craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

No, more!!!

loads more here:

http://sehkelly.tumblr.com/

strange noodle looms

on the level of personal experience, tho -- i work for my family's business, a t-shirt company. we are something of a specialty printer but first and foremost we are known for our tie-dye designs. in most people's experience tie-dye is rightly epitome of 'crunchy craft' insomuch as it's results are highly random & notoriously difficult to control with precision. color matching is not always easy, but there's also the question of coming up with large-scale manufacturing process that will reliably produce the desired pattern over & over again. we produce a lot of inventory, so there are standardized folding & pleating techniques, templates, dye recipes & ratios, laundry procedures, methods of dye dispensing, etc etc -- all of which go into standardizing output of this particular craft, which is the basis of our reputation, on a large scale.

Love SEH Kelly! Beyond love!

I have always wished I was part of some family business that included being skilled in a trade that I needed to learn and become great at. It always clashed with my sister's wish that we were just an old money family (boring). My family is made up of various office and teaching jobs. I'm the only one who does anything crafty. Grandmother's did thread pulling and needlework to relax and that's about it.

http://www.jpeterman.com/One-of-a-Kind

first google result
http://pandpguitars.com

"Every guitar is meticulously crafted from carefully selected pieces of reclaimed timber. Each is unique in appearance, sound, and story. Over a century ago a carpenter built a barn. Milled timbers of ash were hand hewn and framed to last for ages. The builder probably didn't consider that 150 years later that timber takes a second life as an electric guitar, but stories like this are what makes each piece special."

retracted

buy our stories

It's funny because if it's the story of the wood itself that's interesting then maybe they shouldn't sand it down, destroy the patina, and make it into something else that's brand new and doesn't have a story. People should just start collecting reclaimed wood planks and displaying them as art pieces.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/110976884/reclaimed-wood-art

really wish I could find the SNL driftwood sculptor bit with John Malkovich

i like that wood art thing

Ha!!Loved that driftwood sketch!

this woman...
http://olga66.wordpress.com/my-works/

i can't decide whether 'reclaimed' or 'upcycled' is the worse marketing term

"reclaimed" sounds fine to me.

that first wood artist is seriously underwhelming; the second at least has some kind of brutalist vibe going

the first one seemed more of a decor piece whereas the second one seemed more like something you'd see in a gallery or museum

well yes

idea for a hipster furniture store: Reclaimed Freight

HA! Or just Pallets!

on that note, i saw someone on craiglist locally selling cable spools as reclaimed coffee tables

i mean they've ALWAYS been coffee tables, i'm pretty sure my dad had one in his first apartment too, but his wasn't 'reclaimed,' is was junk

my boy cyrus was making upcycled dorito bag purses at camp the other day. #westernmass4ever

but did he meticulously craft the purses from carefully selected dorito bags that each had a unique story?

Upcycled Cinderblocks

reclaimed lint

it's interesting how a disproportionate amount of the stuff that's marketed this way is actually stuff that probably doesn't require a huge amount of true "craftsmanship." Like fucking pickles -- I mean ok, you use higher quality ingredients, you fuck around with the recipe a little, you try different kinds of pickling jars or whatever, but ultimately anyone with a good sense of taste could probably hit on a good pickle-making process relatively quickly and the rest is marketing. OTOH I have a friend who makes really beautiful furniture in brooklyn, and the thing is he has been doing various kinds of carpentry and construction almost his whole life, and his family was in the business too. So even though his furniture is very much marketed in that Brooklyn way, it can probably make about as legitimate a claim to "craftsmanship" as anything can.

just think of how many recipes they had to throw out

how many pickles they had to taste thoughtfully

the records they kept about each pickle's flavor notes

the balance of garlic and dill, so carefully adjusted from batch to batch

the number of different fonts they tried out for their business cards

i want to sell pickles made in the spirit of jazz culture, that is, the recipes are improvised with each batch.

i once bought a jar of "irregular batch" pickles from the discount store. they tasted unusual.

