Ike Doss, one of my senior woodworking students finished his curly, spalted maple bowl today. I'm not sure what to say about it except what you can see for yourself. He gave it to his mother after school, and you know it will be treasured.

Paper Sloyd, again...I hope you aren't bored with it. I mentioned that I had asked my 5th and 6th grade students to do it and they were surprised that it was much more fun than they expected.

It is really good for students of all ages to be able to learn directly from written instructions. When they ask, "how do I do this?" I tell them, the instructions are all there. When they say, "I just don't get it!" I ask, "did you do the preceding project, or are you trying to skip ahead?" Paper Sloyd projects build sequentially in difficulty in such a way that no project is more difficult than its preceding one. What you need to know in one project was learned by the last. The biggest challenge for me is to keep students from trying to jump ahead to projects that they think will be more interesting. They could hardly wait to do the pin wheels.

Computers are changing the way students learn. They tend to avoid directions and just play around with things until they work. If they reach a point of frustration, they will ask rather than read. That process of learning by the seat of the pants can be sort of fun on the computer, but rather inefficient, impulsive and poorly directed for real life.

I tell my students that if they can read and follow instructions they can do anything in the world that they can imagine.
When a knowledge of tools, materials, and processes is in place, they can create whatever they might dream up. They have asked if they can do paper sloyd again next week. The photo above shows students with their pin wheels made in today's lessons.

When furniture made from a chewed up stew of forest by-products begins to wear, sorry things appear. The plastic laminate surface whose color and carefully randomized wood image has kept us fooled and satisfied for a time peals or chips away and reveals the lack of integrity beneath. I'm very sorry, but there is no real wood there, nothing to fix.

Years ago I made a small cherry trestle-style dining table that served in our home through my daughter's earliest years. At one point, my wife asked me to sand and refinish the top. It had seen years of direct sunlight and looked dry from wiping after meals with a damp cloth.

As I began to sand, there were things I noticed that brought me to a halt. There in the surface were very slight indentations... the markings where my daughter Lucy sat as a toddler and tapped with her spoon. These were marks that I could have sanded through, but I wouldn't do it. Real wood records the lives of those who have found pleasure in its use.

There is comfort to be found in provenance. I'm not talking here about a written record of the journey and ownership of work that a museum curator would keep on file, but of the small markings, coded signs left in wood that record our lives and can only be seen, read, and understood by those who have known love in its use.

We learn to take both anguish and pleasure in the wear and tear that shows up on real wood. Our lives are inscribed in it and on it. Just as the rings, grain and imperfections in wood tell the story of the life of the tree, the forest and the earth, the wood in our homes is the medium upon which details of our own lives are recorded and preserved. Wood is a narrative thing. It tells its own story, then the story of the craftsman and then ours. To live our lives without it would be a very sad thing.

Integrity of materials...what about wood? There are clearly wonderful things about wood. It grows from the earth. It pulls minerals and water from the earth, processes carbon dioxide from the air to make oxygen and then grows large and strong in its relationship to gravity and light. There is no type of living thing that has engaged man's imagination more than our trees. We write poems about them.

Steel, glass, clay and stone are each materials that must be forcibly extracted from the earth before our use of them. Wood emerges abundantly on the surface of the earth, nearly as a gift. There is no material friendlier to the touch. Steel, glass and stone are either cold or hot to the touch. Wood, even in the harshest of conditions is mild to the touch. It may be rough and with splinters at first and yet, the touch can solve that problem as well. It becomes polished to perfection through our caress.

You can walk right into the forest with an axe or a knife, find a deadfall branch and begin making art. No other material lends itself so directly to man's creative genius.

Joe mentioned the young couple in the furniture store, and it brings up all kinds of questions about wood. Wood can be such a simple and direct material with such depth of integrity, and yet we know that the wood most people have in the furnishings of their homes isn't really wood at all, but material mixed and compressed from a stew of random forest fibers, reshaped and decorated with printed images on plastic film.

There are several factors that go into the value of an object. One is the integrity of the material. You might ask, is it real? Real wood can be sanded, repaired and refinished. A piece of furniture made from real wood can thus be made to last generations. Another factor is the integrity of the craftsmanship. A craftsman can put into the making of things, the full extent of his knowledge and experience. How can he really know how to do that with newly invented materials? The best craftsmen choose materials with integrity that allow their use of techniques that make their work last beyond their own times. The third factor is the care that is given when the craftsman's work is done. Real wood sustains greater wear without loss of value or appearance, and seldom reaches that sorry point at which the owner of the work no longer cares for it.

