Lost Art Press

31 thoughts on “Your Stuff”

  1. I thought you were going to go with George Carlin on this one – “Have you ever noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff?”

  4. Interesting thought. I’ve certainly experienced having my design choices limited by my tools and skills. As I’m getting some experience with hand tools I’m finding it very liberating.

    I had to rip the top of my workbench to width yesterday. Originally I was going to do it on my bandsaw. Instead I picked up a used/resharpened handsaw from Bad Axe and cut it by hand. Simple, especially compared with trying to hoist a 150 pound slab through the bandsaw.

    1. (on design) I recently read an interview with Charles Eames and he talked about how constraints lend a great deal to a “good” design… A jet plane is more likely to have a handsome design because there are so many things that it has to be, whereas the design of a theater has so much possibilities and influences that it can quickly get muddled and ugly. The Eames molded plywood chair has been called the best design since the steam engine. He said that one of the goals of the design was to make the technique clear and obvious rather than having a factory made reproduction of a traditional design that was.

      (on hand saws) When I began trying to understand woodworking I did not own a saw of any kind I didn’t know how one worked and couldn’t afford one. I started buying old saws that had been donated to mission thrift stores and started trying to learn how to fix and use them. A challenging way to begin but it has given me deeper relationship to the work and the materials. If I nick a hidden nail (because all my wood is from salvage) I can fix it also I’m becoming familiar with how it feels to have the wrong saw for a specific job and likewise how to make the saw I need.

      When I started working on a workbench I told a friend of mine (an information architect) that I was using ideas from Eames theory of design and advice from Chis’s workbench book…invent nothing…make it sturdy…a list of constraints and limitation. My friend asked me…”do you ask the wood what it wants to be?” I told him, “The the more I gain in technical skill and familiarity with the materials, the closer I get to addressing that question in the design process,” He said. “You should write that down.”

  5. Nobody wishes for the demise of power tools more than I, but that’s slightly unfair. If you had replaced “machines” with “tools” you could have said the same thing about any of the great cabinet or furniture shops that ever existed. Mack Headley’s planes aren’t drastically different from mine and my stuff sure doesn’t look like his stuff. In the words of a great mountain fiddle maker not far from here, in response to machine made violins from Asia: “What’s the use of the best machine in the world with a fool a’holt of it?”

  8. I love this quote for what it does. It is so simple and obvious that it does not block out the light it was trying to convey. A fish does not see the water, because he is in it (pervasive) We do not see the light but rather the light illuminates the room so that you can see the stuff in it. If you actually engage this quote it begins asking you all sorts of questions (which are more valuable then answers because questions work and answers rest)

    “Haunted by key images from ancient times, our minds have remained far behind the sophistication of our machinery…As a result abstraction has invaded all the arts.”

    These quotes might have something to say to each other.

  9. Jim Tolpin was addressing an audience of a couple hundred guys, and there were a few of us mostly hand-tools-preferred types scattered among them, but mostly in the back. It was as interesting to hear Jim say he’s become a hand tool convert as it was to see some of the jaws drop on the machine-preferred types. I had thought I might skip Jim’s talk, and it turned out to be one of the better ones!

  10. Reminds me of a quote from Wm. S. Coperthwaite: “Industrial production has been a boon in providing many needed things at a lower cost, but unless we are alert we’ll let the machine start teaching us design. For instance, machines can be used to create any form of chair we like, but commercial interests can make more chairs (and more money) if the simplest design *for the machines* is chosen for the production. So we are surrounded by furniture to fit the needs of machines. …Industrial production has so controlled the design of chairs that we now have a difficult time imagining how the form night differ if a chair were handmade.”

    1. the subject is charged with ideas about technology… Heidegger uses the airline industry to illustrate a similar principal. At one point an airplane allowed people to do something they couldn’t do before but as jobs are created to build them, an industry is created and now we have seats to fill rather than places to go. So there is a shift from allowing you go some place that you want to go, to convincing you to go where I can take you.

      guy Debord wrote…
      In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.

      A deeply loaded subject, this technology stuff. It is so hard to determine what is the proper place or role of technology and in what context it asks some really hard questions of our
      culture and our craft.

      From my time in a kitchen I remember a chef told me I should be able to do everything with the least technology available (knife) so that when the machine breaks the menu
      doesn’t.

  11. I agree with Ryan, it depends on which fool is holding the tool. I believe that the performance of all tools, cheap or expensive, are in the hands of the holder. I am no pro, but I bought a small pocket plane off the $1 table in a Jamesway store over 30 years ago. Tuned and sharpened, it is perfect for that last finishing touch to fit a piece of moulding or adjust a joint for the final fit. It has served me well and I prize it greatly.

