#117： The Ethos of the Craftsman With Peter Korn
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we discuss the idea of craftsmanship and the drive in us to build things with our hands from scratch, and what it can teach us about living a good life. Our guest today has written a book exploring that idea and founded a furniture making school in Maine. His name is Peter Corn, and he wrote a book called Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so this idea of
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craftsmanship and the archetype of the craftsman i think is something very attractive to people
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it resonates with us on a on a visceral level almost there's something about building things
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with our hands from scratch that just is satisfying and there's something that we're
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drawn to we'd rather buy something that we know was made by hand by a craftsman than some
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manufactured mass-produced good but why is that why is it we have that attraction to building
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things why is it that we we are attracted to this idea of the craftsman well our guest today has
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written a book exploring that idea he's an actual craftsman he makes furniture he also founded a
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furniture making school in maine his name is peter corn and he wrote a book called why we make things
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and why it matters the education of a craftsman fascinating book on a fascinating topic and
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today on the podcast we're going to discuss why what's this drive in us that wants that gives us
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satisfaction to build things with our hands and then we're also going to talk about what craftsmanship
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sort of the ethic of craftsmanship can teach us about living a good life a fantastic discussion
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really fascinating delve deep into something uh some deep topics um so i think you're really
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going to like this so without further ado peter corn on why you make things and why it matters
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peter corn welcome to the show thank you brett thank you very much so you are a furniture maker
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um who happens to write can you tell us how you got started into furniture making um because this
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whole i think this idea when you started at least there really weren't a lot of
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independent furniture makers so how did you get into that well i was fortunate enough to go to a
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quaker high school in philadelphia germantown friend school which i think was a great education and then
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go to the university of pennsylvania where i studied history but all that and i graduated from college in
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1972 so i was sort of a 60s hippie kind of guy and all the time i was in school i felt like i was
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living like second hand and real life must have been somewhere else and when i finished college
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what i did was i took a job as a carpenter on the island of nantucket which at the time was a very
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quiet uh forgotten place not not the bustling uh plutocracy plutolopolis that it is today
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and um and i and i had never worked with my hands and i came from a background where my father was a
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lawyer and my mother was an historian and they didn't know anyone at least socially who worked
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with their hands and in their world working with your hands would really take you down the social
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ladder so my father at least was pretty horrified that i took a job as a carpenter and i took that
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job only because it was i moved to nantucket because i wanted to live in this rural beautiful
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place and that was the first job that came along so it was much to my delightful and pleasant surprise
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that i found out how rewarding and challenging carpentry was um if i may continue sure yeah uh my father
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you know was quick to say well you know he was just worried that with a with work like that my my mind
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was going to be underserved i was you know it was going to really be a truncated not that means short
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and that's not the right word uh stifled a stifled sort of life however you want to put it mentally
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stifled um and i found that carpentry engages your cognitive problem solving skills for example uh to a
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huge extent it's it's the your brain is involved as well as your hand and um and i found that sort
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of work a wonderful way to grow into adulthood at the age of 20 and so how did you go from carpentry
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uh to designing furniture well that's sort of a leap it's a little bit of a leap but wood and tools
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are involved uh so after two years as a carpenter i was when i'd been a carpenter for about two years
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and was gaining some sort of confidence in my hands some friends of mine were having uh expecting
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a child and this was the my first friends who were expecting a child and i wanted to make a cradle for
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them so three days before the baby was due i took some pine and some dowels from the lumber yard
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went into this unheated barn at the end of november uh where i froze my butt off um and and built a cradle
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from a picture i'd seen in a book and at the end you know i went into that barn thinking that that i was
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going to end up designing and building houses for a living and i walked out of that barn just passionate
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to rediscover what seemed at that time 1974 like the lost art of furniture making this was before fine
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woodworking came out or all the other woodworking journals that have been around now for decades
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and then there was almost nowhere where you could formally learn fine woodworking in this country
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there were two places you could go to the north bennett street school or the rochester institute of
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technology but i was completely unaware of them i'd never met a craftsperson so for me uh it was like
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trying to learn this craft and rediscover it for myself just from a few books published in england
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and it turned out there were you know i thought i was doing this in isolation and i was but at the
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same time there were probably thousands or tens of thousands of other people in this country of
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of my generation turning to various crafts in the same ignorant way uh because we were looking for
