Crafting the landscape: the journey of a piece of KSIA
An installation co-created by Sreeni Darigala, Sylvia Darigala, Joe Rattray, and Zoe Mander with the Keswick Museum team, as part of The Sensational Museum pilot project
Audio description of the intervention.
What was the KSIA?
KSIA is an abbreviation of Keswick School of Industrial Art. This craft school taught metalwork and woodcarving to paying pupils in the day and provided free classes to working men and boys in the evenings. It later became known for its high-quality work and became a commercial organisation. This impacted on its original aims, although the school continued to run evening classes for workers in drawing and ‘manual training’ (Rawnsley, no date, quoted in Rawnsley, 2007 : 110-131). Pieces by members of the school are known as KSIA-work and are usually in the arts and crafts style typical of the turn of the 20th century.
Setting up the KSIA
Edith and Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley set up the Keswick School of Industrial Art in 1883.
They were both interested in social issues and the arts and crafts movement. While living in Wray, they began learning metalwork and woodwork, planning to teach others. When they moved to Keswick they decided to do this on a bigger scale. The Rawnsleys set up a committee and hired a teacher to run paying classes in the week and free classes for working men and boys some evenings. As much of the work in Keswick was seasonal, their idea was to provide new skills training during the off-season. Workers would learn a new skill and be able to sell their pieces to earn money. The Rawnsleys also valued connection with the natural world and creating handmade works in a world of increasing mechanisation, and aimed to encourage these values in their pupils.
Edith Rawnsley
Image Description: A sepia photograph of Edith Rawnsley, showing her head and shoulders in an oval mount. Her body is facing right, with her face turned towards the camera. She wears an Edwardian style dress with a high necked lace insert, and he hair is styled on top of her head.
Edith Rawnsley was the driving force behind the KSIA. She was the one who initiated learning crafts in Wray, and she superintended the metal repousse work at the school. She designed most of the pieces the pupils made and chaired the management committee from 1884 until her death in 1916. Edith’s designs focused on the natural world, with some recurring motifs being pomegranates and roses – both shown in this installation.
Alice Wayte wrote of her in 1898:
Hard problems have often been solved by woman’s wit and courage, but it was a difficult question indeed that the Vicar of Crosthwaite’s wife was pondering over that snowy afternoon. She was thinking pitifully about the want and dreariness of their little town of Keswick in the wintertide, when the tourists had all departed, and drivers, boatman, and hotel-helpers were thrown out of employ, while the violent rains of the English Lake District made it often impossible for quarrymen or out-door labourers of any kind to work. No wonder her heart ached as she remembered cottages where the weekly wage failed; and groups of men, idle perforced, standing in groups along the plashy street and only too often drifting into the public house whose fire shone out so temptingly. For shepherds on the lonely farms, too, and lads in the shops and pencil-mills, the winter evenings were so long and Keswick had no sort of Club room or Cocoa house or Free Library to furnish wholesome entertainment.
What could she do to help them? How could some kind of remunerative employment be given to eke out the scanty earnings and cheer the dullness of the dark northern nights? The Keswick School of Industrial Arts, the pleasant building of grey stone that stands to-day beside the Greta, is the practical answer to her questionings… (Wayte, 1898 quoted in Bruce, 2001: 29-32).
Why copper?
KSIA pieces are often associated with copper, as well as copper alloys like the brass plate in this installation. While local copper was not used in KSIA pieces, the Rawnsleys were inspired by the history of copper mining and smithing in the area during Elizabethan times. Hardwicke saw the KSIA as part of this place-based craft tradition, and wrote of the woodwork:
… [Keswick] was a Viking town. Town of the wyke of Ketel the Dane; and these Vikings were living here still, with probably the same aptitude for wood-carving and wood-shaping, and with that same love of ornament that their forefathers had brought with them, who came with Ingolf and Thorolf from over the sea,—supplemented, as I suppose, by the love of it that the German Colony of miners in the days of Queen Elizabeth had in their hearts. (Rawnsley, 1902 quoted Bruce, 2002: p.27-28)
What is repoussé?
Image Description: Black and white drawing, possibly charcoal, of Jeremiah Richardson, a KSIA worker, in the Parish rooms where the KSIA had its school. In his right hand he is holding a hammer, poised to strike the piece of metal he is steadying against a workbench stand.
Image Description: Black and white photograph showing a close up of someone’s hands while working on a piece of repoussé. In their right hand they hold a hammer an in their left they hold a small metal chisel against a piece of metal plate. To the right of the plate is a container holding many different metal chisels.
Repoussé work is like embossing. Workers hammer a design into the back, creating a raised relief on the front. Often the KSIA pieces have also been chased, which is a technique where workers hammer on the front of a piece. KSIA workers would often use repoussé for the bulk of the design then chase details into the front. Click this link to watch a video of repoussé and chasing work.
Bibliography
Bruce, Ian (2001). The Loving Eye and Skilful Hand, Carlisle: Bookcase.
Rawnsley, Edith (no date). MS, private collection.
Rawnsley, H. D. (1902). Ruskin and the English Lakes, Glasgow: James Maclehose & Sons.
Rawnsley, Rosalind (2007). ‘Edith Rawnsley (1845 – 1916)’, in Keswick Characters, Volume 2, Carlisle: Bookcase.
Wayte, Alice (1898). Typescript account of the school dated 1898; published in The Home Friend and subsequently published in booklet form.