I can’t bring myself to write a post about completing a job and welcoming our clients home without expressing heartfelt sympathy to all those who have lost their homes, and more, over the past few days to fire or financial devastation. Making things – whether furniture, books or buildings – is a source of joy. Seeing them happily used is an honor. Seeing them destroyed is heart breaking.
Yesterday we finished the kitchen I’ve been tracking here in occasional posts, and the Robinson family moved home. The job took much longer than usual, thanks to the pandemic. We’d planned to do the bulk of the work while the homeowners were in Europe, where Ben Robinson was scheduled to spend a good chunk of the summer with students. When reality put the kibosh on Plan A, we discussed Plan B: the family could live at home, cooking on an outdoor grill, and we’d seal off the kitchen workspace to keep construction dust (and droplets) to ourselves. Then we realized that wouldn’t work, either – the project included reworking the full staircase to the finished basement, as well as the steps to the upper level, and replacing the front and kitchen doors. In the end, Ben and Jenny took their three children, two cats and much of their kitchen’s contents to a rental, and then another. (There was more than the usual rental property available for sublet this summer, as many students at Indiana University-Bloomington had left town due to the pandemic.)
The same view, before: tile floor, falling-apart cabinets, non-functioning appliances, useless bulkheads and a wall that blocked the kitchen from the living room.
Same view, early on, with mobile scaffold for painting the ceiling.
Home! Jenny sent this picture last night.
Here are a few more pictures from before, during and after, followed by a list of sources and suppliers.
A pair of shelves with integrated lighting defines the kitchen from the living room now that part of the wall between them is gone, while offering storage and display space. (I’ve written two posts about how I built these and how we installed them at the Fine Woodworking blog. The first is here. The second will be published there soon.)
We based the design of the white oak baluster and railing on an original screen at the mid-century home of some good friends; the angled slats are spaced for code compliance. The small white oak door on the wall opens into a cavity at the inside corner, replacing a blind corner unit that previously occupied the space.
A set of 15″-deep cabinets spans the transition between living room and kitchen, providing secondary prep space and generous storage. The base color is Real Milk Paint Co.’s Boardwalk, with Granny Smith, Dijon and French Gray colors.I topcoated the milk paint with Minwax satin oil-based polyurethane.
I painted the upper shelves for this set of cabinetry in colors related to other parts of the house, tinting some basic colors (Tree Bark or Willow, Boardwalk and Sunflower, if I recall correctly) with white.
It should go without saying that Tony supervised all my work in the shop.
Mark rebuilds the stairs to the basement.
John Dehner does the last clean-up while Mark loads tools in the truck.
The passageway between the living room and kitchen is now about 1′ wider than previously, which makes moving from one space to the other far more comfortable – you no longer have the sensation of passing gingerly alongside a mountain crevasse. To get the extra floor space, Mark reworked the stairs to the finished basement, moving them forward (toward the basement). He rebuilt the stairs with white oak treads and risers.
A glazed door to the carport brings more light into the room.
Before: The original built-in at right wasted a lot of space. Ben and Jenny used a shallow cabinet (almost invisible here, but you can see a little of its face just to the left of the original built-in) for additional storage. Needing yet more storage space, they had an assortment of shelves along the south and east walls, which made the room feel cluttered.
Detail of the BTC light fixture with the house’s original limestone fireplace surround.
John Dehner trimmed the threaded rod with a reciprocating saw while Mark held the rod steady. The rod is concealed in shop-made white oak tubes.
In 2007, a lightweight box showed up on Christopher Schwarz’s desk from Joel Moskowitz, who runs the Tools for Working Wood store in Brooklyn, N.Y. Inside was “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” a book first published in 1839 on working wood by hand. It was one of a series of books that introduced young people to the basic knowledge of trade skills: baking, coopering, printing, joinery and more.
But it’s not only a how-to; it’s presented as an engaging fictional tale that tells us of young Thomas, a boy apprenticed to a joiner’s shop in a rural English town. He begins his apprentice years sweeping the shop, managing the hide glue pots and observing the journeymen.
Then (plot twist), Thomas is told to build a rough box for a customer who is leaving on a journey that same day. We get every step of the project, from stock selection to construction to delivery, when Thomas brings along an envelope of cut nails for the customer so he can secure the lid shut before his trip.
Thomas goes on to build a school box and finally a large chest of drawers, while he learns the joinery and personal skills to become a journeyman.