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lifestyles that would be more seamless and fulfilling than what we perceived our parents
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world presenting to us so let's go to that question so i think when
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people hear the word craftsman and let's at least this i do this at least you know they imagine you
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know sort of the sturdy industrious independent man in his workshop with a beard probably leather apron
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rolled up sleeves salt of the earth um and it's an archetype i think and that it's very attractive to
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people and it's also it's become almost this like platonic ideal of what a craftsman is
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but you make the case in your book that this idea of the craftsman that we have the sort of romantic
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idea is a fairly recent creation um can you tell us about the arts and crafts movement of the 19th
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century i'd be happy to um well so the place to start is to realize that that until the industrial
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revolution which essentially took place between the late 1700s and late 1800s everything was made
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by individual by by an individual by hand at what we would today say by hand uh and nothing was
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meth produced there were no assembly lines there was you know there was no there was no power driven
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machinery except for water driven freshing wheels or whatever grinding wheels and um and so there was
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no need to to even have a concept like craft when everything was craft and then what happened is the
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industrial revolution came on came along uh and i'm now speaking about europe specifically and even more
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specifically england and and suddenly the trades where you work by hand many of them were displaced by
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manufacturing and and so craftsmanship became redundant and uh and by the late 1800s that process had gone a
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long way and there were there were people in england particularly john ruskin and william morris are the two
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most familiar names who were very concerned as i guess as social philosophers that the conditions of labor
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in manufacture were really demeaning to the workers themselves bad for them spiritually and bad for them
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morally and that if workers if the work was bad for the workers then it and it was deleterious to their
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characters that was bad for society so they invented the idea of craft as a an alternative method of making
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things where the worker would be fully engaged in the full process and in the quality of what they do
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because that would be more spiritually and morally beneficial to the worker and therefore society
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and they before they invented craft before the arts and crafts movement invented craft in english the word
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craft did not mean a type of a type of object or a method of fabrication as we think of it today
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the word craft was used meant what we now hear in coinages like witchcraft and statecraft which is to say
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an ability to manipulate people or situations cleverly and so they invented this idea of craft
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and their craftsman was someone's employee who would build someone else's design through from start to finish
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in a healthy environment and that idea of theirs is that is what you just described which has come down to
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us to this day this hallmark card like image yeah of the craftsman as a skilled tradesman secure in the
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knowledge of his hands and the strength of his character calm at the workbench and pursuing a simple
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peaceful life and idyllic surroundings but for my generation with now i came to craft almost a hundred years
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after they came up with this idea of craft that idea was there unconsciously because i'd never thought
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about craft but at the same time there was this whole overlaying of new ideas about craft that that
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those guys uh ruskin and mars wouldn't have recognized um you want me to go on what what what did that new
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movement bring to the well for my generation what what we very much saw craft as was an opportunity to be
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self-employed self-expressive self-sufficient and self-actualized uh the obvious uh common word
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there being self and that you know thinking about this i i then came to see that that between the end of
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the uh 19th century and the end of the late part of the 20th century which is where i was practicing
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craft for the most part um the normative idea in our society of what an individual is of what the
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self is had changed radically it had been changing a long time but it really changed quickly and radically
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in the 20th century and the difference was that for all of human history the individual had thought
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of himself or herself as belonging to a larger social entity as sort of conceptualize the self
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you might say it's like a finger on a hand but in the 20th century we saw the rise of this idea of
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the individual as being fully autonomous and separate and individual and rational and and able to choose
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uh everything was choice in other instead of belonging to society being shaped by it we started to see
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ourselves as being to pick and choose where in society we want what ideas we like and um and it was
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that idea of the fully autonomous individual that changed the way we approach craft so that so that
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another way to say this is that if you look at art over the millennia um artists tend to portray the
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place where they think truth resides and so you've got um greek art that portrayed this ideal of humanity
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outside of space and time in other words truth lay outside of humanity you've got uh a lot of
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christian art in the middle ages and the renaissance that portrayed uh scenes from the bible essentially
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the idea being that truth resided in god's kingdom in the bible as you know expressed through the bible
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again outside of man and then you can then you've got the hudson river school of art uh in the 20th
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century which portrayed nature and that went along with all sorts of enlightenment ideas about the
