“In a rousing presentation at the 2024 Design Leadership Summit in Edinburgh, Soane Britain’s founder Lulu Lytle, OBE, makes an existential case for the fusion of craftsmanship and innovation. It’s a message the whole design industry should hear.” – Design Leadership Network.
Transcript
“What is it that I especially like – find magical – about the handmade, the craftsman-made? I still find this question almost impossible despite being asked quite often. It’s in large part the quality, but of course, quality is only guaranteed from good craftsmen!
Is it the individuality – the inherent characteristics of the wood, the marble, the leather from which the object is made; the flaws maybe, which aren’t really flaws, such as the hairline cracks in a beautiful pot? What was it Leonard Cohen said about cracks? They’re how the light gets in. Is it the friendliness – the visible difference between, say, machine stitching and hand stitching? Is it the object’s invisible roots, the sense of a past, an intangible but almost human warmth – the awareness that every craftsman-made object carries within it the story of the craftsman or workshop who made it, and the craftsmen and workshops who made them, and those who made them, and so on, and on, and on, back into the mist of time? Is it the knowledge that we’re somehow feeding that tradition, watering those roots? Or perhaps it is the tangible comfort that with quality comes longevity, really well made pieces that will endure, age beautifully, and be cherished for generations to come?
I believe it’s all of these things, however imperfectly I may have described them. There’s also a rather complex ethical dimension, at least for some of us: the fact that when something is genuinely, and wholly, craftsman-made, by a known and trusted craftsman or precision engineer – because let’s not forget the craftsmen-engineers… – or in a known and trusted workshop, we know that they’re properly paid, treated and recognised for their skills and their work. They’re not Uighurs, held against their will, to take an extreme example. So let’s summarise.
What is it that I especially like about the true craftsman-made? It’s the enduring quality; it’s the individuality; it’s the hidden human stories; and it’s because I like fair play, and don’t like exploitation, a subject I will return to at the end. Yes, this little talk has a sting in its tail.
How did Soane begin? It began, not that I knew it at the time, which was 27 years ago, in 1997, with a summer-long road trip around the UK, researching craft skills, and with the small cadre of exceptional craftsmen that I met, and whose skill and knowledge have underpinned every design Soane has made since, and without whose guidance, there simply would have been no business.
I still don’t quite know how we managed it. I was hugely naive, I was 25! And frankly, naive about nearly everything, especially about the extent to which people would share my enthusiasm for local craftsmanship, but a few significant commissions from architects and decorators, mostly in the US, got us out of the starting blocks.
Today, we still work with nearly all of those craftsmen, on this map, or with those that have taken on their workshops when they retired. Every year, we also forge new partnerships with new makers, many with fascinating stories about how they came to do what they do, and the remarkable projects they have worked on. In the last year alone we have started working with 3 new workshops in Scotland.
Every object tells a story, they say, but the stories told by objects that are craftsman-made tend to be better, closer to the object itself, more human.
One such business, found in our 5th year of trading, was the last rattan workshop in Britain, Angraves, in the village of Thurmaston. This was a workshop with an illustrious heritage, having taken on the designs and some craftspeople of a neighbouring workshop, Dryad.
In the early 20th century, it supplied all the great English houses – and their verandas – with rattan furniture, as well as the First-Class areas of the Titanic. It also took commissions for the last Tsar of Russia and for Lutyens at the British Embassy in Washington.
In 2010, we received news that it was going into receivership, the British equivalent of Chapter 11. Its closure would have spelled the death of an English village’s 150-year-old craft legacy; but what to do? We had no experience whatsoever of running a manufacturing business and the idea of doing so felt daunting in the extreme. Yet Soane was its only customer for its handmade work, and here was an opportunity not simply to protect the country’s rattan heritage but also, by creating opportunities for the younger generation to learn this traditional skill, to ensure its longevity. In the end, we felt we had no real choice but to intervene and how happy I am that we did. We now employ nearly 40 craftspeople, a number of whom joined us as apprentices.
A word about mass production… Some people seem to think that I’m straightforwardly hostile to mass production. I’m not. I’m no Luddite.
Industrialisation – the application of power to the manufacturing process, in factories, rather than small workshops – has brought benefits of every kind.
