in Bermuda.

The man who, for the past 47 years, has made an art out of the ancient craft of engraving, is retiring -- and, he says, as far as he knows, there is no one else waiting in the wings who will produce the script and pictorial engraving that can only be done by hand. Customers who may have taken for granted the distinctive Kempe touch on their Rotary, cricket, or tennis trophies, will in future have to rely on the more prosaic work churned out, mass-production style by modern machinery.

"But,'' he adds, "when I close up shop I'll be taking my hand chisels with me and perhaps diddle here and there.'' This diddling, as Mr. Kempe modestly calls his often exquisitely beautiful handicraft, includes commemorative plaques made by him for presentation to visiting Royals, Prime Ministers Churchill and Heath, and Presidents Kennedy and Nixon, to name but a few.

The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club must be one of the many institutions who will certainly be hoping that one of their most illustrious members takes those chisels home with him: "I'm going to find a little nook where I can do the odd job. Otherwise, who's going to do the First Boat Across the Line Trophy?'' he enquires with a rueful smile.

It is not only Bermuda's yachting fraternity that has relied on his expertise.

His handiwork has been much in demand by that famed longstanding former guardian of the America's Cup, the New York Yacht Club.

Over the years, Mr. Kempe has been forced to bow, to a certain extent, to the march of progress. When he found that Bermuda firms were installing engraving machinery, he decided that in order to survive, his business had to adapt.

"I decided I had to use machinery myself, as it's much quicker, but I much prefer not to, and I still do special jobs by hand. I still make all the original `masters' (coats of arms, logos, etc.) by hand, which is then duplicated.'' Sadly, although the business has been for sale for some time now, there have been no takers. So Mr. Kempe, and his assistant for 20 years, Mrs. Yeshia Simons, are now in the process of dispensing with the machines and sorting out a treasure-trove of memorabilia that threatens to take over the Cedar Avenue work room.

"You couldn't ask for a better assistant than Mrs. Simons,'' he enthuses, as he looks back over almost half a century in business. Besides dealing with customers, she has run what he calls the "plastic side of things'', which entails the production of signs and name-plates. Mr. Kempe is the first to admit that it has been her expertise which has enabled him to pursue his other life-long passion -- that of sailing.

"I may not have made a lot of money in a small business, but it's suited me fine because there is so much freedom to go off and do other things. I'm sure that if I'd worked for an exempt company, there's no way they'd let me go off around the world racing sailboats!'' They might, of course, for Jimmy Kempe is a very special sailor, having been a member of the very first Bermudian sailing team (along with skipper H.B.

"Brownie'' Eve and Bernie Ward) to participate in the Olympic Games. That was in 1956, in Melbourne. Today, he relishes the fact that his family holds another record. His sons, Reid and Jay, sailed in last year's Olympics in Barcelona: "No other person I know of has had their son follow in the very same event -- and I've had two!'' He reflects that in those early days, the selection procedure was far simpler.

"I thought the Olympic Association showed great foresight in letting us go.

But the next time around, there was a deluge of people, so we had a big flotilla in Rome, and Bermuda has been sending sailors to the Olympics ever since.'' Writing in the Bermuda Olympian Magazine commemorating the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Mr. Hayward recalled that even the journey to Melbourne, flying by propeller aircraft, was quite an ordeal. Then they found that the one-design Dragon boat, chartered for them and a class of vessel which they had never sailed before, had not been overboard in a year. Having learned the hard way, the Bermudian sailors subsequently made it their business to learn how to sail Dragons, going off each year to Europe to take part in large fleet racing.

Mr. Kempe says that being the man who carried the Bermuda Flag into that huge arena, heading a team of just three who were cheered as lustily as the large contingents, was one of the great thrills of his life: "Although we went on to much greater successes I have never forgotten that first time, 1956.'' On the work front, however, there was never really any doubt that Jimmy Kempe was destined for a job that involved art in some form or another.

"My mother was a pianist, organist and violinist, so maybe I inherited my artistic trait from her,'' he says. But his first ambition was to become an architect and after schooling at Warwick Academy and Saltus Grammar School, he went off to Mount Allison University in New Brunswick. After a bout with polio which hospitalised him for a year, however, he turned to applied arts where he studied jewellery making and studied the specialised art of oxidisation, a process which gives objects a patina of old age.

On his return here in 1947, Mr. Kempe found an island changed forever by the introduction of motor cars.

"There were actually only four or five when I came back, but can you believe it, one of them, on Christmas Eve, managed to run over my little dog and kill it!'' Defying the convention that he should wait until his little shop on Darrell's Wharf was firmly established, he married Home Economics teacher Betty Reid and observes wryly, "If I'd listened to my father, who thought I should save up some money first, I'd probably only have got married last year.'' To give some idea of how economics have changed since those early days, Mr. Kempe recalls that when he made a set of sterling silver coffee spoons, each engraved with hibiscus motifs, together with a handmade pouch of leather lined with suede, the whole thing sold for five pounds.

It did not take the new jeweller long to realise that there was an urgent need for an engraver in Bermuda, so he arranged for a friend from university to come and work for him. When he had to return to Canada, Mr. Kempe took himself back to school to learn engraving for himself.

"It's normally a year's course, but I did it in six weeks. This was partly because I couldn't afford to be away any longer and the fact that I had a very strong background in drawing.'' That background had been acquired years before, in Bermuda, when he studied with Mabel Rainsford, an English woman who taught many Bermudians the rudiments of drawing, and also with well-known artist and teacher Mrs.

Lightbourne.

"She taught me shading, which is very important for an engraver. You don't need colour, you use shading to accentuate. You make the outline, and the oxidisation is used to make the face of an object bright and the background goes dark and this is what gives a sense of dimension. This is essential in pictorial engraving.'' Much to his chagrin, the newly qualified engraver was to find that only jeweller T.M. Doe was prepared to take him on. "I went to the same stores who had welcomed my employ with open arms, but when I wanted to take over the work they all said, `No bloody way a Bermudian can do that'. Then old Mr. Dickinson of Astwood Dickinson told me to come in and see him and he just sat me down and slid two pieces of jewellery across and asked if I'd done the engraving on them. When I said `yes', he said OK, they'd take me on.'' But there is still a note of anger in his voice when he continues. "I was glad to get the work, but I was upset that no one would take a Bermudian at face value!'' Some things, it seems, never change.

Besides the odd `diddling' with his chisels, the founder member and Past President of Junior Chamber, founder member of the 1956 Clean-Up group that became KBB, Past President of Southampton Rotary Club and Elder of Christ Church Warwick, is looking forward to working on the restoration of the cutter Chicane .

"It's a wonderful wooden vessel, 56 feet long, built by Alfred Mylne in 1926, which my son bought about 15 years ago. It's docked in one of the old buildings at Dockyard and we've been working on it for almost three years already. I shall be working on the brass portholes and helping out with painting and scraping. It's a massive job, so it should keep me busy!'' SAILING DOWN MEMORY BAY -- Back in the '30s, these young mariners were already putting in plenty of practice. Pictured in the boat are (left to right) Musson Wainwright, Hugh Masters and Jimmy Kempe. In the water are (left to right) T.J. Wadson, Malcolm Gosling and Kelly Franklin.

END OF AN ERA -- Mr. James W. Kempe pictured in his Hamilton work room.