The Maker’s Maker
If I look back 70 years or so, I doubt I have known a day in my life without being engaged every day and wholly involved for many hours making. I’m talking eight to twelve hours a day. My memories from early childhood are truly vivid. Fabrics wafted from mid-air to spread and undo folds and rolls from bolts of cloth onto my mother’s cutting table followed by the distinctive rustle only pattern-paper tissue makes with the pinning that connects paper to cloth right before the click, click, click of scissors on a wooden tabletop. How can such things not impact your life at ages three and four, five, six and seven? Both my parents influenced my life but it was the industrious way my mother worked, created and made that had the greatest influence in making me a maker myself. Watching an art maker in a person’s young and formative years has power. The dynamic to it is rarely mentioned and therefore seldom even acknowledged as much more than, well, just labour. Of course, and it goes without much saying anyway, most young people and their parents and even their grandparents now are more unlikely to know a true maker of anything within the spheres they move in. In my young years, most streets had several makers of one kind or another. By that, I mean seamstresses and knitters, painters and decorators, woodworkers of all kinds and even a cooper here and there or a clog maker. Not so today, although one or two of you will try to correct me. In much of the world’s makers that I speak of, manual workers making with their hands have been pretty much rendered redundant––surplus to requirements. AI is the techno-industrial extension to further destroy both corporate and individual arts. You watch! But I don’t deny its potential nor would I shout out, “Smash the looms!” even though Luddites did have very legitimate grievances and arguments that have indeed proved them at the very least partially right. They were endeavouring to counter the greedy ownership of mills and businesses, politicians and those living a privileged life and the ones that still hold such office today. Most things in your home now come from another continent and not likely to be the ones you associate with.
Watching any maker making has a dynamism to it in the same sense that dunamis represents the ‘dynamic’ to make what is as yet unmade. Dunamis (Ancient Greek: δύναμις) is a Greek philosophical concept meaning ‘power’, ‘potential’ or ‘ability‘. It’s central to the Aristotelian idea of potentiality and actuality. Potential; the power to make. Dunamis or Dynamis also reflects Dynamis (Bosporan queen), a Roman client queen of the Bosporan Kingdom. When I use the word dynamic I mean empowering. My mother empowered me by my merely being able to watch her as she worked systematically and with discipline she imposed on herself every day. She then encouraged me to make also and always with my hands.
It’s a small thing to make a buttonhole in fabric but it takes much skill to get the stitches to lay flat without distorting the fabric and straightly aligned perpendicular to the curves when needed. Making buttonholes is the tedious and precise act seamstresses and tailors in a pre-machine era carried out in all of their dress-making, tailoring and so on: I see this as the equivalent of our dovetailing wood sections one to another with sharp cuts that hold together in gapless synchrony. The swivel and twist of the scissor tips around the as-yet unmade buttonhole is an art seldom seen by we ordinary people today. It was a working woman or man with no money to speak of who made every day of their lived lives and supported or supplemented their family income by such work. My mother’s amazing ability was common to any seamstress and tailor and, through this seemingly common thing, it became mine too just for the seeing of it and a decision to strive for even though I did not know then the impact of being the child of a maker and designer would ultimately have on me.
If being a manual worker puts someone in a class then I am well settled indeed as a working class maker. I generally don’t use the term because of its past connotations but not because I’m at all ashamed of being so. It’s more the other people that use the term I try not to agree with or associate with in the same way I wouldn’t use being an ‘academic’ as a category of people. Surely journalists and news presenters can by now be adjusting their language because we who go out of the door of our homes most days or sign in from our sofa office are then merely working people like all others. In times past we used terms like navvy, labourer, shop assistant to ensure categorisation of the more unskilled. We also used terms like, “You can do better than that or do better than this for yourself.” Meaning don’t undersell yourself by being this or that when you could be the other. My woodworking teacher, when I told him I would pursue woodworking for a career, said that very thing to me. “You can do better than that.” It was as if my future would reflect on a failure on his part to steer me in the right direction. I’m glad I didn’t listen to him. I must be one of the most contented workers in the world. I still cannot wait to get to my work every day.
I try to imagine a life without making and it’s impossible. Making has been and still is my life. Trying to do what I did with my life might be more impossible today than ever before. When I applied for my apprenticeship interview in 1964 I could have written to fifty joinery companies in the town where I lived. I did write to several and all of them offered me an interview. I went to the first one, got the job and started two weeks later. Undoubtedly this was the best thing I ever did. I don’t believe in luck. That suggests something so much less than dynamic.
You may not be or have been a professional maker but that is unlikely to be a negative. Exposing youngsters to any art form of creativity will impact their lives and especially so when you encourage them by steering their making, giving them space to make and enjoying their company. My work through the latter decades has been to create makers like myself in the hope that I am creating influencers of a responsible kind to work with their families in their own homes just as my mother did with me.
Hi Paul,
Love your work and posts, you’re the reason I got into woodworking with hand tools.
Just wondered, you have previously mentioned being a police officer, did this career interfere with your woodworking at all?
