Just a guy making chess pieces.

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I have seen very similar in the souks of Marrakech. They also seem to be able to turn bowls and small hollow forms with next to no equipment and using toes as well as hands. None of the turners that I saw had any limbs missing either!! On a separate but similar line I also saw spinning wheels made entirely from an old bicycle. The skill of these people with very limited tools is quite exceptional.

Mike
 
He was still there doing similar bits when we were there earlier this year, mind you he and his mates do have competition from the workshops outside the souks.
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bosshogg":hgc7k50e said:
Quite awe inspiring really, a man and his skills...bosshogg :)
Yes one of the things I find so enthralling visiting similar cultures, saw beautiful work being turned out by all sorts craftsmen in wood, silver, copper, clay and the like with the most primitive of setups and tools. We saw a housewife obviously giving details to a carpenter making tables and doors on the side of the road one morning whilst awaiting interpreter and entry into a souk bakery, we just by chance saw her taking a small table away from the place later in the day whilst waiting for our taxi to collect us, not a machine or power tool in sight.
 
Maybe we've lost the plot slightly. To see a man creating beautiful objects in a very primitive and understated way, makes me think
most of us have become snobs in terms of the tools and techniques that we use.
 
Put this up earlier this year well worth watching. spend a lot of time in africa lot of guys in similar circumstances no electricity minimum tools but a lot of skill. must put some pics up. did try once but there all too big so i need to reduce them sometime
all the best
rob
 
CHJ":2y2dmyro said:
we just by chance saw her taking a small table away from the place later in the day whilst waiting for our taxi to collect us, not a machine or power tool in sight.

Many years ago, I was working in Kathmandu for a short while.

We needed a rectangular studio table - that is one with a frame and an acoustically transparent cloth-covered top. Here the table tops traditionally are perforated zinc sheet, but nothing like that was obtainable there.

We decided we could stretch a couple of layers of chicken wire over a frame to achieve the same effect, so I went off to the local chippie with an interpreter to explain what we wanted. There was no sign of any sawn timber, only what looked like a firewood pile in the yard. My guy did his best explaining my rough sketch, then burst out laughing, as did the carpenter. I enquired, to be told, "He says he can't understand why you want a table without a top!"

Anyway, as we were leaving, the guy picked up an adze and went out to the wood pile. By the end of the week we had a beautiful hardwood table (don't know the wood), big enough for four people to sit at, true and square. There wasn't a machine tool in sight in the workshop. We covered the top ourselves with fabric bought in the bazaar, and the guy popped back the following week to see it in use.
 
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