For over seventy years both Hobbies Ltd and Handicrafts Ltd produced thousands of Fretwork designs between them, many extremely elaborate. Hobbies continued with fretwork designs until the early 1960's but by then interest in Fretwork had declined. Many of the early designs were very intricate and I have a great respect for the designers who created these designs without the help of computers and drawing software available today.

Unfortunately very few of the original and unique designs still exist for several reasons. Firstly in the early days photocopiers were not available and most people had little option but to paste the design sheets directly on to the work-piece thus sacrificing the pattern. With simpler designs one could trace around the pattern and using carbon paper transfer the design to the work. With complex patterns, the only practical option was to use the paste method.

Also I imagine that many pattern collections were destroyed during the two world wars possibly as paper was prized for salvage or perhaps relatives sorting out possessions of many young men who never returned from the wars threw out any patterns they found having little interest in saving them. Whatever the reason the early designs are very rare to find and few newly printed ones are available.