The photos above and at left are of a steam bent hickory music stand I made for a violinist. My intent was for it to look as though it just waltzed from the woods. In a sense, it did.

In modern times, we have objects we identify as art or craft because we also choose to live our lives surrounded by objects of little meaning. In the world of museums, there is a term "provenance" which refers to knowing the source and ownership history of a work of art, or literature or an architectural find. We live our lives with objects that have no provenance. They are disposable and in most cases aren't even designed to be easily composted or recycled, so if they had "provenance," it would merely describe the uninteresting journey from the store through a couple months or so at home before being put at the curbside for disposal. The ironic thing is that we sweat bullets over the acquisition of these things.

Provenance is actually the story of the object, and the story the object tells of the culture. Remove an article from its provenance, and its deeper meaning and value are lost as well.

Now, just for one moment, imagine living a life in which every object has clear povenance, each thing reflecting relationship with its maker and the long line of people who have enjoyed its use. What you have just imagined is the kind of world we would live in if we were to choose quality over price, deeper meaning and personal growth over expedience.

My sloyd brother Joe Barry sent me the following reflection on yesterday's post.

" I can't recall the source right now but I was struck by something I read last year about the differences and opportunity costs in quality. It referred to the depression era and how there were two choices for shoes. You could buy a cheap cardboard and plastic pair for $15 that would last 1-2 years or buy a good leather pair for $60 that would last 15-20 years with care and re-soling. The poor man has no choice but to buy the cheap shoes even though he will have paid more for shoes in several years than the wealthy man who is still on the first pair he bought.

"I have had customers save up to pay for a solid wood table even though it was a strain because they knew it would be better than what they could buy in a furniture store. I heard an ad several years ago in Boston for a furniture store in which they interviewed customers shopping in the store and there was a newlywed couple that said they were there to buy a new bedroom set because the one they bought five years previously when they married needed to be replaced! I was shocked and appalled. Okay, as newlyweds they might need a new mattress or even have broken the sorry excuses for beds that are sold. But, replace the whole set of bedroom furniture??!!?? My mother still has the mahagony bedroom set she got when she married in 1951 and it is still in great shape. I wouldn't mind inheriting it. What sort of disposable culture do we have when furniture gets replaced after only 5 years. I wouldn't be surprised if the Ents didn't declare war on us and march upon High Point with the intent to punish them for the wasteful use of trees."

Thanks, Joe, for adding to the discussion.

The solid cherry china cabinet in the photo above is one I made in the early 1980's. It is made with through wedged mortise and tenon joints, hand cut dovetails and lathe turned knobs and door latches. The base and crown moldings were hand carved and attached with sliding dovetails. At the time, I considered it to be my master's thesis in woodworking, but I was attending the school of hard knocks where no actual degree is offered.

There are times when I wish my readers would be more challenging of the things I say. For instance, yesterday I said that hand-made things are more expensive than machine made things. This is only true if you are thinking only of the short term. When the long term value of the object enters the equation, the hand crafted unique object may be far less expensive. I offer the following quote from Michael Ruhlman in Wooden Boats

"We mass-produced our stuff and made it cheap so we could aford lots of it, and thus the quality had diminished to the point that we needed even more stuff, because cheap things break or go bad or get old fast. Things that grow more valuable with age are typically things of superior quality. Even now we might be unable to recognize things of superlative quality, and if so, it was already too late--we'd have to wait four hundred years for a second Renaissance to flood the culture with light."

But we won't wait four hundred years. Tomorrow in the woodshop at Clear Spring School, we will be making friendship boxes to be inscribed and exchanged between students in the First and Second grades. In the 3rd and 4th grades, we are making similar boxes, but because they are studying space, the friendship expressed will be between the earth and moon. The lids of the boxes will be decorated with the earth, orbited by the moon. These won't be objects of the highest quality unless you are looking at the qualities of learning and growth. As Otto Salomon said, the value of the child's work is not in the object made, but in the child who made it.

