Forgotten Skills – Tiverton Book Festival

Nick Kary: Material

Throwing a pot. Building a bench. Sewing clothes. Creating a linocut illustration. Carving a spoon. What does it mean to make things with your hands in a digital age full of mass market, disposable items?

Through beautifully-crafted writing filled with memorable makers, landscapes, stories and scenery, Material is a rich celebration of what it means to imagine and create. Nick Kary champions the voices of artisans across the English landscape, from potters to woodworkers, and reminds us of the rich vein of knowledge and skills that defines our common human heritage.

Much in the vein of bestselling authors Lars Mytting, Robert Macfarlane and Barn the Spoon, craftsman Nick Kary explores what it means to be a maker, where the fluid creative act becomes manufacturing, and what it means to create in a world where consumers are disconnected from the creative and material process. He tells the stories of craftspeople, asking them why they make, and the challenge of making a living out of a practice that was once a necessity; and underlying his visits to meet fellow makers are the author’s own reflections about what and who influenced him to value and make using materials from the earth for the past forty years.

Perfect for fans ranging from Countryfile to Norwegian Wood, Material is a rich, inspiring read for woodworkers, potters, craftspeople, bibliophiles and anyone who enjoys working with their hands.

Tom Allan: On the Roof

A study of an ancient craft, landscape and community from an outstanding new voice. The reed goes on, the reed comes off. The reed rots and returns to the earth. The houses we work on outlast us. The thatch we use has never stood still. On The Roof is a thatcher’s tale – a journey of discovery, and a reflection on what it means for a person or a building to belong in a place. It tells Tom Allan’s story, leaving an office job in the city to find fulfilment among the Devon roofs, as well as the stories of six other people who share his trade. We meet the Hebridean son of a lobster fisherman who thatches with a dune-growing grass, a Syrian refugee who found peace among the seagrass roofs of a Danish island, and one of the first women to become master of Japan’s 5,000-year-old craft of thatching. Thatching is an ancient, living tradition. To be a thatcher is to belong to a craft almost endless in its reach – at once one of the oldest ways of giving shelter, a way of working close to the land, and a deep immersion in the rhythms of a place on the most local scale possible: a village, a valley, an island. But the craft isn’t frozen in time. Thatched roofs exist in a constant state of repair, renewal and alteration, and the trade is poised at a moment of profound change both in the way people thatch, and the plants they use to thatch with. As Allan reveals, the story of thatching is the story of our relationship with the land, and how we have chosen to treat it.

Tom Allan has worked as a thatcher in South Devon since 2012. Before this he planted hedges in the Scottish Borders and worked for a London publishing house. He writes about the natural world for the Guardian’s Country Diary column, and has written on travel and the environment for the Financial Times, Guardian, the Earth Island Journal, British Wildlife Magazine, and others.