A Rare Trade is one that operates today with essentially the same tools as 100 years plus ago, whose skills were originally learned as an apprentice to a master craftsman, making functional, useful, beautiful things designed to live long and be repaired, not replaced.

The Rare Trades community is being developed in Victoria in a new collective called Rare Trades Australia. There are Bookbinders, blademakers, letterpress printers, coopers, bootmakers, steam engineers, blacksmiths, milliners, stone wall builders and many more who use and demonstrate real Rare Trades today. It is the mission of the new collective to help raretradesfolk find and support each other, to help the local community find and enjoy rare skills, and to promote rare trades as not sentimental or antiquated, but proven, tactile and tenacious, as are the beautiful, useful things we make. We call out to anyone who practices a rare trade to join in.