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From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

In this final episode of their tour through David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship, Joshua and Mike bring up several of their critiques of Pye’s thought. As helpful and insightful as he was, the guys both are left feeling like something was missing. See how this book comes up short of a full-orbed, holistic discussion of workmanship and it’s enduring value in a technological age. 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’”

The importance of the relationship that humans share with trees cannot be overstated. Simply put, we owe our survival as a species almost entirely to these plants, and from our most ancient past we have held trees in the highest esteem. Consider the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, or the great ash Yggdrasil in Norse mythology that holds the nine realms together, or the sacred fig (Ficus religiosa) that Buddha sat under. Trees provide us with our primary shelter-building material, giving poles for tipis, timbers for barns, and even peeled veneers for plywood. Every culture has produced household goods primarily out of wood and, until the Industrial Revolution, it was our primary...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

From the M&T Daily Dispatch 

Photo courtesy David C. Now that we’re running the Mortise & Tenon Apprenticeship Program once per year, each term is a pretty big deal. This time, we have more students than ever before working their way through the eight-week program, and it has been a blast. Joshua and I are always blown away by the thoughtful observations, humility, and camaraderie that are showcased when our students get to work. Photo courtesy Michael G. The Apprenticeship Program is now in its 5th term, a milestone hard to imagine when it first launched a few years ago. We’d been seriously missing in-person classes but at the same time recognized the shortcomings of those kinds of singular events. In short, you save up...

From the M&T Daily Dispatch