Today, I am packing up a large order of small boxes for Appalachian Spring Galleries in Washington, DC. This is the culmination of weeks of part-time work, with ever changing roles, from the purchase of essential supplies, through the cutting, milling and assembly of parts, through sanding, finish, packing, invoicing, shipping, and billing. Sound complicated? We live in an age of specialization. If you look any place in the industrialized world you will find that people are stuck in one of the small roles drawn from the list... from the design of the product through making and management, facing endless repetition, while no one sees the whole of the precess in which they are involved.

The life of the American craftsman is different from that.