- 19/06/2025
We meet a Harp maker, living in Shropshire and working there and just across the border near Church Stoke too. He is one of only four Harp makers that are left. We call in to find out more about his trade.
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00:00Hello sir, what's your name? John Letcher. John, you've got quite an unusual trade, you
00:07don't come across many press photographers, but you definitely don't come across many
00:10heartmakers. No, heartmakers are a very small breed, there's only probably about four or
00:16five professional heartmakers I think in Britain really. Wow. I'm semi-retired, whatever that
00:24means, which means probably I do more things than I used to, and in theory I wasn't. But
00:30yeah, I make harps. So your story goes back to being a boat builder, kind of up by the
00:38Norfolk Broads where you grew up. Indeed, that's right. Originally I was trained as a boat builder
00:43and I still do some boat building, obviously living in the middle of the country, I don't
00:49do it here, and I go to a boatyard in the Western Highlands of Scotland, four or five
00:54times a year, and do some there. But about thirty years ago I decided to become, really
01:02spend most of my time making musical instruments. I've done it since I first became a boat builder,
01:10but more for my own amusement in a way, to make myself instruments called a hammer dulcimer.
01:19Thirty-odd years ago I wanted to become a professional instrument maker, and few people have even
01:25heard of a dulcimer, and they have heard of a harp. So that was one reason that I started
01:31to make harps. The other two reasons really were first of all I loved the sound of harps.
01:37I used to listen to a lot of music on harps, traditional harps. But the other thing is the shape of them.
01:46One problem with dulcimers is that they're always a trapezoid shape, you know like a triangle with a
01:54point cut off, and there's nothing really you can do about that. But harps are a much more
02:01sinuous sculptural shape, and it kind of appealed to me in a way too as a boat builder, because both of
02:10them are similar in a way because they both are partly artistic and partly very technical woodwork,
02:19things that really have to work and have a lot of strain in them. But also they have a lot of curves,
02:26and so that was really one of the reasons why I wanted to make harps.
02:31So how do you, like we said there's not many people that make harps, so how do you go about
02:37learning how to make a harp?
02:38Well that's tricky, because really there isn't anywhere at the moment that you can learn to make
02:45a harp. I was already making instruments as I say, and I'd been trained in very technical woodwork as a
02:53boat builder. I also worked for a while for a joiner and a cabinet maker, and so that
03:00extended some of my skills again to things like veneering. But really in the end it's
03:09kind of a matter of teaching yourself. I found a book that had been published in the 1970s that
03:16gave you some basic ideas about proportions and so on. But really after that it was a matter of trial
03:23and error, and just gradually edging towards the kind of things I make now.
03:29So your first attempt at a harp, how did that turn out?
03:33They were surprisingly good. It was a bit alarming when it started to fall apart.
03:41You learn a lot like that. But no, I mean otherwise I was quite pleased with it. But that,
03:49it's a good point because when I first became a harp maker, it was a long time, years,
03:55before I wanted to allow myself to make very many of them professionally. Because it's not only a
04:03matter of how they are today, it's how they're going to be in five years' time. Because one of the
04:10difficulties, as I say, harps are very odd things. All the strain is on one side of the frame.
04:16And so there's a lot of tension in a harp. And so the question is, it's okay today, but will it
04:25continue to be okay? And so I really wanted to wait until I could really reassure myself that what
04:34I was making was going to last. It was sound enough. So that was okay. You know, it just meant edging my
04:40way towards it gradually.
04:42So you wanted to make sure that the only thing pinging and bending was the strings,
04:46not the wood.
04:48Exactly. And I mean, you know, even then, you find sometimes you can make a mistake.
04:54One, I made a series of five quite small harps for one of the local harp teachers for workshops.
05:02And they were absolutely fine. They were slightly smaller than my normal 34 string ones.
05:09And the idea of them was that they'd have a special sliding stand that I invented
05:14that would allow her to set them up at different heights for little kids or adults and so on.
05:20And they worked really well. But I made five of them identical out of the same wood. And four of them
05:27were fine. And one of them just bent and kept bending and kept bending until in the end,
05:34I had to put a new frame on it. So even the same wood can be a problem sometimes. You can't be sure.
05:41Every piece of wood is different. And that's one thing that makes it really interesting. But
05:46you know, you do have to be careful.
05:48So how do people, well, actually, how many harps do you think you've made?
05:53I don't know. It's very hard to tell, but it's not a huge number. I think maybe a hundred
06:00odd harps, maybe that's all. Because I also make dulcimers and I also make, and I do boat building.
