Why we make things and why it matters: The education of a craftsman - book overview

 Ebook from local library published 2013

In the vein of Michael Crawford’s ‘Shop class as soul craft’ - see previous blog for summary, Peter Korn uses his life’s journey and experiences to reminisce on becoming and being a craftsman. The book is relatively short. Life experiences are interleaved with his joy and passion when designing and building furniture. See NY Times article for book overview via interview of Korn.

Korn’s parents (father a  lawyer and mother an academic) are surprised at his choice of vocation. He basically falls into woodworking via helping out a carpenter and eventually working on various building projects across the 1960s. The making of a cradle for the christening of one of his friends provides the shift from carpenter to joiner. He documents the many years, trying to make a viable living as a craftsman. Occasionally, he has to seek financial support from his father, who did not understand his son’s interest in manual work.

Korn’s experiences with cancer in mid-life precipitated his decisions to keep going at something he enjoyed and found great satisfaction from. He eventually opens a furniture/woodworking school, the Centre forFurniture Craftsmanship, in Rockport, Maine. Wrote several seminal books onwoodworking.

Video on his work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zweMkuQc3pU provides insight into his philosophy on life, his journey as a wood craftsman and his passion for the craft. The video also shows his immaculately organised workshop.His work encompasses both the design and  the making of fine furniture.

He writes eloquently about the sociomateriality of woodwork, the need to be attuned to the tools, machinery and materials of his work. In short, a worthwhile read about how working with our hands, provides us with much satisfaction, perhaps difficult to achieve with other forms of work. However, my thoughts are that all work requiring expertise is satisfying. The need to put major effort into attaining expertise, requires persistence and preseverance. Without these, experthood is never full realised. Only when expertise becomes embodied, will continued episodes of 'flow' be engaged with. The intrinsic motivation to reach flow, then leads to a loop of work and aspirations in which flow is encountered regularly. Whilst one is struggling to attain experthood, flow may not be triggered as learning and honing new skills is hard work. It is only on getting to expertise that the routine of work, whether it is manual or cognitive (e.g. problem solving, scholarly/ fiction writing) becomes a joy!