked up hopelessly. Then came the film and burst this prison-world asunder by the dynamite of the tenth of a second, so that now, in the midst of its far-flung ruins and debris, we calmly and adventurously go traveling. With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlargement of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject'.

– W.B. 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction'

2010-08-11T03:56:00.000-07:00

A short video about Brooklyn's Fixer's Collective--and an invite to a party, if you happen to be in the neighbourhood:

To begin at the beginning...

2010-07-30T03:11:00.000-07:00

On July 16 the Arts and Humanities Research Council awarded Small is Beautiful? a grant to support a two year research project. We're still reeling a bit with the news--here's a slice of Dylan Thomas to bring us down to earth and get us thinking about the work to come, in small (and not so small) towns with mourning (or joyful) shops:

"To begin at the beginning:

It is Spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now."

Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

And then a slim envelope from a friend arrived in the post with news of Tom Pow's Dying Villages project. Curious.

Thompson Brothers BBC news footage

2010-05-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

Go here to see my dad, the Manager of Thompson Brothers Ironmongers, doing his best to stay positive. I think he did well!

Slow coast

2010-04-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

Always a name I saw around when I lived in Bristol but I never actually met him. Nick seems to have been spending his time very wisely though. He's made some wonderful slide-shows/interviews with many local artisans, not a million miles away from our desired subject matter. They're along the lines of the 1 in 7 million from the NY Times that CD put up. Go here to check them out.

2010-04-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

Fixers' Collective. And in the same building as the great magazine Cabinet. Brooklyn, NY eh? Must be such a fine place to live.

Keep going

2010-02-05T01:16:00.000-08:00

Birmingham timelapse from 7inch cinema on Vimeo.

As we're waiting to know our future, I'm going to try and keep putting things up here, almost to will us forward. Thanks to Jestonbury for igniting this sentiment by sending us this link. Perseverance eh? Especially seeing this project is about it in some way - though sadly, I suppose it is more concerned with those times when perseverance is no longer enough.

Wise words for the New Year

2010-01-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

I've got two life philosophies, both of which I've borrowed. One comes from Harry Flashman: "No time is wasted talking to someone who's good at their job." I really believe that.

Was reading an interview with Richard Bacon and he said the above quote. Great sentiment that reminded me of SIB.

Es gibt sie noch, die guten Dinge

2009-12-16T08:14:00.000-08:00

You know this store in Germany? Manufactum. They've got a great strap line: The Good things in life still exist. It's what Thompsons could have been if it fancied it.

The Conversation of Life

2009-12-09T02:49:00.001-08:00

Heard this on the world Service and thought of us. We should do some radio off the back of this project..

Phrases of Caitlin: Invitation, rather than evidence

2009-11-25T04:29:00.000-08:00

Because Caitlin has such a way with words, I think it best to keep a record of some of the key phrases, sentences and paragraphs that she comes up with. That way people who visit here can get a flavor of her prose and at the same time the purpose of this project. Let's start with the sentence that inspired Phrases of Caitlin:

"The images will incorporate a reflexive awareness of context and intention (Pink, 2006, 33), treating the photography as invitation, rather than evidence."

Meltdown

2009-11-24T06:16:00.001-08:00

Another one for the file--Ian Beesley, social documentarian of industrial demise.

Are you being served?

2009-11-24T03:42:00.000-08:00

"Most important, the photographs are not merely about the surface appearance of shops. The photographs bring out the ways in which the different visual character of the shops - shining cars, puddles of oil, neat rows of bottles, clean glass counters, formica tables and the seductive darkness of the tattoo parlours - make up the visual texture of an area and of a community." Elizabeth Edwards, from her essay on Tom Hunter's project in east London--some definite resonance with our ideas, and Liz will be joining us on the advisory panel.

The Long List

2009-11-09T07:41:00.000-08:00

This is the list of businesses we'd like to check out. If you have a suggestion – or if you're one of the businesses and would like to make contact – please post a comment.

SOMERSET

Thompson Bros. Ltd. Bridgwater. Ironmongers (sadly, no longer in business)
The Menders, Crewkerne. (source: 2 independent calls in response to local press)
Alan Davies, Crewkerne. Television and radio repair (source: Phillipa Kendall)
The Abrams Bindery, Wellington. (source: Rosalind Gregory)
Crystal Lines, Wellington. Stained glass repair (source: Rosalind Gregory)
R.J. Phillips, Taunton. Clock repair (source: Rosalind Gregory)
The Upholstry Centre, Taunton. (source: Rosalind Gregory)
Washing Machine Service Centre, Taunton. (source: Rosalind Gregory)
Clarkes Electrical Services, Taunton. (source: Rosalind Gregory)
B.L. Bontoft, Bridgwater. Domestic appliances servicing and repair.
Kai Thomas Roth Cellos, Shepton Mallet. (source: Angus Cameron)

DORSET

Castle Forge, Sherborne. Metalwork and repairs (source: Kathy DeSilvey)
R. Paveley, Tailor, Portland. (source: Jo Morland)
Brian Hoppe Cycle Shop, Sherborne.
Gandolfi Cameras, Shaftesbury. (source: Alex Tymkow)
D. Palmer Postcards/Cameras, Bridport.

