This website is for people who are into ironmongers. It’s for people who need to use ironmongers (or hardware) shops regularly, who prefer local rather than out of town stores or who simply like meandering into traditional shops for this and that.
The site celebrates these remarkable shops, what they offer, the people behind the counter and their customers. And it invites dialogue about their contemporary importance. Starting in Scotland. The Blog page offers a monthly commentary on travels, contacts, updates and information.
In Scotland, if you ask people what they think about ironmongers they’ll mostly pause to gather their thoughts and smile. Then they’ll describe the shadows and smells of an ironmongers from their childhood or recall one they visited last week where an assistant helped to solve a DIY or gardening problem.
If there’s time for a longer conversation, they might ask if you think ironmongers are dying out. Or start speculating on whether society has moved too far towards ‘ending not mending’, throwing things away rather than repairing them. When they start bewailing the fact that today’s products are designed to defy repair, that the population has become frighteningly deskilled and to question the impact of consumerism on global sustainability, its time to direct them to this website.
Here you and they can share stories and photographs, talk about the practical and the aesthetic importance of community ironmongers and about how to promote and support their continuing healthy contribution to 21st century life.
