TUTTY’S SHOES (1979)
Throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s, David Shaw Smith and his wife Sally captured the intricacy and brilliance of Irish craft in the landmark RTE series, HANDS. Now aged 74, and still filming and archiving craft footage, Shaw Smith, revisits six of the businesses and artisans he filmed in the original series to see how they’ve weathered the last 30 years, focusing on this new generation of craft workers.
PROGRAMME 5 – “The Shoemaker”
David revisits the artisan shoemaker George Tutty in Naas and observes the painstaking craft of the bespoke cobbler.
In 1979, David came to county Kildare to film traditional shoemaker George Tutty and a family business that had been the very ‘sole’ of life in Naas since 1946. David returns, 24 years on, to find the business still thriving in the hands of George Senior’s son George and wife Marian. Incredibly, all the methods and processes of shoemaking that old George devised and perfected are still alive and well today.
Like other artisan handcrafts in Ireland, shoemaking faces the ongoing challenge of finding skilled workers. Kristoff Jurek came to Ireland from Przytkowice near Krakow in Poland fully skilled and with years of experience under his belt and has been working at Tuttys for six years now.
We join him in the workshop as he skilfully cuts the finest leather and performs the time-consuming sculpture: from measurements to 3-dimensional models of the customer’s foot. In a profession where accuracy and precision are everything, we observe the making of a new pair of brogues for David – deftly created by master craftsman Johnny Murray.
IN GOOD HANDS is a six part contemporary documentary series exploring the life and work of traditional Irish craft-workers and how they’ve adapted to the demands of the modern world: from elite saddler-makers, iron workers and cobblers, to bespoke tailors, potters and artisan weavers.
Some, like the Powers, a family of metalworkers from New Ross, are object lessons in entrepreneurial spirit, adapting in the face of competition and cheap imports from abroad. Others, like the Tuttys of Naas are third generation cobblers who have used technical ingenuity to re-invent themselves in the 21st century. And a lucky few, like Nicholas Moss Pottery and Berneys saddle-makers, have prevailed because they are among the best in the world at what they do.
The world of Irish craft has changed a lot in 30 years but, despite the series’ important emphasis on continuity, IN GOOD HANDS is rooted firmly in the present, showing the craft industry as a reflection of Ireland’s changing social and cultural spectrum.
IN GOOD HANDS is entertaining, inspirational, feel-good television for viewers of all ages – bringing new relevance to the hugely popular Hands series.
In Good Hands is a GMarsh TV production for RTÉ
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