DEVON

The Tool Box, Colyton.
Haynes of Colyton, Colyton. Ironmongers
Make and Mend, Plymouth. Sewing and knitting repairs (source: Colin Searls)
All in Good Time, Plymouth. Clock repair (source: Colin Searls)
Cabinet Supplies, Plymouth. DIY
N.H. & S.E. Sparks Shoe Repairs, Honiton. (source: Angela Doble and Doreen Young)
Honiton Clock Clinic, Honiton.
Harris and Son Hardware, Totnes. Ironmongers and tool repair (source: Adrian Welch; John Brodribb)
A.R. Church, Ashburton. Hardware (source: John Brodribb)
Alexandra's Alterations, Exeter.
Sew Bazaar, Exeter.
C & D Appliances, Exeter. (source: Adrian Welch, David Harvey)
Cobblers of Heavitree, Exeter. (source: Adrian Welch)
Mobile I.T., Exeter. (source: Adrian Welch)
Kirk Radio, Exeter. (source: David Harvey)
Parkhouse Shoe Repair, Exeter. (source: David Harvey)
David Cooper Watchmaker, Ltd., Exeter. (source: David Harvey)
More Phones, Exeter.
Ivor Doble Jewellers, Exeter.
Peter Marsh, Tailor. Sidmouth.
Morris Foundry, Dunsford. Hand-tool manufacture. (source: Anne-Marie Cuhlhane)
The Jewelers, Plymouth. (source: Simon Gomery)
K Lorenc Watchmaker, Crownhill, Plymouth. (source: Simon Gomery)
Plymouth Clock Centre, Bretonside, Plymouth. (source: Simon Gomery)

CORNWALL

Speller's Cobblers, Carharrack. (No longer in business)
Stick of Lostwithiel, Lostwithiel. Shoe and leather repair
Star Shoe Repair, Redruth.
Froyco Services, Redruth. Electrical repair. (source: Nicola Thomas)
Just In Fabrics, Cambourne. (source: Nicola Thomas)
Simon Waplington Watch and Clock Repairs, Penryn.
Simpson's Radio and Television Repair, Penzance.
Sew Quick, Falmouth. Sewing machine repair.
Blissland Harness Makers, Bolventor.
The Ringinglow Rocking Horse Company, Crafthole.
Penzance Computers Workshop Centre, Penzance.
Biggleston, Hayle. Ironmongery, hardware.
Make Do and Mend, St Day. (self-nominated)
Force 10 Power Tools, Penryn. (self-nominated)
Wearnes Jewellers, Camborne.
Taylor's Tyres, Redruth.
Lyrebird, Constantine. Textile repair and alterations.
DAR, Falmouth. Electrical spares and repairs. (source: Barry Butland)
Silverwinds, Hayle. Musical instrument repair. (source: Lucy Frears)
Cornwall Teddy Bear Hospital, St Just. (source: Wendy Campbell)
The Shoe box, Bodmin (source: Charles Hall)

Ways to make an exhibition of ourselves

2009-11-05T05:34:00.000-08:00

Of course, no offense to James Ravilious and the like, but I think our work should look very different to that. What I don't want is my photos in a frame, locked away, gathering dust, a moment in time that no longer works, no longer is alive. Of course all photography is this but I'd like to steer awy from this is possible.

How exciting to have something as 'simple' as putting a new sole on a shoe, but photographed / filmed / discussed / heard in a very technologically complex and varied way? And shown, repeated, recorded and disseminated in a highly sophisticated and sympathetic (and somehow not nostalgic) fashion?

(Worth noting is Martin Parr's new exhibition at the Baltic in Gateshead, where he has one floor of his photographs but then another floor of the bits and pieces that surround them. The epehemra that is attached to the time and the place that he took the photos. ('A range of objects from his personal collection' as it says on the Baltic site.)

The aim to 'Engage academic and non-academic audiences in conversation about everyday aesthetics, cultural value, and social change' is relevant here too. I love the thought our work will in some way filter in to how people shop, how much they value and understand their local businesses. In fact, that is the reason we started this isn't it Caitlin? So for me, it's crucial I feel that my photos do this, or are allowed to do this, are directed towards doing this. I'm not sure I've understood that myself until now, and how important it is for me.

Image: Luc Delahaye exhibiton. A wonderful example of how effective life-size images can be.

Form and content: Exhibitions

2009-11-05T02:22:00.001-08:00

I think its important to have a 'show' that will incorporate a selection of material and a in varying formats and mediums. I don't know why (though I think I could work it out), but it seems this should be a more than photos on a wall and words on a page. The two have got to swap places, or rather have no defined places, and they must be together yet exist successfully alone.

The Photographs, such as they are: some deserve big. Very big. And some, especially series, can be a lot smaller. Perhaps really small. One thing that seems certain is that they be of a high quality; a main element of this project is the emphasis on craft, on something done properly. Clearly how we present our work has to reflect and honour this. Somehow it feels that the photos should be on aluminum. Or a similar tough, yet beautiful surface, no frame to distract (?), no glass to obscure from the subject matter. As little sense of being preserved in aspic as possible.

