In 1980, when Hurricane Bob ripped through Martha’s Vineyard, it tore down a big hickory tree alongside Humphrey’s Bakery in West Tisbury. We took the butt log, hauled it to our yard, and milled it into planks. Until a few months ago they sat on stickers somewhere deep in our wood storage building waiting for my son Pinto to make a rocking chair for me and my wife Chris.
No more. He just finished the rocker. I’d show a picture but I don’t have one yet that does it justice 
(I do have a picture of a prototype reclaimed wood SMCo floor lamp he made; here it is).
Pinto’s a superb woodworker (and one of my fellow owners at South Mountain), a sublime musician, a great Dad, and many other things that make me proud. (No bias here, of course). The rocker is so artfully crafted that to look at it takes your breath away and to sit in it makes you sink into reverie and wonder who will be sitting in that chair in 200 years.
Pinto grew up watching and helping my colleagues and me build. He wandered around the shop. He made stuff all the time. I didn’t grow up with that. But I did have shop class in seventh grade with Mr. Eddy. I built a slalom water ski out of mahogany. To bend the tip I had to slice it with a bandsaw, glue in lots of small pieces and bend it on a form. I wasn’t that good with a bandsaw, so if you look at the edge of the ski in the picture below (I still have it today; it’s gathering dust in the rafters of our shop) you’ll see that the laminations wander.
Can you tell?
The laminations may wander, but the ski is true and the experience of shop class was so memorable that I remember it clearly almost 50 years later. The thought of that shop class – which is a dying part of our educational system – leads me to the juxtaposition of craftsmanship, factory-produced housing, and the work ahead.
In a 2006 essay called “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” (which has become a book of the same name that I haven’t read – the subtitle is “An Inquiry into the Value of Work”) the author, Matthew Crawford, makes a case for the importance of manual work and craftsmanship:
“Skilled manual labor entails a systematic encounter with the material world, precisely the kind of encounter that gives rise to natural science. From its earliest practice, craft knowledge has entailed knowledge of the “ways” of one’s materials – that is, knowledge of their nature, acquired through disciplined perception and a systematic approach to problems.”
Eliminating shop class assumes that it is a good idea to herd everyone into college and get them busy in front of a screen as soon as possible. It assumes that there is little to be learned from manual labor and little value to society. But who’s to say that the “jobs of the future” in a “post-industrial” economy are more fulfilling or more valuable?
Meanwhile, Inga Saffron wrote an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer in January called “City’s Green Groundbreakers” about the Philadelphia Four, a group of rising design firms that see architecture “as a weapon in the battle to stave off environmental ruin.”
The four are convinced that conventional building methods are as obsolete as “hunting and gathering.” Building takes too long, wastes too much, and costs too much. “Rather than attempting to make our system greener, these architects are bent on overthrowing it,” says Saffron.
It’s all about digitizing what we build, electronically sending models to factories, building under controlled conditions, and snapping together components on a site.
Doesn’t sound so new, does it? It’s the old modernist call to arms, which has been going on for a century, and still nobody’s figured out a way to do it better than the Sears Roebucks kit homes of the early 1900’s, which combined craftsmanship with factory production and automation.
(Between 1908 and 1940, Sears customers ordered about 75,000 houses from the Sears Roebuck mail-order catalogs. The houses were shipped by rail all over the country. Each kit home contained 30,000 pieces, including 750 pounds of nails and 27 gallons of paint and varnish. A 75-page instruction book showed homebuyers, step by step, how to assemble the pieces. Many of those houses still exist.)
Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, the elders of the Philadelphia Four, wrote a manifesto called Refabricating Architecture in 2003 that says that buildings should be produced like airplanes and cars.
I’m not convinced. A large part of the process of building has already found its way to the factory – building is more a process of assembling manufactured parts than ever before. Maybe most of what can successfully be produced in factories already is.
This is especially true of the big work ahead in the building realm, which (in the times of diminishing resources and declining population to come) will be about fixing the buildings we’ve got in transformative ways. Deep Energy Retrofits for profound energy use reduction, increased comfort, and greater durability.
Here on Martha’s Vineyard there are 18,000 existing buildings. Each will – at some point – need to be brought into the 21st century, or just thrown away. This is true of the entire developed world (in the developing world the story may be different).
