Telling Tales With Technology

Cleo Witt spoke briefly but very entertainingly of her recent interview with Ken Stradling the managing director of the Bristol Guild, a successful high-quality outlet for applied arts which he has managed since 1948. Her enthusiasm and enjoyment of the unexpected in interviewing combined with details of preparations provided the audience with a useful methodology. A short interview conducted by Mike Hughes [see next speaker] formed the basis for her longer taped interview. Preparations included research on J.E.Barton, the head teacher at Bristol Grammar School, who appeared to figure as one of Stradling's influences, and questions were planned which would reveal whether, perhaps, early work in forestry had lead to an interest in natural materials, touch and texture.

The interview itself revealed that Stradling had become an archetypal British entrepreneur influenced as much by attending auctions with his mother, as the one-hour-a-week lessons with the head teacher who brought every subject back to his passions for film and architecture. Cleo Witt talked of her preconceptions, expecting Stradling to reveal influences of the arts and crafts ethos; instead what came out in the interview was his repeated use of the word 'inventive'. The gap between what was expected from the interview and what actually came across was one element of the unexpected. Typically the interviewee often touches on a rich subject immediately the tape is turned off. In this case Ken Stradling revealed his friendships with Marianne De Trey and William Newland, both present at the conference, and this opened up another avenue of exploration and demonstrated the way in which interviews can be both an end in themselves and an opening towards further research.