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From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

We’ve been having lots of discussions lately about old tools. This isn’t out of the ordinary around here, as you might guess – most days feature at least one moment of geeking out over the discovery of some 19th-century photograph of a cooper at work, or poring over a beautiful painting by a Dutch master of a woodworker’s shop, or examining a tool that Joshua or I just picked up – but the pace and variety has increased. One big reason is our recent opening of registration for the 2023 M&T Apprenticeship Program, where students from all over the world will convene for an 8-week online course in hand-tool woodworking. Once they’ve signed up, many students reach out to us with questions...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

In this episode, Joshua and Mike pick up where they left off with David’s Pye classic discussion about the value of craftsmanship in a mechanized age: The Nature and Art of Workmanship. This chapter explains that diversity is essential in design and that the artisan’s handwork “picks up where design leaves off” to give us that lively tactile quality that we appreciate at the close proximity of daily use. 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’”

Public post @ the M&T Daily Dispatch 

We have now opened registration for the 2023 M&T Apprenticeship program. This eight-week mentorship brings together the benefits of online education (clear and replayable tutorials, reduced expense, and slower pace) with the benefits of in-person classes (mentorship from instructors, camaraderie of fellow classmates, and accountability to help you get to the finish line).  Mike and I thought long and hard and researched many other programs as we put this together. It’s well known now that the average completion rate for online classes hovers around a meager 10%. This disappointing result is probably due to multiple reasons (poor presentation of material, lack of student accountability, little skin in the game, etc.), and any online educator who cares about this is desperately...

Public post @ the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

After nurturing, caring for, and steering Issue Fourteen through its infancy and trouble-free adolescence, we are delighted to send it out the door and into the world. It’s ready. And while the development of an issue of M&T is a much more abbreviated (and infinitely easier) process than raising a child to adulthood, there are some similarities. I’ll try to unpack the metaphor through my own experiences in writing an article for a new issue. An idea is carried around for a few months, developing, growing, changing, before it’s put down on paper (or in a Word doc). The writing process is intense, often necessitating several consecutive days blocked out for the task. It’s a tremendous relief to finish this...

Public Post at the M&T Daily Dispatch