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noble savage and so truth was thought to reside in nature and then if you come into the you know the
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1940s for example or abstract expressionism you've got artists who are splattering paint or they're painting
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abstract things where the painting takes shape because every choice the artist makes is a response
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to whatever previous mark he or she has made on the canvas and so what you get is people painting a
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portrait of their intuition of their interior self so that um we're at a place then where truth resides
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internally and it's for us to discover as artists or as individuals and bring forth to share with
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other people it's a very different concept of what the individual is that has shaped my generation and
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subsequent generations of period we're talking about craftsmanship um and it's this is a topic that
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sort of is woven throughout your book the idea like what is craftsmanship because i think people have
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rough notions of it right what would they imagine what craftsmanship is but i think if you ask different
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people you're probably going to get different answers on what craftsmanship is so how do you
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define craftsmanship like when does something become a you're displaying craftsmanship whenever you're
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doing something well i i have to order offer a definition two definitions of craftsmanship one is
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craftsmanship if you're talking about the within the within the world of crafts themselves
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uh where people are fabricating uh where people are fabricating objects out of actual physical
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materials and if that's where we're looking to define craftsmanship then we're talking about uh it's
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craftsmanship is work or a work process that engages uh hand skills you know you have it requires developed
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skills it requires an unwavering commitment to quality and uh and also a heightened understanding of one's
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materials those are the three elements that go into craftsmanship that are common to craftsmanship
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and then you could think about craftsmanship when for example people will talk about a lawyer crafting a
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a brief well or manufacturers talk about the craftsmanship in their uh automobiles for example
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well so now we don't have individual agency involved that's been removed and we don't always have
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physical materials involved but we still talk about craftsmanship and what remains there is that that in
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that implies a commitment to quality and a deep understanding of one's materials even if one's materials are
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or something that's not doesn't have any physical materiality so there's this caring about what you
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do commitment to quality deeply understanding one's materials those are the elements of craftsmanship in
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general why do you think it's what is it about building with your hands though that can that helps you
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i don't get in touch with that idea of craftsmanship more so than you know a lawyer
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crafting a contract what what is it about the materiality of craftsmanship working with your
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hands that allows you to get in touch with that well i think there's there's actually several ways to
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describe that and i'm actually i think i'll try three of them sure um one of them is that there's an
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experience that that creative people have in the studio in this case it could be craft it could be
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painting sculpture um it can be writing in fact that uh miholy chic sent mahali if that's the proper
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way to say his name who wrote wrote a book called flow and some other books on this topic he labels that
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this phenomenon flow where you disappear your sense of whole sense of time and self all disappears
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you're so fully engaged in the work that that's all there is and that turns out to be an immensely
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pleasurable wonderful feeling um and so creative people you could almost say enjoy their creativity
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or come to it simply for that feeling uh but there's there's a lot more to it but that is one element
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um what's so wonderful about craft in addition to that is that you can't um how can i say it anchors
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your creative work your ideas and your efforts substantially in the real so for example when
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i'm writing right you writing you can put words together and it can suggest new ideas and you can
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go off on flights of fancy that are quite seductive but they actually may be total nonsense but when you're
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working with wood and chisels for example there's no question about whether a joint is tight there's no
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question about whether a chisel is sharp in fact there's no question about whether a chair is
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comfortable like it's apparent to any user so so your your ideas your suppositions your efforts
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are checked by the real and that's actually quite a healthy thing um and that's one of that's one of
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the pleasures of craft and another is that at the end of the day you see what you've achieved it exists
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in the physical world to be enjoyed shared with others um it doesn't just disappear off a computer
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screen you know onto the next thing so at least those are the some of some of the things that make
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craft such a delightful uh thing to practice so one more oh go ahead yeah yes there's this uh it there's
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this maxim in in craft uh that that bernard leach a british potter is said to have stated back in the
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last century which is that um craft engages head heart and hands in unison he said it a little better
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than that uh and that is i think one of the things that makes it so fulfilling is that you are somehow
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when you're doing when you're engaged in skilled craft work and let's say you're in that state of
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flow or not it doesn't really matter you're employing all of your bodily all of your human capacities at
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once you know you're you're engaging your actual physical capabilities you're engaging your imagination
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you're invasive engaging your abilities for cognitive problem solving and you're engaging your creativity
