PAUL SMITH LAMENTS THE 'DECLINE IN CRAFTSMANSHIP' IN THE UK
Nice interview with Sir Paul Smith by Simon Usborne in The Independent on Monday. Here's a small extract: "I look at this bike (a Mercian) and see something that was handmade in England by a small business," Smith says. "And that's something I mourn – the fact that there are now so few small companies like that. I worry about the pressure young people feel to earn a certain amount of money or to achieve a certain status. To be a stonemason and only to carve as much stone as your hands can manage isn't attractive anymore." Image of early 1980s Mercian catalogue cover from Chris 531 on Flickr