Lost Art Press

Happy New Year! The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” – a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). Please excuse the male-centric language. We are all products of our time, and this essay, written in 1955, was no exception.

—now that we are in the early days of another year here is something to which we can set our hand that is infinitely worth doing

Since the days when the first hunter devised the first hunting knife, people have always shown themselves eager to possess anything that had a rarity value, something a man had made or, having discovered, had wrought upon with such skill that it became infinitely desirable. The puzzle of it is that today so many men accept passively the idea that they should have nothing in their own homes of rarity value, forgetting that in their own two hands they have the power of making, and that which they make will be of necessity unique. It may only be a chair or a table which, at a glance, may look very much like any other chair or table. The fact remains that on every small detail in the making the craftsman is able to consult his own choice: he will put in a small bit of carving on this knob just for fun, or he will give a steeper rake than usual to the legs to suit his fancy, or change the thicknesses of the original design to something that pleases him better. He will have an eye for the room, even the position in it that the pieces is to occupy, and he will judge the size accordingly. At every point he is able to consult his own wishes so that, in the finish, this is no mere chattel turned out by a machine like hundreds of others, but something unique and personal to himself. The points of difference may be very small, but they are there, and through every tin variation they proclaim the impress of his personality. That is why it is always the immediate contact with the maker that men value, the statuette or piece of pottery that is an original and not turned out from a mould, an original painting, the first impressions of an etching, giving new minted the true value of each line nearest to the artist’s hand, and not least the original work of the craftsman with the tale of his infinite patience and skill written in each sensitive line for the discerning eye to find, if it but seek.

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How many of us in times past have started the New Year with new resolutions of the most ambitious kind, especially when we were very young and there seemed no reason to our ardent imaginations why the highest honours should not be within our eager reach. It takes the passage of the years to convince most of us of our limitations, and a maturer wisdom to learn how to work within those limitations and produce our own particular type of achievement. We are not all cast in the mould of elder statesmen and great leaders of men, but we each have our own particular innate gift of creativeness which, if developed, can give us both the outlet and sense of achievement we all need. That power to introduce something that is unique into our surroundings; that power to give an added grace and charm to the things we use, distinguishing them from the impersonality of manufactured articles, is the power of the free man. It will grow stronger with use for, once we begin to make things to suit ourselves, our outlook undergoes a subtle change. We begin to look at our surroundings with new eyes in a way that is both critical and discriminating. Critical, because once we are able to mould them more or less to our wishes, we begin to see that there are quite a number of things we would like to change, and that there is no reason why we should not change them. Discriminating, because once we begin making in good earnest we learn from first-hand experience the essential qualities of a first-class article, and in the attempt to achieve these qualities in our work to distinguish them in other things. The man with the trained eye and hand is as sensitive to the lines and shapes of pottery, for instances, as he is to those of a fine piece of furniture, and that quality of uniqueness, once started, can spread itself to the rest of his surroundings. That does not mean that he will be living in a little paradise of eccentricity, fantastically different from his neighbours. It does mean that his surroundings will be stamped with an essentially personal quality, which will have just that touch of distinction and interest which makes for pleasant living.

***

It is as well to remind ourselves, now that we are in the early days of another year, that here is something to which we can set our hand that is infinitely worth doing. To build up a home that makes a gracious and pleasant abiding place for our family and for the welcome of our friends, one in which we can feel free in spirit and in purpose, is to have achieved no mean ambition. The very fact that our personality has found expression through our own creativeness is to grow both in personality and freedom and with the actual doing the power of achievement grows. This is the kind of power that neither corrupts nor brings unhappiness in its train. Rather it brings with it the satisfaction of one of our deepest instincts and an interest and awareness in life and living that is something altogether different from the eager greed of a man pursuing the glittering prize which the world calls power. For indeed, it is power over himself which the craftsman knows and which has adorned the face of the earth with the lovely monuments of his skill.

