# Human Record — transmission lineage case: sieve and riddle making returns from extinction

Status: **LIVING-KNOWLEDGE LINEAGE CASE / PUBLIC SOURCES ONLY / CURRENT CRAFT STATUS DEFERRED TO HERITAGE CRAFTS / NOT A CRAFT MANUAL / NOT PRACTITIONER ENDORSEMENT / OPEN TO CORRECTION**

This record asks a narrow question:

> What does the public evidence show about how UK sieve and riddle making crossed an apparent extinction boundary and reached new practitioners — and what remains unknown about the actual transfer of skill?

It does **not** attempt to preserve the craft by writing down its technique. It does not decide who is a qualified maker, reproduce a practitioner's tacit knowledge, or speak for the living practitioners named in public sources.

```text
RECORDING != CONTINUATION
DOCUMENTATION != LIVING PRACTICE
PUBLIC REPORT != PRACTITIONER ENDORSEMENT
CRAFT STATUS -> STRONGEST OWNER
```

## Why this case was selected

The Human Record's working selection rule distinguishes content loss, lineage loss and living-knowledge loss.

Sieve and riddle making is useful because the public record contains an unusually visible transition:

```text
WORKING CRAFT
-> REPORTED LAST MAKER
-> RETIREMENT
-> LISTED EXTINCT
-> PUBLIC RED-LIST / MEDIA ATTENTION
-> NEW MAKERS
-> CRITICALLY ENDANGERED LIVING PRACTICE
```

That makes it a test of **transmission lineage**, not a claim that The Human Record can keep a craft alive.

Heritage Crafts is the stronger owner for current UK craft status, viability, practitioners, training routes and safeguarding. This record therefore defers those judgments to Heritage Crafts and asks a narrower provenance question: what public sources say about the transition, which claims share one institutional source, and where the actual person-to-person skill transfer remains unclear.

`OWNER_FOUND != NO RECORDABLE LINEAGE GAP`

## Current state

As checked on **16 September 2026**, the current Heritage Crafts entry classifies sieve and riddle making as **critically endangered** and reports:

- 0 professionals for whom it is their main income;
- 1 professional for whom it is a side income;
- 1 trainee;
- current practice in Taunton, Somerset and Swansea.

Source:
- Heritage Crafts, *Sieve and riddle making*: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/sieve-and-riddle-making/

These are Heritage Crafts' current research claims. The Human Record did not independently count practitioners or verify their commercial status.

The page names a 2025 Red List review cycle. The 2026 check date records when this source was read, not a new practitioner census.

```text
HERITAGE_CRAFTS_STATUS != INDEPENDENT_HEADCOUNT
CURRENT_PAGE != PERMANENTLY_CURRENT
```

## The visible transmission line

### 1. 2009 — one maker is publicly described as the last

On 28 November 2009, *The Guardian* published Jon Henley's feature *How to make a sieve and riddle* after visiting Mike Turnock at Hill & Sons in Whaley Bridge.

The article reports Turnock saying that, as far as he knew, he was the last person in Britain still producing handmade wooden sieves and riddles. It says he had been doing the work for around 30 years, that his father Fred Turnock had taken over Hill & Sons in 1948, and that Mike hoped to retire if he could find someone to train and take over.

The feature also describes the making process and Turnock's workshop in detail. This Human Record does not reproduce that process description; readers can inspect the original source.

Source:
- Jon Henley, *How to make a sieve and riddle*, The Guardian, 28 November 2009: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2009/nov/28/how-to-make-sieve-riddle

This is independent contemporary reporting about Turnock. It is not independent proof that no other maker existed anywhere in the UK.

### 2. 2010 / 2017 — retirement and an extinction classification

The current Heritage Crafts page says Mike Turnock retired in 2010, rendering the craft extinct until 2018.

A Heritage Crafts announcement from 8 March 2019 separately says sieve and riddle making had been listed as **extinct in the first Red List in 2017**.

Sources:
- current Heritage Crafts craft entry: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/sieve-and-riddle-making/
- Heritage Crafts, *Craft skills under threat with 37 additions to the Red List of Endangered Crafts*, 8 March 2019: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/our-stories/announcements/craft-skills-under-threat-with-37-additions-to-the-red-list-of-endangered-crafts/
- Heritage Crafts, *The HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts — 2019 edition*: https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HCA-Red-List-optimised.pdf

These three Heritage Crafts sources share one institutional owner. They should not be counted as independent witnesses merely because they are separate publications.

The current Heritage Crafts page also cites the 2009 Guardian feature. Different publishers do not establish independent corroboration for overlapping historical claims. That citation is a known source relationship; it does not establish which individual claims depend on the feature.

### 3. 2017–2019 — public attention becomes part of the revival pathway

The 2019 Heritage Crafts announcement says that after the craft was listed extinct in 2017, **two new makers** had revived it and were beginning commercial production by March 2019.

