00:00In the bustling tapestry of Britain, where centuries-old traditions blend seamlessly with modern life,
00:05there exists individuals who march to the beat of their own drum.
00:10Meet the inventors, the dreamers and the eccentrics, whose daily lives are anything but conventional,
00:15as we showcase the vibrant eccentricity that colours the landscape of British culture.
00:21Unconventional Brits invites you to step into the worlds of local legends,
00:25celebrating the delightful diversity that makes Britain truly extraordinary.
00:30Coming up this week, Britain's biggest brick collection,
00:37willow sculptures and an artist who paints people's portraits using their own make-up.
00:45Oh, your curls, wild curls.
00:49I don't know what I'm going to get when my model, which is just everyone I know who wears make-up, turns up.
00:57Some people have cases of make-up they've never worn, a lot of people have a lot of reds,
01:03and I think that's interesting because the red never gets used, it's a fantasy, isn't it?
01:08Oh, I'm going to be that glamorous person with the red lipstick.
01:13Nobody wears bright red, I think.
01:15So I don't know what the model will be like or what the medium will be.
01:19It's very exciting.
01:20We've got a model coming this afternoon and we'll just see what comes out.
01:25I love it that you've brought wine.
01:31Well, one has to do things with wine.
01:33Two months ago, a friend in Clear the Rose said,
01:36Margit, would you like to have an exhibition space?
01:38And I said, yes.
01:40Then I thought, oh no, what am I going to fill it with?
01:42I thought, I want to do something different.
01:44What should I do?
01:45What should I do?
01:45And then this idea came up for an exhibition, which I've called All Made Up.
01:50It's an exhibition of portraits of people using not paint or charcoal, but their makeup as a medium.
02:00Originally, the idea came about when my daughter was seven.
02:03She said, oh, draw me, draw me.
02:05And what did I have to hand?
02:07It was this tiny little pink lipstick that she owned.
02:10And I just drew her profile.
02:12And then I thought, while I was doing it, why?
02:15As a seven-year-old, why does she own lipstick?
02:20And then that's how the thoughts started rolling.
02:23But can we have the eyes in it?
02:24If you look out of the window, you can have whatever you want.
02:27It's your photo.
02:28It's your portrait, not mine.
02:29I'm just sitting.
02:33All right.
02:34Certainly bringing up really interesting themes, how you curate yourself to present yourself to the world,
02:40which is very topical of this time, you know, on Instagram,
02:44which profile, which image are you projecting to the world?
02:49But on the other hand, is it actually creating a wall between you?
02:53Are you actually showing that you're vulnerable?
02:55Is it school today, briefly?
02:57She doesn't mean feeling like going to school.
03:00Well, you do it really in the teens.
03:02People are quite delighted to have their portrait painted, I think.
03:07I haven't shown many people yet and really positive reactions so far.
03:12I must say that there is no one style, which is partly to do with the model.
03:18I'm getting a really different sense from each person.
03:21So some of the portraits are really abstract with blocks of colour and others are much more realistic.
03:27It does help that everybody who's posed for me is a friend.
03:34We're just sitting here and I'm drawing and occasionally we chat.
03:37We have a cup of tea.
03:39What a lovely thing to do.
03:41What a lovely way to be together.
03:44I like bronzy things because normally I'm used to just, I put makeup on one other way.
03:49Some of my portraits smell, actually.
03:51Yes, some people have brought perfume.
03:53A little bit more.
03:58Here we are.
04:00Let's see.
04:01You're not quite there yet.
04:03Oh, my goodness me.
04:06I've never seen myself like this.
04:08You've been very kind.
04:10You've made me look younger anyway.
04:12So I love it.
04:23I don't think my life's going to be long enough.
04:26I've got upstairs a studio full of books with ideas.
04:31Yeah.
04:32The next book is going to be called Dogs in Hats.
04:34That's well on the way.
04:36It literally will be about dogs in hats.
04:38Still to come, the man who wanted a single brick for a garden shed doorstop and now has over 4,000 of them.
04:49It's a niche way of saving a part of the Scottish industry of old.
04:54I've been living with these sculptures all last year.
04:59So the orangutan's been looking at me for a long time.
05:02You get to a point when you're making a sculpture, if you can look into their eyes and it causes you to be emotional, I feel like I've cracked it.
05:10And orangutan, if you get close enough and look into his eyes, you could almost speak to him.
05:15And he does make me emotional.
05:17So he's my favourite.
05:19And I miss him, actually.
05:20So, yeah, I do miss him at home.
05:22It started a long time ago.
05:24I used to live in Cornwall, actually.
05:26And I just wanted to do a craft course to pass my time.
05:30And I saw a willow basket class.
05:33And I thought, I'll do it.
05:35And I just was in awe of the fact that I could start off with a bunch of twigs that I thought were just twigs at the time and come home with a basket that I had for years.
05:46I had it for years, put my vegetables in it, put all my stuff in it.
05:50Later on, I could scroll through the Internet and look at images of what and see what other people were doing.
