Tag Archives: BBC

The ‘Countryfile’ Experience

PL and tom HeapIt was quite a shock to answer the phone when travelling by train up to London and have a researcher from Countryfile on the other end of the phone. They were doing a feature on endangered crafts, linking to the Heritage Crafts Association/Radcliffe Red List of Endangered Crafts (see here) and were looking for someone from the Heritage Crafts Association to interview. I made some suggestions and also explained the challenges that heritage crafts face. I was rather surprised then when Maria, the researcher, said that she would like me to be the one they interviewed.

PL CountryfileApparently they have only two days for filming for each programme, and needed to be in Devon the next day, so, although I have been filmed in my workroom more than once, they decided that they should film in the workshop of Heritage Crafts Association member Sarah Goss, a wood carver, from Midhurst, Sussex. Taking my sloping board with me, a few props and a black cloth (always wise!) we arrived to find that my requirement for ‘a table and a chair’ was actually a rather rickety table, but we managed to stabilise it. The crew were, as they so often are, fantastic, and Polly the Director was very kind. Tom Heap, the interviewer, was an absolute gentleman, and so professional. I fluffed lots of times, but he didn’t once.

Extinct. CountryfileI hadn’t been told what questions they would ask, but had thought about possible answers. The first one was what crafts were extinct, and I told them the four which included gold beating, a craft close to my own heart because of the gold leaf I use in my own work and in the Illumination courses I run. I can’t now use English gold leaf because the market was flooded by cheap imports – and that’s at least 2,000 years of craft skills in the UK gone in the last few years.

PL explaining CountryfileI really did feel the weight of heritage crafts on my shoulders, and although everyone was very kind, the challenges of craft continuing into the future are more complicated than the short sound bites they really wanted. The fact that we are one of only 22 countries out of 194 in the world not signed up to the UNESCO Convention of Intangible Cultural Heritage was cut out, although I was allowed to mention the Convention itself. (Tangible Cultural Heritage are the things you can see like the buildings and objects; both are reasonably well looked after. Our Intangible Cultural Heritage are the things you can’t see which includes craft skills, and they are supported hardly at all, apart from what the Heritage Crafts Association tries to do.)

Currently viable. CountryfileThe other point that I wasn’t able to go into in detail is that there is little government funding available for apprenticeships because the funding follows qualifications and not training. Qualifications Agencies in the UK will not offer qualifications for niche subjects. In fact their minimum number of entries is 100 per year – in a number of heritage crafts that wouldn’t be the number even in 100 years – so no qualifications! Then for the 80% self-employed, 100% of the costs of training someone are born by the trainer, and, as I explained in the interview, if, over the course of a week the trainer spends a day a week passing on the skills (and it’s usually much more) they can’t make and their production goes down by 20% and that’s their profit margin; so they can’t even afford to pay themselves, let alone someone else!

Screen Shot 2017-09-11 at 12.39.46And although I made the point, I couldn’t go into detail and it was somewhat overshadowed by the woman running a map company who came on after me. If a unique heritage building, the only one of its kind in the country was going to be knocked down to make way for a roundabout, or a wonderful meadow with the sole remaining species of a very rare flower was about to be tarmaced over for a car park, people would be up in arms and these could even reach the national news. Yet we are losing craft skills and they get barely a mention anywhere. The question also that we’re always being asked is ‘is this craft viable?’. But no-one asks if that unique building or that beautiful meadow is viable, and they, like heritage crafts, are all part of our rich cultural heritage.

Some thought that the interview and approach of the programme gave the impression that the Heritage Crafts Association were backward thinking and only interested in the past. This couldn’t be further from the truth! What we’re interested in is ensuring that craft skills get passed on into the future. I did say: Traditional crafts are part of our heritage, they exist in the present, and they should be in our future – but it didn’t make the cut.

PL To be continued. CountryfileThey wanted to use my calligraphy so I prepared all the words and phrases they asked for, and also had lots of spare paper to write them out if they wanted to film me doing that, which they did. The item ended with ‘To be continued…’ so we hope that Counytryfile pick up the topic again in the future.

