Sixteen new crafts have been added to the ‘critically endangered’ category of the Heritage Crafts Association’s Red List of Endangered Crafts. Skills such as withy crab pot making, millwrighting and commercial handmade paper making are now at serious risk of dying out in the next generation.
They join 20 other critically endangered crafts, which include five – bell founding, flute making, scissor making, tinsmithing and watch making – which have been reclassified as being at a higher level of risk than when the research was first published in 2017.
Daniel Carpenter, who led the research on behalf of the Heritage Crafts Association, has remarked: “The Red List of Endangered Crafts is vital in drawing out attention to parts of our shared cultural heritage we are at greatest risk of losing […] at the Heritage Crafts Association we believe that the country’s skills and practices can be just as valuable as its historic artefacts and monuments”.