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Part 2: Vocational training

The essence of craft is the relationship between the master and the apprentice. This model of training has remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. Knowledge necessary for craft professions is gained through practice. You learn the tricks of the trade through apprenticeship at a workshop of a more experienced craftsman. The people presented at the exhibition have also followed this path.

Nowadays journeyman and master exams, that is the exams for successive degrees of specialisation, are organised by the chambers of crafts, which also initiate activities integrating the community.

Keeping in touch with other craftsmen and observing their methods is key to perfecting one’s own craft. You may learn from your parents and grandparents, whom you watch at work from early childhood, from an official master who teaches you or during informal meetings and conversations with other specialists. Nowadays making such contacts is easier thanks to the Internet and the national and international fairs. Relationships between people and a shared passion for the profession are crucial.

 

This is what Benedykt Niewczyk, a luthier, says about the meaning of the master-apprentice relationship:

‘In the case of the master-apprentice relationship you have an unlimited time for training at your disposal. Masters’ [skills] are verified by their customers on a daily basis. This means that better masters have work, whereas worse masters do not. Those who have more work than they are able to do on their own, take on assistants. If an apprentice does not reach a certain level of expertise, it may take him or her many years until he or she becomes a journeyman or a master. It is different when it comes to a regular school where you get a report card every year and then another one and another one until you become the so-called expert. Of course, some people are good, I’m not saying they’re not. But craft continuously verifies this.’

This is what Elżbieta Sobańska, a dressmaker, says about vocational training:

‘It has been like this for centuries that you learnt the skills from a master. There has been a professional ethos. An apprentice always knew that he or she had to go through the stages of humbleness, training and honing skills. It was a long journey until he or she was trained so well that they could become an example for others. But thanks to that, craft has always maintained high standards.’