Why scores of Victorians are taking to ancient and rare trades
What do a blacksmith, leatherworker, clockmaker and coachbuilder have in common? They’re helping to ignite new interest in old craftsmanship. Read how.
Ballarat
Don't miss out on the headlines from Ballarat. Followed categories will be added to My News.
A great deal of knowledge and talent has surely been buried under centuries of technological progression, and with it, part of our connection to history.
But across Victoria, skilled tradesmen are rekindling a passion for the niche know-how of bygone eras.
Blacksmithing, coach-building, clock-making: long is the list of expertise once ubiquitous but now scarcely sought after.
But perhaps not for long, because the desire for a tangible taste of the past is on the rise.
Some come for the history, learning through making and doing. For others, the impermanence of the modern world drives them to pursuits more concrete.
Tim Bignell stumbled upon the hammer and anvil through his work at Sovereign Hill in Ballarat, where he now performs regular blacksmithing shows for his visitors.
“I think there’s a craving in the disposable world we live in,” he said.
“We grew up with TVs and now the internet: I think people are just craving a hands-on tactile experience.
“Generally speaking, all these sort of trades have become very popular again.
“Some of it’s purely for interest’s sake, but good quality tools still need to be handmade: they can’t be mass produced.”
Glen Waverley clock-repairer Fergus Forsyth admires the artistry of handcrafted time pieces still ticking long after their makers.
The bicycle-maker turned horologist said people fashioning things with their hands was “almost a lost art” and that machined clock parts “stand out like a sore thumb”.
“Early clockmakers would be designing and inventing contraptions to tell time and they would be trying to get more and more accuracy in those time pieces,” he said.
“The methods and the skills that were involved are all something that I find fascinating.
“Some of the ornate engraved work is what I find a lot of enjoyment working on and basically resurrecting something that’s maybe 300-odd years old that can be still used.
“It is an art that is dwindling like so many of the original trades, but it is making a little bit of a resurgence.”
McKinnon-based calligrapher Lachean Duncan said that since its rediscovery in the 20th century, calligraphy had become “more common that it ever was”.
Nevertheless, she said there “wouldn’t be too many people around now that have managed to have a whole career based on calligraphy and lettering”.
“Just because you can print something and type it up, doesn’t mean you can design and produce something that is a piece of artwork and that has character to it,” Ms Duncan said.
“It’s an appreciation for beautiful forms and art and creativity.
“And it doesn’t compare to type because it has a soul and a life of its own.
“As with anything that is handmade, it carries the heart and soul of the person that has created it.”
The resuscitation of such skills can also be a more personal matter, because with them, items of great familial value are kept in proper shape for future generations.
South Gippsland rocking horse restorer Olivia O’Connor books out a whole year in advance and provides quotes for her full-time trade only once every 12 months.
She is visited by people from across the country, frequently by grandparents wanting to bequeath a rocking horse in good condition to their grandchildren.
“Particularly with restoration skills, I think it’s very important to literally preserve people’s family history,” Ms O’Connor said.
“That’s quite an important thing and I feel honoured that people entrust me with that because a lot of the rocking horses I’ve restored are well over 100 years old and they’ve been in that one family the whole time.”
Sometimes the trade itself, rather than its product, retains a family memory.
Central Victorian straw plaiter and corn dolly maker Elizabeth Woodroofe makes decorations out of Australian wheat straw meant to symbolise luck, fertility, and a good harvest.
She knows of no other dolly maker in the country and said some women had been brought to tears at her market stalls from their memories growing up in Europe, where the craft is more common.
“I’ve been able to do it since I was a child because I helped my mother who used to do the craft in the UK,” Ms Woodroofe said.
“It really wasn’t important to me at different stages of my life, but at others it was quite important.
“I suppose first of all I do like the connection: it’s something I learnt from my mother so I like the feeling of continuity and the link to her.”
At her workshops she has noticed people “really love being able to create something themselves”.
“They start off with something you just see growing in a field and you actually produce something that you can show people,” she said.
“It’s quite pleasing to see.”
Even knowledge of something as still as a stone wall has a living history in need of repair.
When Kyneton’s Jim Kilsby realised his farm’s drywall required maintenance, few people had the skills he was after.
Taking matters in his own hands, he went on to develop his own training centre for the trade.
“There’s literally kilometres and kilometres of our history still sitting out there that needs repair and there are a few people that say they can do it, but there’s very few certified people to do it,” Mr Kilsby said.
“A dry stone wall should be lasting at least 100 to 200 years if it’s built properly.
“We believe that once taught properly, people can actually – they won’t be able to do it very quickly – but people can actually build it themselves. That’s why we teach.”
Armourer Sam Bloomfield was an arts student in the early 2000s, learning some of his craft from an armourer for the Lord of the Rings films.
Now living in Glenlyon, he’s taken the trade’s foundational skills and added his own flair to his work.
“You can learn a skill that is hard to come by, but then once you’ve learnt it you can either continue making whatever it is that skill is for or you can use it to then go and make your own creations,” Mr Bloomfield said.
“You could keep replicating original armours or you could take them into other more arty fields.
“You could make large sculptural pieces out of copper or brass or silver or, hell, gold if you wanted.”
The imperfections in handmade things, he said, made them more valuable, not less.
“I really like a handmade object, something that someone’s actually made,” Mr Bloomfield said.
“It might not be entirely perfect perhaps – some things are pretty damn perfect actually – but it’s like heirlooms.
“You think, ‘Maybe this’ll be something that somebody will really love.’
“I like that concept of it living far beyond the maker and being loved.”
Central Victorian leather worker Laszlo Rideg was working in the mining industry near Alice Springs when he stopped at a roadhouse one day and spotted someone with a “gorgeous” satchel bag.
He determined to make one himself, got into tooling leather, and was introduced to medieval fairs.
It was the change he needed from the grind of daily life, and, he said, reached its full expression in his participation at the annual Lost Trades Fair, this year held in Bendigo.
“Sure beats beating around the desert or driving trucks locally,” Mr Rideg said.
“The only thing that really gives me a buzz is to create things, so that’s what I do.
“I think in this modern age, as good as it is with medical technology and all the rest of it … we’re so far removed from our hunter-gatherer beginnings that we’ve lost track of it.
“When people get back to homemade stuff there’s a connection; it triggers something in the back of people’s minds.
“In a time when everything’s so automated, that someone could still make a living off something that’s an old trade that’s particularly minor – what’s not to like about that?”
Seaford pilot dies in aerodrome plane crash
“He was up doing something that he loved”: A pilot who died after his plane crashed west of Melbourne has been identified as a 20-year-old Seaford man.
Delisted Essendon speedster finds new footy home
Former Essendon utility Nick Hind has signed for a new footy club and will play as soon as this weekend. Here’s what we know.