I got unexpected amusement from reading that there used to be exactly three glass eye makers in the UK. I know that doesn't actually mean anything, but I couldn't help it.
It's kinda like making violins and such, it seems like a really satisfying job but it's ultra niche. Probably similar to trying to be a full time poet.
I'm thinking more in market saturation terms. There arn't that many full time violin makers, similar to there not being many healthy poets being gainfully employed for their poems.
Neat! I have for the past 40 years had a new prosthesis made every second year or so by F.Ad. Müller Söhne [1] – it is always a wonder to see the ocularist work with miniature glass blowing equipment creating an eye fit just for you.
From the grandparent link: When to replace your eye?
The tissue around the eye socket changes over time, and the eye can become scratched, even with careful maintenance.For these reasons you should replace your eye every three to five years, more often for children.
I can see that your question has already been answered, but I can confirm what it says. The cavity left after surgery changes over time, and the prosthesis, even if it is glass, eventually gets worn, leading to irritation. I presume that this is due to sand and grit in the air, which scratches the surface.
Additionally, you can have the ocularist recenter the eye prosthesis so that it better matches the orientation of your normal eye. Most eye prosthesis are approximate hollow quarter spheres resting on the eye musculature so that they can move in unison with the other eye.
Interesting, acrylic applied in multiple layers. I can see how this would be superior to glass from a manufacturing standpoint (easy to cast and layer), but my experience with acrylics is they scratch and aren't very durable. Perhaps that's another benefit - customers coming back more often for replacements.
The sievewright references it, but the Guardian haven't provided a link; the Heritage Crafts' Red List of Endangered Crafts is a fascinating resource. https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/redlist/
This exists in many fields, including software engineering (programming in Ada or Cobol, for example). In healthcare and surgery it is particularly relevant as some surgeons get a very rare and specialized types of cases that then allow them to develop new techniques and nobody but maybe at times 1-2 residents or fellows get to watch to even get a chance to learn. A combination of small/rare demand and limited distribution of the craft due to the apprenticeship nature of it.
My wife has just benefitted from one of these specialist surgeons who has spent the last 20 years developing techniques to repair the damage caused by a frequently botched gynecological surgical procedure.
Is Ada actually considered a legacy language in the same way COBOL is now? What languages have displaced it for new software in the safety-critical areas that it gained ascendancy in?
Banks in Sweden are making a big effort of recruiting, training and offering a viable career path for COBOL developers. A bunch of central systems still run like clockwork on IBM mainframes, why replace them?
I keep hearing about these magical systems that work like clockwork, but I also work in a bank and the reality is very different. In a void, yes, those systems are amazing. Now add all the other systems that have to be linked with that and things start to turn into a nightmarish situation. All the new systems have to be contorted, twisted and designed in weird ways to accommodate the old ones. Everything works a bit worse just because there are a minority of systems that don't know UTF-8 for example, or can't send more than 16 bytes in a field. Banks are very bad at IT. If you don't work in the trading part of it you are seen as a necessary evil. These systems are still with us because banks are very risk averse and because decommissioning a system in a bank can take decades.
If you think banks old software is bad, just wait till you see their newer stuff. The JSP I see dumped out there is just terrifying in many cases... and that's after security and code review.
15 years ago we needed to do crazy amounts of manual testing of an early mobile app on lots of different devices (we had ~2k separate device models in the office).
Our best hire ever in this area was this ~55-60 yo woman who had a background as a bank teller and had been selected to receive COBOL training by the Swedish bank who had employed her since she was young - they had done aptitude tests and recruited primarily from their existing work force.
She had the perfect combination of drive, curiosity and ability to express herself clearly and logically. She ended up working really closely and efficently with a bunch of developers in their 20s. She also helped so much in building a really nice, "wholesome" atmosphere in the office.
Any idea what it's like from a physical perspective to keep a mainframe like that running? Is there a point at which parts need to be custom made to replace anything that breaks or do they generally keep running with minimal physical issues?
Kinda makes me think about those old industrial engines that have been running continuously for 80-100 years.
You can buy new, fresh, 100% compatible mainframe hardware from the same companies where you bought them 30 years ago, that's not an issue. They're not cheap but they never were anyway.
I used to work for a defense contractor and I heard that they had moved away from Ada to C++ for newer projects like the F-35. I don't think that one went so well.
Interesting that arrowsmithing is endangered, but bowyery isn't.
What sort of arrows are not getting made? (cane, reed, bamboo, wood) using what techniques? Does this include the heads, or is that a separate specialty? (or does smithing mean that this is separate from blacksmithing? Really, any competent blacksmith can knock out any sort of point you want all day long)
What do they use for fletching? (here in the U.S. it's turkey feathers)
Knocks are mostly plastic these days, but a while back I remember seeing some bone knocks which I still regret not buying.
Most trad archers who use wooden arrows end up fletching their own. These dont show up as arrowmakers, but they are. Wooden arrows have to be matched to the bow and the shooter.
If youre not shooting a longbow, its easier and cheaper to shoot modern arrows which are mass produced and dont require the same level of tuning.
Yes, but where are they sourcing the shafts? Of what material? (It's been a while since I saw Port Orford Cedar shafts in bulk in a sporting goods shop)
Apparently the discussion here is limited to commercial viability of crafts?
Is preservation of craft a concern when it has become widespread?
