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4810 Educators providing Courses

Precious Metals Workshop

precious metals workshop

Edinburgh

Established in 2010 by Goldsmith Ian Nicholson [http://www.thisisian.com/] and located in Edinburgh’s creative space Out of the Blue [http://www.outoftheblue.org.uk/], the Precious Metals Workshop (PMW) is Edinburgh’s leading independent workshop for goldsmiths, silversmiths, jewellers and hobbyists. We run courses [https://www.preciousmetalsworkshop.com/courses] for all levels of skills and provide access to a large range of tools and facilities necessary to create jewellery. We are a safe space for creative minds, home to a family of makers [https://www.preciousmetalsworkshop.com/jewellers] who share their knowledge and skills while inspiring each other and benefiting from an artisan vibe within the workshop. We operate several programs based on helping people start their own jewellery careers, providing a free bench and facilities access as well as weekly business mentoring. See our Inclusions [https://www.preciousmetalsworkshop.com/inclusions] page for further information on this. At the PMW we are very aware of our supply chains. There is continued exploitation in the mining of metals and gems and we are proud to support two third-world women’s mining groups. Please see our Facets [https://www.preciousmetalsworkshop.com/facets] page for further information. The Precious Metals Workshop is a community of makers, where we share our knowledge, skills and inspire each other as creative individuals. We provide a range of specialised equipment including soldering stations suitable for casting, pickling tanks, wheel and barrel polishers, ultrasonic tank, bubble etching tanks for copper and silver, fly press, ring stretchers, stone setting tools, heavy duty vices, bench drills, hammering stumps, silversmithing hammers, draw bench and plates, metal guillotine, rolling mill, large and small kilns. We have an extensive collection of resource books on techniques and practices to support both our emerging and established makers.

Oak And Smoke Tannery

oak and smoke tannery

Moretonhampstead

Oak and Smoke Tannery is dedicated to Natural Tanning and Traditional Leatherwork. Oak and Smoke Tannery is made up of Jane Robertson and Jessie Watson Brown. We are two individuals with a passion for the wildness in nature and the skills that enable us to live closely to the earth. Through this journey… we discovered tanning! The tanning processes we practise use only natural ingredients – locally harvested tree barks such as Oak and Willow, oils and Smoke. We tan and sell leather, rawhide and unique leather handcrafts. The Heritage Crafts association has categorised tanning as ‘critically endangered’ as a craft because there are so few people practising it and even less teaching it. We intend to demystify the art of tanning by teaching simple methods, with simple tools. This is how we were taught and how we still practise. We learned tanning in Washington State in America and more recently from traditional tanners in Scandinavia.  We love the discovery of learning how different skins and processes work, and seeing the alchemical change that they go through during the tanning process. When we first returned from America lots of people were asking us to teach them tanning so we set up our first hide camp. The first year was small with a group of friends, and it was a booming success. Since then its grown and grown every year and now we run numerous camps every year, as well as guest teaching on other courses and offering individual tuition. All this as well as of course tanning leather ourselves on Dartmoor and in Mid Wales. We would love to see tanning become normal in peoples homes, as it once would have been. Most of the UK's domestic animal skins get exported to other countries or tanned in chemically intensive commercial tanneries, and most wild animal skins are wasted - its heart breaking! We have very high standards when it comes to ethics and the environment [https://www.oakandsmoketannery.co.uk/ethics]. All our skins are by-products of farming and hunting, otherwise discarded.