06:09And in a way, it was a choice I made a long time ago because I could have become an absolute full-time
06:18heartmaker. There wouldn't have been any problem about finding enough work. But it would change it
06:24considerably. It kind of drive me along, I felt, in a way that I didn't really want to be driven.
06:30It wasn't that kind of thing. And I felt that I'd end up having to make compromises, which I didn't
06:36want to make. So yeah, not a huge number, maybe a hundred, hundred and twenty, maybe more. It's hard to tell.
06:44So how would people know it's one of your harps?
06:50Well, that's a good point. I can actually show you if I can dodge around here for a moment.
06:57It's something that I haven't got at the moment on any of my finished runs, but I call my
07:03silver spear harps and that's my little logo. It's made of solid silver and I attach it to the
07:11front of each one of my harps. And the name originally came, it's the name of an Irish tune.
07:19And I chose it because years and years ago when I was young and I was just finding all sorts of
07:28different routes into music, one of the very first albums that I found that showed me how amazing
07:36Irish music in particular, but traditional music generally can be, was by a chap called
07:42Finbar Fury, an Irish guy who's a tinker actually, but a wonderful, wonderful musician.
07:48And he was playing on the Irish pipes. And one of the, the tune that really absolutely blew me away,
07:56is the expression really, was this tune called The Silver Spear. And it's one of those tunes,
08:03everyone has them. Even now talking about it, literally makes shivers down my back. There's
08:09just something about it. It was absolutely electrifying. So that was what I used as my kind of trade name.
08:17So in terms of harps, do you make a harp and then you put it out in the world to sell it,
08:23or do people come to you and order a specific harp?
08:26Well that's changed really. Well it used to be a real mixture. I used to make, obviously I got people
08:36who came to me wanting harps and very often what I'd do is when I had a commission or two,
08:42I'd make several. So I'd make some for stock. One reason is because with woodwork, although a lot of harp
08:52making in particular is hand work, the same as it is with boat building, some of it, quite a lot of it is
08:58machine work. And machine work not in the mechanical sense where you'll stand next to the machine churning
09:05things out. It's still, you're using the machine in a way that Ray a kind of craftsman many years ago
09:13would have used a hand tool. But what takes the time of setting the machine up to use it precisely?
09:20And very often, so making one of these for instance, this is the frame called the string arm,
09:30that's the bit at the top of the harp, the strings are attached to that, they go down there,
09:35and it's attached to the sandbox which is this at the bottom there, and then there's one of these
09:42pieces, a four pillar that comes down. And so I make these on a thing called a spindle molder and I have
09:48a, the first thing really is that you put your pattern on a piece of wood and you work out where
09:58you're going to get the piece from and you cut it out roughly and then you would attach that to your
10:06roughly cut out piece which is one of those and then you use the spindle molder to give you
10:11that runs around this and gives you an exact copy. And it's a way of making sure that you get something
10:19exact every time. And it's important because this is what gives me the actual joints that give me the
10:29shape and the connection and so on. All the time what you're doing, although craftsmanship is a funny
10:35thing because you, although people will certainly pay a bit extra for something that's unique and handmade
10:44and they do, at the same time you always do have to have one eye on the clock because you are competing to
10:52some extent with factory made things and so there's only so much that extra time you can afford to spend.
11:00So it's an interesting thing because you're not only, if you're ever going to make a living as a
11:07professional at anything, any kind of craftsmanship, you not only have to make the thing very well but
11:14you have to be quick enough. You do have to find ways where you can of doing something quite quickly and
11:21that then allows you to have that extra bit of time for another stage that makes it really unique.
11:28So if people discover you, what do they do then? Do they come and visit you? Is that how it works?
11:37I'm going off on a tangent in the usual way. Yeah, sorry, I remember what I asked.
11:44Yeah, well what happens is yes, I've got a website and so people find me on the internet
11:53and they will come and try a harp out. I keep them at the house because I don't have anywhere here for
12:00finished instruments. So here we have the finished item then John. It's beautiful, love it. What's this made of then?
12:07Well this particular one is American Cherry. I use about four different words really, one
12:15Ash, Sycamore, American Cherry and Walnut. All of them are strong obviously and they also give a good
12:23sound but they also look really nice in their own way. One of my favourite ones is the Cherry and
12:31although most of the sound of a harp really is created by the sandbox and the soundboard,
12:37the wood that you make them from has an effect as well and it's a very subtle effect but it's very
12:42definite. So a Walnut one for instance will have a different kind of voice really to a Cherry one or an Ash.