For anyone interested in this subject, the BBC produced a great miniseries called Victorian Farm in which three historians worked on (and lived at) a farm using authentic 19th century tools and techniques. The highlight of the show for me were the frequent artisans and skilled tradespeople who would visit the farm to demonstrate these types of skills. None of the people profiled in this article would be out of place among the guests they had.
I expected Terry English [1] to be on that list, but he wasn't. Very cool anyway of course!
I love the kind of thinking that makes someone switch into a job they know is extinct, from "the outside" (i.e. not being born into it), that is really taking a chance at doing something fun and worthwhile.
I got quite adept at Black and white photo processing and printing. It’s a skill, but better (though slightly different looking) results are yielded with a digital camera and computer. So I’ve kinda accepted that skill can go away and the world will be ok.
Even though we have incendiary weapons, steel and building materials that work for us today, people still wonder about how to make things like Greek fire, Damascus/Wootz steel or Roman concrete. Even if we have better techniques, I do think it's a worthy academic endeavor to at least properly document stuff like this for posterity. If not, someone hundreds of years down the line will look at a painting of a sailboat and might go crazy trying to figure out how to make the sails or something. :)
Also, knowing how to make a glass eye might somehow some way help in some other application where you have to make something out of glass in that particular shape. Or, it might just be fun to try your hand at it :)
Aside from that, knowledge doesn't exist in silos. The silos are our creation to help us sort out the nigh-infinite breadth of knowledge available to us.
There's no telling if sievemaking might incidentally tie into a currently undiscovered mathematical formula that relates to the internal structure of a helpful molecule.
Nonchalantly allowing knowledge to die out universally simply because it doesn't benefit you directly now sets a dangerous precedent for the future and potentially closes doors to humanity's potential.
> There's no telling if sievemaking might incidentally tie into a currently undiscovered mathematical formula that relates to the internal structure of a helpful molecule.
That reminds me of reading somewhere that, during the Apollo program, the engineers couldn't come with a good design for the knee joint of the spacesuit themselves. So they ended copying the design of some preserved medieval armor made hundreds of years ago, and it worked fine.
I don't think this is entirely fair. There are people in the United States who carry on skills that most people consider lost. One marvelously documented one is Dave Engel, wainright and wheelright in Joliot, MT. He has documented his skills in a weekly youtube video for years. There are many others. My wife is an expert in Scandinavian fiber techniques, and teaches weaving, spinning, dying and nalbinding (a Norwegian fiber technique that looks like knitting, but is in fact entirely different and much older). She can make you a sweater, or wool rya (thing the warmest bedcover you can even imagine) from raw wool, straight off the sheep (which she raises, and I shear) and the right pile of weeds (for dyes).
Be the change you want to see mate. There is nothing stopping you from picking up one of these crafts in the US and offering your services to your community.
Time, money and space are all fine limiters and happens to be rife in the US, not to mention other places. Sometimes you can be without one of these (maybe something is cheap to start or needs little space), but you really need all three to do anything meaningful with these.
Also, training. There's a reason why this stuff is passed down through families: It's hard, it's hard to find a teacher, and the amount written in books about most specialized crafts is limited in quality and quantity.
when I was a child in SF Bay Area, there were craftspeople, furniture, print making and litho, special castings, and among some heavy printing press, large scale painting. silver and gold smithing and more. That list is only things I saw with my own eyes. Post-2000 and especially post-covid I would be very surprised to see one percent of those, operating as a self-sustaining small business. Small business continues to close in a hundred categories.
In high cost of living countries, a business needs to make substantially more than its base costs to continue to operate.
Paying living wages is a challenge every startup needs to consider if it wants to scale past a meager existence for its bootstrapped founder.
Startups thrive in low cost of living areas. You see cycles of cheap land -> innovative businesses -> concentration of talent -> economic boom -> expensive land -> globally uncompetitive businesses -> whole industry collapses.
This is what happened to the automotive industry in the mid-west.
you are right and I am seeing that -- however please consider the difference between England-style factory automation with economic booms, versus Florence Italy style high-skill, high value artisans. Near San Francisco and other places historically, the demand for very high value arts and crafts was closer to the latter. Land was never cheap here post-Spanish era.
We see rent as a massive expense for this innovation, but that isn't an inevitability. Consolidated landlords cannot recognize certain advantages that "Ma and Pa" owners will recognize like consistent (albeit lower) payments, tenants who are respectful of the building and grounds, or the fun of supporting a cool business.
Compare that to a place like Japan where the post-war distribution of land and smart zoning continues to cultivate a vibrant local economy, or venerable Italian cities where homes and businesses remain for centuries.
I don't condone decommodification of real estate or other acts of heavy-handed socialism, but there are laws that play against the "little guy" that must be repealed. Admittedly, every approach (including the Japan and Italy examples) has pros and cons, but many of us forget that there are alternatives out there.
We have so many of these —- look at old steam and rail shows and clubs. There are so many weird old things that are kept up by hobbyists and re-enactors. Heck, look at historical villages like Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. Or look at Old Salem in North Carolina.
I suspect youtube is helping to bring this back, I follow some living history channels (after finding Townsends) and a lot of maker channels, and there seems to be an explosion of interest in traditional making.
https://artificialeyes.net/ocularists/iowa/coralville-vbulga...