This page is devoted to just one Fretwork plan, Handicrafts Advanced design No 12 The Lord's Prayer plaque
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To me this plan is the 'Holy Grail' of fretwork designs going back to my days as a young boy. My grandfather was a very skilled fretworker and in the early 1900's when fretwork was a popular hobby he decided to give fretwork classes to interested youngsters in the town of Chipping Norton Oxfordshire England. The 'students' would ask him where they could get supplies which prompted him to open accounts with both Hobbies and Handicrafts to supply the required tools and equipment to them.
As a young lad, I was always a fan of fretwork following my grandfather and my father who was also a very good fretworker. On the wall in my grandfather's bungalow was this wonderful very skilfully cut Lords Prayer panel. Every time I visited I always looked at this piece of work in sheer wonderment, I could not imagine how he managed to cut out such a delicate piece of work which was some 32 inches (812mm) high.
My grandfather passed away in 1968 and the plaque disappeared, none of my family knows what he did with it, possibly he gave it to the kind lady who looked after him in old age. (My grandfather was very badly wounded in WWI on the Somme and still had shrapnel in his body until he passed away.
Ever since my grandfather passed away it was always in my mind to make this plaque myself but without a design sheet it would be impossible, furthermore the chances of getting hold of this plan was most unlikely. The reason being that the plan was last on sale via Handicrafts some 100 years ago, also anyone who made this plaque would have sacrificed the design as it had to be pasted on the wood then cut out. As the years passed by I never forgot about this design but knew I could never get a copy.
In one of the woodworking forums I was a member of some members asked about this plan but no one had ever seen one or knew of any in existence, Many people think it was a Hobbies design but as I explained it was a Handicrafts design. Hobbies did have their own Lord's Prayer Design, the Hobbies version was lovely and had a very ornamental frame but it was a 'mere shadow' of the Handicrafts version .
As I grew older I often thought about the design then in late 1996 I first went on the internet, it was very different then, no Ebay or Facebook or even Google! Eventually Ebay arrived and I managed to buy the odd old Hobbies magazine and a few plans. One day I found an advert on Ebay for a shoebox of old fretwork designs said to consist of some 60 design sheets. I placed my bid and won as no one else placed a bid!
The box arrived and I excitedly opened it up, some of the design sheets were intact but the majority had fallen into A5 size parts where they had been folded originally, I assumed that the pile of designs had been left in a shed in the sun as some of the paper crumbled up at touch. As I searched through the box I was delighted to find all the designs were very old some back to 1899! I carefully removed the parts of the designs keeping them in order. Then amongst them I spotted the word Lord's Prayer and right in front of my eyes was a copy of the elusive design printed in blue ink, I could not believe my eyes, after all these years I had finally got a copy albeit in many pieces.
The incredible thing was that further down in the box I found three more copies of the Lord's Prayer plan, two of them in Green ink. It reminded me of the London bus 'saying' that you don't get a bus for ages then three arrive at once! In all the box contained not 60 designs but well over 100. I was so delighted that I contacted the seller to say thank you and she was really pleased that they had gone to a good home.
I spent many days and evenings joining all the pieces together into complete plans, they were mostly very delicate and some parts were missing where they had been folded. I spent many months joining the plans and scanning them into my PC so that I could store the plans away to prevent further deterioration. Some of the plans were so large that I needed 8 A3 size scans to save them. Once the scanning was done I could concentrate on repairing the missing parts and renovating the plans, but it does take time.
Above and to the right. Showing the damage to the designs where they had been folded, the paper is very fragile and rips and crumbles very easily.
The Lord's Prayer Design sheet.
I have this plan in both the Green and Blue versions.
They are not restored yet, when I have restored them I hope to allow others to download the design to keep it alive so to speak.
Left. A small part of the Blue design not yet fully restored.
Right. A small area of the green version in the process of being restored.#
Both are the same apart from the colour.
In January 1931 this young lady Caroline Heldzinger (left) writes from South Africa That she has completed five Lord's Prayer plaques and is working on two more, amazing considering the complexity of the design. Caroline also says that she only broke two blades when cutting out two of the panels and that was only an accident in praising up Handicraft's saw blades!
The centre image shows the panel cut out by Gwyn Morris age 13 from Swansea.
Far right another panel cut out by a young man. All amazing work .
Many of these panels were made up for church halls etc, they sometimes are for sale on Ebay.
Hobbies Lord's Prayer design.
It's only fair to point out that the Hobbies company also offered a Lord's Prayer design entitled the Lord's Prayer Tablet (Design No 5) it actually appeared in 1898 some thirteen years before the Handicrafts version.
As you can see from the images the plan was Gothic in design and very ornate. It was some 42 inches high and 19 inches wide. (1066mm x 482mm).
In the 1950's Hobbies offered a simplified version with a less elaborate frame and simple lettering - although I would not fancy cutting that lettering out - very tedious!
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