The Importance of Craft
If craft is the art of work, and I believe that that is what craft is, then we ourselves become a live canvass filled with an ever-changing palette of colour and texture. It puts our work and the way we work, the materials we harvest and garner, and the delivery of it in finished work, in order. We cut the natural from its root, blossom, stem, fruit and much more to refine it, whether that be to dye, soften, weave, mould, shave, hammer, axe, adze or saw for the need. Craft once provided support in our growing the essentials of life, to agrarianism itself; no one can deny it was a perfect marriage between those who grew and those who worked their craft. These two were inextricably woven in perfect union and this union created the harmony of something many if not most cultures, in their newfound sophistication, have lost–craftwork.
We use the term craftsmanship as the generic reference to whats made by hand and made well. Exemplary craftsmanship still exists but only in a minority of people and yet this level of workmanship was as pandemic as the coronavirus that now besets us. In a hundred years we have transitioned from cultures where everyone knew someone, many, who made with their hands. Today, most people will know no one who does such things and a culture that has no desire to do such things and yet deep down a man in a suit selling real estate, a lawyer at a desk in Manhatten, a woman managing her business will express in some way the desire to cut make and build something of beauty with lasting qualities with their hands. Success in business and finance may have the reward leading to certain security and even comfort, but making has its own intrinsic value that can never be bought or sold. The ability to make skilfully with only your hands and a few hand tools parallels the reward of soaring as the eagle, hovering as the kestrel and finding contentment without any pursuit of money is the most tangible reward of all. How do I know? I have done it! And I have known no equal for the working of it into my life. My greatest contentment has been to take the raw and transform it by my hand into art itself. Craft matters!
My work over the past few decades has been to encourage others to invest what time they have to spare in developing their craft in woodworking. It has never been my intention to speak against machining and machining technology, but what I have done and continue to do is show and indeed prove that handwork is much more reliant on skill and that developing of that skill is never static but highly intrinsic to our wellbeing, exercise, sense of fulfillment and satisfaction. I have said often that machining wood is not the same thing as working wood using hand tools. I tire of people saying there are two ways to make the journey as though one equals the other by way of reward. How can that be so when it’s the machine that does the work on the one hand and the other requires the whole of human effort. To say such things is to compare the athlete running the marathon or the spring with the commuter riding the tube over the same distance. It should be self-evident that he latter, the hand toolist, engages willingly with the greater challenges of high self-demand in the same way the athlete does. Especially is this so in a consumerist culture that demands all of your daylight time and energies just to survive. Industry and commerce consume our very best hours in the day and then too the years in decade upon decade. The sadness too is the reality that it then tries to reward us with the illusion of something called retirement when our bodies are worn down and moving quite quickly to being worn out. I know that this is not the same for all. Successful people with good health often go on to do rewarding things as an era when they volunteer into more occupations. I just want everyone to reflect a little more on crafting the years you have into the future. Nothing more.
My work life has thus far been different than most. I learned the discipline of craft and applied the art of it to bring order to what I made and continue to make. I look back on 5.5 decades of making and know that I would do it all over again. I can scarcely recall Mondays not being my most favourite of days. I enjoyed the planning of my week, the cutting and cutting and cutting of my wood and at the end of every week seeing something standing in front of me that brought the reward of making it and the reward of passing it on.
In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, I still have as much work to do as ever. It hasn’t stopped me from looking into the future and a future I still see with the most amazing hope. The past prophets of recent months and years predicted a decline would come to Britain when Britain reestablished itself outside of mainland Europe. The decline now faces Britain for a different reason and of course, it faces the whole of Europe together with it’s neighbouring and distant continents. The falling pound is the same as the falling economy on a global scale. The greatest sadness of all is the sad loss of life, this is the greatest and most incalculable loss of all. My handwork enables me to reflect on such things as these; craftwork keeps me sane and then maintains that sanity too.
This is not the first time I have said such a thing and many have latched on to what I say in that. I don’t bury my head, isolate myself selfishly away, pretend nothing is really wrong but I still laugh every single day at something I see as funny. I still listen for news of my brothers and sisters around the world and search out their wellbeing, or at least news of them. Losing our loved ones, hearing of friends passing, sickness and disease in an epidemic and now a global pandemic means that we all feel the pain. You see, we are supposed to. We are supposed to absorb the pains of one another so that no one suffers alone. In the past, I have made many coffins for friends I have lost. I cut a dozen dovetails to each of the corners and my planes and hands have planed every face. Mostly they were simple. Pine, that’s all. But the thing was, in the making of those wooden caskets, I could sense the pain of the children left behind, the sad loss of parents that should never see their children pass before them, such like that.
