07-02-2013, 02:12 PM
(07-02-2013, 10:21 AM)Retired Wrote: The second video covers all aspects of hand made furniture in the traditional style.
I don't know if you or others are aware Colin, but the second clip is from a wonderful documentary series called ‘Hands’ - a unique, multi-award winning series of thirty-seven documentaries on Irish crafts made for Irish television (RTÉ), produced by David and Sally Shaw-Smith. The films captured the final years of traditional rural and urban life in Ireland during the seventies and eighties. They travelled the length and breadth of the country recording these personal and revealing films. As much about the life of the individuals, as the crafts they practised.
Imbued by a sense of urgency to record crafts in their natural surroundings before they disappeared completely, David and his wife Sally, under contract to RTÉ, travelled the length and breadth of Ireland and it’s islands to assemble this important collection of 37 films on traditional Irish crafts and lifestyles, where the emphasis is on the skills of human hands rather than on machines.
The films not only recorded the various craft processes in great detail, but also created a unique archive of life in Ireland at the end of the 20th century.
Many of those featured in the film will by now have passed on, and their craft skills will have died with them. Some, (perhaps all), of the films were featured many years ago on Channel 4 and I watched the series, enthralled by the extraordinary skills of rural people. I think the C4 series was entitled ‘Irish Hands’. You can buy the 'Hands' films (DVDs actually) individually or as a boxed set, but they’re quite expensive. The boxed set which runs for more than 20 hours is normally 156 Euro, but presently on offer for 111 Euro. (With the recent collapse of the pound against the Euro, you can consider a pound to equate to a Euro).
You can watch a trailer of each film at the website, and they’re well worth viewing:
http://www.irelandstraditionalcrafts.com/about.html
The series covered crafts as varied as harps and candles, to basket weaving, dry-stone walling and Irish lace. There were nine films under the heading of ‘woodcrafts’. I especially like the ‘Donegal Weavers’ (No. 5), made in 1980, which followed the traditional way of life of the three McNelis brothers from Ardara, Co. Donegal. Connal and Jimmy are (or most likely ‘were’), weavers - outworkers for the well-known woollen mill and shop ‘Magee’s’ of Donegal Town. John, the third brother, made wholemeal bread, baked in a pot-oven over the open fire. He also milked the cows, churned the butter, and cultivated shamrock, Ireland's national symbol. There they were, busy at the loom in a ramshackle lean-to shed, taking the bolts of cloth to Magee’s on the back of a tractor, for the cloth to later end up in the top fashion houses of London, Paris and New York. One extreme to the other!
What I liked most about the films is that while they're instructive about the crafts, they were also a window on ways of life with which most of us townie Brits will be utterly unfamilar.
Regards, David.
BVWS Member.
G-QRP Club Member 1339.
'I'm in my own little world, but I'm happy, and they know me here'
BVWS Member.
G-QRP Club Member 1339.
'I'm in my own little world, but I'm happy, and they know me here'