The craft renaissance

As long ago as the 1960s, the poet Edward James was worried that traditional crafts were dying out. Having frittered much of the family fortune he had inherited, aged five, on supporting struggling surrealists (he commissioned the Mae West lips sofa and lobster telephone from a scuffling Dali) and on backing shows starring his actress girlfriends (‘very wealth-consuming,’ he admitted, ‘because invariably they flopped’) then creating an 80-acre sculpture garden in the Sierra Gorda mountains of Mexico, the man described as ‘the last of the great eccentrics’ decided in his late fifties to invest his remaining money in something more sensible. So in 1964 he founded the Edward James Foundation and signed over the cod-baronial family pile, West Dean House in West Sussex, for the creation of a college teaching craft skills.

When West Dean College opened in 1971, all did not go according to its founder’s plan. In competition with state-funded art schools, it failed to attract sufficient students to the full-time courses in stone carving, wood carving and ironwork as James had envisaged, and fell back on craft courses aimed at amateurs. ‘I gave my money to help humanity,’ he grumbled in a 1978 documentary made by his friend George Melly. ‘I didn’t give it to help elderly middle-class couples who are bored of watching television learn how to make corn dollies or bobbin lace.’

Today, along with stone and wood carving and metal work, West Dean College runs degree and diploma courses in clock-making, musical instrument making, ceramics, tapestry, conservation, interior and garden design and fine art. ‘You name it, we do it,’ says principal Francine Norris. The fact that students all have to pay for higher education has levelled the playing field.