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    Trades Programs

    Featured Video

  • The Art and Mystery of the Cabinetmaker Crafting a Card Table

    The Art and Mystery of the Cabinetmaker Crafting a Card Table

    In the eighteenth century, master tradesmen and women passed along their skills and techniques "the art and mystery" of their trades to apprentices. With the coming of industrialization many of those skills were lost, but through research, experimentation and practice the tradesmen and women of Colonial Williamsburg have relearned the arts and mysteries of their trades. In this video Colonial Williamsburg Master cabinetmaker Mack Headley shares some of the arts and mysteries of his trade as he creates a reproduction of an eighteenth-century card table.

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  • Silversmith of Williamsburg

    Silversmith of Williamsburg

    A silversmith takes a battered old bowl and a few scraps of silver and fashions a magnificent new coffeepot.

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    The "Silversmith of Williamsburg" is one of an esteemed series of videos that look at the trades programs of Colonial Williamsburg. Modern day craftspersons are trained under a master-apprentice system to use the tools and techniques of the eighteenth century to create 21st century replicas of colonial objects. In this video the silversmith takes a battered old bowl, and a few scraps of silver and fashions a magnificent new coffeepot.





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