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and you you can't ask for more than that you're right you you mentioned how um you found when you
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first started carpentry you found that it not like what your father said it would sort of dull the mind
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that it actually engaged the mind i've had that experience too when i've done sort of projects around
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the home it's it's amazing how much harder sometimes a little project a diy project that i'm doing is
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than saying writing an article for the website is and how fun it is right there's a challenge there
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and you're not going to stop until you solve it uh and you just you keep plugging at it even though
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you know i should have given up hours ago but you see brett for me the shoe's on the other foot okay
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meaning meaning i'm i'm i'm used to solving problems in the woodshop and so that becomes a fairly smooth
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process for me but when i sat down to write this book all i started with were certain deeply held
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convictions that were almost more physical i can't explain yeah the sort of convictions you hold
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in the pit of your stomach in your in your bones uh then i had ways of expressing them with words
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so for me working with words was a process of trying to untie knot one knot after another
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um and uh it was a long engaging deeply engaging struggle it was wonderful and i'd be i'd write
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before work and then i'd be driving to work and i'd have to pull over to jot down the next little
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step for an idea that as it unfolded itself that was wonderful um so here's a question i have so right
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now it seems like there is uh we're having a renaissance uh in the marketplace where you say
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handmade goods artisanal things are hot everyone wants you know something that's you know they want
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something that's built by a craftsman they want something that they know is not made by a giant
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corporation or a machine and but it's funny is that you can buy a table that look that was built in a
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in a factory and they'll be an exact same table built by a single person right but people will
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probably pick the one that was built by the person why is that you have you you have just so hurt the
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feelings of that individual person i didn't know i know well i know i know but i mean what is it what
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is it that a person is buying because i guess it's a way of the the third person of taking part in the
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creative process right i mean what is it that we're buying when we purchase something built by a
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craftsman is it a story is it a sense of meaning what is yes it's all those things you're you're
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you're you're buying well first of all i i'm going to disagree or rephrase something that you said i'd
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appreciate that which is this that if you were engaged in trying to make your living as a as a
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furniture maker for example you would find that in fact it's really hard to find the market for your
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work that the the more skill you put into it the more expensive it gets the smaller your audience
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becomes and uh and in fact it's my observation that that my generation of crafts people
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um say this differently i belong to a what retrospectively is now labeled a movement
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called studio craft and studio craft people made one of a kind singular objects that existed as ways
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for them to develop their individual artistic voice and their individual skills and show them off
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and i mean that in a positive way um and those were very ended up being fairly expensive gallery
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pedestal type objects young people who are excited about designing and building things today for for
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the most part aren't interested in making those precious gallery style objects there's a there's
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a whole new movement that is sort of centered in brooklyn that i call studio design people are still
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designing and building wonderful things but these are meant to be things that can be produced by
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others at more reasonable price points uh and sold to a wider audience and there are other concerns
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like sustainability and community that somehow enter their design processes as well so the sort of the
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cultural horizons to which people work have changed and that changes the nature of the object
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so i think the object younger crafts people or does product designers however you want to say it are
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making today actually are probably more marketable and have more of a market than those of my generation
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but they're batch products they're not the one of a kind thing still to answer your question what sells them
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is the fact that they're authentic that they did come from one person's imagination and one person's
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caring about their quality and that is a story that has to be told otherwise
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it doesn't no one would know that so yes you could say it was the product of the piece having a story
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yeah um so one of the things i love about this book is that you talk about craftsmanship
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and the drive to build them why it's so fulfilling but you also
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explore how the journey of becoming a craftsman is also a journey on how life should be lived
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which is very aristotelian in a way right aristotle talked about you know virtue is sort of like
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the practice of virtue is sort of like practicing being a craftsman of some sort so how can craftsmanship
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help us or studying craftsmanship help us live a good life well so that begs the question what is a good
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life okay and uh and i guess that's the largest context within which i'm writing is trying to answer that
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question and it seems to me based on my experience and observation
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that a good life is one that provides the person living it with a sufficiency of meaning
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and fulfillment those seem to be the two qualities we're so hungry for that so often seem missing today
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and i have come to define meaning as having a sense that your thoughts and actions
