A little mester is a self-employed worker who rents space in a factory or works from their own workshop. They were involved in making
cutlery or other smallish items such as edge tools (i.e. woodworking chisels). The term is used almost exclusively to describe the craftsmen of the
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, whose name derives from the River Sheaf which runs through it. The city serves as the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire a ...
area, and is mostly archaic as this manner of manufacture peaked in the 19th century and has now virtually died out.
Little mesters either worked alone or employed a small number of workers and/or
apprentice
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a ...
s.
, referred to as one of the last little mesters, died in 2021.
History
The origins of the term are uncertain.
''Mester'' is the Sheffield dialect variant of ''master'',
[ (]wikisource
Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project (each instance usually re ...
) Thus a ''little mester'' refers to a
master craftsman working on a small scale. Prior to the 18th century cutlery manufacture in Sheffield had been undertaken by individual master craftsmen who would make an item from start to finish. In the late 18th century there was a large increase in the size complexity of the cutlery and tool industries that made it necessary for craftsmen to focus on a single stage of the manufacture.
Cutlery factories then rented workshops to self-employed craftsmen, the little mesters, each specializing in one step of production, such as forging, grinding or finishing.
See also
*
Journeyman
A journeyman, journeywoman, or journeyperson is a worker, skilled in a given building trade or craft, who has successfully completed an official apprenticeship qualification. Journeymen are considered competent and authorized to work in that fie ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Little Mester
History of Sheffield