Archival history
MERL miscellaneous note - 'I gave this elm-wood bowl made by G. W. Lailey to Bride + John Berry as a wedding present... // The maker of this hand-turned elm wood bowl, G. W. Lailey... was said to be the last person in England to carry on the tradition of making treen vessels such as were used for domestic purposes in early times. // Mr Lailey's workshop was a small wooden hut on Bucklebury Common, Berks, where as a schoolgirl I visited him in 1936. He was elderly or old at that time. He said with pride that people from far away, among them foreigners, came to see him at work there. // Mr Lailey's lathe was similar in type to the primitive lathes still used in the 1930s by the chair bodgers who worked from place to place in the beech-woods of the Chiltern Hills making rungs + other turned parts for chairs. The spring on which the action of the lathe depended was a rod or thick sapling, sturdy but to some extent bendable, whose lower end was fixed upright outside the hut. Its upper end came into the hut through an opening in the walls. Fixed to its top was a cord or strap to whose lower end a treadle was attached. // The block of wood to be shaped was fixed between pivots at work-bench level. In installing it on the lathe the cord or strap was looped round some narrow part of the block itself (e.g. a projection, afterwards cut off, on what would become the vessel's base) or round some element holding the block between the pivots: the details of this I do not know. Since the cord, stretched between the top of the rod + the treadle, was taut, it thus turned the block when the treadle was used, the direction of the turn changing as the treadle moved up + down. While the upper surface of the block was turning towards the craftsman he shaped the wood with his chisel. // I remember no more about the lathe, but doubtless it has been described elsewhere. // Mr Laily said that he turned large bowls for a college or colleges at Oxford + confirmed that this was still going on. They were used for washing up silver, to avoid damaging it. There was a set of six elm-wood porridge bowls in the workshop, made to order for a client. Mr Lailey sold me one of them, as well as the present, larger bowl, saying that he would make another to complete the set. I do not remember there being other finished items in the little workshop + there was no suggestion whatever of goods being displayed for sale. // Katharine Fremantle // ... 2002 // [insert] Katharine gave the bowl to her sister Bride as a wedding present when she married John Berry on 20 August 1936. // Margaret Alexander // Bride and John's daughter // 16. Nov. 2004', MERL miscellaneous note – ‘The Craftsman. One of the most famous craftsmen in England was George William Lailey of Bucklebury Common, Berkshire, who for nearly eighty years practiced his craft in a small isolated hut on the common. George Lailey, the eldest of eleven children, started work with his father, William Lailey, who, like his father, was also a bowl-turner, when he was no more than nine years old. William Lailey was a renowned craftsman, who employed others in his workshop. Although many of his bowls were sold locally, in the Reading and Newbury markets, great quantities were also taken to the London stores, a cart-load being taken up at frequent intervals. When his father died, George Lailey took over the family business. During the First World War, all the employees left him and for a while Lailey worked along, but with his mother helping him to saw up elm blocks. After the war he was helped for a short time by a war-wounded brother –in-law who soon gave it up as the work was very hard. Ever since then Lailey worked on his own for he failed to induce any young man to learn the trade. Lailey died in December, 1958, and with him died a tradition that went back for hundreds of years. During his lifetime, the fame of the Bucklebury bowls had spread far and wide; scores of bowls had been sold to London stores and many had gone overseas, especially to America. Lailey’s hut, tools and equipment were presented by his niece to the University of Reading’s Museum of English Rural Life. //Location. George Lailey was the last of a long line of Bucklebury turners, but at one time the unenclosed common with it’s dells and dips, was a great centre of woodland crafts. There were other bowl-turners, there were rake-makers, beesom-makers and many others who drew on the profuse timber growth of the common to make a great variety of products for farm and household use. Indeed the small hamlet where Lailey lived and worked bears the name Turners Green, which is surely an indication of the past importance of wood-turning in the life of the locality. // Raw Materials. Although a great variety of timber may be used for bowl-turning, Lailey was primarily a craftsman in elm. Not only does elm occur widely on Bucklebury Common, and there was therefore a plentiful supply close at hand, but it had another advantage in that elm is a particularly tough wood which does not crack or split easily. Unlike north country turners who use poplar, or Welsh turners who use sycamore, Lailey could cut a number of bowls out of a single block of wood. A succession of bowls are thus cut from one block, one inside the other, with hardly any wastage. In the past, turners were responsible for producing a great variety of turned ware ranging from bowls and trenchers for domestic use, to cheese moulds, cream skimmers, and milking stools. Others were primarily concerned with turning tool-handles, mop-handles, rake-handles, axe-handles and many others. Indeed, until quite recently, there was another turner at Bucklebury who specialised in this category of work. Lailey was, however, a make of decorative turned ware; his main products were bowls and platters, candlesticks and bellows, egg cups and trays, and he never produced and utensils for dairy or farm use. For this reason he used elm, a timber with an attractive and warm rosy-brown colour, whose beauty of grain could be brought out very effectively with polishing. In recent years, most of the elm was obtained from the Hermitage district. // Processes. // 1. The elm after seasoning for five or six years, was sawn up into blocks in the timber store at the back of the workshop. Tools – cross-cut saw, chopping block. // 2. The blocks were next trimmed to a rough half-round shape. Tools – Axe, chopping block, // 3. Turning the bowls. Tools – Mallet, pole-lathe, inside & outside chisels, callipers. // 4. Finishing. Tools & equipment – Draw knife, spoke shave, files, trimming horse, turmeric for dying. // 5. The finished bowls were then stacked in the open air to dry out before selling. // Marketing. Lailey’s workshop was very well-known and scores of visitors from all parts of the country used to visit it during the course of the year. Like his father before him, he was not dependent on this casual trade and for many years some large London stores provided a market for all the bowls he could turn out. // Until the 1930s Lailey had a horse and trap which he used for fetching timber and for taking his bowls to the nearest railway station. During the First World War, when he was exempted from military service, his bowls were much used as ladles in munition factories.’, MERL 'Handwritten catalogue' form – ‘This hut was the workshop of George William Lailey (1869-1958), bowl turner. It stood on the Common in the hamlet of Turner’s Green at Bucklebury, Berkshire (5/432). // The structure consisted of a very rough wooden framework covered on the outside with weather-boarding and patched with corrugated iron. The roof was tiled and the floor appeared to be other earth beneath the deep layer of wood shavings which covered it. // A wooden lean-to with corrugated roof was built against the rear of the hut (5/434). A door on the front of the hut facing west led into the interior and a shuttered window to the right of it provided light for the principal pole lathe inside (5/). Two more shuttered windows in the south wall provided additional light for this lathe and also light for a second lathe which hade been disused for a long period. There was also a door on this side of the lean-to. There were no openings in the north wall the interior if which is shown in 5/. // The hut measured 20’0” x 13’0” in plan and was 12’9” from the ground to the apex of the roof.’