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actually make a difference in a larger moral sphere and i've come to define fulfillment at least for
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myself as the sense that you are using your human capacities to the fullest well practicing a craft is
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not the only way to achieve meaning and fulfillment but it's a wonderful way to do it and the fulfillment
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part comes as we discussed because in craft you really are employing head heart and hand in unison
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all reading from the same page and in terms of the work giving you a sense of making a difference in
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a larger moral sphere if i can just talk about furniture making for a moment uh every piece of furniture
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describes the life to be lived around it if you think about it uh so the work you would see at
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versailles those very ornate uncomfortable chairs uh incredibly expensive they're describing there was a
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whole world of how you sat in a chair and how you related to other people and all that is described by
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those chairs the shaker rocking chair describes a whole nother attitude towards life the idea that
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daily life and work should be lived as sacraments uh so when you're designing furniture in a sense
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what you're always doing is you are trying to close more closely and ever more closely approximate
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through the furniture how one as a human being might best live their life what what what one's daily
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life should feel like that sort of thing uh so that's one example of of how
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being engaged in a specific creative endeavor can be an exploration of how we should live as human
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beings and really in my mind and i'm i'm not a religious believer so certainly from my point of view
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the largest moral context that exists is the effort of humanity over all of its existence the ongoing
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effort to define what it is to be human and how we should live and i think that anytime anyone engages
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in the effort of trying to bring something new into the world that matters not only to themselves but
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matters to other people they're actually engaged in exploring the parameters of existing ideas of
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what it means to be human and how we should live and it's the fact that they're doing that in that larger
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context that gives their life meaning um and it doesn't i'm not saying anyone in the creative arts
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for example is ever conscious of that context or thinking about the ideas that i'm discussing i'm
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just saying this is what i see as the underlying reality to all creative effort and not just creative
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effort in the painter's studio or the craftsman's shop but creative effort in the science lab creative
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effort in starting a new business creative effort in trying coming up with a new recipe in your
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kitchen these are all expanding the boundaries of how you think about the world and uh which means
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that you're coming up with new ideas about who you are and how the world around you works it's
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fascinating um and you we could talk more about this but uh time is limited so uh but i definitely
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recommend people to check out the book um where can we learn more about your work well i have a
00:30:22.300
website for the book which is uh peterkorn.com but really my real work in life has been
00:30:32.060
founding and running a school called the center for furniture craftsmanship a non-profit school
00:30:37.180
in rockport maine and the website for the school is woodschool.org and that's what i've been
00:30:43.260
doing for the last 23 years i'm much more of and these days an arts administrator and a teacher
00:30:51.260
than i am an actual craftsman and um i'm one of 40 people 40 plus people who teach at this school
00:30:58.780
and that's where you would really see and learn what i what i do and what i'm passionate about is
00:31:04.940
is the school open they have like do you have classes for beginners people who've never done
00:31:09.020
furniture building ever yes we we have an extensive uh summer and fall schedule of one and two week
00:31:15.420
courses that many of which are entry level in furniture making but also in wood turning and in carving
00:31:22.220
and other aspects of woodworking and then uh we the rest of the year we run a nine month furniture
00:31:30.300
making course and a bunch of three months long turning and furniture making courses which most people take
00:31:38.380
because they want to become professional at it but they are also open to and attended by many
00:31:44.780
amateur woodworkers as well and have you noticed has interest in your in the the school gotten bigger
00:31:50.940
and bigger throughout the years or is it about the same or i well enough you know i started the school
00:31:56.940
by teaching six people at a time in my backyard uh so and you know i ran seven two week or maybe it was nine two week
00:32:04.300
workshops that first year and so the school went through a period of rapid and tremendous growth
00:32:09.980
for the first six or eight years and uh now we have 400 students a year come through that's great
00:32:15.900
but um but then in the around the the recession that happened in the early 2000s uh the woodworking world
00:32:24.620
saw saw cultural interest level off and now we're seeing it grow again and we're seeing more
00:32:30.940
younger people coming in and more women coming in and that's pretty exciting but again they're coming
00:32:37.180
in not necessarily uh from an interest in craft the way i pursued it but but something that looks
00:32:45.740
almost the exact same except where it's informed by the the newer world that younger people live in
00:32:51.420
and perceive so there there is this as i said this great interest not only in
00:32:56.140
you can find craftsmanship and and work that expresses your voice but there's also an interest
00:33:03.260
in how do you design a wonderful product a chair that can be made that's affordable to others
00:33:10.780
very interesting well peter corn thank you for so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:33:15.340
brett thank you so much i really appreciate you interviewing me our guest is peter corn he's
00:33:20.540
the author of the book why we make things and why it matters the education of a craftsman
00:33:24.620
you can find that on amazon.com go check it out it's a really fascinating read you can also find
00:33:29.500
more information about peter's work at peter corn.com and that's corn with a k and also if you're interested
00:33:35.420
in checking out the furniture building school that peter founded and check out one of the classes that
00:33:41.260
they have to offer you can find more information about that at wood school.org again that's wood school.org
00:33:47.660
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:33:54.700
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy
00:33:58.940
this podcast and you're getting something out of it i'd really appreciate it if you'd go give us a
00:34:02.700
review on itunes or stitcher whatever it is you use to listen to the podcast that'll help get the
00:34:07.340
word about the podcast and uh i would really appreciate that so until next time this is brett mckay