New book celebrates everyday repairs in the South West

The book documents the work of Dr Caitlin DeSilvey, a Senior Lecturer and member of the University’s Environment and Sustainability Institute (ESI), and Dr James Ryan, Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural Geography, who were joined on the project by local designer and photographer Steven Bond.

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in 2010, the Small is Beautiful? research project used visual methods to explore the South West’s small-scale repair industries, including cobblers, tailors, blacksmiths and bookbinders. The project investigated the aesthetics of the workplaces and their place in modern-day life. The book documents the project in a series of photographs and short essays featuring twenty regional businesses.

Dr DeSilvey said: “Through this project we met some remarkable people, who were unfailingly generous in sharing their knowledge and their workplaces with us. This book shares the spirit of the research with a broader audience, and Steven's photographs provide a fascinating record of the repair and mending trades in the region.”

In the book prologue, Professor Sarah Pink from the University of Loughborough comments: “The photographs in this book are sensorially rich. They take us right to the surfaces and forms of objects that have been repaired, and show us the marks on them that, if they could speak, would narrate their stories. The photographs invite us to participate for a moment in these stories and to imagine histories and futures of making and repair”.

During the research, the project held exhibitions at the Old Press Gallery in St Austell, the University’s Exeter Campus, the Bridport Arts Centre and the South West Image Bank (SWIB) in Plymouth. The team has also shared their work on a website: Celebration of Repair. 

Copies of Visible Mending: Everyday Repairs in the South West are available in regional Waterstones branches and can be ordered from the Uniformbooks website.