So our reasons to make with our hands are to support one another in some primordial depth we have yet to see the reason for or understand. The meaning of handwork for me is to follow those ancient paths of vocation where understanding my materials from the inside out and then too to engage with human life in every way I can, provides a path of total certainty into an ever-unfolding future.
Great read Paul
I’ve never been more grateful for the skills and philosophies you have taught me.
Thanks
Ron
Inspirational ,from one who lost a son ,I have sought solace in my shed learning always learning and valuing the learning
My father was a shoemaker and did other leather work too. So I grew up learning to craft things out of leather. What I learned as a young boy taught me discipline and creativity. When I retired two years ago, I was an ironworker for 46 years, I told the young men that I left behind that you need to manipulate the steel not the other way around. Here in the U.S. it sometimes seems many are trying to just get the work done and not looking back on what they learned after completing a project.
When I was younger, I worked for my uncle on his dairy farm for a few years. One year winter refused to give up, so spring tilling of the fields was late. Sundays were my day off. On one Sunday when winter was giving up, it dawned warm and sunny, and I awoke at my usual time for milking, 4:00 AM. Rather than to fall back asleep, I found my way to the tractor and plow that had been readied for Monday, and began plowing the field planned for Monday. Turning the earth was a soulful undertaking for me, and I found my church there under blue skies and spring air, thanking the Lord for his gift. I finished plowing the field at the end of the day, and stopped to look back at what I had accomplished. Feeling as fulfilled as if I had gone to church instead.
My career away from the farm seldom afforded a plowed field that gave me the same feeling of peace. It was my art, my craftsmanship, using the farm tools to create a seedbed for planting that gave me that feeling. My career afterward, away from the farm, seldom gave me a plowed field to look back on at the end of the day. That day stays with me all my life.
I think that feeling is what you are describing in your craftsmanship. Thank you for sharing it, and reminding me of that day.
I guess we always think problems are ours alone, because we are alone in many ways. But people Do care often and I appreciate reading here.
I think if we feel others care, we too can reach out.
Our governments ask us to do telecommuting (work from home on a computer) where possible.
This shows that most of us are in fact pushing paper (I have done it also) while tangible things were outsourced.
Now we are in great trouble.
I have been sewing masks with old shirts.
Fortunately, most of the times, I resist the injunction to throw away.
Hospital are asking volunteers to sew nurse’s coat that can be washed/boiled. Because they have been relying on throw away coats which are not anymore available in the required quantities.
Sylvain
Two and a half years ago I started woodworking after I watched one of your videos on youtube, well, I started with carving things with a kitchen knife out of wood I found on the street and now I have a small shop with a setup like yours but with a minimum set of tools of course, but I never feel disabled as long as I have sharp tools.
Many say I have to find a real job and have a stable monthly income and insurance, but I can’t imagine working for a company or anyone except myself. I need that control. But sometimes I get the feeling that I can do more, that I’m not using all my potential. Specially with regard to interacting with people, since most of the time I’m alone in my shop and have no contact with people. I love teaching too, but I’m not sure if that’s something that I should do in the future.
Hasan, maybe you could teach just one young person to love wood and all its wonders, do you have one person that shows interest? Invite them in to see one project, enthusiasm creates a compound interest, maybe your opportunities will then grow larger. Be confident in your ability, generous in your giving and enjoy every moment of inspiring others.
“Especially is this so in a consumerist culture that demands all of your daylight time and energies just to survive.”
And in return offers you everything under the sun with the claims ‘New! Quick! Easy! What you want, when you want it! You want it all, and you want it now!’
But in handwoodworking (and many other fields as well) there are some things that can’t be bought with money but only earned with time and effort, frustration and perseverance. Things and skills acquired that way are more genuine and valuable. It’s the direct opposite of ‘easy come, easy go’.
Thank you for these beautiful words of wisdom, Paul.
I am wishing that as a result of this global pandemic, if we survive at all, that everyone will begin to envision the world we want to live in, how should we change now, as we emerge from this? I think many of us here would agree that there is much that needs to change. Surely people are learning something each day, as our old way of life becomes more uncertain. One thing I am certain of is that the skills that Paul teaches us are going to be needed, in whatever kind of world we end up with. May you all be well!
Great writing Paul! I am a US serviceman currently stationed here in England. I will probably be here another 4 years or so before retirement eligibility. Been following you for about a year and a half now and often come the concussion that I need look nowhere else as I (green as I am) aspire to be a fine woodworker. Any chance you will still be taking on apprentices in a few years; hard to say I’m sure. I made several of your intro projects and then your workbench this winter. Now, I’m just about finished up with a hope chest for my daughter from your blanket chest design. The progress goes painfully slow but does move along all the same. Take care Paul and FAM
I am scared for the old.and the sick but also the young people in essential services who the system is sacrificing to the pandemic while the fat cats hoard their unearned wealth. If the ultrarich say they made their billions from bootstrapping hard work, i wonder: whose?
