Crafts & Industries

Evidence of local skills in producing flint and chert artefacts and pottery are evident in the Prehistoric period, as well as the acquisition of high-quality objects reflecting high levels of specialist craft skills.

From the Roman period the most exciting discovery at Exeter has been the excavation of one end of the legionary workshop in which metal goods were made (and perhaps repaired) for the legionary soldiers. Other industrial activities represented include pottery making; the production of tiles for buildings, the quarrying of stone, and other types of metalworking, even including goldworking.

The archaeological finds from late Saxon and Norman Exeter illustrate a wide range of activities going on side-by-side in the centre of the city. They include the working of textiles and leather, metalworking, butchering and hornworking. Away from the city centre, an Anglo-Saxon pottery kiln produced ceramics of very high quality. The ambitious Norman programme of new churches and castles must have greatly developed the building industry; by the late 12th century craftsmen working locally were achieving some really accomplished works alongside more barbarous output.

Later Medieval and Tudor Exeter supplied a wide region of Devon and Somerset with manufactured goods. The work of specialist craftsmen whose work is to be seen in the churches of Devon and beyond is illustrated in the museum by the produce of the bellfounders and glass-makers of the city. Among the building trades, the products of the city’s wood-carvers, stonemasons, plasterworkers are well represented in the collections.

Surprisingly difficult to recognise, however, is any of the cloth which formed the principal late medieval land early modern output of the city. Traces of cloth production include the excavated remains of dyers’ vats.

From the high days of the late Stuart and Georgian city it is the minor trades which are most strikingly represented: clay pipe makers, pewterers, glass-blowers, clockmakers and sculptors.

Following the collapse of the cloth trade in late Georgian days, the museum collection represents the works of a selection of Victorian craftsmen: a grainer, the architectural sculpting business and potters. In showing off the skills of Victorian craftsmen the museum is itself a model, being a major commission of the leading local architectural practices of the day.

From the 20th century we have perhaps not been as active in collecting as we might have been but the activities of an Exeter iron foundry, and the output of a number of local artists and craftspeople of the recent past, are represented.