The piece in the photo above is some of my early work, from around 1980 or so. It is made of cherry with exposed mortise and tenon joints locked and expanded outside the mortise with walnut wedges. I don't know if this piece of early work exists or if it has value. It would be nice to see it again someday.

There are hidden costs to nearly everything, so when a human being is put to test, trying to make decisions about spending hard earned resources, it is extremely difficult to come to a clear understanding of the price we pay. We compare various features of the products involved, relative to price, and then decide.

What if we throw other variables into the equation? Like its origins. Was it made in a sweatshop where child labor is exploited and people work under conditions of near slavery? Are there environmental consequences of the ways its raw materials were extracted from the earth, or are there serious dangers from the by-products of its manufacture? What about the disposal costs of the object after its usefulness is depleted? What about the transportation costs and the effects on the environment? What about wasteful packaging and its disposal costs? And what do we mean by disposal? Are we just talking about the costs of hauling it away, or are we talking about the long term costs of the degradation of the environment from landfills or incineration?

Then there are other costs that are even more difficult to evaluate. These can be called the "human opportunity costs." If we buy something rather than make it ourselves, we choose not to invest in the creative opportunity and growth opportunity that we, ourselves would derive from it. If we choose to buy an object from a big box store, rather than having someone we know in our own community make it for us, we make less of an investment in the people of our community and more in the big box store and what it represents. If, in total, we choose not to invest in the creative potential of our own people, but place our investment outside our own communities, can it be any surprise when we have crime, juvenile delinquency, teen pregnancy, meth addiction, gated communities, increasing police surveillance, failure in schools, increasing costs of incarceration...

I realize that these are complex issues with no easy answer... at least not one that won't come one pair of hands at a time.

I wanted to talk today about the mental health issues related to the use of the hands. It is another thing that fits into the category of "human opportunity costs." If we buy instead of make, we are missing the opportunity to discover and take pleasure in our creative potential. Depression is one of the serious consequences of that choice. If we fail to offer others in our community the challenge of making their lives and livings through the use of their hands, we have failed to encourage the members of our community to discover and take pleasure in their creative potential. Again, depression, mental illness, and substance abuse among our neighbors are the logical consequences of our choice.

Not happy thoughts, but we can change things, one pair of hands at a time. Let's start with our own.

The photo above is of a dining chair made for my cousin Mary Lou and her husband Michael. The set of 6 chairs, table and sideboard were made in 1996.

John Henry...there is a story and song in American folklore about a man who tried to keep up with a steam powered machine while working on the railroad laying track. Of course it is a sad song, and John Henry couldn't keep up.

Every thing that is made for sale competes with every other thing for the attention of the American wallet. American craftsmen, like John Henry, just can't keep up. Human beings make things that are different from the things made by machines. In most cases, objects made by hand are more expensive. But with machine made things, we seldom see their hidden costs.

So why would anyone in their right mind want to buy something that was hand made? There are a number of qualities that machines just can't put in place, and from the looks of things, people have very little comprehension what those qualities are.

Machines don't have feelings about their work. They don't care. There is nothing in the soul of the machine to invest the essential qualities of humanity within the object it makes. It is ironic that people would choose to fill their lives with meaningless objects, devoid of feeling and manufactured without the most interesting components of humanity invested in them...the qualities of hope, aspiration and personal growth.

You know when you set up a machine to make something, it may start out at a high level, but it gets worse and worse at it until the wear of the machine leads it to failure. When you yourself, set out to do something, you get better and better at it and if you care for the outcomes of your efforts, your work reaches higher levels of craftsmanship. When we ask others to make things with their hands, aspirations and hope, we play an important role in their growth, and perhaps even in the growth of our human culture. You can think of buying hand made things as making an investment in humanity.

As a craftsman, I owe everything to a few important customers who encouraged my growth by asking me to make beautiful things. You can play a part in the growth of others, or you can spend your money on foolish, meaningless stuff. You choose. The photo above is of a trestle table made for my very good friends, Kathy and Rick McCormick.

If you look back in the past of any traditional culture, you find a tradition of hand crafts. This is true whether you examine the plains indians of North America, the peoples of Viet Nam, Tibet, Australia, the Moari, the polynesians, east Indians, black Africans or the Soumi of northern Sweden and Finland. People used their hands to create beauty in their lives...not in pursuit of art to be sold, but as an essential condition of daily life.

