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| Click here to read Simon Fairlie's article |
Please don’t think this yet another abandoned blog... it’s
not. But life has been so busy of recent, that I don’t seem to have found the
time to post up or indeed do anything of much note that is post worthy. However,
life is getting back to normal a little and in the next few weeks I hope to
post up some pages on making bookbinding equipment (a lying press and bone
folders) as well as some more weaving and actual book binding.
For now I am working on an article that looks in more depth
at one aspect of Simon Fairlie’s much quoted piece Can Britain Feed Itself? If you haven’t read it and sustainability
and resilience in food production are of interest please do follow the link, it
is an excellent read.
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| Download Thinking Allowed with Grayson Perry & Richard Sennett broadcast 6th Feb 2008 |
One other thing that comes with much recommendation is an
edition of the Radio 4 programme, Thinking
allowed with Richard Sennett & Greyson Perry, discussing craft and what
it means to be a crafts person. The conversation is fascinating, liberating and
sobering almost equal measure. There are too many points to bring out here, and
anyway you might as well listen to the show and get it first hand, but the crucial
point for me was the need to accept flux and incompleteness as essential
elements within the creative process. Grayson (who is a most surprisingly erudite
and thoughtful person) says that a tightness to be right can constipate and
kill the creative process, but that in accepting that we will not always be
right we have embrace difficulty and struggle.
Later he almost sums up the whole programme when says:
‘People are put off struggle, with a low boredom threshold; we’re addicted to adrenalin and drama. Everything is black and white with no middle ground and we have the attention span of a gnat. The idea of working at something for 10,000 hours for 8 or 10 years scares people, but it’s brilliant if you do.’
For me they get a little muddled when they talk about
machines, berating Ruskin for being blind to their effectiveness and then going
on to criticise computer designed buildings for their lack of material
awareness and Victorian pottery for its lack of life. But this doesn’t not
distract from the excellent show and has inspired me to read Richard Sennett’s
book The Craftsman. The radio show
can be listened to by clicking play below or downloaded by using the link under the Thinking Allowed image.
So please bear with me dear reader, much more is to come for
we have only just begun!