Chris and Joel re-published the book in 2009 (it is now on its fourth printing) – and to go along with the historic text (included in its entirety), Chris constructed all three projects, with step-by-step instructions and drawings, and Joel wrote a section that explores the social structure of England in 1839, and woodworking during the period.
It is available in hardcover and as a searchable PDF; it is also the only Lost Art Press audiobook – recorded by Roy Underhill. That project was at the request of a school for autistic children, so that students could listen then build the projects.
Most modern woodworking texts are silent on the topic of nails. Ernest Joyce, the author of the widely distributed book “Encyclopedia of Furniture Making” (Sterling), put it thus:
“Apart from panel and veneer pins, the furnituremaker has little use for nails except for softwood work etc.”
I couldn’t disagree more. While it is surely possible to build furniture without ever driving an iron nail through wood (just ask a Shinto temple builder), that is neither an expedient nor historically accurate approach to building traditional Western furniture.
Antiques of the highest caliber bristle with nails – you just have to know where to look. Examine the cabinet’s back for rosehead nails. Do you see how the moulding and cockbeading are attached? How about the glue blocks that support the entire case piece behind the feet? In some cases, even the dovetails are nailed. And though some might contend that nails in antique dovetails were part of a shoddy repair job, that’s not always the case.
Wrought Roman nails taper on all four sides and are prone to split your work, which is why cut nails were invented. Cut nails taper in their width but not in their thickness. Making them is expensive, which is why wire nails were invented. Wire nails are cheap, hold OK and don’t require a pilot hole, which is why they are extremely popular.
But before you scoot down to the hardware store to pick up some nails, read on a little farther. Those might not be the right nails for you. The first recorded nails are Roman nails, which appeared about 5,000 years ago and had a good long 4,800-year run. Roman nails are basically square and taper on all four sides to a point. They were handmade.
I’ve used nails like this, and they are tricky. You need a pilot hole, and you have to place your nails so they are as far away from the ends of boards as possible because these nails wedge your work in all directions. So splitting your work is easy – unless the wood is green.
In my opinion, the best nails are those that Thomas used in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.” Thomas used cut nails, which are much different than both the Roman nails (sometimes called wrought nails) and the modern wire nails used in carpentry today.
Wire nails are made from long spools of wire – no surprises here. The wire flies through a machine that snips it to the proper length, then a machine “upsets” one end of the wire to create the head and sprays the fastener with some sort of adhesive or coating, depending on what the nail is to be used for.
So wire nails are either round or basically square in section (the square ones are used in pneumatic nail guns). They don’t taper in their length. They are incredibly cheap. They also don’t hold particularly tenaciously (with some exceptions), though they are excellent for carpentry or situations where you don’t need a bulldog grip.
Reproduction furniture makers who use hand-driven nails still typically use cut nails, just like Thomas did. Why are they called “cut” nails? These fasteners are sheared from a sheet of steel stock. (Imagine a Kit Kat candy bar being broken up into individual sticks. It’s a bit like that.) However, instead of being round or square, cut nails are rectangular in section; they taper in width but not in thickness.
Like Roman nails, cut nails require a pilot hole, and you want to mind the wedge shape. If you apply the wedging action against the end grain of your top board, the nail will hold well. If you apply the wedge into the face grain, you might split your work.
Cut nails were the nails of choice in the 19th century. They were made in large numbers at the beginning of the century but were driven to near-extinction by the less expensive and more convenient wire nails by the end of the century.
In the “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker,” the reader is advised to learn how to straighten cut nails that have been bent and then discarded. This activity might seem like quaint parsimony, until you’ve bought a few boxes of these fasteners. Modern cut nails are made using the same machines and processes as they were in the 19th century and, as a result, they are expensive.
I pick up every nail I drop. I straighten (or try to) every nail I bend. It’s a bit of a meditative skill. Tap the nail with a lightweight hammer while holding the fastener on an anvil or a steel plate. Many small taps are better than one mighty blow.
And one more piece of advice: If you cannot save the entire nail, snip off a straight section and use that as a headless brad for finer work.
If you can’t afford cut nails, the next best thing is to buy cement-coated wire nails (which are actually coated with a heat-activated resin). Furniture maker Jeff Headley uses these, and he modifies the head by beating them with a hammer on an anvil to give the head a squarish shape. When installed, these hold well and look like cut nails.
