WOOL & WAX

Hands across the water…

The HANDS series, filmed in Ireland in the late 70’s and 80’s, captures the final years of traditional rural and urban life in Ireland. Inspired by a sense of urgency to record crafts in their natural surroundings before they disappeared completely, film makers David Shaw Smith and his wife Sally, travelled the length and breadth of Ireland and it’s islands, to document the series of films on traditional Irish crafts and lifestyles, where the emphasis is on the skills of human hands rather than on machines.

This film of boat builder and former eel fisherman, Jimmy Furey (parts 2 and 3 linked below), shows the construction of a Shannon One Design, a wooden clinker-built, eighteen-foot racing dinghy. SOD’s are traditionally built on the shores of Loughs Derg and Ree in Ireland and are unique to the Shannon river.

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELPt_x08Os

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPNePCOZSZo&feature=related