12:50And we were having a little chat off camera, there's a reason that harps are more affordable now than
12:58they once were and it's partly down to this little device you've got in your hand. That's right.
13:02What's it called? Well most people tend to think, when they think of a harp they imagine on these very
13:08big concert harps that have pedals to change the key of the strings. That was developed 150 years ago so
13:19that people in orchestras could change the key very quickly but it made harps very very expensive and
13:27at one time they used to be very much a people's instrument you'd get them everywhere but then they
13:33went out of favour. But round about in the 1970s people came up with an early version of this which
13:40is called a semitone lever and basically all it does you fasten one on the side of the harp next to each
13:48string one on each string and when you turn it on it it's put in exactly the right place so that when
13:58it's on the it raises the string by the note by a semitone and that means that you can play in any key
14:06but it's a far less expensive kind of thing than a concert harp would be. So really since the 1970s it's
14:16made all the difference um so that these are now a kind of people's instrument again. But I also used to
14:25go to wood fairs and I then there's uh one exhibition International Heart Festival in Edinburgh over a year
14:33that I used to go to I don't do for probably 20 years but Covid unfortunately knocked that on the head and
14:41although they have restarted it it's not in the same venue and it's not really I think quite what it was
14:49and I am and anyway as I say I'm supposed to be semi-retired so I don't really do that now but why the other
14:57thing that the pandemic did to me though was that as I say I used to have a number of harps in stock of the
15:05kind that I knew I'd sell most off because I don't like people have to wait too long you know there's
15:11a limit it's reasonable to wait for a period but but you don't wait too long but these what happened
15:17during the pandemic was that I couldn't get to the workshop um and then I couldn't get materials so
15:25I found myself selling all the harps that I had and I've never really caught up so now I always make them
15:31all on commission yeah and what's the furthest you've had someone traveling to come and visit you
15:37to purchase a heart oh that's hard to say I mean all over Britain but I but I do I've sold them all
15:45over the place I've um had them in America um Singapore lots on the continent um I've had an agent in the
15:55Netherlands for many years and they take quite a lot of my harps so really a lot of they're they're
16:01kind of all over the place so we think there's about four heart makers in Great Britain let's fast
16:08forward 20 30 years how many heart makers are we going to have then that's a very good question and
16:14it's a worry it's a worry to all of us um finding people take over these trades is a worry for everyone
16:24I know it's a problem for boat building because about I was saying that I work on a boat yard
16:30up in the western highlands and I mean I'm 71 nearly and um all the main craftsmen there are basically
16:38about the same age we should have retired quite a few years ago the chief engineer um virtually all
16:44and some are much older and it's mad and you know we we joke sometimes about them having to buy a load of
16:52corporate Zimmer frames to get us around the boat yard but it is very difficult because one of the
16:59problems is that by definition all craft workshops tend to be very small so you tend not to be big
17:06enough to have um apprentices one thing that's made a huge difference and something that really helped me
17:14actually is an organization called Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust and that was set up quite a number of
17:21years ago um to commemorate um the queen mother but also to help to provide training in traditional crafts
17:32and it's absolutely brilliant it's been going i think for 30 years and they helped me because i was already
17:40making harps and dulcifers um at that point but as a self-taught maker i felt like there were things that i
17:49didn't know that i'd like to know and they gave me enough funding to attend um london go to the
17:57university we've got musical instrument technology or used to they're not there anymore um a technology
18:04course and i was was able to get some useful information but yeah it's a problem the the only thing
18:13one thing that is quite good is that a friend of mine who's a very good heart maker i think the best
18:19small heart maker i think in the world he lives just south of edinburgh um he is currently trying to
18:26get funding to put together a heart makers um college in a way where he will be teaching two people at a
18:35time um to become heart makers and um this is a brilliant idea because i've talked to him many many times
18:43we it's a subject that we always come back to how is this thing going to keep going because obviously
18:49it would be tragic if in a few years time all the traditional hearts that were being used for
18:56traditional music in britain all came from china or america or italy um that would be very very sad
19:05even if the parts were very good ones um it you feel that things like that should should have a
19:13root here i have a feeling that i'm the only heart maker i mean my workshop is just over the border in
19:20wales here and and i think i'm now the only heart maker actually left in wales which is i i mean you
19:27know in theory full time but hopefully that that might not last very long but i mean it's a very
19:35sad state of affairs yes it's a way yeah well thank you for inviting us into the world of um
19:42your hops and um it's fascinating thank you sir okay
19:58so
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