Regards
Steve
No. It enhanced it favourably because I worked shifts that left me free to do woodworking over and above my eight-hour shifts for another eight hours of productive woodworking and the secure income with added income was great.
Paul, Again, a nice article. But… In your articles you mention the physical, the metaphysical, the calming effects, the joy of design, the joy of working, and the awe of creating. Over the years, did I miss the discussion about the intellectual aspect? In my mind a LOT of the effort is intellectual.
Michael
Left and right brain interrelate interchangeably and compliment one another in our working. I often think it’s like the way the left and right hands work in unison and though characteristically and apparently exact opposites the one never refuses the other in support of common tasks. Critical thinking becomes action. Critical thinking results in the active and skillful concepts we apply throughout our making, so analysing and evaluating information guiding and governing our making multidimensionally throughout our generating the things we make encapsulates all elements from our incoming and past experiences. This experience-based intellect, influences, comes directly from our observations, experience, self reflection and external reflection, reasoning and communication. Ultimately these things coming from and through our intellect guide us in our belief and action, two inseparable partners. In some circles this defines faith. Faith has the power and dynamic to take us from mere thought into actual actioning and so we make what didn’t exist through our joint mental, physical, emotional and indeed intellectual union. Think multi-dimensional specualr reflection if you will. Quite remarkable. I have written on critical thinking as a non-academic novice with regard to craftwork somewhere in the past. Taking an empty day yet unstarted and planning into it split-seconds before it unfolds for us to live in. The initial concept, concept planning and then the ongoing work resulting from the merest thought until the work stands in front of us, is our faith resulting in works.
As always Paul, your musings are insightful. I productive way for me to lower my blood pressure as I simply calm down in your writings.
I do hope you are in the midst of publishing your drawings. That would be a welcome addition to my overloaded bookcase.
! A reason to get into the garage and make sawdust!!
I wish I had had such a choice when I was entering the workforce but the woodworking option just wasn’t there at the time. I was not cut out for higher education and so I got into a machine tool repair apprentice school instead. While it was respectable work at the time it was not considered to be as good as let’s say an engineer or accounting profession. Eventually I did get my college degree going to school nights and as I was forced to change careers through obsolescence it eventually helped me.
All the jobs I performed are now obsolete, and I had five different careers. While I was very successful and enjoyed all of them I would not want to go back to any of them.
So now I work in my shop most days when I’m not doing the things I need to do to maintain my life. I show my children what I am doing but so far have not sparked any interest in the craft. Although on several occasions I have worked with them on projects around their respective homes or at least shown them how to perform the tasks. I don’t know many if any people who still do their own work around the house. For me it’s always been a practical thing to be doing. I can’t afford a $50,000 kitchen or a $35.000 bathroom renovation so I do them myself. I just can’t pay someone to maintain my lawn when I can do it myself. What am I supposed to do sit in a chair and watch someone do what I could be doing?
So with me it’s the learning and doing with the end reward of having something I built myself. I also have the privilege of owning something that’s one of a kind and will last long after I am gone. The tasks engage my mind and body, I am physically and mentally engaged with my surroundings. I can’t think of a better way to spend my remaining days. Isn’t it amazing the age we live in when we can learn from someone who lives on another continent at our convenience.
This was one of your very best blog entries. It was direct and oh so true, especially the paragraph about greedy bosses who are always on the lookout to maximise profit and reduce staff. Having outsourced everything to China, they are now eagerly awaiting AI to remove the messy and expensive human element in their search for even more profit.
When I started highschool in in 1976. I also started taking shop classes and ended up taking all the woodworking classes offered at my school. I remember having to come to grips with the choice of working with wood, or going into a more academic pursuit, in my case computer science. I chose the latter because my dad convinced me that a particular birth defect would keep me from working fast enough to hold down a job as a cabinet or furniture maker.
Now I get to come to grips with the end of a reasonably successful career of 40 years, and yes, I have acquired a particular set of skills. As, my time here winds to a close, a lustrum, a decade, maybe 15 years, if God wills it. I hope I can open a small hand tool shop and spend my time making beautiful and useful things in wood. Thanks for the education and inspiration, Paul.
It was enjoyable to read this weekly conversation starter. My life also was greatly influenced by the attistic qualities of others. My parents did many things with their hands and did not realize that I was watching and learning. I grew up in the early fifties when handwork was still active. It both interesting and appalling to see how technology growth in the 20th century and on into this century, has added so much to our lives; both good and otherwise. Memories of a different era can be good.
There are many examples of makers, if you consider “making” to be defined as creating something that did not exist before.
My mother was a seamstress from whom I learned many practical sewing skills which contributed to my making and repairing things from college costumes (I was the only one who could make button holes without a dedicated buttonhole attachment) to gloves, shoes and many other family things. From my grandfather I learned plumbing and practical shop practices (like: if you are going to carry a pocket knife, keep it sharp – a dull blade is dangerous.) On the other hand, from my father I learned good business practices (he was a banker.)
My own career (44 yrs) was making computer programs, but knowing the skills of making physical things has stood me in good stead in maintaining our home in ways that I find rare in younger generations. The ones who have grown up in a society which will throw away and buy new rather than repair.