At the same time, I’m conscious that mechanisation and production lines, for all their advantages, which include consistent quality, have stripped most of the things we buy of their individuality, even, in a sense, their originality, and also reduced the people who make them, or parts of them, to operators, as distinct from craftsmen with creative agency.
Four points about craft practices:
Firstly, craftsmen have a flexibility a factory doesn’t which allows them to implement new approaches at a speed unachievable in mass production.
Secondly, by designing individual, bespoke objects, craftsmen can explore alternative working methods in order to create pieces that are perfectly suited to their intended use, user and space.
Thirdly, the independent nature of many craftsmen forces them to adapt their techniques to suit the resources available to them. This allows them to trial experimental, potentially more sustainable, approaches and materials with greater ease, due to their reduced setup costs.
Finally, their skills aside, what’s the one thing that all true craftsmen have in common? It’s the desire, even the compulsion, to do their work as well as it can be possibly done. I see this, and feel it, every time I visit a workshop. For mediaeval craftsmen, making was an act of piety. At some level, that’s what it remains for all true craftsmen today.
I’m for both mass production and craftsmanship. I’m for both IKEA and Hermès:
IKEA with its undeniable quality, sometimes remarkable quality; Hermès, with its rigorous standards, living heritage of true craftsmanship, total integrity and total authenticity. IKEA wins on value for money, in the minds of the majority, but equally, there’s a reason Hermès is one of the world’s most respected and resilient luxury goods brands.
I thought it would be interesting to illustrate the importance of our maintaining heritage skills through four stories of devastating fires and the restoration projects – and resurrections – that followed them.
Built as a Tudor palace in the early 16th century, Hampton Court was redesigned by Christopher Wren in the 17th century, possibly to rival Versailles. This resulted in the destruction of almost half of the Tudor palace, including nearly all of Henry VIII’s private apartments. The fact that this remodelling is rarely discussed is telling. Like all great houses, Hampton Court’s history is always told through its occupants, rather than its makers. Let’s face it, Anne Boleyn makes a more compelling story than Christopher Wren…
The fire was in 1986, on the 31st of March, at night. A royal palace for over 500 years, it was decimated in the space of a single evening, the victim of an elderly resident’s habit of reading her newspaper in bed by candlelight.
Hampton Court was home to innumerable examples of fine craftsmanship. Notable among them were several large wood carvings by Grinling Gibbons whose work, never surpassed, stands at the pinnacle of traditional woodcarving. When faced by the prospect of losing such pieces as these, we are forced to accept how much we have forgotten in terms of traditional craft knowledge. Fortunately, only one of these carvings was completely lost to the fire and a small team of exceptionally talented woodworkers was able to restore the others.
This restoration project, like most such projects, was an opportunity to learn from the masters of the past, a process I see as education through restoration. Britain has many great carvers but, sadly, too much of the contemporary carver’s work is repetitive and low-grade. It is only through trusting craftsmen with an element of creative control that we can encourage these skills to improve upon their historical counterparts.
Ultimately, in architectural terms, the fire at Hampton Court proved to be a lucky escape. Due to the nature of the destruction of the building, large portions of its original features could be reused in the restoration. Even the great crystal chandelier, crushed by the collapse of the ceiling it so beautifully lit and ornamented, could be bent back into shape.
Tragically, during Hampton Court’s restoration, another of England’s great stately homes suffered the same catastrophe. On the 30th of August, 1989, it was the turn of Uppark, a late 17th century masterpiece in the Sussex Downs. The house, famed for its particularly delicate interiors, had remained unchanged for some 400 years. The devastation caused to the building was so serious that many doubted the property could be saved. Happily, however, the National Trust’s insurers decided that restoration would be cheaper than a pay-out for total loss.
The subsequent restoration of Uppark House further highlighted the wealth of craft skills involved in the creation of such a building and the difficulty of replicating such work today. The ground floor rooms housed five beautiful 17th Century stucco ceilings, all of which had been reduced to fragments. Freehand modelling of lime and hair plaster is a technique that had been lost for 150 years. No plastering firm in Britain had any experience of working in this way. In fact, the recipe for creating the plaster mix had been completely forgotten. The restoration of the Uppark ceilings required the mastery of lost skills, in an alien material and on a daunting scale. Geoffrey Preston is a conservator and sculptor, with a background in stone carving, who was invited into the restoration project. Having taken it upon himself to conduct the necessary independent research, he rediscovered the techniques of 17th century stucco modelling but was unable to locate any living practitioners.
