The Craftsman

by Richard Sennett

people ought to decide which technologies should be encouraged and which should be repressed.

Learning from things requires us to care about the qualities of cloth or the right way to poach fish; fine cloth or food cooked well enables us to imagine larger categories of "good."

people can learn about themselves through the things they make, that material culture matters.

what happens when hand and head, technique and science, art and craft are separated. I will show how the head then suffers; both understanding and expression are impaired.

Craftwork establishes a realm of skill and knowledge perhaps beyond human verbal capacities to explain; it taxes the powers of the most professional writer to describe precisely how to tie a slipknot (and is certainly beyond mine). Here is a, perhaps the, fundamental human limit: language is not an adequate "mirror-tool" for the physical movements of the human body.

The good craftsman is a poor salesman, absorbed in doing something well, unable to explain the value of what he or she is doing.38

Is simulation dishonest? Is it destructive?-not an abstract question; as the trials of computer-aided design show, simulation can be a synonym for "design."

The craftsman is a more inclusive category than the artisan; he or she represents in each of us the desire to do something well, concretely, for its own sake.

by making something happen more than once, we have an object to ponder; variations in that conjuring act permit exploration of sameness and difference; practicing becomes a narrative rather than mere digital repetition; hard-won movements become ever more deeply ingrained in the body; the player inches forward to greater skill.