  14. Hmm, I think there are a lot of reasons that people’s stuff looks similar. And I think having the same tools is pretty far down the list. Most painters and sculptors have the same media and tools. Muscians have the same notes and instruments. Cooks have the same food, pans, stoves, and ovens. But somehow quality varies …

    1. Exactly!
      The guy who said this was being crafty in describing a shift in perception. Was he talking about something intellectual in how you approach a project? Is flipping the switch on your power tools to solve a mathematical problem of matter and space so mechanical that something important to the craft gets lost? Or is he giving warning to a craft that has been usurped by an industry driven by power tools? He creates a new space of perception almost ex nihilo (out of nothing) …I’m so glad to hear from someone that was there… most of the crowd favor power tools and he’s pretty much telling them…”your doing it wrong.” He’s offending people by drawing them to their own conclusions and yet allows the subject matter to speak for him in a way that allows you to ignore it as silly or pick it up and ask what it means. However you look at it it is strangely compelling

    2. That’s a thoughtful and interesting point. I would say one of the things on the list might be plans. Even among woodworkers, our stuff might look similar because we are working from the same plans. With all of the detailed plans in woodworking magazines, readers obviously demand exact plans for anything they might build (and cut lists of course). I think we should take more of Roy Underhill’s “You get the idea” approach. In his original books, there were no exacting dimensions for how to build your shaving horse, just a general understanding of how big certain things needed to be — because it made sense. If you understand the principle of why a design works in appearance and function, then you can adapt to your individual needs or stock on hand — and you have some unique stuff.

      1. plans! That’s huge! An architect doesn’t build buildings, he makes planes for other people to build buildings based on a formal structure of how things work. an information architect does a similar job in a different setting but the goal is to make things work well or BE GOOD or work well. For Heidegger a hammer is his example. When your using a hammer well it seems to disappear, you don’t notice it. Like walking, you don’t think much about it anymore do you? Once you’ve got the formal structure you make adaptations to what it makes sense to do.
        What I love about woodworking is that it can’t be summed up in words or or understood in purely intellectual terms. It must be experienced, you must DO it to understand it. I think to make really good adaptations power tools may be a hindrance because of how much of the direct experience diverted in the name of speed and accuracy. When you turn off the power tools more of your senses are tuned into the job and the experience…Different
        things occur to you.
        The Peter Follansbee tool chest adaptation didn’t arise out of flipping a switch but for the one in his head. I would even say there is a deeper sense of emotion in work done in quiet.

  15. The bel curve of my experience: Started out making bird houses, wanted to make queen ann furniture, now I’m making stick and rustic furniture from found materials.

    1. Bird houses! that’s great! you should write a book! You could document your journey in woodworking and market it as a bird house book and chances are it would sell…I hear bird house books are the best sellers.

  16. Would it matter if all ‘our stuff’ looked like other people’s? It does if it looks bad, but if it’s good (whatever that means), doesn’t that mean it’s right (in some way or another)? Perhaps we’ve collectively stumbled on the point where the function and material and cultural understanding come together?
    OR… does it really look the same? is it just the same to the casual glancer, but the careful observer sees the difference, the fingerprints in the work? (one is mushy, one is crisp; one has tight fitting joints, the other doesn’t; one has fair curves, the other… you get the idea)
    And anyway… it’s easy to pick on machines. Tools impose limitations and constraints. Machines are more complex and impose more complex constraints, but it’s only a matter of degree not of kind.

    1. The quote on it’s own is tantamount to saying, “a line cut by you looks like a line cut by me.” He is not clear about what he means by machine. He could be talking about hand tools for all I know and the meaning would be… equally illusive. He could mean that there is a formal structure to the way things work…a structure standing…looks like a structure standing, because there are parts that support and parts that rest.
      I’m a big fan of the Japanese principal of Wabi-sabi …it is the imperfections that make it perfect.

  17. “Machines are more complex and impose more complex constraints, but it’s only a matter of degree not of kind.”
    Is this true? It deserves some serious thought and I think it may be part of the key to judging when a piece of technology is out of place. I have nothing against technology…But similar to the medium is the message…I think to some extent…the tools are the trade
    I think what I have a problem with is…if you can’t add 2+2 to = 4 without a calculator and if there was a system in place that would actually discourage you from knowing how to do simple math because it want’s to sell calculators. that would suck

  18. The Riace bronzes. Many consider the sculptures, the best ever made…any where…ever…in the world. The embarrassing fact is that modern craftsmen can not reproduce this quality of work and it has nothing to do with materials or tools. There is simply a degree of know how that has been lost. Modern tools can fill this gap any more than primitive ones…but is it possible to find these lost skills with modern power tools?

  19. “Our conventional response to all media, namely that it is how they are used that counts, is the numb stance of the technological idiot. For the content of any medium is the juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watch dog of the mind.” …”We become what we behold.” Marshall McLuhan
    The written word is…linear, sequential, uniform and infinitely repeatable. and it has changed our intellectual functioning. Before the written word there was no assembly lines…churches did not have pews. This is a huge shift in perception and yet so pervasive you don’t notice it. When we talk about lost art I don’t think of it as just a quaint bit of nostalgia…I think it might actually mean we risk loosing the ability to reason in a particular way.

    “Your stuff tends to look like other people’s stuff because you have the same machines.”

    In this context…the way this makes sense is nothing less than chilling.

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