Many wealthy people make the claim to having earned but never actually worked for anyone except themselves. I doubt that most of them know what hard work is on the one hand but then all the more worked for a soul-destroying corporate entity with no future beyond losing any identity they have in menial and tedious work year on year.
Paul, you’ve well stated the insidious effects of industrialism…the ever-present push for maximizing, optimizing, increasing not the quality of the product but the return on investment…the money. It affects the producers by minimizing concern for quality of life, quality of the “making” experience, and creating cognitive distance between the maker and the product. Companies quit caring about craftsmen and craftsmen develop sometimes open disdain for companies in turn.
Paul, your words are audible balm for those of us who share your love and know the value of craftsmanship.
Thank you.
Paul,
Did you make the carved (finnial?) in the second picture? If so, how? It’s very nice.
Thanks,
Thomas
No, not my work. These are in a building in the central area of Oxford’s university area.
Inspiring as always. My wife and I have been woodworking for just three years and are building our own furniture. It brings us great joy to work with our hands from rough lumber to finished pieces we use every day. Although ‘hybrid’ workers, using power tools to get us close, the end result always needs a lot of hand work and carving to complete. I now have a growing array of hand tools that are in great part to your videos over the years. Thank you.
ps: we built the house we are in too!
Hello Paul,
I very much enjoyed reading this piece. You have clearly been doing some deep thinking and have articulated those thoughts so well here.
I was quite moved when you said about making coffins for friends and thought of the love that must have gone into that work.
Take good care of yourself
Paul, I was reading the poem Junk by Richard Wilbur this morning and thought of you. Have you read it? It’s fantastic.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43045/junk
I think you’d like it.
Great article again, thanks
Rico
Your life and commitment to your craft and, your friends is an example for all of us to follow. Thank you Paul.
Paul: Thank you so much for this post about crafts-people. I grew up with a father, mother and grandparents who were from farming generations. They could, it seems, to almost anything with next to nothing, much of it rough and ready but completely functional. The idea of going to a store to buy something was a thought that certainly didn’t come first on the list of options. I am so thankful to have seen that in my boyhood days and learned a little bit of it. Love your “stuff”, especially in your more philosophical moments. I build classical guitars but always benefit from your blogs and YouTube demonstrations. I learn from even your most basic teaching and demonstrating.
Paul, thank you so much for this delightful post. I am new to the rank of woodworkers, having retired less than a year ago from my surgical practice in the western US. Arthritis was claiming a portion of my skill set, and the new kids arriving from their residencies and fellowships were trained in robotics. Not long before leaving, I assisted (but mostly watched in 3D video) my new partner reconstruct a badly damaged pelvic organ. It was poetry in motion, and I knew I did not have the years or facility to do what he could. I was not sad, and I knew it was time to go.
Fortunately during my working years I collected some proper woodworking hand and power tools and built a place to put them. I found time to read, study, and watch several teachers – such as you, and have been able to create and build furniture for our home in the red rock country in southern Utah. I am proud of the pieces, but aware now of the utility vs artistry that came very powerfully to me in your post. I suspect I will be more interested now in the journey of this craft. Please keep up the vital instruction; I so need it! Thanks again.
Mike
Thank you Mr Sellers for this post. I see your just as skilled at wordsmith as you are at woodworking. Your woodworking master classes have been an inspiration to me an do too your words.
I’m 47, a paramedic in Medford Oregon, USA, and a novice at woodworking. I have always liked to build with my hands but never seem to have the time or “the right power tools” to build anything. But I still longed to build.
I discovered your woodworking master classes on YouTube and found a friend who showed me that I didn’t need the right power tools to build a simple box. All I needed was a saw, a chisel, some scrap wood and a little effort to build something beautiful and functional.
Every time I reach for my small dovetail boxes that I built with my own hands that hold my screws, one for each length of screw mind you, I smile. I built that. And small boxes led to bigger, more complex boxes with this thing called joinery. Something I didn’t even know about until a friend in England taught me.
Thank you Mr Sellers. Thank you for sharing and showing me your craft. You have made a difference Sir, not only in my life but in countless others.
Respectfully
Scott Darland.
What a beautiful, generous message
Paul, a few years ago I build a coffin (with no plans) for my mother. I’m currently building two because my priest asked several of us to build some in case some of our older parishioners pass from the virus. I’m curious–would you consider doing a coffin as a masterclass project? I’d love to see how you did it. Mine are fairly simple. One is a birch plywood toe-pincher, the other is an oak box.
I am amazed & feel inspired with your understanding & constantly being aware & learn from this awareness while working with Wood. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts 😊😊
Also ,your mention about reducing pain by feeling it is quite convincing.
Thanks once again, keep the great work going 🙏🙏