How to Choose the Right Nail
The number of styles of cut nails is bewildering, and they all look similar and have odd designations for their lengths. Even today, nails are sold using the original pennyweight system.
What you need to know about the pennyweight system today is that a 2-penny nail (and “penny” is typically abbreviated as d) is 1″ long. Each additional pennyweight adds a 1/4″ to the length of the nail on up to 10d nails, which are 3″ long. (Nails longer than 3″ are sold differently. If you need nails longer than 3″, however, you’re not a furniture maker.)
Naturally, you are wondering what length of nails you should stock up on to build furniture. Most of my furniture work requires 4d (1-1/2″ long) and 6d (2″-long) nails. There is a formula you can use, however, to arrive at this same conclusion.
Whenever you nail two boards together there is a board on top and board below. It’s the board on top that you want to pay attention to when selecting a nail. How thick is this board in “eighths?” A 1/2″-thick board is, for example, four eighths. A 3/4″-thick board is six eighths. Convert that number to pennyweight. So to fasten a 1/2″-thick board, use a 4d nail. To fasten a 3/4″-thick board use a 6d nail.
Of course, pay some attention to the board on bottom – you don’t want the nail’s tip to poke out the other side.
So now you know what lengths you need. What about all the different styles of nails? There are three commonly available styles of nails that I use to build furniture. And there is one style of nail that is difficult to find (in the Midwest, at least) but easy to make. Here are the four styles and what they are good for. I’m going to use the names that Tremont Nail Co. (tremontnail.com or 800-835-0121) uses because that company is by far the largest modern-day supplier of cut nails.
Here are the four types of nails used in typical furniture construction: wrought head nail (left), fine finish standard, cut headless brads and sprigs.
Fine Finish Standard Nail: This type of nail holds carcases together. It has a pronounced taper and a large head, so it will wedge up your workpieces well and hold tightly. Its strong wedge is a two-edged sword. It also will readily split your work if you aren’t cautious.
Cut Headless Brads: These slender nails are excellent for attaching moulding. They don’t have as pronounced a taper and are skinny things, so they aren’t suitable for full-scale case construction. But their scrawniness is ideal for jobs where the nail head will show, such as attaching face frames (with the assistance of glue). I typically add a 3/16″ bead detail to my face frames, and these nails sneak into the quirk of the bead nicely. Note that the maker says these brads are headless; that’s not entirely true. They have a small head.
Clinch Rosehead Standard: Rosehead nails are great for attaching cabinet backs or anywhere you want the nail head to shout, “I’m a nail.” There also is a version of this nail (that is more expensive) called a “wrought head nail” that has a black finish and a head that looks hand-finished. Use this nail when you want to shout, “I’m an old nail.”
Sprigs: You’ll see this nail mentioned many times in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.” Sprigs are headless nails or nails that have a head on only one side of the nail – they make something of an “L” shape. I have yet to find a reliable source for these nails, so I make my own by clipping the heads off of the cut headless brads listed above. Sprigs, as you will find out, are great for attaching delicate mouldings or for lightweight structural applications.
Using cut nails involves some know-how and a special shopmade tool, which we’ll cover in building the Packing Box, the first project in “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker.”
Corner cabinet with round front in Wharton Esherick’s kitchen (Photo: Lauri Hafvenstein)
One of the most eye-popping kitchens in the recently published book “Kitchen Think” is in the home of 20th-century American sculptor Wharton Esherick. As with the rest of his home and studio, located just west of Philadelphia, the kitchen is a product of exuberant creativity unfettered by concern for convention – think natural materials, organic forms and *color*.
Whether or not you’ve visited the place in person, there’s an opportunity to visit virtually on Sept. 13 from 4 to 6 p.m. (Eastern), when the Esherick Museum holds its annual fund-raising party. Enjoy the company of some fun and thought-provoking folks familiar with food, kitchens and more; enter the drawing for a three-legged stool made by Rob Spiece of Lohr Woodworking; ask questions about pizza, pantries or pot racks during the interactive portion of the party via Zoom. More information and sign-up here.
The following is excerpted from “Grandpa’s Workshop,” by Maurice Pommier. This 48-page book was translated by Brian Anderson, an American-born writer and woodworker who lives and works in France. It is ostensibly a book for children, though the stories, lessons and drawing style will appeal to anyone who has an appreciation for the natural and the fantastical.