The current Heritage Crafts entry identifies the two public revival pathways more specifically:

- **Steve Overthrow** began making sieves and riddles after discovering that the craft had been listed extinct in the first Red List in 2017. The current page says he is now focusing on training a new maker.
- **Colin Davies**, of Riverside Riddles and Sieves, began making commercially after watching a BBC *Countryfile* feature about the Red List report.

Source:
- Heritage Crafts current craft entry: https://heritagecrafts.org.uk/craft/sieve-and-riddle-making/

This supports a bounded causal statement: Heritage Crafts reports that the Red List and related media exposure were part of the pathways by which these two people began making.

It does **not** establish that a publication transmitted the craft skill itself.

```text
ATTENTION PATHWAY != SKILL TRANSMISSION
READING ABOUT A CRAFT != LEARNING THE CRAFT
REVIVAL != VIABILITY
```

### 4. Public sources separate research, reconstruction and direct tuition

In a published Homo Faber interview, Steve Overthrow says he learned partly from Mike Turnock and received knowledge he could not find through research. This is a first-person account as published by Homo Faber, not an interview conducted by The Human Record or independent verification of the teaching.

The 2019 Heritage Crafts Red List adds a separate institutional description: it reports that Overthrow began making at the beginning of 2018, received **advice and tuition** from Mike Turnock, and also reports a period of product development and refining before commercial production. The report does not establish a strict sequence between those components.

A 2023 *Gardens Illustrated* interview adds another part of the route. Overthrow describes research, repeated failed attempts while developing his making practice, and Turnock's help on matters he says he could not have researched. The record does not treat the article's narrative order as a complete chronology of learning. This record preserves only those high-level learning modes; it does not reproduce the process details published in the article.

Sources:
- Homo Faber Guide, *Steve Overthrow*: https://2022.homofaber.com/en/discover/discover-steve-overthrow
- Heritage Crafts, *The HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts — 2019 edition*: https://www.heritagecrafts.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HCA-Red-List-optimised.pdf
- Natasha Goodfellow, *Sieves and riddles: discover the company making handmade garden sieves*, *Gardens Illustrated*, 26 April 2023: https://www.gardensillustrated.com/features/sieve-and-riddle-handmade-garden-sieves

Together, these public sources narrow the Overthrow route from a generic "direct learning" statement to reported components. They do not establish one complete linear chronology:

- Red List attention / discovery;
- research and surviving public material;
- trial-and-error / product development;
- direct advice or tuition from Turnock.

The components may overlap or iterate; exact sequence remains unresolved.

They still do not establish the exact tacit content passed between people, the relative contribution of each route, the completeness of what survived, or Colin Davies's learning route. Multiple published accounts carrying practitioner self-report are not automatically independent witnesses to the underlying teaching.

```text
REPORTED LEARNING MODES != COMPLETE SKILL-TRANSFER RECONSTRUCTION
MULTIPLE PUBLISHED INTERVIEWS != INDEPENDENT WITNESSES
```

Discovery credit: Mark relayed a Dola reading pointing to an [ELITISM article dated 26 August 2026](https://elitismstyle.com/the-craft-that-read-its-own-obituary). Following that lead, Codex located the Homo Faber interview. The later Heritage Crafts/Gardens Illustrated follow-up narrows the route further; none of these publications is treated as THR observation of teaching.

### 5. Current state — alive, but still fragile

The current Heritage Crafts page no longer treats the craft as extinct. It treats it as **critically endangered**, with the small practitioner/trainee counts recorded above.

That is an important distinction:

```text
EXTINCT -> REVIVED
DOES NOT IMPLY
REVIVED -> SECURE
```

## What this record can responsibly say

As of the checked public sources:

- a 2009 independent newspaper report described Mike Turnock as, to his knowledge, Britain's last working handmade sieve-and-riddle maker and recorded his hope of finding a successor;
- Heritage Crafts says Turnock retired in 2010 and that the craft was later listed extinct in its first Red List in 2017;
- Heritage Crafts says the craft had been revived by two new makers by March 2019;
- its current page identifies Steve Overthrow's discovery of the Red List and Colin Davies's viewing of a *Countryfile* feature as pathways into making;
- Heritage Crafts currently classifies the craft as critically endangered and reports 0 main-income professionals, 1 side-income professional and 1 trainee;
- the exact skill-transmission chain is **not fully reconstructed by this record**;
- for Overthrow specifically, public sources now report a mixed route involving research, trial-and-error/product development, and advice or tuition from Turnock; the exact tacit content and completeness remain unresolved.

## What remains unknown

This record does not establish:

- exactly what practical knowledge passed directly from Mike Turnock to any later maker;
- for Overthrow, the timing, relative contribution, exact tacit content and completeness of the reported research, trial-and-error/product-development and Turnock advice/tuition routes;
- for Colin Davies, the learning route beyond the reported *Countryfile* / Red List attention pathway;
- which parts of the older Hill & Sons practice survive unchanged and which have been adapted;
- whether all materially important tacit knowledge survived the extinction interval;
- the identity or training stage of the current trainee beyond Heritage Crafts' aggregate count;
- the completeness of Heritage Crafts' practitioner count;
- whether the craft is commercially sustainable beyond the current reporting period;
- whether the linked practitioner website is currently available to all readers.

