Artisan Modern: Quality Work, Transactions, and Objects
25 April 2021
As they have delivered work from labor and industrial logics, artisans have likewise redeemed materials from their status and calculus as “inputs”.
As they have delivered work from labor and industrial logics, artisans have likewise redeemed materials from their status and calculus as “inputs”.
Around the world is a crisis of modernization in which younger generations do not want to inherit the farming and other artisanal work of their families. At the same time, a subculture is burgeoning of young people and ex-office workers who want to work with land, agriculture, food, and traditional production methods.
“We try to keep the distance between the customer and the workshop as short as possible…These are objects that I want to be used. And it should be used hard. That’s what they’re made for…Buying a table takes a long time. It takes months….Most of these people are buying the last table for their life…For me it would be a success if the grandchildren still like the table.
So what is the cosmology of food sovereignty? Food is a community, not a commodity… But how do we turn this idea into culture? Alberto Melucci explains how it is that we create culture… through creating new spaces, identities, meanings, identities, commitments….
His explanation of his strategic capacities is “I am an electrician.” This reminds me of Matthew Crawford’s painstaking work on the “cognitive riches” of trade labour. (Summary here.) Crawford’s point is that trade work is satisfying. Wałȩsa’s point is that it is also a form of analytic training.
The Mehl Stübchen is a flour factory which creates flours for many specific uses. They sell to home bakers, rather than to businesses, providing advice
Walking through Kreutzberg/Neukölin I was drawn to another minimalist window display of an unlit store in a residential street. Like most entrepreneurs of shops with
I was going in a different direction, on an arbitrary itinerary when I saw a poster for the Berlin Make Mrkt and figured out that
In a less gentrified yet part of Kreutzberg is this market described by my favourite local food blogger as “the most interesting food in Berlin”.
The Neustadt neighborhood of Dresden, which was rebuilt by artists after the reunification of Germany, has quite a few artisan manufacturers, including shoes and clothes
“Usually we are cheaper than the discounters, because there’s no middleman.”
This market was so movingly delicious to eye and sense, that I had to just enjoy it rather than documenting it. Produce, baked goods, prepared foods,
“People see eggs and they ask ‘are these barn raised or free range raised?’ ‘Are they organic or not?’ It baffles me that wine is not the same. Where did it come from? How was it grown? Is it organic? People should be interested in the process and provenance of wine, the same way they are with food.”
I first visited this farm when I was 19 in 1979. Shortly thereafter my friend who owned the farm was killed in a car accident.
exhibit: Local Objects artist: Amory Starr gallery: Gaffa, 281 Clarence Street context: Sydney Design Week 2013 run: 25 July – 5 August. opening: 25 July
I was a contractor. I bought a hobby lathe on sale. I burned out the motor in 6 months, so I knew I had found
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To build a movement, we need to spread the idea, far beyond the subculture which has nurtured it. We need to translate to older and
Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. 2009: Penguin Books. If the regard that many people now have
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I don’t usually eat meusli, but my body targeted its cravings that way last week, and I follow. I found a beautiful one, and expensive,
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I’ve been writing about the ravages of globalization and peoples’ ferocious rejection of its conditions for a long time. I researched and wrote about the
