Not another abandoned blog...!

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.

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!