At 7 a.m. on a Wednesday in mid-August, 2020, it’s 52° (F). There was snow a couple of days ago. Bars and cinemas are open as usual, and no one’s wearing a mask.
If this picture strikes you as something out of a parallel universe, that’s because it is. I’m on the phone with Laura McCusker, who’s bundled up in a sweater, relaxing at the end of her day in Hobart, Tasmania, which she calls “an island, off an island, at the bottom of the planet.”
“Tasmania is a good place to be riding this out,” she says, referring to the Covid-19 pandemic. “We are an island state. The borders were locked down early; there have been no active cases for two months.”
Laura and her husband, Pete.
The more you learn about Laura and her life, the lovelier this picture becomes. Laura and her husband, Pete Howard, live in West Hobart, a five-minute walk from the center of town. Their three-bedroom house sits on a hill overlooking the river, with fruit trees, a dog and chickens in the backyard. A bush reserve down the street is home to wallabies, possums andpademelons.
Wallabies.Laura on the bike with the family dog, Buster.
Laura’s workshop, in the suburb of Moonah, Tasmania (an indigenous name for a type of eucalyptus, or gum tree), is a 17-minute ride away on her electric bike. The building was constructed as an apple-packing shed circa 1911. Layers of brick with sawdust insulation between them keep the temperature stable and the shop noise down. Add a timber ceiling, picture the place set by a babbling brook, and you’ll get why Laura calls it “completely idyllic. When we came here from Sydney, I couldn’t believe there could be such pretty industrial buildings so close to town.” Tasmania has a lot of Georgian buildings, she goes on; because the economy was depressed for many years, the buildings escaped the razing that most of us know as “development.” As a result, “a lot of old towns look like they’re straight out of Jane Austen.”
Under the rainbow. Laura’s workshop is in the building at left.
Laura’s dad and mum, “Charlie and Lucy,” circa 1968.
Laura’s background is more cosmopolitan than her charmed domestic and work situation these days might suggest. The second of four children (her brother, Jim, is two years older; sister, Anna-Lucia, 2-1/2 years younger; and the baby of the family, Daniel, is 8 years younger), she was born to a Brazilian mother, Lucia, and her father, Charlie, is from Northern Ireland via Glasgow and Adelaide. Both parents are doctors (Lucia, now retired, is a specialist in chronic pain management and palliative care, and Charlie’s an OB-GYN) who met as students at The Memorial Hospital in Worcester, Mass., did their residencies in Glasgow, then returned to Australia.
Laura (left) attempting to restrain herself from blowing out her sister’s birthday candles.
Laura went to an all-girls high school in Sydney where classes beyond strict academics were limited to home economics or textiles and design. She had no idea that there were people who made furniture for a living. She understood that her future would involve university, followed by a profession.
But in the pause between high school and college, Laura planned to travel. Shortly after she took her final exams at the age of 18, she flew to London. Two days later, she’d slept off the jet lag and headed over to a pub for something to eat. “The guy behind the bar said ‘Oh, you’re from Australia. Are you looking for work?’” He mentioned that a pub around the corner was hiring. She checked it out. “Does the job come with accommodation?” she asked. It didn’t, but the manager said she could sleep on the pull-out sofa in his flat upstairs. Pete was the manager’s flat mate. “I met Pete on the third day I was in London, and that was 27 years ago,” she says, laughing.
They stayed in London for about 18 months, with a trip around the Greek islands along the way. After a while, Laura switched from selling drinks to selling medicinal herbs for Culpepers in Covent Garden. Then, in 1994, it was time to go home and enroll at Sydney University.
Laura and Pete in Greece.
Pete followed six weeks later. While she was in classes, he was employed – first at a butcher’s shop, then at a bakery. He forewent candlestick making in favor of management; two notable jobs were preparing for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney and working for Opera Australia.
Laura started a degree in fine arts, but left because “it wasn’t hands-on enough.” She took classes in medieval history, classical mythology and social anthropology, then heard that students in an architecture class were building tables. She signed up for the course. But when she heard it was going to cover concrete stress fracture points and building regulations, she says, she “ran screaming from the room,” thinking “there must be an easier way to learn how to build a table.”
Shortly after, she entered a training apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker through Lidcombe TAFE, a vocational school in New South Wales, where she began what would result in a Certificate III in Cabinetmaking.