John Neihard, in his novel about the Sioux, "When the Tree Flowered" describes the life of a young man growing up in the traditional way and the pride he felt in the articles of clothing made for him by his mother and sisters. Compare that with what we have now...the lust that children feel to look just like the distant designers prescribe, ...as outlined in the pages of magazines and catalogs, all the while living in fear that they will stand out from their crowd. The measure of their family's love is in the purchase of the brand name, and the look of modern sophistication.

You can tell me. Have we missed something? If so, how do we make the journey back?

We can learn a lot from Sweden. In the early part of the 19th century, Sweden was flooded with well made manufactured goods that made traditional handcrafts meaningless. Why make what you could buy so cheaply and well made? Next came alcoholism. Men and women needed something to do to ease the long winter nights and there was no longer a need to make the objects required for their daily lives. They were stripped of their traditional source of self-esteem, so they made and drank alcohol.

I'm not stating this as a criticism of anyone. The same problems have appeared everywhere the hands have been stilled by the introduction of mass quantities of manufactured goods. Here in Arkansas, we have problems with alcoholism and Meth addiction. Add to that all the other problems involving mental health, and you may get the picture. Who needs to make anything when you have Walmart? And besides, who would want to wear anything your mother made you, even though it was made with artistry and love?

Now, in Sweden there is a movement called Home Sloyd Or "Hemsloyd", which is the Swedish equivalent of the American Craft movement. I have a good book to recommend that is about turning a corner on things. It is by a friend of mine, Bill Coperthwaite and is called "A Handmade Life" The photo above is of some of Bill's handmade crooked knives and a handmade basket from his collection.

Joe Barry, my brother in Sloyd asked in response to today's post whether I'd heard of Ninja Finger Weaving. I guess I'd seen it in the martial arts movies, but didn't understand what it was. The site Ninjaa.com explains it. Interestingly, the purpose isn't really to do magic, but to still and focus the mind...again illustrating the hand/mind inter-relationship that we overlook in education. The image above is from ninjaa.com and illustrates the weaving of fingers in the pattern "toh" to establish mental and emotional harmony with the universe. Personally, I prefer the kind of weaving that leaves baskets and cloth behind...objects made in reflection of our harmony with the universe that can be understood and used by others without pretense or mystique.

The image at the left is of a cave painting in whch a stencil of the hands formed the origin and destination of a journey rich in symbolism.

The image of the hands in meditation illustrate how the posturing of the hands can be used to induce prescribed mental states.

I am reminded of a conversation with Eureka Springs artist, Eleanor Lux. I was describing how modern research into gesture indicates the powerful connection between the movement of the hands and human expression through speech. She remembered when her mother would tell her, "sit on your hands" to get her to be quiet or to help her to avoid saying things that might make someone angry. The body language of sitting on hands always tells the observer that there are serious matters being pushed aside, significant feelings being repressed or important words left unspoken.

As an experiment, hold your hands in the position shown in the photo above and note the state of your consciousness. Does the hand posture induce calm? or quiet? Try it. Tell me what you think I tried to put my hands in the position illustrated and found that the geometry of the illustration is impossible for me to duplicate without extreme pain, as the view shown is what you would see in the mirror and not what you would see by looking at your own hands. Under normal circumstances, thoughtful contemplation of my hands often brings peace, stills my heart and quiets my mind.

One of the most interesting things about the hands is their connection with meditation or prayer. Our hands are far more deeply connected to the human psyche than we can imagine. There are three images I want to share. The first is of a cave painting of human hands from Patagonia. The second is Albrecht Dürer's classic portrait of hands in prayer and the third is of hands in the classic zazen meditation position.



We have always known the intimate relationship between the hands, our creative power, and the shaping of spiritual and physical reality. But we do a pretty fair job of ignoring the hands in modern education. Because we ignore the hands, we get dumber by the minute.

A Reverance for Wood...a blog reader was kind enough to compare my writings with those of one of my idols, Eric Sloane. One of Sloane's books A Reverance for Wood was the book that awakened me to the wonders of wood and the essential role that wood played in American history. I've read the book many times as it is one of those I can pick up and take comfort in.

Eric Sloane was first and foremost a painter and illustrator rather than a writer and all his books are beautifully illustrated in line drawings that add value and interest to the text, in the same way I hope the photos on this blog add interest to what you read here. A Reverance for Wood has had such profound impact on my life, it is difficult to find the right words to say about it. Just find it and read it. It might have an effect on yours. The image above is one of Sloane's illustrations from A Reverance for Wood.

