* * OAK PIGGINS.
The second example is of a different nature, and is interesting artistically, but not commercially. There is exactly one English workman (he lives on Bucklebury Common, Berkshire) who still carves out of solid wood the sort of milk bowl, with various other apparatus, called, in some places a.piggin. The shallow saucepan-like bowl and its long, solid handle are carved out of one block of wood. A few Welsh workers still carve out of oak broad bands, with interlocking ends, for use in the stead of metal hoops round the containers. It is very
curious that some of the wooden instruments are almost identical in pattern with apparatus made in Switzerland about 3000 B.C. ! Such a craft is merely a quaint survival, though perhaps worth retaining as such. For the moment what concerns me is that real rural crafts, with an industrial meaning, survive and may be properly encouraged.
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