This work is not going to happen in a factory. It is going to happen with teams of well-trained designers, engineers, technicians, analysts, craftspeople, tradespeople, and laborers.” The digital information will flow from studio to site rather than from office to factory. Much of the digital information will be collected at the site, in the same way that a craftsperson collects information “through disciplined perception and a systematic approach to problems.”
Craftsmanship is the practice of staying with a pursuit for a long time and boring deeply into it to get it right. That’s not something we want to disappear; it’s something we want to encourage. We’re trying to learn to do Deep Energy Retrofits this way. Let’s bring back Shop Class, get the kids away from the screens for a bit, and let them make their own wandering saw cuts which will, in due time, straighten out. Mine did. Sort of.
Anna Tunick
Pinto’s lamp is so elegant!!! Show us the rocker, John!
jabrams
Anna – When I have photos I’ll post. Love to you across the ocean.
Jeff Arvin
Hey John,
I read your blog post where you mentioned the rocking chair Pinto made for you and Chris out of a thirty year old piece of wood. I laughed, because I just built a coffee table for Carol out of a piece of wood I’ve been hauling around since the late ‘70’s—probably through 8 or 9 moves. What’s that say about us woodies? It was a 2 ½” slab of black walnut, that I resawed, and the table was the first piece of “fine” woodworking I’ve done in years and years. My chops are rusty as the product shows, but it was good enough to make my wife happy and it was great to spend a few hours in the shop.
You also mentioned Mathew Crawford and “Shopcraft as Soulcraft.” I, too, was attracted by the title, but tossed the book aside after a couple chapters. I would probably agree with most of what he has to say, but the guy was setting off alarms. There was the “watch out for libertarians” alarm. And the “even though this guy comes from academia and is over-intellectualizing his topic, he’s acting anti-intellectual” alarm. And the “I’m gonna wade through this book and be pissed which is sometimes a good thing but probably not this time” alarm. Do you hear these kinds of alarms? Are they a blessing or a curse? Or both?
But mostly your post re-stimulated some thinking I’ve done over the last couple years about the definition of craft. I’ve been confused and dissatisfied by proposed definitions over the years. My timber framing colleagues speak of something being “well-crafted,” but when pressed for what that means, they give “well, you know…” kind of explanations, and imply that it’s obvious in looking at the object what it means to be well-crafted. But it’s not. So when I press further for a definition, about all that’s offered up is descriptions of work, that in my mind define precision—tight-fitting joints, for example, as if producing a tenon that is as square and true as one cut on a table saw (or Hundegger) is the ultimate achievement of craft. But that’s not enough!!! Craft has to be more than achieving machine-like precision, doesn’t it? And it has to be more than sentiment. I can’t listen to another wistful monologue about “my grandpa’s tools” and “they don’t build them like they used to.” My grandpa had those tools, too, and although he was a hardworking guy who got a lot done in a day, he could not be considered a craftsman.
David Pye wrote “design proposes and craft disposes”—a helpful notion. Pye also suggested that craft is not a matter of tooling–that is, not inherent to the use of “hand tools” versus machinery–but rather it’s the degree to which the quality of the outcome of an operation is dependent on the skill of the operator—a helpful notion, since it takes atavistic a/o moralistic arguments or arguments about the virtue of various tools or methods off the table. But there remains the inevitable argument about the definition of “quality,” and the attendant dangers of being dragged back into the swamps of virtue/morality/precision.
So what about quality? From the ‘fifties (I think in the statistical definitions of quality employed in industrial applications, and maybe from Dr. Deming’s work) I found the notions of “fit for intended purpose,” and “fitness for use,” which are satisfying because they bring the issue of service or serviceability to the discussion, and, at least for me, become a solid basis for discussing quality. I have always liked the phrase “good enough for who it’s for,” because it implies that context is an important consideration and introduces the concept of service. In fact, the ultimate judge of a given work might be what purpose does it serve, and does it serve that purpose, because without service you get “tenon polishers” and other acts of self stimulation with a more prosaic name of which I’m sure you are aware.
