In Korea, 96-year-old grandmaster and founder of Napcheong Yugi, Bong Ju Lee, is among the only people in the world making traditional yugi, also known as Bangjja — a Korean type of hand-forged bronzeware. See his master craftsmanship, dedication to detail, and how he is teaching his son to continue his legacy. Credits: Producer: Carla Francescutti Director/Producer: Nadia Cho Camera: Gerald Lee, Tim Han Subtitles: Vicky Won Editor: Carla Francescutti Executive Producer: Stephen Pelletteri Development Producer: McGraw Wolfman Supervising Producer: Stefania Orrù Audience Development Manager: Terri Ciccone

Before factories. Before power tools. Before speed. There was the file cutter. This episode of Unearthed explores the nearly forgotten craft that helped build the modern industrial world—one hammer strike at a time. In the hills of Germany’s Bergisches Land, entire families once worked from small home workshops, transforming forged steel blanks into precision hand files using nothing more than a chisel, a hammer, and extraordinary control. Through the old “putting-out system,” raw steel was forged in Remscheid and carried through valleys and forests to be finished tooth by tooth at kitchen hearths and earthen workstations. Each groove was struck individually—thousands of blows per file—judged only by eye, sound, and feel. No guides. No markings. No second chances. This was family labor and generational knowledge. Women annealed steel by the stove. Children cleaned and prepared blanks. Men cut late into the night to meet weekly quotas. A full day’s work might yield only a few dozen small files—tools that would later shape engines, gears, and the machinery of the industrial age. By the mid-20th century, machine production replaced most hand file cutters. Workshops closed. Skills vanished. A few spaces were preserved in museums—but many stories were lost forever. Because every precision machine we rely on today was once refined with tools like these—crafted by imperfect hands guided by patience, discipline, and skill. If this craft had disappeared entirely, we might never have known what we lost.

The Craft of the Slater documents the reconstruction of a historic Hunsrück farmhouse at the Rhineland-Palatinate Open-Air Museum in Sobernheim. Using original methods and tools, skilled slaters clad the exposed weather sides of a 19th-century half-timbered house with slate, just as it once stood in the village of Bickenbach. The film follows the work step by step: from sorting rough slate straight from the quarry, marking templates, and hand-hewing decorative plates, to nailing intricate patterns onto the facade. Traditional tools such as the slater’s stake and hammer shape pointed, rounded, and cross slates, while ornamental elements—rosettes, initials, and symbolic motifs—emerge directly on the scaffolding. Beyond technical instruction, the video reveals how slate cladding protected rural buildings from harsh mountain weather and became a form of architectural expression. The finished facade, with its overlapping scales and refined details, reflects both craftsmanship and social status. Preserved in the open-air museum, the Bickenbach house stands as a lasting testament to the slater’s trade and to rural building culture in the Hunsrück. Original source material: Das Handwerk der Leiendecker Published by Alltagskulturen im Rheinland © LVR-Institut für Landeskunde und Regionalgeschichte CC BY 4.0

Walter Keeler is a British studio potter, born in London in 1942. He attended Harrow School of Art, London where he was trained by Michael Casson. He established his first pottery at Bledlow Bridge, Buckinghamshire in 1965 then moved to his current studio in Penallt Wales, where he lives with his potter wife Madoline. He was professor of Ceramics at the University of the West of England and in 2007 was named Welsh Artist of the Year. http://www.goldmarkart.com Keeler makes salt glaze pottery influenced by early Staffordshire Creamware. Writer Oliver Watson described him as 'one of the most important and influential potters of the 1980s'. Keeler's work is held in a number of public collections including Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museum Wales, American Craft Museum, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA and the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Hoaka Delos Reyes is the last of his kind. The master stone carver has practiced his craft, one that holds deep significance in Hawaiian culture, for 40 years. His process utilizes the technique and tools of his ancestors, requiring patience, endurance and prayer. Travel to the glorious island of Maui and spend time with an artist who is constantly learning from the natural world around him. These stones are considered sacred in Hawaiian culture. When visiting, please be careful not to move or remove rocks.

Sophisticated arts flourished in mid-15th century Japan, including sado (tea ceremony), noh (masked stage performance), kado (flower arrangement), and aesthetic interest in yugen-no-bi (subtle profound beauty) and wabi-sabi (quiet simplicity and restrained refinement). These led to tearoom carpentry and refined tearoom sukiya-zukuri (sukiya-style) architecture. This wooden building style called suki (elegant taste) eliminates showy decoration while pursuing aesthetic refinement attuned to the sensibilities of those in the building. The subtle interplay of elements — such as rays of light, shades of wood materials, and woodgrain appearance — is all deliberately planned. Master builders of sukiya architecture are called sukiya-daiku. Japanese craftsmanship is a way of life for artisans who continue faithfully making their traditional crafts while devoting themselves to enhancing their skills.

The Menegazzo family runs one of the world's last goldbeating operations. In Venice, Italy, Mario Menegazzo hammers bars of gold until they are so thin they become mere leaves – thinner than a human hair. The process beating gold until it obtains the delicacy required for use in gilding is hard work. Mario uses hammers that weigh up to 8kg to pound the gold into its leaf form. It’s then used for a range of purposes, such as artistic decoration. For centuries, Venice used this precious metal to flaunt its wealth. The craft of goldbeating has been practiced there since the year 1000, when trade was booming. Now, very few craftsman's shops are left that still work gold by hand. Goldbeating – where the hand still trumps the machine – has almost died out.