The things we make and how we make them is the primordial stew of worlds. Things offer a local and infinitely large story. All things, like local food, dialects, patterns found in rugs and an alphabet of ceramic pot design and decoration draw out a map of influence, story and…
I started making bread with both beer yeast and my own starter, with some seriousness, about ten years ago. Then, Youtube and the internet, including a very interesting specialized bread making forum called The Fresh Loaf sent me on my way to making some pretty good bread. My attraction to…
My wife Anna has a has a postcard mailed to Bulgaria from Detroit, Michigan in 1919. On the postcard George Daskalov, her great great uncle, writes to his mom, among other things: “Please start the sauerkraut and find for me a good wife.” His mother found for him a wife,…
Craft lets the world around us appear. Things (foods, rugs, dresses, cars and cities) describe a map of significance. That map, of moving boundaries, illuminates what is most and least significant to us and situates us amid the wilderness of earth in a culture. What we understand craft to be,…
It is fitting that the oldest known drawings lie in caves. Those, dark protected dream-land places feel right for the oldest drawings. All caves are to some degree dangerous. In caves people have to supply the light. They have to explored and whatever light you bring in is not guaranteed…
The most ancient known ‘artwork’ is a red jasperite pebble that fits within a closed fist. The pebble is worn and polished. It has two deep-set holes appearing to be the eyes of a brooding, slightly angry face. In the center of the stone is the slight indentation suggesting a…
‘Craft’ brings to mind the medieval artisan. That specie of humanity made almost everything by hand. Books were hand written and ‘illuminated’ with illustrations and ornament. Cathedrals, town-halls, fortifications and houses too were built by hand. A cathedral’s master-builder used templates, a compass, scaffolding, chisels and saws. Gothic building technology…