And what about people? In nearly 30 years of timber framing, I’ve worked with hundreds of guys, almost all of whom try on the mantle of “craftsman,” but a very few handful of them, perhaps, five or six (just so you know, I don’t include myself in this group—I’m a yoostawannabe), have really distinguished themselves in my eyes. They were all different personalities, but the thing they have in common is an uncanny “smoothness” that translates to a steady forward progress (unlike my own process of a couple steps forward and a few steps back; I usually end up building an object twice before I finish it once!) and consistently good results. I think the key is an ability to anticipate several steps ahead so that the “move” they make in the present sets up the next steps. Clearly experience is part of that, but experience appears to be more than a database from which to pick and choose “moves” but rather experience is a base from which they can project their intelligence into the future because they seem to be able to deal with new or unknown variables without complication. And of course none of these bubs is very verbal. You can ask them how they knew to do that, but don’t expect much of a reply. It remains a mystery to me, a very human one, but their acquired knowledge and skill guides judgement and creativity as they engage in building.
So what I’ve been looking for is a definition that avoids undue sentiment while making room for people, but not out of hand rejecting technology, with a component of purpose and service. Is that too much to ask?
And here’s what I got (so far):
Craft is a process requiring skill and judgment that transforms an idea or material from one state to another adding usefulness.
For example, acting is a craft that transforms written work into a performance (I suppose even oral reading of a text could be a craft). Writing transforms an unvoiced idea or yet-to-be connect bits of data into a story or a document. A timber framer transforms a pile of sticks into a structure. And when that happens, the original inspiration/idea/material becomes more valuable or useful (I prefer “adding usefulness” to “adding value” because it is more poetic). I suppose there could be arguments about what’s useful, but I don’t think they’d run very long. Similarly, skill and judgment* acknowledge the human elements by implying learning and creativity are essential to craft, and seem to be definable without much controversy (though I haven’t tried and probably shouldn’t underestimate a given group’s ability to overthink the room).
And what, then is the meaning of a well-crafted object? It’s one that faithfully expresses or executes the intent of the designer/ creator/ thinker-upper. Is that a cop out? I don’t think so, but it does bring up the relationship between art and craft which, for the sake of brevity, I won’t go into, except to say that I believe art to be vision or inspiration and craft to be expression of art. But that’s for another day.
I’d love to hear what you think about craft if you have time. I also look forward to seeing you sometime, though I don’t know when it will be. But if you’re ever in the area…
I hope all is well on the Vineyard. We continue to muddle through out here, and though there’s still not much visibility into the business future, there is a general sentiment that things are improving. Fingers remained crossed. And I’ll keep reading your blog.
So until next time, best regards,
*my friend George Baumgardner, one of the few real craftsmen I know, says “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.” I love the loop.
jabrams
From one yoostawannabee to another, I applaud your inquiry into the meaning of craft. I am in a position – as you must be, Jeff – of being continually surrounded by extraordinary craftspeople who can do things in ways I could never dream of. I experience craft in two ways: vicariously (watching people do things well) and universally (we aspire to do all things well, and all work is a chance to develop worthy expressions of craft in all its parts. The spirit of craft leads us, like the Balinese say, “to do everything as well as we can.”
I just re-read something i wrote a few years ago which still, for the most pat, seems to say what I think about Craft.
“The imperatives of craft create an internal set of standards devised by the maker (child development experts say that this sense of being in control is one of the most important characteristics of play). The craftsperson or team of craftspersons makes the whole thing, from start to finish.
The purpose of craft is generally not dramatic innovation but evolution and improvement, so standards are based on practice that refines the craftsmanship over time. It’s not practice for something else or performance against an arbitrary or competitive standard. When we make a piece of furniture, there’s a complete outcome, but it’s practice because it’s part of a continuum that is never complete. We are forever polishing our skills.
We, the makers, are never satisfied. Every design has flaws that we don’t see until it’s built. Each building could be detailed more coherently, each chair could fit the body just a tad better, and every color could be one shade closer to artful perfection. We grumble, we assess, and we curse our carelessness and foolishness. We are gratified when a tight fit leads to an elegant result. That is the craftsperson’s lot.
I’m still heartbroken (that sounds extreme, but I can’t think of a better word—it’s more than sad, I know, so maybe it’s slightly heartbroken) when I look at something we’ve done and see a room or a roofline or a detail that should have been better. I wish we’d come closer to the target. Often we put our heads together, in such situations, and think hard about how we could have, and whether it’s too late. Sometimes it’s not. Even when the solution takes serious reworking, we repair the cause of our slightly broken hearts when we can.”
That says it pretty well for me. And I love your friend George Baumgardner’s way of putting it: “Good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment.”