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Get A Handle On It

It was a flurry of activity around here during the filming, editing, and organizing of our most recent online course. Back to the Bench: Restoring & Using Heritage Tools is a very practical look at finding old tools and getting them working wood again, quickly. We feel strongly that heritage tools are often the best tools for the job for both supremely practical reasons (high quality, bargain prices, etc.) as well as intangible values (they’re beautiful, they connect us with the people of the past). The use and enjoyment of antique tools, for me, is one of the singular attractions of hand-tool woodworking.  That said, I do love a good bargain. Being budget-conscious when it comes to purchases, I find...

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Podcast 61 – “Critique of ‘On the Nature of Gothic’” Pye Ch 10

“Handmade” does not mean “shoddy.” This latest episode of the David Pye mini-series tackles chapter 10 of The Nature and Art of Workmanship in which Pye takes John Ruskin to task for his sloppy reasoning about workmanship. Pye’s motivation in writing his book was to critique the “illegitimate extensions” of Ruskin’s ideas about art and pleasure in work. He believed that a more precise analysis would clear up this muddy thinking so that the crafts could be recovered and dignified once again. SHOW NOTES  Order your copy of the book here: The Nature and Art of Workmanship Joshua Klein’s article in Issue Seven: ”A Fresh & Unexpected Beauty: Understanding David Pye’s ‘Workmanship of Risk’” Issue Ten with Ruskin’s “Savageness ”...

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Misunderstanding the Ends of Art

But the principle may be stated more broadly still. I have confined the illustration of it to architecture, but I must not leave it as if true of architecture only. Hitherto I have used the words imperfect and perfect merely to distinguish between work grossly unskilful, and work executed with average precision and science; and I have been pleading that any degree of unskilfulness should be admitted, so only that the laborer’s mind had room for expression. But, accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art. This for two reasons, both based on everlasting laws. The first, that no great man ever...

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It’s a Tragedy

Let’s not let these tools go to waste. They’re workhorses with lots of good work left to do. We’ve already been getting great feedback about our latest course, Back to the Bench. I can tell this material was long overdue. -Joshua  

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