Traditional trades (known also as traditional building trades and preservation trades) is a loosely defined categorization of building trades who actively practice their craft in respect of historic preservation, heritage conservation, or the conserving and maintenance of the existing built environment. Though traditional trade practitioners may at times be involved in new construction, the emphasis of the categorization is toward work on existing structures, regardless of their age or their historic value, with a specific interest in replication or conservation of the original results and craft techniques.
Trade technologies
Traditional building trades commonly include masonry, timber framing, log building, traditional roofing, upholstery, carpentry and joinery, sometimes plumbing, plasterwork, painting, blacksmithing, and ornamental metal working (Bronze and brass). In addition to "hands-on" skills and knowledge of building processes, traditional trade practitioners incorporate knowledge of historic preservation, materials science, historic architecture, and procuring replacement materials. Contemporary practitioners of traditional trades must also avail themselves of modern technologies, current materials science, and 21st century construction project management.
The work performed by these practitioners is not only essential to the maintenance of the historic built environment, but also to the preservation of the traditional trade skills and knowledge themselves. In many cases, traditional trade skills and techniques date back centuries. Traditional trades such as carpenters and timber framers; masons, plasterers, lime burners, and brick makers; painters; blacksmiths; and slate, metal, shingle, tile, and thatch roofers, are anecdotally said to be “dying” arts. While it is true that some techniques of the past are not well enough understood, it is also true that these crafts have been practiced continuously all over the world without dying at all.
Traditional trades not only restore and help to maintain buildings, but also stabilize priceless archaeological sites, and in doing so, help us understand the techniques used at places like Cuzco, Stonehenge, and Angkor Wat. Such trades are not solely practiced for the conservation of monumental heritage sites and can be applied to conserve vernacular sites such as barns.
Materials technologies
The traditional trades focus on preservation of the knowledge of craft work specific to historic building technologies and traditional/non-traditional building materials. Traditional building materials and traditional trade technologies are commonly associated with a host of materials, but not limited to, stone, brick, terra cotta, adobe, cork, leather, timber and log, bamboo, thatch, slate and metal roofing, fine and vernacular carpentry, ornamental plaster (scagliola), stained glass, window and door restoration, wood refinishing, painting, cast iron and wrought iron. In what may at times be considered non-traditional materials are found trades such as chandelier and lighting restoration where you have to be somewhat of a jack-of-all-trades with an understanding of electricity, and knowledgeable with properties and finishes of metals, glass, and optics. As an example of the mix of new and old materials, the art of restoration of mobile residential trailers requires a number of traditional trade skills associated with traditional and contemporary materials in a manner not dissimilar to those hand-work skills and preservation approaches required to restore an historic automobile, a biplane, rocket ship or steam locomotive.
Green trades
Traditional building technologies tend towards a closer relationship of the built environment to an in-practice understanding, interaction and use of natural resources and recycled or salvaged building materials than is common in the practice of modern and contemporary building technologies.
For example: a traditional timber framer in search of difficult-to-acquire materials with which to rebuild heritage structures will tend to seek out an understanding of forest management, tree harvest, conversion process and building design and technique. These integrated skills and their supportive knowledge base both in scale and localization are readily adaptable to strategies of sustainable new-build economies.