Taking the time or finding the resources to be able to pursue craft knowledge can be hard when you’re a fixed-income retiree, a strapped grad student, or the breadwinner of a young and growing family. We’ve established the Mortise & Tenon Craft Research Grant to help folks from all walks of life to make these opportunities possible.
If you’ve been intending to apply but haven’t yet sent the application out in the mail, we recommend you do so ASAP, because the deadline is only two weeks away: June 1st. Mike and I already have a stack to read through and we’ve heard from others hoping to apply. We’ll be selecting the first two grant recipients in the first week of June.
During the course of the research, we will be available to advise and support recipients as needed so that they can complete an essay (to be published in M&T) in approximately one year’s time.
Several have asked, and no, this opportunity is not restricted to Americans. The M&T Craft Research Grant is wide open to an international pool of folks who are looking to research, document, or revive pre-industrial wood crafts. There are so many amazing traditions around the world, and we need to hear these stories before they are smothered under the rubble of history.
If you want to help celebrate our world’s panoply of craft heritages, you can do so in two ways:
- Apply for the grant to do the research yourself.
- Donate to the program to support these researchers. (All supporters receive a wax-sealed trade card as an expression of our appreciation, as well as periodic updates on the progress of the research.)
We are excited about this program because we never envisioned being able to facilitate such a valuable contribution to craft scholarship. We hoped to inspire a few individual woodworkers out there, but never even dreamed of anything like this. This is exciting stuff.
We will be announcing the 2021 Grant recipients next month. The deadline is not far away…
– Joshua