He therefore placed an advert, in the Artists’ Newsletter, for ceramic artists who would be willing to apply their skills in an alternative manner, and then held a series of auditions to assess competency and, finally, set about teaching the successful applicants how to apply stucco, while simultaneously running lime plaster cornices.
This approach was only viable due to the presence of a surviving craft industry. Although not trained in this field, the ceramicists possessed skills that could transfer between different craft disciplines. They understood material; they had an eye for detail; and they had creative patience: skills not highly valued in an industrial setting but essential for craft work.
The lengthy Uppark House restoration project was a success story which showed that if the required skills exist somewhere, there is hope of restoration, even in the most desolate cases, just so long as there is the will to make it happen. The project highlighted how important it is both to train the next generation of craftsmen and to give craftsmen the opportunity to develop the highest-level skills. Assuming, this is, that we don’t want to lose them forever… The approach taken by the Uppark conservators – one of maximum fidelity to original materials and techniques – is atypical when it comes to this style of work.
When Windsor Castle was stricken by fire, three years later, on the night of 20th November 1992, the restoration was undertaken with a completely different mindset: one of opportunistic compromise. The opportunity was taken to modernise the building and alter the design of the building better to suit its current use. Steel and concrete were used in place of their oak and stone counterparts and the ornate plasterwork was completed with cast gypsum. There is, of course, a logic to such an approach but I sometimes wonder if an opportunity to further the skills rediscovered at Uppark was forsaken.
At the same time, much of their work was inspired, including the recreation of the woven-silk wall and bed hangings by Richard Humphries who works with Walters, an 11th generation, family-owned silk weavers, based in Suffolk. By studying fragments of the fabrics destroyed by the fire, they were able accurately to reproduce each and every one of the fabrics concerned.
My fourth fire is one I’m sure you all remember. On April 15th, 2019, flames engulfed Notre-Dame Cathedral, burning for 15 hours and consuming most of the roof and causing the spire to collapse. Having absorbed the full horror of the catastrophe, I suspect that many of us here were thinking along the same lines: “Do we really have the skills to recreate this building today?”
Notre-Dame has had over 500 craftspeople working on it for the last five years, including Americans and Brits. Their skills are rare: at best, scarcely taught; at worst, on the verge of extinction. In every restoration project of this scale, some skills have to be relearned. Craftsmen naturally yearn for a challenge, an opportunity to excel, and it’s clear that those who’ve had a hand in bringing this Gothic masterpiece back to life are proud to have done so. One of them is Hank Silver, a carpenter from Massachusetts. In an interview in the New York Times, he put it like this: “Nobody builds cathedrals anymore.” And here again is a story with a happy ending. After years of expensive, painstaking and hugely complicated restoration, the finished project will be triumphantly revealed to the world this December.
A less happy story is that of the Glasgow School of Art which, as we’re in Scotland, I feel I must mention, out of respect. Designed by Charles Rennie-Mackintosh, and considered by many the world’s greatest Art Nouveau building. It was twice in recent years devastated by a fire: the first, on 23rd May 2014, destroying its magnificent library; and the second, on 25th June 2018, during its restoration, destroying almost everything. Its fate remains uncertain.
What do these incendiary stories teach us? Or of what do they remind us?
Firstly, these fires remind us of the extraordinary craftsmanship to be found in our greatest buildings. In buildings such as Notre-Dame, Windsor Castle, Uppark House and Hampton Court, practically every detail, interior or exterior, is a bespoke creation, showcasing the skill and intelligence of the craftsmen of the time. Such buildings are not mere walls and ceilings. They are libraries of exquisite workmanship and innovative design, and the embodiment of human skill and ambition. They are vital parts of the historical record.
Secondly, these fires remind us not simply how much we could lose if genuine craft skills were allowed to fade away completely but also quite how easily this could happen. For me, these fires stand as a symbol of the speed at which traditional craft skills can be lost. Just as beautiful buildings and beautiful works of art can be destroyed in an instant, so the decades of development that have gone into perfecting the skills to which they owe their existence, can be erased in a generation if we do not take measures to support them.
Thirdly, these fires remind us how much the past can teach us.