It was the late-1990s, when a lot of manufacturing was moving to China; that made it hard to find a position as an apprentice. She hired on at a business that made high-end furniture out of particleboard with architectural veneers for offices and law libraries. While it was valuable experience, it wasn’t what she really wanted to do. “It wasn’t solid timber, and it wasn’t fine woodworking,” she says, “but it was a fantastic training in how to be efficient in the workshop and get the job done.” So after a couple of years she went back to school, this time at the Sturt School for Wood, just outside Sydney, which specializes in craft-based traditional woodworking. There she learned coopering, laminating, steam bending, dovetails – the whole shebang.
That was a year-long course. “Completely wonderful,” she says of the experience. “It was monastic. Beautiful. You could cut dovetails to your heart’s content seven days a week.” But she will always appreciate the pragmatic training she got from the job in the cabinet shop, where she learned to run a business and pay the rent.
On graduating from the Sturt School, Laura moved to Sydney and worked at a co-operative, the Splinter Workshop. There were about eight members who shared the space and machines. She set up her own corner and started building and selling furniture, relying on word of mouth at the start. When she didn’t have paid work, she built prototypes to her own design and did her best to get coverage in the local paper. She also tried small-batch products such as wooden vessels to hold ceramic dishes for burning essential oils, a venture that she says barely covered her costs, “but it was really good training in small-batch production, marketing and building relationships with galleries.” She worked there for five years, during which she gave birth to her daughter, Ella, and her son, Jimmy.
Laura and Ella.Pete, Ella and Jimmy. Laura writes, “Jimbo’s 17th birthday. Ella made the delicious orange and poppy seed [cake]. She’s an amazing cake maker/decorator.”
In 2003, when Ella was 4 and Jimmy a few months old, she and Pete decided to move to Tasmania. Real estate prices in Sydney were out of reach for a furniture maker and arts administrator, and getting worse by the month. They realized that quality of life was important and felt that they wanted to give their kids a home where they could settle, rather than having to move every year or so from rental to rental. With no local contacts or work lined up, Laura took a job at a shipyard, building furniture for a 60-metre (nearly 200′) luxury super yacht. She also completed a bachelor’s degree in adult and vocational education, which certified her to train others in the trades. It seemed like a good idea – she could spend part of her time teaching and the rest in design-build for her own business. But as things turned out, she didn’t need the back-up plan. “Work got so busy, it was hard to do both,” she says. “I made the choice to go back to my studio practice.” In 2010, she convinced Pete to leave his work in management and work with her full-time.
Cabinet in Tasmanian oak with decorative oxidized doors and oil finish. 1800 x 750 x 450 mm (approximately 71″ x 29-1/2″ x 18″).
When we spoke, they’d just finished a set of shelves for a local client and would be moving on to a couple of mobile cabinets for a client in the hospitality business. Other jobs coming up include a big dining table in Huon pine. They’re also trying to finish up some jobs at home, such as a pair of decks and a studio flat on the lower floor of their house. It may be a place for friends to stay, or perhaps an AirBnB.
They work primarily in local species. One is Tasmanian oak, which Laura points out is not in fact an oak, but an umbrella term for a variety of eucalypts. “In Tasmania they call up to five different euycalypt species ‘Tasmanian oak,’ she says. But in Victoria they’ve got the same lumber and they call it ‘Victorian ash.’” It’s a big tree, so she suspects Europeans who took over the region simply called it “oak” in a generic sense. It’s easy to get, kiln-dried, quartersawn, consistent in color and consistent in price. Although it’s used primarily as a building material, Laura says “I actually think it’s a beautiful furniture timber as well.”
Huon pine is another prized species. Laura says it’s soft, and perfect for boats. But “it costs a lot of money, so people think it has status.” Another regional species is blackwood, which she compares to chocolate cake. It’s variable in color, which makes it hard to get a uniform look for a piece of furniture, and the dust is carcinogenic.
Sculptural communal seating and coffee table designed for Spring Bay Mill and inspired by the Painted Cliffs at Maria Island. Wall shelf for a couple who collect decorative ceramics.Bench in Tasmanian oak. 1800 x 450 x 400 mm (approximately 71″ x 18″ x 16″). (Photo: Peter Whyte) Short Black Coffee Table in Tasmanian oak. 600 mm diameter x 450 mm high (approximately 24″ diameter x 18″ high). Coopered base finished with oxide and oil.
