Basic Concept
Danish society has undergone major structural changes this century, including in production. The number of primary producers and small independent tradesmen’s production units has been considerably reduced, some forms of production have been abandoned entirely and others have changed so much that the skills and practices, and the framework within which they worked, have disappeared or changed to the extent where one can say that many a century-old cultural web is in rapid dissolution.
Throughout the centuries, tradesmen have reshaped natural products to articles of use and tools. The tradesman learned his trade from his master, who might even be his father, and the special expertise applying to precisely his trade was passed on from generation to generation, each in turn accumulating a body of special knowledge of materials, products and tools: a knowledge which is no longer required in our modern specialised production. At the same time, the tradesman’s work was woven into his private and social life, forming a particular lifestyle which was no longer able to survive the impact of modern systems of production.
Many elderly people who grew up in villages have clear memories of the village as a place where numerous trades flourished and provided the basis of many families’ lives. As late as the early 1950s our villages still functioned as broadly composite economic units, and the rural trades also flourished, still including forms of production with roots extending far back, but which had adapted well to the economic production of the rural co-operative society, while simultaneously, new kinds of production skills had quietly begun to penetrate into the rural trades as the rural population gradually changed its lifestyle in step with the population as a whole.
Rural trades were never static, however, but constantly evolving to adapt to the society for which the tradesman was making his products and providing his services. The rural tradesman of the 18th century made one kind of tool, while the production of a modern smithy’s or carpenter’s workshop is far more specialised and focused on certain products intended for sale in a bigger market. Such modern production forms, however, also grew out of the old rural trades.
Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum and the Rural Trades
In the 1960s, Hjerl Hede Open Air Museum began the construction of a trades section for rural trades.
The section now includes the shops of a wheelwright, a coach builder, a cooper, a rope maker, a shoemaker, a clog maker, a printing office, and a smithy. In addition, the Museum has collected several workshops which are currently in storage. These include a turner, a pipe maker, a slaughterhouse with smokehouse, a potter’s workshop with kiln, and the workshops of a carpenter and a saddler/harness maker/upholsterer.
The Museum plans to add another three or four trades to its collection to enable Hjerl Hede to show a broad and comprehensive picture of Danish rural trades.
Dissemination of heritage trades: preservation of the manual tradition in an authentic historical framework
We believe that dissemination through working displays, which is a tradition at Hjerl Hede, gives us the best possible conditions for disseminating the rural heritage trades in an excellent and interesting manner. The Museum began to forge links with the relevant trade organisations when establishing the workshops now on display. Manning the workshops every summer is also a matter for joint co-operation with the organisations.
For dissemination of cultural values to succeed, it is vital to have the right people in the workshops.
The workshops are manned by skilled tradesmen and we stress that the people we select must not only be fully qualified within their trade, they must also have retained the “knack” to be able to ensure that the Museum’s many visitors really do meet the “master in his workshop”.
It is, however, becoming more and more difficult to find tradesmen with the requisite skills and practice, and a major obligation therefore rests on museums to document the many different work processes over time and, if possible, to train new apprentices in these old trades.
Such training would, however, require that the trainees be attached to the museum as permanent employees, or that the museum guarantee that the products made can be sold in sufficient quantities and at a sufficiently high price. This latter point may, however, be doubtful, as one of the main reasons why a trade is dying out must surely be that market for its products is too small to support its continued existence.
A combination of demonstration and production is, however, an obvious possibility. The Museum plans to let the Centre for Rural Trades appoint some of the tradesmen with whom the Museum has already established good contacts, let them train new people, and allow them to accept outside orders. According to the plan, about 1/3 of the working time must be spent on training and the retraining of new people, another 1/3 on dissemination of knowledge and demonstrations, and the last 1/3 on production.
The Museum’s old workshops are only used during the summer months and are not heated, so other workshops must be fitted out for use in the winter months, and a small number of more “modern” machines and tools must be purchased. It is intended as part of this project to construct modern workshops outside the Museum, where work can proceed all year round and where training and retraining can take place. The Museum’s old workshops will continue to be used for demonstrations when manned for live displays.
An example of such a combination of demonstration and production which has already proved its viability at Hjerl Hede is the preparation of hand-hewn timber, split wood and straw rope. Hjerl Hede makes products for other museums for more than DKK 100,000 annually. We have also made hand-forged fittings, brackets and tiles etc. for building restorations and we have made mill wings and roofing shingles to order. The products are made during the working display periods.
