THE MAKING OF A PAIR OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH GLASSES

Thank you to Liam Chapple for sending this video. It was created by his friend Matthew Barton and shows some of the processes used at Oliver Goldsmith, a glasses manufacturer in West London.

FACTORY VISIT NO. 8 : ALFRED DUNHILL, WALTHAMSTOW (PART THREE : THE PROCESSES)

“A girl in my class whose sister was at Cordwainers. She brought in a pair of gloves that she’d made. I thought ‘wow, I’d love to be able to do that.’ I liked sewing, doing crafty stuff. So I thought ‘that’s what I want to do’.”

Emma, the only female bench worker at Alfred Dunhill tells us about how she came to work at the factory. To get to the level of ability that is required she spent many years honing her skills. Cordwainers college in the East End was central to her learning.

“Eventually I got a place. I was there for three years. I didn’t do glove making though! I did two years of leather goods – small stuff, handbags. Third year was saddlery which is where I learnt this,” Emma tells me as she demonstrated the stitching of a handle.

The skills within Alfred Dunhill are passed on. “I’ve been teaching John junior (there are two ‘Johns’). John and Kevin are the youngest and they’re 41. We need some young people coming through.”

“You’ve got to want to do it because you love doing it; because there’s no money in it, not at the bench level anyway. We all love what we do, we’re craft people. I like it because it’s traditional. I love doing stuff with my hands. I’ve always made things.”

As Emma chats she continues her saddle stitching with impressive dexterity. Using wax to help grip and stop the thread from coming undone, she stitches sturdy pieces of leather together in near effortless fashion. “I get told off at home for doing the taps up too tightly!”

I ask if the processes have changed at all over the years. “The traditional side hasn’t. The materials have changed though. With bridle leather the tanning has changed due to different chemicals. The properties change and the leather doesn’t do what you want it to.

“Some leathers lend themselves easily to being edge dyed because they have a lot of natural fat in them. Other things… like it is not very water resistant. So if you’re using glue and you drop some on the leather - some leathers it will just wipe straight off, with others it’ll wipe the colour from it. You’ve got to be aware of what you’ve got in front of you.”

Emma moves on to show us the process of edging leather. “You don’t want a sharp edge on a bridle. That followed through from when I worked in the saddlery trade. A customer does not want to feel a sharp edge on a bag so we take the edge off. There’s different sizes of edge tool. This is a super-duper one, only to be used in certain circumstances. You need to do both sides.”

Following edging Emma applies a dye to the leather edges. “You wipe it on, put plenty on. Everyone has their technique. All you’re doing is buffing it – because the fibres are damp, smoothing it.”

Finally Emma shows us the art of pricking. “It’s where we make holes. You just need a mallet and one of these,” she says, picking up what looks like a fork with closely spaced prongs, “They’re calculated as stitches to the inch. Biggest we use is 5 to the inch. I’ve got a 13 to the inch, that’s for bridle work. You put it next to your crease line, give it a whack. The aim is not to go all the way through, just to give an indication as to where to go when stitching.” Emma's years of experience mean that she makes it look simple.

As we make our way off the factory floor we take the opportunity to have a quick chat with Rick who started at Alfred Dunhill ten years ago. We talk about the history of the place and the type of people who work there. “We like it here. There’s a buzz about the place. When there’s work to do, we’re like bees in a hive,” Rick muses before concluding, “It’s nice to know that one of the big houses has an English workshop isn’t it?”

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All photos by Robin Mellor

See here for Part One and Part Two

DRAKES TIES : MADE IN ENGLAND

"We make ties completely by hand... We are printing cloth in Macclesfield and we are weaving the majority of our silk in Suffolk."

Drakes, the largest independent handmade tie maker in England. A video by Jai Rafferty for It's Nice That.