The following is excerpted from “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years” – a collection of essays from The Woodworker magazine while Charles H. Hayward was editor (1936-1966). Please excuse the choices of pronouns. We are all products of our time, and Charles Hayward (born in 1898) was no exception. Every time we re-read one of these essays, we’re struck by how so much of it still resonates today. May our shared interests in the craft continue to be the “best kind of aid to living.”

So often it would seem that the wrong kind of memories attach themselves to Christmas. For some people there is a convention of sadness. Things are not what they used to be. Sons and daughters have married and gone their way and left the home hearth desolate. Death has made gaps in the family circle, beloved friends are with us no more, and the tide of mournful reminiscence flows on. But so does the ever-recurring pattern of life. We cannot halt the process. Only the intensely selfish and possessive would even wish to do so.

But surely we can persuade ourselves to an acceptance of the passage of time. The sad things and the bitter things lose their keen edge with the years, but, like the sundial which tells only the sunny hours, we can cherish the happy memories and rejoice in them as being something truly precious of our own.

Once when I was on a train journey, a small boy and his mother came tumbling breathlessly into the compartment, waved off by a happy throng of youngsters. As the train drew out of the station the boy sat back silently, little smiles chasing one another across his face. His mother looked down. “Tired?”

He shook his head and heaved a sign of contentment. “No. I was just thinking. I’ve had such a perfect day.”

Often I thought of him while the war was on, for that time he would have been old enough to fight. Did the memory of his perfect day spent in an English garden amid the happy laughter of his friends come back to him then? I have always felt sure that it did.

And then there are the absurd things in our lives which unite us to “the inextinguishable laughter of the gods.” Once when I was walking behind a friend in a narrow country lane, my foot slipped and I went headlong into a deep ditch. The side was almost perpendicular and for the life of me I could not manoeuvre myself the right way up again. My friend, meanwhile, who had been talking to me over his shoulder, struck by the sudden silence, looked round and found to his amazement I had completely vanished. Looking up and down and round about he saw at last a pair of feet projecting from the ditch. The moment when his horrified face came peering over the top at me, then to all intents and purposes standing on my head, still remains one of the funniest moments of my life. Indeed, we were both so paralysed with laughter that rescue by means of his helping hand was a slow business.

It still remains a memory which can set me chuckling at any time—and, oh, life is so mercifully full of them, if we know how to enjoy them and make them truly our own.

Then there is the chronic idea of loneliness, which is becoming one of the great bugbears of our age. Unfortunately, it is real enough for a great many people. What always seems so unreal are the means taken to alleviate it. The Christmas parties, the communal get-togethers, television and the like, are panaceas which bring their moments of happiness, but they cannot provide any real cure for loneliness. As with so many other problems, only the person concerned can find the answer. A rejoicing spirit will rarely be a lonely spirit, for he or she will be able to enter with liveliness and interest into whatever part of the human scene their lot is thrown. Moreover, for anyone who has been able to develop some definite interest or practical skill, there is always too much to occupy him for the thought of loneliness to enter in. The important thing is to find an interest in life which accords with the needs of one’s own nature.

For the man who is essentially practical a handicraft is the answer, one in which he can turn any skill which he already possesses to better and finer use, right up to the point where his craftsmanship enters the realm of true art and becomes a source of increasing satisfaction.

And there is no reason to limit his interest to manual skill. There is a whole wide field of literature dealing with furniture making and its allied crafts and the social history behind them. In fact, there are all manner of related interests which can be pursued by anyone who is prepared to take sufficient time and trouble. To start with only a meagre equipment of knowledge is no handicap in these days of good libraries and easy accessibility of objects of superb craftsmanship in famous houses and museums. We can browse among them all and follow up any particular trails which most take our fancy.

Interests will open up as we go, leading to many a fascinating bypath which at the beginning could never have been foreseen. A man has to care sufficiently to make the initial start and to be sufficiently persistent till the thing grips him. After that he will insensibly acquire those inner resources of his own which, in the long run, are the best kind of aid to living.