As we all know, Charles McKim, in establishing the American School in Rome, sought, in Charles Moore’s words, to “train artists by bringing them into close contact with the masterpieces of all time”. It’s the same with craftsmanship. Craftsmen, to be complete, need to know and understand the work of their ancestors and often it is restoration projects that give them the opportunity to do so. This is what I mean by education through restoration. To be a true craftsman is to be not simply a supplier, however skilled, however creative, but also a researcher. Sadly, restoration teaches us, too, quite how much we have completely forgotten, or lost the ability to do, or to do sufficiently well – even having mined different craft disciplines for a solution.
Finally, these fires remind us of the importance of ambition: the ambition to learn, the ambition to teach and to train, the ambition to preserve and to bequeath, and the ambition to excel; and they remind us, as well, that, in the world of craftsmanship and restoration, the more you know how to do, and the greater your skill, the more ambitious you’re likely to be. The less our history lies in darkness, the brighter our future.
Which brings me to my next topic: the practical steps that are being taken to help traditional craftsmanship endure in the modern world.
The Cathedrals’ Workshop Fellowship is an apprenticeship scheme, focused on teaching the skills required to conserve our crumbling cathedrals – skills such as stone carving, carpentry and glazing – and which enables students to use the techniques they have acquired on actual cathedrals.
Heritage Crafts is a charity that offers craftsmen bursaries to learn traditional craft skills. It supports makers in financial hardship and funds research projects intended to rekindle lost skills. Such initiatives matter. Of course, they do. However, they depend for their peak relevance on there being opportunities for their graduates to put their skills to practical use in the real world – viable career paths, in fact, offering wages commensurate with their expertise. This is where you – yes, you – come in. If heritage craft skills are to be preserved, there need to be opportunities for craftsmen to work on new, as well as conservation, and restoration, projects.
The Carvers and Gilders of London is an example of a traditional craft practice that is an exemplar of education through restoration. Their workshop successfully adapted to modern demands under the guidance of Christine Palmer who has trained countless craftspeople in carving techniques, styles and surface decoration methods since 1978. Working for clients such as Soane, whilst simultaneously working on the restoration of Hampton Court, and Uppark, and Windsor Castle.
Richard Humphries of Sudbury Silk Mills has managed to tailor business to modern needs. His knowledge of historic textiles is unrivalled. Alongside its conservation and restoration work, it regularly undertakes commissions to produce modern interpretations of historic textiles. An example is the Mabille fabric, developed by Soane in collaboration with the mill. Inspired by a Napoleon III-era needlepoint carpet, the Mabille weave allowed the weavers to push the boundaries of their traditional techniques to produce a truly innovative new design. It’s thanks to projects such as this, and craftsmen such as these, that historical craft skills will be passed on to the next generation.
Conservation and innovation make a great power couple. One thing that helps – helps take craftsmanship and innovation to the next level – is knowing how to collaborate.
What do I mean by collaboration? I mean, as you would expect, human collaboration – teamwork. And I mean, the kind of collaboration, and cross-fertilisation, between craft disciplines, that we saw in action in the restoration of Uppark House. But I also mean something else. I mean collaboration between traditional craftsmanship and industrial processes, and openness to the novel solutions in which such collaboration may result.
Let me tell you the story of the Crystal Palace, built in 1850, in Hyde Park, by Joseph Paxton, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. It’s one of the best illustrations known to history of the value of such openness, such intellectual curiosity, such cross-fertilisation, and such collaboration, and of innovation-friendly cultures. A rare example of an ambitious project completed under budget and before time, the Crystal Palace, the largest glass building ever constructed, was built in five months for £20 million, in today’s money. Moreover, it was entirely bespoke – designed for one purpose, and one only, and for a specific place. Its large barrel-vaulted section was actually added at the last minute to preserve a number of full-sized elm trees.
Two things made the Crystal Palace possible: Paxton’s readiness, as a designer, to work in close collaboration with his craftsmen; and Paxton’s intimate knowledge of British manufacturing, and its most recent technical advances. The Crystal Palace’s frame is made of cast iron. There had been advances in the production of high-quality cast iron and the rate at which complex forms could be produced, enabling designers such as Paxton to build previously unimaginable structures. As for the ingredient for which the Crystal Palace was best known, and from which it derived its name, its glass, it owed a great deal both to Paxton’s experience designing greenhouses at Chatsworth House and to recent industrial advances.
