What is a treasure that’s been lost?

I worry about skilled trades going away. Maybe some have been lost already (probably, right?) but there are a lot of culturally important skills that really only can be learned and understood by doing them, and if there’s no one left who knows how to do them, they disappear.

We went wine-tasting last week in Canada, and at one winery (Stratus) the guy serving us (who might have been the owner), took us backstage to see the operations. It was a random offer, but we are not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t worry that wine-making will be a lost art, but seeing how viticulture is such a specialized version of horticulture (which, itself requires hands-on learning), it acts as a decent proxy.

I watched a video on Tumblr the other week of this filigreed broach being made using traditional Japanese techniques, and it was just staggering. It took a really long time (it was a timelapse video, of course), and the skill was obviously highly honed. I don’t know how well we (in America) do with making skilled trades accessible and valuable – it’s not something I know very much about at all.