What I Do: ‘I learned how to tinsmith from my father’

I’m originally from Edenderry, Co Offaly. I was born on the side of the road. Until I was 10 or 12 years old, we lived in tents. My father by then, he had saved a few bob and he bought a barrel top wagon and we moved into the wagon.

We travelled around Offaly, parts of Kildare, Meath, Westmeath and a bit of Cavan. It was a nice life, it was a hard life and it was a good life. There were seven of us altogether, five brothers and two sisters.

My father was a tinsmith. He made buckets, tin mugs, they were called “ponchers”, the billy cans, the tommy cans, the milk jugs – anyone who wanted something made, he’d make it. There was never any money made out of it; we used to swap it for food. It was a way of feeding ourselves at the time. My mother used to go around the houses and she used to swap them. Say a woman wanted a milk jug, we’d swap that for tea and sugar, a bit of flour, a bit of meat, cabbage, spuds and onions.

When I was growing up, everyone was equal, settled people and Travellers, there was no difference

The billy can and the tommy can were the most popular. Every man down around Offaly that time used to work for Bord na Móna and they used to buy the billy can to make their tea in the bog. If there were a few working together, they would buy a tommy can. They could get six or seven cups of tea out of it. You’d only get about two or three out of the billy can.

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Every settled person in the country knew us. We used to stop at the gate of the houses and we used to play football with the young lads that time. When I was growing up, everyone was equal, settled people and Travellers, there was no difference. There wasn’t as much racism or discrimination when I was growing up, to be quite honest with you.

I learned how to tinsmith from my father. He never taught me, but I was there every day with him. I learned by looking at him. I started off when I was only about 14 making stuff. There came the day he wasn’t able to work and then I took the tools over. Only for that, the tools would have been lost as well. I have all his tools and I have some belonging to his father. These are tools that you will not get any more.

I got married and I moved up to Dublin in 1972. I got what they called a little tigín, it was only like a little shed with a stove in it. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t settle and I moved out three or four times. Eventually, I got the children into school and got them a bit of education that I never got. That was the end of travelling for me.

I come in here hammering and tipping and tapping and everything comes back

I always kept up with the tinsmithing. I have a little workshop out the back with a stove in it. I come out here and sometimes I don’t leave it until 10 or 11 o’clock. It’s a way to remember that life. I can see everything in my eyes, back years. I come in here hammering and tipping and tapping and everything comes back. You’ll always think about the roads and the camps and the places we were.

I think about my brothers and sisters, they are all dead and gone bar two of us. It will always go through your mind as you are making stuff, thinking of my father sitting down to the fire. He’d sit on the ground and he’d be tipping and tapping from early morning until evening, day in day out. You think about the settled people that you knew. You’d go back to the same people and they’d have a welcome for you.

I go to vintage shows now and people want me to demonstrate the tinsmithing. An awful lot of the older generation know what it’s about. They used to watch us when they were coming back from school – they’d sit down beside my father and stay an hour looking at him. They sit down beside me and remember the Travellers who stayed on the side of the road near them.

The tradition is lost, it’s gone. There are only two of us tinsmithing now. We are not going to live forever. Whatever time we go, that will be the end of the tinsmithing. – In conversation with Joanne Hunt

Traditional tin products made by James Collins and Tom McDonnell are available to purchase from wemakegood.ie

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