Artisan who sees in shades of grey

Mar 15 2009 by Coreena Ford, Sunday Sun

TALENTED artist Jez Hunt is building a fantastic future for himself, as a master craftsman of the past.

And looking at these pictures of his creations it’s hard to believe the skilled artisan’s secret . . . he is totally colour blind.

Jez, 33, has achromatopsia, an extremely rare condition which has left him seeing the world in shades of black, white and grey, because his eyes are missing the photoreceptors, known as cones, needed to distinguish between different hues.

After passing an art course at Newcastle College — with flying colours of course — Jez’s sight defect certainly hasn’t hindered his career as a freelance artisan, creating wild costumes for role-playing historians under the name Ancestor Leathercrafts.

He is also a successful craftsman with leather merchants Le Prevo, in Newcastle, where he used to go to buy the materials he needed for the bags, pouches, helmets, body armour and belts he makes.

While Jez, of Benton, Newcastle, has no idea what colour really is, he uses logic to work out the colour of objects like the sky, grass and skin tones, and he can closely match other colours according to their darkness or lightness.

Whilst we might assume it would be impossible to work in colour, Jez can get people’s orders spot on thanks to labelled pens, pencils, paints and leather materials.

He said: “I’ve worked in the shop for about three years now, and I’ve got everything labelled up.

“People sometimes bring in a sample of something and say ‘I want to make something in this colour’ and I get blank looks when I ask ‘what is that?’. Once I explain they’re usually very nice about it.

“Outside of work I make armour, belts, pouches, bags, helmets, belts, costumes, masks, props of all sorts, and prosthetic and special effects work.

“People who buy my stuff are mostly LARPers, Live Action Role Players or weekend warriors as they’ve been called.

“I’m involved in LARPing too . . . the best way I’ve heard it described it is cross-country pantomime.

“A lot of the props, costumes, and special effects are done as commissions for all sorts of folks, from theatre, through burlesque performers and film.

“Most of the leather craft stuff I make under the name Ancestor Leathercrafts is historically inspired, and that’s what fires my imagination and moves my hands.

“I try to do as much of it as possible with traditional materials, so the leather is all of the ancient vegetable-tanned variety wherever possible, and hand tooled and dyed.

“Researching anything is always a challenge, but I have a large collection of books on various historic periods and cultures and the net is a great source of information too.”

Jez’s condition could be rectified by special contact lenses that would allow him to see the full colour spectrum, but he has no plans to buy them.

He said: “Colour could be useful at times, like when I’m cooking meat for instance . . . I ate raw pork once as I didn’t know it wasn’t cooked.

“But I think I’d freak out at being shoved into a world of colour after all these years, so I’m quite happy without it.”