'A must-have for anyone interested in working with straw and an astonishing contribution to the preservation of this endangered craft.' Jay Blades MBE, Co-Chair of Heritage Crafts An engaging makers' guide to the history and craft of straw plaiting, brimming with helpful step-by-step diagrams. Straw plaiting has been used to make accessories from hats and baskets to handbags, trimmings and homewares around the world for centuries. Once employing tens of thousands of people in the UK alone, the craft is now listed as Critically Endangered on Heritage Crafts' Red List. This book aims to change that, drawing on more than 50 previously unpublished patterns and techniques from around the world that will help you to unlock the history and preserve the skills of straw plaiting. For each pattern, follow the step-by-step diagrams and instructions and discover how they were developed whilst learning about materials, tools and preparation. Once familiar with the plaiting techniques – using straw as well as other materials – you will be able to develop your own skills, possibly blending in recycled materials, which are increasingly being used to produce beautiful and unique pieces.

Chronicling the contributions children made towards their families' livelihoods in hard times, this detailed record catalogs the high price children had to pay--sacrificing their health and education--while employed in agriculture, chimney sweeping, straw-plaiting, silk-throwing, papermaking, and brick making in 19th-century Hertfordshire, England. This enlightening history demonstrates that the poor conditions in factories and mills, as well as in household chimneys, contributed to the many diseases and injuries that afflicted these young laborers. While there are examples of innovative manufacturers such as John Dickinson, who built respectable housing for his employees, the overall picture that emerges during this period is one in which Hertfordshire's children arduously struggled to make ends meet.

For all interested in the use or manufacture of colours, and in calico printing, bleaching, etc.

Although perhaps best known today as the home of Vauxhall Motors, Luton's industrial roots run much deeper. Long before it became associated with motor cars, Luton was the centre of ladies' hat production in this country - a success founded upon the earlier regional industry of straw-plaiting. Many surrounding towns and villages fed into the industry and helped to make the region globally renowned. At its peak in the 1930s, the region was producing as many as 70 million hats in a single year; however, it entered a rapid decline following the Second World War from which it never recovered. This has left Luton, Dunstable and a number of other local towns with a challenging inheritance of neglected and decaying fragments of a once vital industry. This book is intended to be an introduction and guide to the area's historical depth and to its distinctive and varied character, seeking to explain the development of the region as the centre of the hatting industry in the south and exploring the lives of the people working there during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The historic links between the surviving building stock and the hatting industry are assessed and the book highlights the significance of the surviving fabric and the potential of the historic environment within future conservation and regeneration plans.