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Photo from Retronaut

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Photo of Michael Marriott from Spitalfields Life

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ALICE MADE THIS : CUFFLINKS

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Photo by Tina Cheng for Bloomberg Businessweek

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Photograph by Colin O'Brien for Spitalfields Life

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Photo by Richard Saker for The Observer

FACTORY VISIT NO. 8: ALFRED DUNHILL, WALTHAMSTOW (PART TWO : MASTER CRAFTSMAN RICK READ)

The Alfred Dunhill factory in Walthamstow, East London, employs several master craftspeople. Rick Read is one of them. Above the main factory floor, in a quiet, well lit room, Rick creates bespoke items of great beauty.

Rick, who hails from south of the River Thames, has worked for Alfred Dunhill for ten years. He started his career in 1966, since when he has created products for the likes of Tanner Krolle and Chanel. Rick served his apprenticeship at Marshall and Company. He explains that company's demise, "they did desk sets and the like. Since desk sets have fallen by the wayside, so have they. More's the pity."

With companies such as Marshalls going out of business and the likes of Tanner Krolle being brought out (by Alfred Dunhill), many of the employees at Alfred Dunhill have worked for a variety of household names. It strikes me as being a very similar story to that which I heard at Globe-Trotter.

We talk to Rick about some of the items he has made over the years. He tells us of his pride at seeing Tanner Krolle briefcases still being used by business people on the tube. The items he makes are made to last.

The reason that the items which Rick and his colleagues make last so long is the attention to detail and understanding of materials. Rick talks us through the prototyping process, where items are mocked up in a cheap material called 'salpa'. "It’s very cheap, you can make the job up, get the proportions right, send it back to the designer, they can draw on it, cut it, do whatever. We’ll probably do another in salpa to check it’s right. Then we’d do one in old leather before the final one in proper leather."

The proper ones are very impressive. Flawless leather goods that are the result of Alfred Dunhill's exacting standards in materials, the craftsman's skill and understanding the customer's needs. Rick tells us about a recently made alligator skin wallet: "It came out so well… It’s like anything you do, if you make the smallest mistake, you’re doing some decorating indoors say, your eye goes to it (the mistake) straight away. This wallet… it was pukka! Spot on. So good he (the customer) wants another one."

While leather goods continue to attract healthy sales, other items no longer have the relevance that they used to. "There were 300 craftsmen making pipes at one point here. You used to go to the football years ago and everyone would be wearing a cap and smoking a pipe!" The pipe business does still exist, under the name White Spot.

Conversation moves on to apprenticeships and education. "All the guys downstairs are all long serving, it’s very hard to get anyone new to do crafts," Rick tells us, "I think the reason is that it costs a lot of money to train someone up and there’s nothing to tie them to that company. They could finish their apprenticeship and go ‘I think I’ll try this on my own’. They could take their skills away. It’s up to the company to make it worthwhile staying."

Rick tells us that he is to retire in a couple of years. They are already looking for his replacement - it is a long process to find the right person. "People want the big bucks. If you go on to an apprenticeship you need to be prepared to be on a low income," Rick says. The person in question would need to 'gel straight away' in the small workshop that Rick shares with Tomasz Nosarzewski (who has taken up a kind of residency over the last year or so at Bourdon House, Dunhill's Mayfair HQ in order to bring the craft closer to the consumer). "They don't need great skills," Rick continues, "it's just a particular fit."

I suggest that it could be tough to find that elusive person, what with the required skills not being taught in schools as they used to be. Rick nods. "The school I went to – there was a drawing office, there was a metal workshop, a wood workshop, a forge… all of these things pushed you in that direction if you weren’t academic. But to do this you have to know drawing, you have to know measurements… you need to know quite a bit before you can actually put those skills in to the hands and do the job."

We talk about the difference between making and designing. "There was a college in Hackney, Cordwainers. But it has moved more towards design… everyone wants to be a designer you know? Design to me... ideas just keep coming around and around. The amount of times I hear someone say ‘oh, we’ve got a great idea, look at this’ and I think ‘oh yeah’ (Rick rolls his eyes) … ‘I think that’s in the cupboard at the bottom!’ These things, they come around, get tweaked up." He has a point.

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All photos by Robin Mellor