INDUSTRIES 



HANDICRAFTS ' 



Perhaps the most interesting of all the modern 

 Gloucestershire industries are those pursued by 

 the Gild of Handicraft at Chipping Campden, 

 where it has been established since 1901. 

 Founded in Whitechapel in 1888, the gild 

 owed its inception to the desire of a Toynbee 

 Hall Ruskin class to put into practice the prin- 

 ciples which they had learnt. Three working 

 craftsmen formed its original members, who were 

 intended to receive recruits from a school of 

 handicraft worked in connexion with the gild. 

 This particular branch of the experiment failed 

 from lack of support by educational authorities, 

 but the productive work of the gild progressed 

 rapidly, gradually including such handicrafts as 

 cabinet-making, wrought-iron work, printing, 

 book-binding, enamelling, jewellery, and silver and 

 copper work. Partly from the necessity of finding 

 more space for its growing activities, partly from 

 a desire for purer air and healthier surroundings, 

 the gild was moved five years ago from its 

 quarters in Essex House to Chipping Campden, 

 where its workshops were set up in a deserted 

 silk-mill. ' On the ground floor of this building 

 is the printing-room ; on the central floor are 

 the metal shops, where work the jewellers, the 

 silversmiths, and the enamellers. On the 

 upper floor the cabinet work and carving is done. 

 In another building is the smithy, and away at a 

 different part of the ground is the storage for 

 timber and the power-house where the rough 

 timber is sawn.' Over seventy men and boys 

 are employed. 



The artistic, social, and commercial success of 

 the gild is a tribute at once to the truth of 

 its principles which are indeed those of Ruskin, 

 Morris, and Carlyle and to the skill with which 

 these have been adapted to practical requirements. 

 For though the industry is organized on a co- 

 operative and profit-sharing basis, the need for 

 flexibility and for skilled leadership has never 

 been lost sight of. All designs are supervised 

 by a chief designer, Mr. Ashbee, the lecturer to 

 the original Ruskin class, while the business side 

 of the enterprise is entrusted to a special director, 



both of them being elected by the gild com- 

 mittee. In 1898 the gild was formed into a 

 limited liability company. 



Broadly speaking, the formation of the Gild 

 of Handicraft ' implies a rebellion against inutili- 

 ties, a conviction that machinery must be rele- 

 gated to its proper place as the tool and not the 

 master of the workman, that the life of the pro- 

 ducer is to the community a more vital considera- 

 tion than the cheap production which ignores it, 

 and that thus the human and ethical considera- 

 tions that insist on the individuality of the work- 

 man are of the first importance.' Its aim has 

 been by reviving the system of apprenticeship 

 and by training the craftsman in the whole of 

 his work, not only in a section, to give him an 

 understanding and joy in his work. With all 

 the supervision that is given to the products of 

 the gild's art, the greatest care is taken that each 

 article should bear an individual stamp ; and the 

 stimulus thus given to the artistic sense and 

 conscientiousness of the craftsmen is evidenced 

 by the creative faculty which many of them 

 display and by the beauty and thorough work- 

 manship of all their productions. These are 

 still of the class originally enumerated, furni- 

 ture-making, printing, hammered metal-work, 

 enamelling, and jewellery. The high reputation 

 of the gild has brought to Campden a private 

 artist in stained glass, and is further borne wit- 

 ness to by the many requests for lessons from its 

 workmen, both in the Campden school of art and 

 in technical schools all over the country. 



This artistic character, if it is due to the prin- 

 ciples on which the gild was founded, must also 

 surely owe a great debt to the surroundings in 

 which it is placed. Campden is a peculiarly 

 beautiful village, untouched by architectural out- 

 rages, and still containing unspoilt several four- 

 teenth and fifteenth century buildings. The 

 workshops of the gild stand beside a stream, in 

 the midst of a rose-garden ; and altogether no 

 better atmosphere, literal or metaphorical, could 

 be found to inspire and contribute to the success 

 of this attempt at the idealization of industry.* 



MINING 



The mining industry of Gloucestershire has 

 been practically confined at all periods of its 

 history to two districts the valley between the 

 Cotswolds and the Severn, and beyond that 

 river the Forest of Dean. At the present time 

 nearly three-quarters of the coal raised in the 

 county, and its entire though meagre output of 



1 See C. R. Ashbee, A 'n endeavour totcarJi the teaching 

 of John Rutkin and William Morris (Essex House 

 Press), from which the passages quoted are taken. 



iron, come from the second region, though at an 

 earlier period the disparity of production between 

 vale and forest may not have been so marked ; 

 it is therefore convenient to deal first with the 



' For information in the whole of this article the 

 writer is much indebted to Industrial Gloucestershire, 

 published by Chance and Bland, Gloucester, and to 

 the kindness of local persons interested in manufacture, 

 especially to Mr. W. Stanton, of Stratford Lodge, 

 Stroud. 



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