Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

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

— Jim Tolpin, Woodworking in America, 2009

One of my friends teaches a freshman composition class at a university. At the beginning of every class she hands out an index card to each student and asks them to write down the answer to this question: What do you hope to gain from this class?

The best answer ever?

“I want to reach my fool potential.”

— Christopher Schwarz

“You cannot spell ‘contemporary’ without the words ‘con’ and ‘temporary.'”

— Christopher Schwarz, on the founding phrase for his next book.

“It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided, but the men: – divided into mere segments of men – broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in the making the point of a pin or the head of a nail.”

— John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853)

“What seems to have happened is this. Certain pieces of furniture, because of their essential practicality and usefulness, began during this period [the 17th century] to achieve definitive forms for which they were to retain for many years. Skilled but unsophisticated country craftsmen, usually joiners rather than cabinet-makers, repeated the same designs again and again, without changing them much, because they had been found to be the best for a particular purpose. A good deal of furniture thus escaped from the influence of fashion and, however unconsciously, responded only to the principle of fitness for use.

“It was the furniture of this type which eventually attracted the attention of 19th-century reformers such as William Morris, and which, through him, became the progenitor of a great many of the utilitarian modern designs which furnish people’s houses today.”

— Edward Lucie-Smith, “Furniture: A Concise History” (Oxford University Press)