russian roulette style pickles. 1/100 jars is poisoned.

you just need to stick with it, contenderizer, enough to get rid of all the programming big pickle has done to your tastes all these years -

WITHOUT YOUR EVEN REALIZING IT!!

vlasic more like vlascist

hey hurting can you describe exactly how cooking & preserving foods is somehow less of a craft because i just want to make sure it's not just a lazy gendered distinction between durable & consumable goods

wait why is this a "gendered" distinction? I was specifically thinking of dudes I have read about who leave wall street jobs to found some "craft" or "artisanal" business. "Craftsmanship" used to mean a skill you develop over a lifetime. There's no reason that can't mean "consumable goods" but it's just hard for me to believe that pickle-making is the kind of skill one needs to hone over a lifetime.

just think you are kind of begging the question of what "true craftsmanship" is here

i mean, if a "craft" can be described as a set of skills and practices, then it seems a bit unfair to compare a relatively small set kills (making pickles) to a larger set (woodworking). you're putting your finger on the scale, there. just because one set of skills is bigger than another doesn't make the qualitatively different.

Ok, I developed the ability to make really good cappuccinos. It probably took me months of practice, maybe even a year. I don't consider myself a "craftsman" because of this. I think it would be kind of insulting to what "craftsmanship" really means to do so. I think there's something very late capitalistic about the idea that you can quit your corporate job and become a "craftsman" by starting a business.

i still don't get the basis of your distinction; you're just comparing unequal skill sets again. if i were an apprentice cabinet maker, it might take me a full year of dedicated practice to learn how to make a really good dovetail joint. it's not one skill that makes up the whole discipline of woodworking, just as making cappuccino or pickles does not make up the entire discipline of cooking.

I think there's something very late capitalistic about the idea that you can quit your corporate job and become a "craftsman" by starting a business

i mean -- i guess so? but isn't that kind of a good thing, that people are able to do this? obviously sure, taking a year or however long out your life to learn a new trade is dependent on a hell of a lot of economic privilege, even moreso in new york. ok, i get that. i just don't understand what's so contemptible about "quitting corporate to go artisan" per se.

there's nothing contemptible about that as a life choice, that's not really my point. I'm saying that the labels ("artisan" "craftsman") have been robbed of some of their meaning.

to me they have spawned new hilarious contexts (artisanal pencil sharpener etc...) rather than meaning dilution

it's a fantasy people play when they discover life has no meaning. as in, money, status, and possessions are what we're all taught is important in our culture, and that shit's a dead end since we were taught these things have meaning for no other reason than the fact people make money off us from it, so it's easier to live in lala land by becoming an "artisinal craftsman" than to face the fact that everything you've lived for and still live for is completely pointless.

ime it's far more common for ~products~ to be described as "(hand)craft(ed)" or "artisanal" than for their makers to self-label as "craftsmen" or "artisans"

so yes i agree that if someone handed me a business card that said "pickle craftsman" i probably would die laughing but does that even happen?

i'll take the position that skills become more valuable as they are honed, educated and integrated. the skill of a master woodworker with decades of experience IS more valuable, in a general sense, than some ambitious kid's year-old enthusiasm for pickling. a lifetime's worth of kitchen experience in the hands of a truly gifted cook is far more like the former than the latter.

i kind of differ on this point. in furniture the main thing i admire is the enthusiasm of the novice.

I think it's not the process of pickling so much as the end result that's ridiculous. I mean, it's just a pickle. How could you devote your life to that?

I mean if you're going to get into the craft of fermenting stuff, at least learn to make something useful like booze.

well yeah, i think if we were talking about beer or cheese it would be more difficult to write off culinary craft as seeming insubstantial in comparison to other of the "practical arts"

it's easy to say "LOL pickles," but if i spent a year learning how to make really amazing cheese and everyone says my cheese is the best and i go into business for myself -- how have i NOT earned the right to call myself an artisan? how many years are necessary? or am i only allowed to claim that if i learned my ancestral cheesecraft through secret family traditions