It's a living

2009-10-30T08:35:00.000-07:00

Georgiana DePalma Tedone: The Mozzarella Maker
One in an amazing series of profiles running in The New York Times. B&W images with a simple audio track of individual, idiosyncratic, ineluctable voices.

A means of discovery

2009-10-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

'I use photography as a means of discovery, as a tool with which to clarify visions and construct knowledge about a particular city or place. Pictures are the starting point in framing a question, adding a link with other images, or claiming a territory'. Camilo Vergara

More on his Invincible Cities site, and some books on my shelf.

Fiskars Village

2009-10-28T13:14:00.001-07:00

There is a residency here, Fiskars Village. Take a look. Very nice indeed. A quality project from makers of quality tools. We used to sell Fiskars stuff in Thompsons. So it seems when the original ironworks where all the tools were made died away, it was derelict for a while. And then...

"The beautiful surroundings and vacant premises lured a number of craftsmen, designers and artists to the village. By 1993, more than 20 professionals in the fields of crafts, design and arts had moved there, and gradually the idea of a group exhibition grew within the community."

Now this would make a good trip for us in the Bongo! Seriously though, it's somehow a great example of what we are celebrating, isn't it. And also a wonderfully positive example of how these things can be reignited, or given another type of life, another reason, another feasible incarnation.

Me in Thompsons Brothers (coat is at least 60 years old)

2009-10-15T12:32:00.001-07:00

2009-10-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

James Ravilious, suggested by our James as a photographer whose work resonantes with some our our hopes for this project.

Redruth adventure

2009-10-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

John Londei in AOP magazine Sep 07

2009-09-23T04:09:00.000-07:00

Certainly the hue of the images add something to the subject matter, but there would also be something nice about making images in a really high-tech, modern way. Not quite sure what that means, but it's just the notion of making all this seem contemporary and 'enough' to be brought up to date, rather than the audience (and the material itself) having to don khaki overalls to enter this world. The essence being that quality and integrity should not be confined to yesterday? Perhaps.

Thompson Brothers Ironmongers 1797-2007

2009-09-23T03:06:00.001-07:00

Preliminary investigations

2009-09-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

Would anyone be up for a day out in Redruth soonish? We could stop by this place, Star Shoe Repair. Also thinking it would be a good way to calibrate our various aesthetics, to see if we really do know what we're after when we see it, or if we're all after slightly different its.

Critical nostalgia?

2009-09-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Today I'm wondering about how we explain what we're doing. Did some fishing around this afternoon, and was reminded of a concept that might do some useful work for us: critical nostalgia. First mention I can find of it is Jim Clifford talking about Raymond Williams, arguing that a focus on the pastoral (or, in our case, the (almost) insolvent, the obsolete) can actually work to 'break with the hegemonic, corrupt present by asserting the reality of a radical alternative'. The objects remember the future that could have been (and still could be).

It might give us a way to confront our misgivings about being too twee and precious head on, and actually fold this element into the project with a critical edge. Anyhow, some interesting work around this concept recently in a whole bunch of different contexts: German film; Northern Ireland's material culture, feminist fiction. Also a new project on 'Nostalgia in the 21st Century' at Strathclyde.

What is West Country?

2009-09-21T03:33:00.000-07:00

I was wondering about the boundaries of this project. And it is interesting how these terms get banded around and no-one really knows what they mean, where exactly they are, or even if they have capital letters. I used to work for a magazine that had 'south west' in its title, and there was always discussions over how to write it. So here's a few things to help us in pinning down the term we want to use.

Jumping the gun

2009-09-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

A little eager; I had an idea about the cover of a book. Imagine the 'band' with the writing to be a brass plaque, weathered with use and age, and stamped crudely and lovingly.. don't worry though, it'll change a hundred times yet.

2009-09-11T05:25:00.001-07:00

A bit of 'Betweentimes', by Sean O'Brien

'If the mind could forget what it thinks
About failure and history and money, and watch
How aesthetics takes leave of its senses,
In love with the facts of the matter,
The blue light and derelict happiness.'

Photo: Caitlin DeSilvey

Cushing Saw

2009-09-06T06:13:00.001-07:00

Andrew's Christina's World hung in the dining room throughout my childhood, and my parents live a few miles from the Wyeth's home place. Strange synergies, you tapping straight into that old vein, no doubt one of the sources of my aesthetic preference for the faded and peeling, bleached light and lost objects. This one is from Andrew's son, Jamie. Very apt for our project, no? I was looking for one of my favourites, some back-lit lettuces growing in copper tubs below a lighthouse. Later.

Andrew Wyeth to start us off

2009-08-26T02:09:00.001-07:00

Hello Caitlin and welcome to the blog I've set up for the project. For me, blogs are an excellent way of showing each other things but at the same time building up a collection that we can see grow and that is easy to refer back to etc. These Andrew Wyeth images are just part of something else I was doing but I though I'd put them up as somehow they seemed to tie in nicely on many levels.