05:55I thought, oh, God, I'd love to have a go.
05:58So I did go on a few more courses, just simple things like a willow pig or, you know, something like that.
06:05And at that point, I couldn't really find how to do these big things.
06:10So I kind of self-taught myself.
06:14Initially, underneath the sculptures is a steel armature.
06:18And I actually went on a welding course a while back.
06:22I thought, I just need the basics of welding.
06:25So they start off with a steel framework, really.
06:29So it's a very simple, like my drawing would be a stick drawing of what you want it to, the shape to be.
06:36And it helps if you've got any awkward shapes like orangutan arms, you need to stay there.
06:42Or if you wanted a sculpture to stay like that, a steel armature helps.
06:47So it starts from there and then ultimately you weave out from that.
06:53So you weave in and build in and build in until you're forming, you know, muscle tone and some sort of form or reality.
07:01Grommet on the scooter.
07:03My boyfriend is an avid scooter fanatic.
07:07So spending so much time in the garage last year, I thought I'll do something that he can get involved with.
07:13And luckily I had his Vespa scooter there too, as a dimension and size comparison.
07:20But who doesn't love Grommet?
07:21So I thought I'd stick Grommet on top of it.
07:24And I love him.
07:25But with the Vespa, say, I did a lot more metal work on the top.
07:30I did use brake shields for the inside of the wheels.
07:34I then wove them together to form the two wheels.
07:38I cut and welded the seats out of metal.
07:42So I did a lot more metal work on the scooter, but it's paid off.
07:49Two hairs boxing with, you know, human life forms as well with the trousers on and the boots.
07:55I just thought it would be a comedy thing.
07:58And I thought if we can put them in the wood, they're just going to look great.
08:02So it's almost a funny thing.
08:03Can you imagine what the fight would look like if it actually happened?
08:06It's very therapeutic because hours just pass by and you don't know where they've gone.
08:13It's a lot of concentration.
08:15Yeah, I kind of get lost in it really.
08:17These things take hours and hours and hours and hours.
08:20So you've just got to take it one bit at a time.
08:22And when you suddenly create a bit of muscle tone that looks right, it spurs you on to do something else.
08:29Or when your sculpture looks back at you and says, hello, possibly, it just spurs you on to keep going.
08:34But it is a very calming, therapeutic thing.
08:37Everybody is totally mesmerised by them, to be honest with you.
08:42They love them, absolutely love them.
08:44We've never had a trail or done anything like this in the grounds on a kind of, you know, something that's going to run for a few months and had so much interest.
08:53And, you know, they're so popular.
08:55When would you see these things in real life unless you went to a zoo or went to where they're from, Sumatra or Africa?
09:01Where would you get to see that?
09:02So although they're just willow sculptures, it does evoke a feeling of, oh, wow, look at that creature, you know.
09:10In between work and everything, it has taken me pretty much the whole year.
09:14And it's been a labour of love.
09:15It's gone on and on.
09:17But I'm so glad that people are getting to enjoy them now.
09:21Now, not many people are saying this, but I love the boxing hares.
09:24And I also like the location down near the lily pond.
09:27But I don't know the way they're just looking at each other.
09:29I don't know.
09:30I think it's great.
09:31Yeah.
09:32But I think also just behind me here is the orangutan in the tree.
09:37And I think that has to be up there as well.
09:40Yeah.
09:41It literally is up there.
09:48My name's Mark Cranston.
09:49I live in Gerber, in the Scottish borders.
09:51This started off as a hobby back in 2010.
09:54My first brick collected was a white hill, which was manufactured just outside Edinburgh.
09:59And 4,000 or so bricks later, the latest addition is the Rossite brick, which is quite a rare brick to find, actually.
10:09So that was donated very recently.
10:10So the idea of this brick collection is it's a niche way of saving a part of Scottish industry of old.
10:19We don't have a brick manufacturing industry these days.
10:22It was once a really, really important industry for Scotland, and we exported bricks all over the world.
10:28One company in particular, manufacturing bricks, actually exported to 120 different countries, and that was just on its own.
10:35So they played an important part in the Industrial Revolution, bricks, particularly the fire bricks, as they were sent all over the world to be used in industries from making glass, making iron and steel, chemicals, you name it.
10:49There's over 4,000 pieces in it.
10:51And I have an associate brick collector, Ian Sederby, who's got an equally big collection.
10:57And between us, there must be at least 6,000 plus items that we could exhibit in a museum, which is the ultimate goal for us.
11:08We feel it's an important collection for Scotland.
11:11There's nothing else like it.
11:12The museums existing at the moment don't have it.
11:14So it needs to be saved.
11:16It needs to be exhibited, because there's a story to tell here that many folks don't know about.
11:21Next week, we'll visit a unique gym where Egyptian belly dance is helping women stay fit well into their 80s.
11:35You're not thinking about anything else, not thinking about family and bills and doing the shopping or work or stress.
11:41You can just switch off from everything, which is something that people don't really think about.
11:46But you notice at the end of the class, everybody's mood's shifted.
