Craftsmen

This post and this post got me to thinking.

I'm only twenty-two. But I suspect that I've known more real craftsmen personally than a lot of people my age and younger will ever meet in their lives. It seems like a real craftsman is a dying breed.

I knew a carpenter of surpassing skill. He passed away some years ago, but I grew up getting to play in his shop with the wood scraps. His brother is a calligrapher who does amazing work--think the Book of the Kells and other illuminated manuscripts. I remember some of his work still.

A dear friend of mine who runs with the faire circuit is a pewtersmith. My father's best friend is a silversmith. I know a man who makes Celtic harps by hand, and another who makes guitars. I've known wood carvers and glass blowers, and I've watched all of them working on projects in all stages of completion, from raw materials to the final finishing touches.

My father is a blacksmith. I've seen him turn old, broken files, garage door springs, rail road spikes, and other pieces of trash metal (good, high-carbon steels no longer useful in their present form, I mean) into beautiful knives, spears, axes, and other items. And his knives are truly amazing.

I've been horribly spoiled on them, and hold all other knives to his high standards. There was a time out at a faire when we had run out of business cards. We had printed sheets, but not individual cards. So I sat behind the table, and when someone requested a card, I sliced one off for them with one of the knives. I used that same knife all weekend, and by the end of the weekend, it could still cut newspaper without a snag and shave hair. I've watched people (morons who didn't know how to handle knives) slice themselves open on them and start bleeding and dripping on things without noticing that they'd been cut at all.

One of the most irritating and heart breaking things that happens, often, is the way people sneer at the prices of these hand-made objects. They want to buy my father's blades for the same price as some stamped piece of crap from Pakistan or China. They think anything over five dollars for a blade that took a day to forge out, and weeks to complete the hilt and scabbard for is an insult. They also treat them like they aren't worthy of the sort of respect a good tool deserves.

I know they do the same to the finished products from the other craftsmen I've known. I guess a lot of people no longer understand the kind of work that goes into something like that, when you're doing it the right way. I know they don't understand the kind of quality that comes with it.

I got the argument posed to me that I count in that group in a way, since I knit. I don't really agree, though I do see the point. I can take string or yarn and two sharpened sticks and make clothing out of it. And there is something intensely satisfying about looking at a skein of yarn, and then looking at a project I've completed and thinking about how I made that.

And I think a lot of people in the world would benefit from such projects. Have someone build a box from hand, starting with nothing but boards. Teach someone to knit and have them make a sweater or gloves or a hat. And when they're finished, ask if they'd be willing to sell it for the five dollars they were expecting to be able to buy it for earlier.

I can guarantee I know the answer.