James Fox's new book, Craftland, is a love letter to Britain's dwindling world of traditional manual labour. From bodgers (chair leg makers) to snobs (journeyman boot and shoe makers), Fox documents 72 critically endangered crafts among the 285 still practised in the UK, according to the main charity supporting traditional skills.
Fox meets the Noble family, pre-eminent dry-stone wallers from West Yorkshire. Their walls, built with an instinctive knowledge of gravity and friction, can last 200 years—far longer than a post-and-wire fence. Yet the trade is uneconomical: even with subsidies, wallers earn less than £85 per metre, working in conditions that allow only a few metres a day. However, demand from private gardens and tourist attractions remains lucrative, with the Nobles recently flying to Japan to build a Cotswold stone wall.
Many craftspeople reject the label 'craft'. A Devonshire wheelwright insists, 'I'm not a craftsman, this isn't a hobby... This here is a trade.' Felicity Irons, a rush merchant on the Great Ouse, barks at Fox for asking if her work is relaxing: 'Of course it isn't. It's bloody hard work.' Even a ceramic noodle bowl maker in Hackney Wick calls herself a 'multidisciplinary artist and researcher'.
Fox becomes lyrical describing Roger W Smith, a master horologist on the Isle of Man who produces only 20 watches a year, each costing over £300,000. These intricate assemblages convert 'the invisible forces of the universe into an insistent tick'. Despite the hard-headedness of his subjects, Craftland shimmers with love for meticulous, patient labour.
While well-researched and deftly written, the book feels part of a genre—impressionistic place-writing about lost heritages—that may be reaching its expiry date. The woodcut illustrations, though lovely, border on overfamiliar. Craftland itself seems to be slipping into obsolescence, even as it celebrates trades that are vanishing.
