Sydney Free Saddlery

Nigel at Sydney Free can make a saddle that is tailored to the rider and horse. These days, he may only make one a year as customers will opt for an off the peg saddle that might cost half the price. Each hand stitched saddle takes 40 hours to complete. Other time is spent in repairing boots, saddles and leather items.

Customers have included leading equestrian sportsmen and members of the Royal Family. Nigel's craft skills are in danger of being lost in our quest for lower prices. Once such skills are lost, they are hard to rediscover. 

Loco Glass

Circles of bright fire fill a room with heat as the blowers work. From a furnace, hot glass is drawn and the blower steps back, his feet sending odd shards of solid but impossibly hot glass across the floor. The blower roles the glass over a rail and begins to tease glass away from the heat softened core of its parent. Expanding, as the other blower’s lips push air into the tube, slowly the glass expands.

Light catches swirls of colour as the glass rolls, the object takes life as the blowers tease another unique form into existence.

Taking pictures, my body close to the furnace, my head begins to swim. Occasionally warning me, the blowers are mindful of my presence. Reminding me that the glass on the floor is still at 800 degrees Celsius, forcing me to move around them as their patterns of work take them across the room, I continue to see, to make shapes from the light and form. 

Finished work lines the entrance to the workshop. As I leave, I mention the heat. He nods, telling me that sometimes the blowers are overcome by it. For the sake of their art, for the sake of a work of beauty, they graft, close to the furnace.