This is one of a large collection of films made by Eric Hall.  Eric took up making films in the Bingley area from as early as 1929, when he would have been about 25.  Starting out with a 9.5 mm cine camera he became a very keen filmmaker, continuing to make highly polished films right up to the 1980s.  For a period he was Chairman of the North East Region of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC) and President of the Bradford Cine Circle, founded in 1935.  Many of his films won...

This is one of a large collection of films made by Eric Hall.  Eric took up making films in the Bingley area from as early as 1929, when he would have been about 25.  Starting out with a 9.5 mm cine camera he became a very keen filmmaker, continuing to make highly polished films right up to the 1980s.  For a period he was Chairman of the North East Region of the Institute of Amateur Cinematographers (IAC) and President of the Bradford Cine Circle, founded in 1935.  Many of his films won awards and commendations from the IAC, and Hall regularly won the President’s Trophy of the Bradford Cine Circle.  For more on Eric Hall see the Context for Ower Bit bog Oil (1963-64), a film which was also ‘Highly Commended’ in 1968. 

Although made as late as the mid-1950s, Eric was still using 9.5 mm film, before he moved on to 16 mm.  By the 1950s 9.5 mm was being overtaken by the 8 mm film, and so there aren’t that many colour 9.5 films from this period, even though the larger frame of 9.5 mm produced a much higher quality picture.

Many of Eric’s films seem to have been made with an eye for preserving in celluloid places and traditions that are in danger of being lost, and this film certainly belongs in that category – Ower Bit bog Oil being another example.   Something like a dozen different skills or crafts are featured in this film.  Of course, all of those seen here can still be found being practiced by dedicated enthusiasts.  But whereas at one time they would have provided a living for a significant proportion of the, especially rural, population, today much fewer people are able to eke out a livelihood from using these skills; and for the most part they have been relegated to hobbies.  Yet despite the general social decline of crafts, there will doubtless always remain those who are drawn towards them, and not least in Yorkshire – see the book by David Morgan Rees and the website exhibiting his research (References).

But not all of the skills on display in the film have been relegated to hobbies: dry stone walling continues to be very much an important occupation, and one for which courses still exist.  Dry stone walls remain the most important barriers to fields in the highlands of Yorkshire where the supply of stone is plentiful.   The practice goes back some 4,000 years in the British Isles to the stone age, funnily enough. In fact many of the medieval monasteries in Yorkshire were built in this way, Fountains Abbey being an example.  Although modern fencing is cheaper, and much quicker and easier to erect, it doesn’t last nearly as long, and lacks many of the other advantages of dry stone walls, not least from an ecological point of view.  Today there is some 69,926 miles of dry stone wall in England alone, much of it in need of repair.

Other than this not many of the crafts that Eric has filmed are especially typical of Yorkshire: hardly any appear in Marie Hartley’s and Joan Ingilby’s, Life and Tradition in West Yorkshire.  Perhaps the most unusual craft shown here is that of the bookplate maker.  This is a small print pasted inside the cover of a book to denote ownership, usually with the term, Ex Libris, which means 'From the Library of . . .’.   These go back to the start of printed book in Germany in the 16th century.  The recently published book by Martin Hopkinson has some fine illustrations of these.  It is to be hoped that the coming of ebooks will not entirely eradicate these emblems of the personalized library. 

When Eric Hall writes in one of his intertitles (not shown here) that: “the old crafts were, and still are, a testimony to a proud independence of spirit and a passionate love of tradition”, there is a suggestion that we should stop and ponder the significance of making things by hand, even if only as a hobby.  In his book, The Craftsmen, Richard Sennett argues that craftsmanship is rooted in being human. It is not simply about making tools, but has a civilising function through its development of social traditions and skills which are passed down the generations.  This social dimension of craft can easily be overlooked when viewed as simply a leisure pursuit, a hobby carried out by a small minority of individuals – see also the Contexts for Pipes (c.1935) and for Heritage of Skill (c.1962).

Yet nor should its importance be underestimated for the individual practitioner.  In his path breaking book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Iain McGilchrist argues for the importance of integrating our bodily engagement with the world with the world we have built up in our heads.  The division between hand and head that characterises much of modern life McGilchrist sees as creating an unhealthy divorce from the physical world.  The diminishing part played by handcrafts and skills in much of the western world has contributed to this divorce.  For people like Eric Hall and his generation, who bridge a period when increasingly technology made redundant many hands-on skills, this loss represented more than just nostalgia for the past.  Amateur filmmakers from the 1950s often required a fair level of skill even to make and show films.  The experience of acquiring skills can help develop an appreciation not only of the intrinsic satisfaction this can provide, but also a recognition of how it can shape character as well.

This formative aspect of craft relates to a distinction that Sennett makes between skills and craft, with the latter entailing the emotional rewards of being “anchored in tangible reality” and being able to take pride in ones work; something that doesn’t necessarily go with having skills (Sennett, p 21).  In craft one has to lose oneself in the learning of the craft, with the aim of achieving excellence.  The diminishing of this practical striving for excellence, what the classical Greeks called arête, is something that diverse thinkers in the twentieth century – such as Heidegger, Arendt and Alasdair Macintyre – have seen as having a profound negative effect in the shaping modern culture.  

References

Matthew Crawford, The Case for Working with Your Hands, Viking, 2010.
Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, Life and Tradition in West Yorkshire, 2nd edition, Dalesman, 1997.
Martin Hopkinson, Ex Libris: The Art of Bookplates, British Museum Press, 2011.
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, Yale University Press, 2009.
David Morgan Rees, Yorkshire craftsmen at work,  Dalesman Books, 1981.
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, Penguin, 2009.

Dry Stone Walling Association
History Of Dry Stone Walling
Yorkshire crafts and craftspeople, The David Morgan Rees Collection