Now that I have retired, I look forward to getting more time to make with my hands because I want to, not because I have to; with physical results rather than things created at a keyboard; turning the keyboard skills into a supporting role to help design and plan rather that provide income.
During my youth virtually every female in my family was involved in some form of needlecraft. I often remember having to be used as the pattern for a jumper or holding a hank of wool as it was wound into a ball of wool. Knitting was almost a background operation done during conversations. I guess it was often done to save money, but I like to think also for enjoyment.
One of my uncles made rag mats during lambing time, it occupied him whilst he stayed up during lambing time. I have seen modern versions of them, but his were far better, really tight.
we do seem to have lost so much to commercialisation.
i remember at primary school being told that I could be so much better than a woodworker, I have always regretted following the advice.
I recently received my copy of Essential Woodworking Hand Tools, and I can attest to the quality of the book. A must-have resource for any shop, five stars.
Great article. I really loved the B and W photos, they emphasize the texture of wood, really better than color photos.
Thanks Paul. My daughter is about to turn 13. She doesn’t know what she wants to be when she grows up. I didn’t at that age either so I am ok with that. What I find I mostly worry about is will she pick a profession that she enjoys and that will earn enough money. I don’t know exactly what enough means because that also gets into understanding what lifestyle she wants or what lifestyle she is willing to accept for a given career and also where she is or isn’t willing to live. It will all work itself out. All I can do is expose her to a variety of things and see what likes and dislikes.
I saw a show called Best Woodworker in Britain. I thought, wow Paul’s going to be on it. It was just for best new woodworker ha!
P.S. I started on the Poorman’s (aka World’s Best) Marking Gauge, the oval one with the slotted screw. And I chose a chunk of white oak. Not a good move. My planes are bouncing off it and skipping and gouging. Starting to get to flat on S4S.
What would be the best level of sharpness? I went from coarse to medium to fine on the Chinese thin metal plate diamond sharpener glued to a piece of plywood then stropped with green compound on leather on a flat of wood just like you showed us. Seems very sharp the blades. Put them into the ECE planes, even tried 3 different ECEs, smoother, scrub.
Problem is when you are a novice, you just don’t know jack (planes).
In 1963, when I was in junior high school, our class met in the art room and the art teacher took on the role of guidance counselor, he explained all the different types of work and how much money could be expected for each. He talked about those who chose to go to college as making the most annual salary. Then he went down through the list of jobs that high school graduates could do and then the jobs that dropouts would end up with. I remember he said that college students had to be good in math to get in ( he was wrong I learned some years later), I felt I could not go to college as I was not a good math student. Guess what he said about those who chose to become carpenters? Da Ta Ta Daa: he ranked carpenters as those who could make a living close to if not equal to College Graduates !!! No kidding. I set my sites for becoming a craftsman and I did become one, starting my own business. This teacher was also a “good carpenter who built his own house so he knew what he was talking about.
Paul, I just received a royalty check from a book on database programming that I wrote 14 years ago. I could think of no better use for some of the money than to purchase the book you mentioned in this writing. Thanks for the link.
I had to give up professional woodworking some 30 years ago when a Vietnam War injury caught up with me and I could no longer stand on my feet all day to work. It’s gotten worse but the scent of freshly hand planed oak could no longer be ignored. So now I work for 4 or 5 minutes and sit for 10 to 15 minutes. I anticipate that your book will occupy the time that I’m not contemplating my current project. Thanks again for helping me fulfill my life.
I also experienced a guidance counselor’s 1976 instructions that my family expected me to attend college since I was a fair math and science student and woodworking was not compatible with my apparent talents. I believe I would do things over again differently, however, my long way back to woodworking still worked out and I look forward to spending my remaining time here engaged in many more projects serving our making and the coming generations of kids currently seeking their way. Thank you and Joseph.
Growing up I was bombarded with the “you must go to college to get a good job” by teachers and family alike. I made sure my kids didn’t get that and instead got to choose more of their own way. My oldest did go to college and got a teaching degree, which she now uses to home school 7 of her own kids and 2 of a friend. My older son is now a cabinet maker and owns his own shop (he heard from many along the way that pursuing woodwork wouldn’t pay, etc. but he now knows that he out earns many of his peers – some of who are dramatically under employed and still living with their parents). My other son, after a private college art degree and some years in retail, decided to become a plumber. I’m extremely proud of them all and they are living proof that working and making is still a legitimate career! Thanks for the inspiration Paul – I hope your message reaches out to many of the younger set or to their parents to help steer them at least into being open minded about making!
Well conveyed as always, Paul. After an Army career I am a hobby hand tool woodworker after learning so much from your book and videos. I have two daughters and finally got one to carve a spoon from some cherry from our property. But both girls knit and crochet thanks to their Grandmother. I might be getting a little Christopher Schwarz “anarchist” but think crafts and creating things by hand is being rediscovered by many younger people (and at least this not-so-young person) as a response to the disposable culture and the advertising and influencing that sells those goods. Thank you again for your instruction and motivation to build!