WORKING from the garage behind his home in Langport, Somerset, Steve Overthrow relates a recent phone call from a customer. ‘She called me up and started telling me her invoice number so I could identify her,’ he says. ‘I said to her, forget that, you’re Mrs Young, that’s how I know you.’
This personal, slightly olde-worlde approach is characteristic of the things Mr Overthrow loves best in life—namely, well-made tools, authentic, homegrown materials and a slower paced way of living in which work is purposeful, sustainable and properly useful. It was all of these things combined that led him to revive the craft of sieve- and riddle-making back in 2017, when he learnt via the Heritage Craft Association’s ‘Red List’ that it was officially extinct.
The idea
