NZ's one and only "trug craftsman"

Tony Hitchcock is the only professional practicing “trug craftsman” in New Zealand.

You may have seen the sign for “The Trug Maker” workshop on your way up the Anatoki Valley, just before the salmon farm. This is where the magic happens. Trug making is the craft of handmaking traditional Sussex baskets from willow and coppiced with sweet chestnut – or in the New Zealand version, with willow or hazel.

Tony tells The GB Weekly that he “learnt trug making from lifelong friend, Anatoki neighbour and mentor Brett Hutchinson”. Brett made trugs for 20 years, after learning the craft from Rockville craftsman Mike North. Tony is dyslexic and had some initial concerns about measuring; these were soon put to rest by Brett, who said “you can put a nail through your tape measure”. Tony soon learnt to “throw the rules out the window, as trugs are made by feel, by look, by instinct”. Creation requires a good eye, which Tony has in spades from his career as a fencer.

Trug materials are sourced locally, with Tony coppicing hazel and willow in winter. Coppicing is the practice of cutting a tree or shrub back to ground level, where it “regenerates and grows back stronger and with straighter stems”. Tony is grateful to local farmers and landowners for allowing him to coppice on their land. “At this point it is a long stick, which I split into [lengths for] rims and handles. These are steamed and bent onto a form and then left to dry until needed.” Due to the seasonality of harvest, Tony needs to make a year’s supply of rims and handles over winter.

The trug slats are made from locally sourced aspen (cottonwood poplar). Tony harvests a tree and mills it on site. The boards are then dried for a minimum of six months, then cut into slats. Each trug requires four different shaped boards, and the preparation is lengthy, with the slats steamed and then nailed with copper nails to form the finished trug.

Tony also makes other beautiful crafts including the “Devon Maund”. These were traditionally used as a harvest bin, emanating from Devonshire, England. These days they are more suited to storing kindling, or as the “ultimate shopping basket”. The skillset required to harvest and create the maund is on the decline, with the UK’s Heritage Crafts Association placing it on the “red list of endangered crafts”, with only around six professional craftsmen listed in the United Kingdom.

Tony’s vision for the business is to carry on being sustainable. “Everything is sourced locally except the copper nails. We are making a product that will last [the user] for decades. The knowledge [to make trugs] has been passed on to me, and many years in the future I would like to pass on the knowledge to someone else locally.”

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Growing up in a small rural town in Australia and working throughout New Zealand within the Real Estate industry for the past 10 years, she understands the dynamics of the unique market we have here in Golden Bay and what it takes to succeed.

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Phone Mickayla on 027 297 8477 or email mickayla@goldenbayproperty.com