Much of their work to date has been for clients in the tourism and hospitality industries – hotels and event spaces. They’ve done pieces for the MONA Museum and built tables and seating for restaurants. Tasmania’s economy relies heavily on tourism; as a result of the pandemic, that kind of business has taken a big hit. But as more people have shifted to working from home, those in the building trades have had new orders for decks, home offices and interior renovations. She and Pete have moved, at least for now, from contract clients to domestic ones. “I feel we’ve been really lucky,” Laura says. “It’s kind of weird to get on national television and see what’s happening in the rest of the world.”
She didn’t expect to make a living as a furniture maker when they moved to Tasmania, but as it happens, she could not have been more mistaken about the prospects for doing just that. “If I could find some way to live, own my own home and have a high quality of life,” she remembers dreaming, “to actually have a viable business making beautiful and interesting furniture for people… I never expected to be able to do that in Tasmania.” Handmade furniture, she explains, was always “very, very expensive.” But Tasmania turned out to be the ideal place to make furniture for a living. “You don’t have huge overheads, so it doesn’t have to be that expensive or exclusive.” She compares her current circumstances to those of the past, recalling how she and Pete weighed pros and cons as they considered the move to Hobart. There’s a lot of money in Sydney – “big-city paychecks.” She wouldn’t have that in Tasmania. But, she thought, “I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll flip burgers, or I’ll teach.” In fact, her studio rent plummeted with the move; her annual rent for that idyllic timber-ceilinged industrial space is what she paid in Sydney each month. Marketing via the internet means she doesn’t have to sell her work through galleries; given that galleries typically make their money by doubling (or more than doubling) the price an artist puts on her work, selling directly to customers makes her work vastly more affordable. And shipping costs from Hobart to Sydney have turned out to be almost the same as what it cost to move a piece of furniture from her studio on one side of Sydney to the other.
Table with Tasmanian blackwood top and oxidized Tasmanian oak base. 3600 x 2600 x 720 mm (approximately 142″ x 102″ x 28-1/2″).
“But it’s also a much nicer quality of life,” Laura adds. “Living in a big city was wonderful when we didn’t have kids, but once you have kids it all changes. We had a wish list consisting of (amongst other things) good coffee, live music/theatre venues, good food, museums, beautiful beaches, bushwalks etc. and an airport so we could get out quickly if and when we needed to visit family overseas and interstate. Hobart ticked all these boxes and more…they even have the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra and now there’s MONA. It’s also in the same timezone as Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane so it doesn’t really feel like we’re very far away from grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins when the kids speak on the phone. Hobart is still a small town but has enough to keep us interested and it’s only a short flight to Melbourne or Sydney when you feel you need a fix.”
Laura’s and Pete’s kitchen, which she says “was cobbled together at the last minute with leftover bits and pieces from the workshop (excluding the handmade concrete tiles from Morocco). It’s been fun to have the freedom to trial different finishes at home and see how they hold up to use.”
At this point, Ella has one year to go in her fine arts degree at the National Art School in Sydney, with a focus on printmaking. Tuition is paid for by the government through the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS); students repay the investment in their education by means of a prorated tax over the course of their working life, once their income reaches a certain threshold – interest-free. “So, if you’re an artist or a teacher or a nurse, you pay a lower rate” and it takes longer, Laura explains.
Jim, she says, “has a really mathematical and engineering brain” but is also into philosophy – he reads Kafka, Foucault and Chomsky “for fun” – and plays piano and guitar. At 17, she says he’s “interested in everything. I don’t think he’ll be hanging around Hobart.”
“This was the photo we took just before Ella left home for university in Sydney.” writes Laura. “It was sad but we were all putting on a brave face. “
Reflecting on how views of work and higher ed have changed over the course of her life, Laura recalls the way things were when she was the age her kids are now. “If you’re intelligent and good at academics, you will go to university and become a professional. The fact that I didn’t want to do that – the idea of wanting to go into a trade – wasn’t ever on the table. If you’re a girl who’s smart, you don’t go into a trade.
“I think I was just a bit of a shit stirrer; I probably wanted to wind my parents up a bit.” She mentions Matthew Crawford and Richard Sennett. “If you work with your hands, you’re not very bright, and if you’re bright you get ‘rewarded’ by being able to work behind a computer for up to 10 hours a day!
“I feel very lucky to have a job where it’s intellectually challenging as well as physically rewarding. I’m able to be creative and analytical… It’s like productive yoga. It feels so good to be moving and producing and making and…by the end of the day you look around and it’s very satisfying.”
