Learn | An Endangered Craft

Photography by Jeff Gilbert

Taking up a new craft is a delicious challenge and something that helps us feel we’re growing and developing. So imagine the glow of taking up a craft that is in danger of dying out. 

In our November issue, we met Elizabeth Ashdown (pictured above), who practises passementerie, the craft of making ornamental embellishments. She’s the youngest of only six people practising this craft in the UK, which inspired us to find out which other crafts were in danger of becoming extinct. 

Below are a list of crafts that Heritage Crafts have on their ‘critically endangered’ crafts list. Click on each one for information from Heritage Crafts on training opportunities, number of practitioners and more. You might be inspired to take a course or simply give it a go yourself. 

Critically endangered crafts

The crafts listed below are considered to be at serious risk of dying out in the UK (Heritage Crafts also a category of crafts that are only regarded as ‘endangered’. Crafts that are critically endangered might be due to a lack of craftspeople, reduced opportunities for training, being financially unviable or simply that there is no longer a way to pass on the skills and knowledge required. 

• Arrowsmithing 

• Basketwork furniture making

• Bell founding

• Bow making (musical) 

• Bowed-felt hat making

• Chain making 

• Clay pipe making

• Clog making

• Coiled straw basket making

• Coppersmithing (objects) 

• Compass and navigational instrument making

• Copper wheel engraving

• Currach making

• Devon stave basket making

• Diamond cutting

• Encaustic tile making 

• Engine turned engraving

• Fabric pleating

• Fair Isle chair making

• Fan making

• Flute making (concert)

• Fore-edge painting

• Frame knitting

• Glass eye making

• Hat block making 

• Hat plaiting

• Hazel basket making

• Highland thatching

• Horse collar making

• Horsehair weaving

• Industrial pottery

• Linen damask weaving

• Maille making

• Metal thread making

• Millwrighting

• Northern Isles basket making

• Oak bark tanning

• Orrery making

• Paper making (commercial handmade)

• Parchment and vellum making

• Piano making

• Plane making

• Plume making 

• Pointe shoe making

• Saw making

• Scientific and optical instrument making

• Scissor making

• Sieve and riddle making

• Silk ribbon making 

• Silver spinning

• Spade making (forged heads)

• Spinning wheel making

• Sporran making

• Straw hat making 

• Sussex trug making 

• Swill basket making

• Tinsmithing

• Wainwrighting

• Watch face enamelling

• Watch making

• Whip making 

• Withy pot making

• Wooden fishing net making

You can read about Elizabeth and her passementierie in our November issue, as well as others who are doing their best to save beautiful and rare things from extinction, from languages to red squirrels. Turn to page 66 to read The Preservation Society. 

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More from our November issue…

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