Idea links

 

 Matthew Crawford, p161, Shop Class as Soulcraft 

- knowing how; personal skill, practised, tacit understanding

- knowing that; information spouted from anyone, anywhere

George Sturt, as discussed by C. Fraying, p35, On Craftsmanship

Jerome Ravetz, as discussed by C. Frayling, p46, On Craftsmanship

Robert Ornstein, as discussed by C. Frayling, p70, On Craftsmanship

The Power of Making

 This photo was taken from the article linked to below.  It is credited to Gareth Neal, who created the work pictured.  

His site is here.

A good article on Design Week website about the upcoming exhibition at the V&A, The Power of Making.

The Use of the Made

A question which popped up when reading yesterday:
Is it (witnessing) the use of the made that validates the maker? (and the made?) (and even the making?)

I don't think it is, I am not sure that making needs validation, a reason. I believe that the pure action of making (whatever the discipline and intended result) is enough in itself to create meaning for the maker.

However, does making become more valid if there is a purpose for the made object outside of the makers hands? Does making become more important if it offers social value (a blanket knitted for a charity for example)?

(The book & page etc that inspired the question:  Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft, p187ish)

David Pye

Reading this book (written 1968) has truely got my brain going.  This is a primary list of questions/thoughts it has inspired in me, and quotes from it:

'On the workman's depends a great part of the quality of our environment' (p17)
'It may be mentioned in passing that in workmanship the care counts for more than the judgement and dexterity; though care may well become habitual and unconscious.' (p20)

If risk is only in the workmans hand, does the making of a (successful) machine lead from stored risk to stored success and deflated/depleted risk?
'"Is the result predetermined and unalterable once production begins?"'(p22)
Can risk lead to the creation of certainty?

'The workmanship of risk has no exclusive perogative of quality.  What it has exclusively is an immensely various range of qualities, without which at its command the art of design becomes arid and impoverished.'(p23)
Is this still relevant?  I believe it is, however I also believe the quality of mechanical production has improved sine the advent of computerisation.

And once again, the tool as an extension of the hand crops up (p28) - when making, are we, the makers, part of the machinery?  Do we become the tool?

David Pye

Am currently reading this book and thoroughly enjoying it.  David Pye was a great thinker.  His best known idea was about the workmanship of risk - where one slip of the human hand making the object could ruin or change the outcome of the whole piece - and the workmanship of certainty, mechanised mass production, where a machine churns out many identical and well made copies of one object.