 

Screen Shot 2017-09-11 at 12.33.31If you want to support heritage crafts then please do join the Heritage Crafts Association (here). Unlike contemporary crafts we receive no government funding so our members and those who donate are particularly valuable to us because without them we could not do what we do, and we need to do so much more.

A new Book of Hours (well 6 pages!)

Page from Book of HoursOver the years I have produced a number of props for television programmes and films, and have also been filmed writing as historical figures with a quill or pointy pen, or demonstrating what I do – illumination with gold and egg tempera, and writing on vellum with quills – as well as being filmed as myself – a scribe and illuminator. Being commissioned to produce six pages for a mock-up Book of Hours for the BBC series of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall was a really interesting job to get.

The skin from William Cowley was a dream – both hair and flesh side – and I chose sections that had a clear scattering of brown hair follicles so that there would be no confusion that it was paper ‘pretending’ to be vellum.

Screen Shot 2015-01-02 at 13.47.25This is a short film clip of the various stages of the book and how it looked once it had been pasted into the book itself.

testing writing

 

 

I tested the skin to see how much preparation it required (for all the information you need about using and preparing vellum and parchment, see my video, 3+ hours long on everything to do with manuscript crafts and modern materials), and then experimented with pen nib sizes and letter height so that I could replicate the writing. Once these were determined I was able to rule guidelines and see if my test preparations worked for writing.

The pages are based on the Hours of Joanna of Castille, but the designer has added gold and coloured side panels, and imported mediæval animals and motifs to add interest to the pages. The Hours are quite small – page size is 105 x160 mm (4 x 6 ins approx) – which means that the lettering is tiny – about 2 mm high.

There were two main ways of producing these six pages. One is to start from scratch with the text, and design and lay out the pages, inserting larger initials, designing the motifs and so on. This is rarely a real choice because it adds often more than twice as much to the time, which I certainly didn’t have. The other is to copy an already existing manuscript, which is indeed what I did.

Design transferredI traced the whole page, including the text, to get a sense of the rhythm and form of the script, but decided not to transfer the tracing of the lettering, as this results in rather static rhythm. It did need a lot of concentration to ensure that line endings were reasonably consistent. They looked very even in the original. However, when I was working on the pages I realised that line endings weren’t that consistent in the Joanna Hours. The tracing outline is secured here (right) by red paint – minium in mediæval manuscripts – I use traditional techniques as much as possible.

Book of Hours textI drew lines for the text and wrote out the first page which was actually the second one. It is always better to start not at the beginning if you can, as your writing is often tighter and more cramped when you first set out, and this shows if it’s right at the start. I was fortunate in that I had a transcription of the text; some of it was difficult to decipher, for example, domum or domiun (my Latin wasn’t good enough to translate as I went along). The letter i was rarely dotted, and, with wear, the tiny joining strokes at the top of an n and at the base for a u meant that these letters were difficult to distinguish. This transcription made a huge difference. The red rubrics were written as I went along, but I left spaces for the larger painted initials, and completed them after the writing.

Then it was on to the painting.

tiny monketI very much enjoyed painting the little animals, though these were less than 2 cm high.

There was a monkey (right), a rabbit (below), squirrel and two peacocks (one of them is below the rabbit on the right).

 

 

rabbit

 

 

 

 

peacock
squirrel

 

 

 

 

 

The squirrel eating a hazel nut was fun to paint.

snail

 

 

 

 

And every mediæval manuscript needs a snail!

Book of HoursThere were also strawberries, thistles, roses, and blue and pink flowers of slightly indeterminate nature.

 

Book of Hours gold baseThen it was on to the gold. There wasn’t enough time to use the traditional mordant of gesso, so I used a modern medium, raised it slightly, and then applied real 23·5 carat gold leaf. Gold leaf on anything other than gesso is never as wonderfully shiny and smooth as in traditional manuscripts, but it will certainly look really illuminated as the pages are turned in the series.

Book of Hours pagesIt did look reasonably shiny, though, but as the book was going to be ‘aged’ and rubbed to looks as if it had been in the family for some generations, I didn’t worry too much about taking care with the gilding.

 

These six pages were sewn into one gathering, and this was then tipped into an already bound book which was aged to look as if it had passed through a few generations.