This heritage production can readily be expanded when the right workshop facilities have been provided, and Hjerl Hede will then be the “place to go” to have one’s horse-drawn vehicles and cart wheels made, one’s coach seat upholstered or horse collar repaired. And this will be the place where one can have specially made hand-forged builders’ hardware made for restoration projects or obtain hand-hewn timber and block-sawn timber for restoration tasks, e.g. for half-timber houses. Many Danish horse-drawn vehicles are currently repaired abroad because we lack tradesmen with the requisite experience in Denmark. This is one of the problems which Hjerl Hede’s training programme will be able to redress.
The objective is to establish a centre of competence and knowledge for rural trades and, through training and retraining, to preserve the old Danish trade traditions, skills and practices in order to allow the public to experience these trades in authentic surroundings.
Such a training programme is important and crucial if the Museum’s many visitors are to continue to have the opportunity in the future of experiencing the old Danish trades at a sufficiently high level.
The various tradesmen must participate in manning the Museum’s workshops during the summer period, and for the rest of the year engage in commercial production as well as taking part in the Museum’s educational services which allow schools and other groups to take an active part in the work and to learn about the proud traditions of Danish trades.
The active modern workshops, where fully trained and highly qualified tradesmen participate in training and production, will also contribute to strengthening the Museum’s position, thus ensuring that the present live displays can continue, expand and improve.
Training at several levels
The Centre of Competence for Rural Trades will be the forum for the proper training of new tradesmen wanting to apply their trade on a commercial basis.
The qualifying course will proceed in close collaboration with technical colleges, which will be responsible for parts of the theoretical education. The intention is, for example, that the theoretical component should include subjects such as materials, tools, history of styles and preservation as well as the ordinary mandatory subjects.
The practical component of the course will be in the Centre of Competence for Rural Trades, under the guidance of the fully qualified master tradesmen. Part of the course will also take place at the County Conservation Centre, where trainees will learn to assess the extent of repairs required in the restoration of museum objects, a task which will inevitably become part of their work.
The qualifying course is intended to be open to all, including participants from other countries, e.g. the Nordic countries and the EU.
Retraining and further training of practising tradesmen
The Centre of Competence for Rural Trades will also be the venue for the retraining and further training of fully qualified tradesmen desiring a short or more extensive course in order to improve their skills and practices. This could, for example, be tradesmen about to take part in the restoration of cultural heritage buildings or tradesmen wishing to specialise within their trade.
Traditional trade courses for people in early retirement and the disabled
The Centre of Competence for Rural Trades can also become a highly attractive venue for senior citizens who have left the job market because the pace became too punishing, but who would still like to contribute their skills and abilities, albeit at a slower pace. It would also be very valuable for the Centre to have this potentially rich resource of life experience and overlooked talents to draw upon, and it would be just as valuable for many such people to be able to be part of a community and to feel they had something useful to contribute.
Schoolchildren
The Competence Centre for Rural Trades will also be part of the Museum’s educational facilities and services, where schoolchildren at all class levels may learn about the proud traditions of the old Danish trades and, in certain periods of the year, try their own hands on the various materials.
Project Venues
1. Authentic workshops in the Museum
The various workshops will be fitted out in authentic buildings already standing in the Open Air Museum, or which will be moved to the Museum to become an integral part of the Old Village along with the other workshops.
The tradesmen will work here during the summer months when the Museum is populated. The use of authentic comprehensive environments creates unique opportunities for providing a holistic experience for the public. To step through the door into a real house with a genuine interior and a master tradesman skilled in his work creates that sense of a genuine experience which we want our visitors to have.
2. Modern workshops outside the Museum (the Centre of Competence)
Modern workshops will be built with heating and in compliance with current statutory workshop requirements.
This is where the tradesmen will work in the winter months on commercial production, demonstrations and teaching. The work to be performed in the authentic workshops during the live displays in the summer months will also be prepared here.
The modern workshops will generally not be open to visitors.
3. The Welcome Centre
The Welcome Centre is the Museum’s new main entrance, with introductory displays and information on Museum activities, its layout and collections.
The Welcome Centre will also contain a range of public facilities, including toilets, kiosks, an information desk, and room for live temporary displays associated with trades or the ancillary activities of seasonal work. The public will also find the rural tradesman at work here in the winter months, when the authentic workshops cannot be used.
4. Teaching rooms adjacent to or as part of the Centre of Competence
Teaching rooms and facilities will be constructed for course work and training.
The rooms will be made available to the Museum’s dissemination services and to the various trade groups in connection, for example, with training and retraining programmes.
It is further intended that the Museum’s tradesmen will take part in the training of e.g. restoration technicians, for which there is currently a growing need.
|
