craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

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

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

― fervently nice (Treeship), Friday, July 26, 2013 1:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

in furniture the main thing i admire is a comfortable resting place for my ass.

peopel are forgetting the japanese dudes who spend 10 years just learnign how to make sushi rice

xxp why "artisan" and not "cheese maker"?

but you craft one pickle...

my business card says 'reclaimed dildo craftsman'

bespoke handmade dildos whittled with utmost care to fit your internal dimensions

Two fittings, guaranteed

I wld probalby buy a pickle from the guy who had been making pickles for 20 years over hte guy who had been making it for 6 months

THat's the problem, right. epople take time off and they read ablog about pickle making an three months later they open up the Picklery in red hook

read that as Pickleberry and thought "there's a concept the world is ready for!"

Nobody wants to eat your pickles that you psent three months learning how to make. thats probably a terrible pickle

The other problem is that thinking high quality ingreidents make for a good pickle. Okay your cukes are from a family owned farm near the finger lakes and your vinegar was distilled from all organic apples grown in connecticut. Your pickles still fucking suck you goddam asshole

Nobody wants to eat your raspberry dill coriander pickle. Go away

You say that and I want to agree w you but I had a temp roommate last year who made "peach lavender butter" which sounded mystifying (and worrisome) but turned out to be AMAAAAAZING and I wish she had been my roommate longer so I could benefit more. She was also young and super awesome and worked at an artisanal pickle store, incidentally.

ugh i spent $12 on a so-called artisan pickle that was SO OBVIOUSLY the work of a journeyman picklesmith, just dreadful, i just had to returned to the neighborhood cornichonerie and demanded my money back

Journeyman picklesmith is a delightful phrase

This brine. THis brine contains the salt of my father's sweat, and the salt of his father's sweat before him, and the salt of his father's sweat before him. WE have toiled long and hard and across generations to bring you this briny pickle. Eat it with respect

Give a man a pickle and he will eat that pickle. Teach a man how to throw a bunch of cucumbers into a barrel with some brine and vinegar and he will feed all of Brooklyn with artisanal pickles.

also <3 Journeyman Picklesmith. the central character in a ribald 18th C knockabout allegory.

http://www.cbc.ca/books/malcolm.jpg

sorry all this talk about brooklyn artisanal pickles reminds me of this: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2013/01/sell-out-part-one.html

pretty sure malcolm gladwell is a lurker here