`UNKNOWN != ABSENT`

## Source-access note

Heritage Crafts' current page links to Steve Overthrow's website and says it contains details of the sieve-making process.

On 16 September 2026, the research aperture used for this record attempted to fetch the linked website and process page but did not obtain them; one fetch returned a 502 error and another could not retrieve the page from the available cache.

This is only a failed retrieval observation from this aperture.

```text
FETCH_FAILED_HERE != SITE_GONE
INACCESSIBLE != NONEXISTENT
```

No claim in this record depends on unseen content from that site.

## What was not checked

- interviews conducted by THR with Mike Turnock, Steve Overthrow, Colin Davies or the current trainee (the published Homo Faber interview with Overthrow was checked);
- the relevant BBC *Countryfile* episode;
- Steve Overthrow's process website content;
- surviving Hill & Sons tools, patterns, workshop records or business archives;
- physical comparison of objects made by different generations;
- Heritage Crafts' underlying unpublished reviewer evidence;
- whether another practitioner exists outside the current Heritage Crafts count.

These omissions matter because tacit craft knowledge cannot be reconstructed reliably from publication history alone.

## Strongest owner and THR boundary

**Heritage Crafts is the strongest current owner identified for the UK craft-status and safeguarding problem.** It maintains the Red List, consults practitioners, records current viability issues and operates safeguarding/training support.

The Human Record should not duplicate that function.

The narrow THR contribution is to preserve the **source ancestry of the revival story**:

- what was reported before extinction;
- what the institutional Red List later said;
- how public attention is reported to have reached later makers;
- what those sources do and do not prove about transmission;
- what remains missing from the chain.

If Heritage Crafts or another stronger owner already preserves that lineage more completely, this record should link outward and become smaller rather than compete.

## Living-practitioner / consent boundary

This case uses already-public reporting about named practitioners. The Human Record has **not** contacted them and does not claim their participation, approval or endorsement.

It deliberately does not reproduce a detailed craft manual, private correspondence, unpublished training material or restricted knowledge.

Any future attempt to record practitioner-specific tacit knowledge, workshop practice, voice, video, tools or teaching should require a separate permission/authority decision rather than treating cultural risk as permission to extract.

```text
PUBLIC SOURCE != ENDORSEMENT
RISK != PERMISSION
RECORDING != OWNING
PRESERVATION != EXTRACTION
```

## Why this belongs in The Human Record

The case tests a boundary the first two records could not:

- *Camp Fire* tests provenance plumbing around an old, institutionally held artefact.
- the flak case tests source ancestry around a repeated factual claim.
- this case tests whether a record can preserve the public evidence of **living knowledge transmission** while remaining honest that a record is not the living skill.

The interesting fact is not that a craft was declared dead and then came back as a neat success story.

The interesting structure is:

```text
PERSON
-> PRACTICE
-> RETIREMENT / BREAK
-> PUBLIC RECORD OF LOSS
-> ATTENTION
-> NEW PRACTITIONERS
-> NEW TRAINING
-> STILL FRAGILE
```

and the unanswered question inside it:

```text
WHAT WAS TRANSMITTED, WHAT WAS RECONSTRUCTED OR NEWLY LEARNED,
AND THROUGH WHICH ROUTES?
```

That question remains open.

## Dated correction

19 September 2026, Framework: checked the Heritage Crafts 2019 Red List entry and a 2023 *Gardens Illustrated* practitioner interview. The Overthrow lineage now records reported research, trial-and-error/product development and Turnock advice/tuition as distinct learning components. Exact teaching content, timing, relative contribution and completeness remain unknown. No practitioner contact, endorsement, private material or process manual was added.

16 September 2026, Codex: made reconstruction and new learning explicit alternatives to transmission, recorded the Heritage Crafts citation of the Guardian feature, and distinguished the source-read date from the page's named review cycle. Basis: [source review](https://github.com/markgoodbody-bit/human-record/pull/9#issuecomment-5700699961). Reported status, counts and historical events are unchanged. This is a source-relationship and framing correction, not a new practitioner observation.

16 September 2026, Codex: added the published Homo Faber interview following Dola's lead relayed by Mark. A reported direct-learning route is now supported; exact teaching content and completeness remain unknown. No new practitioner contact, endorsement, status assessment or headcount is claimed.

## Correction route

Bring stronger public evidence, especially evidence about the transmission chain, source dates or current status boundaries.

- contribution guidance: https://thehumanrecord.net/CONTRIBUTE.md
- repository issue route: https://github.com/markgoodbody-bit/human-record/issues/new

Do not send private practitioner information or unpublished process material without the right to share it.

```text
SOURCE CORRECTION > CONFIDENCE
RECORDING != CONTINUATION
OWNER STATUS != THR STATUS
HISTORY != CLEAN
```