At Chatsworth, he had developed the “Ridge and Furrow” technique, a method which allowed him to span large distances with minimal structure, maximising the amount of light he was able to let in. The advances in glass manufacture were those of the Chance Brothers glass factory, in the Midlands which had recently perfected the process for making cylinder-blown glass, such that it was now possible to make large panes of transparent sheet glass. Paxton designed every part of the structure around the size of glass sheet that could be blown at the time.
In 1852, the Crystal Palace was relocated to Sydenham at a cost of £166 million, in today’s money, over eight times its cost of construction, but I’m afraid – yes, you’ve guessed it…; it’s our seventh… – in 1936, it fell victim to fire. Did that tragic fire somehow symbolise the demise of the ethos of at-scale invention that had so characterised nineteenth century British achievement? You could be forgiven for thinking so.
In today’s manufacturing climate, there is a tendency to outsource the fabrication of parts to the lowest bidder. In so doing, we shift the focus away from the whole and, in the process, make innovation much less likely. But not impossible… Craftsmen and industrial partners can and do collaborate, and people such as you, or many of you, in this room – experts, believers in traditional craftsmanship but also in craft innovation, intermediaries able to see the bigger picture – can play a key role in helping them to do so.
Which brings me to my conclusion… I told you at the beginning that I believe in true craft because I believe in quality; because I want skills to survive in every country and believe it vital that they should; and for ethical reasons. I also told you that this talk had a sting in its tail, but one I believe gives us a wonderful opportunity
Here it is… How many producers that you buy from show you the full picture? How many pay lip service to the principles I have espoused today but don’t actually respect them, in practice? Let me put it another way. If something is made almost entirely in China and only “finished” in America or Europe, do you, or do you not, think that you and your clients should be aware?
Do you think that they are? You see, I know that many are not, and I know that this is wrong: an unethical deception. I know that, too often, I find myself listening to design professionals, both in interiors and fashion, waxing lyrical about products that even a cursory glance should suggest are not everything they claim to be: some are undeniably very good, but too many mediocre, and a fair number truly shoddy and destined for landfill.
I know that too many companies find it all too easy to promote their European or American creatives and finishers, while effectively making invisible the craftsmen who have essentially made the item, makers who are typically Asian, upon whom these businesses and massive margins are built are removed entirely from the story, incidentally at the same time as shouting from the rooftops about their support for diversity. In doing so these business are erasing the narrative of the maker, where ever they may be. And I know that too many journalists are all too ready to play along with or are unaware of such deceptions. And this is the opportunity. What I’d like us to do is create a kind of movement:
A movement with you – architects, decorators and furniture makers – at its heart: you who are the shapers of space; you who are at the vanguard of interior design commissions.
A movement in favour of traditional craftsmanship, local craftsmen – English in England, Chinese in China, and so on – and honest ethical business practices in this sector.
A movement ideally in favour of maker-visibility but failing which, transparency as to where makers work.
A movement that persuades clients not simply of the added value of honest craftsmanship but also of the need to investigate provenance: to look sceptically at “superficial brand mythologies” – in Louis Elton’s phrase – and deeply at how, where and, most crucially, by whom something has been made.
And a movement that persuades you and your colleagues of the role you can and should play in guiding and informing your clients. If they care, I believe you owe it to your clients to ensure they understand the sources of all you buy. If they don’t care, I’d like you to persuade them to care. To quote a well-known arbiter of taste, Miss Piggy, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and it may be necessary from time to time to give a misinformed beholder a black eye.”
I believe such a movement could make a real difference and that it would be a better, happier, culturally and aesthetically richer, and more honest, world, if we did. We need to ensure that traditional craftsmanship – true craftsmanship, local, ethical craftsmanship – survives into the next generation, and the one after that. But it does need our support.
On which note, here, to end, because I mentioned him earlier, is a Grinling Gibbons carving from the altar of St James’s, Piccadilly, of The Pelican in her Piety. Isn’t it extraordinary? I’ve chosen it – as my parting image, – because it’s a depiction of the survival of the next generation. That pelican, is taking desperate measures to feed her chicks and ensure their survival. I’ve chosen it, as a reminder of just how good traditional craftsmanship can be. And how incredibly important it is to nurture it.
Thank you very much for listening.” – Lulu Lytle, Founder, Soane Britain