One of the best things we can do for our children is to be creatively engaged in our own lives. If you watch TV or play computer games with your time, what do you think your children will do when they grow up? Your time would be better spent whittling at the kitchen table, making things that are useful, beautiful or both and serving as a role model of creativity.

One of the things I do when I get my summers off from Clear Spring School is teach. There are a variety of wood working schools and clubs that engage me to teach week long classes to adults. The first school where I taught is one of my favorites. It got me hooked on the experience of sharing my knowledge and experience with others. I tell about my first teaching experience at Arrowmont on a page in my website which I call Turning Left at the Hard Rock Cafe.

I can't really describe for you what a rich experience a week at Arrowmont can be. You would have to experience it for yourself to understand. This year I'll be teaching at American Sycamore Woodworking Retreat in Indiana, William Ng's School of Fine Woodworking in Los Angeles, The South Florida Woodworking Guild, and with Diablo Woodworkers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Later in the fall I'll have two day classes at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock and at a Woodcraft Store near Dearborn, Michigan. Each of those will be an incomparable experience. Here in Eureka Springs, some friends and I have founded the Eureka Springs School of the Arts (ESSA) because we believe that being engaged in the arts is essential to the human spirit. At ESSA or Arrowmont, you can choose from a variety of crafts in addition to woodworking. The photos above are from Arrowmont.

It is difficult for human beings to grasp complex concepts without being led through the basic simple premises that lead up to the complexity. Difficult tasks are made easy when simple skills are in place. Abstract concepts may be difficult to understand without first understanding the concrete observations upon which they are based.

Human beings can be capable of incredible insight and creativity, but we arrive at these points through incremental development that is too often ignored in modern education. We think the purpose of schools is to impart knowledge, forgetting that there are levels of knowledge and an objective transcendent of knowledge called wisdom.

Just as a matter of discussion, I suggest the following for you to consider:

Levels of Knowledge--
Knows about.
Knows how.
Can explain it.
Can do it.
Can do it well.
Can do it well and explain it.

You will note that knowledge in its higher forms involves capacities for both action and understanding.

Knowledge comes from a variety of sources…conversation, books, radio, instruction, television, internet, personal observation.
Knowledge may be acquired either directly or from a third party.
Wisdom emerges from reflection on personal and collective experience.
Wisdom involves understanding the relationships between seemingly disparate events, concepts and things.

If we designed our schools to impart wisdom, one of the activities for all students would be woodworking, and the school would look a lot like Clear Spring School.

The drawing above is of Otto Salomon demonstrating the proper posture and stance for sawing in Educational Sloyd.

Today in the woodshop, the 5th and 6th graders were finishing up two projects, fraction blocks and wooden pyramid boxes. Some were already done with both. When students miss school due to illness, or when some students work more slowly than others, there are times that we need something else to do as a filler that is also fun. Today I introduced paper sloyd. Even though paper sloyd was originally intended for even younger children, the method is fun and the students were allowed to advance at their own pace. There is an opportunity in it for precise workmanship, and to advance independently required the students to either read carefully or watch carefully what the other children were doing. The photo above is of Edna Anne Rich's book Paper Sloyd published in 1910, along with the Valentine I found inside and a paper sloyd project made in class. The students (and teacher) had so much fun that they want to do the same thing next week. Teacher, Andrea Brinton made a pin wheel and as I carried some students in my car to the lower campus, she, driving the van ahead, held her work out the window to allow the wind to give it a good spin.

I wish there were Clear Spring Schools in every community and that all children (and teachers) could find so much fun in learning.

I've been reading a good book, recommended by a friend Reuben Rajala who keeps me informed of articles about woodworking education. The book Wooden Boats by Michael Ruhlman, is about the Gannon & Benjamin boatyard in Martha's Vinyard and the men and women who make and design wooden boats. It is truly a wonderful book for anyone who might either love boats, or feel drawn to acquiring a better understanding of the human desire to create with integrity and greater purpose. Michael Ruhlman's book is a story well told about the lives of boat makers, the making of wooden boats, and the people who might be inspired (being "boatstruck") to commission wooden boats costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, but saving for the present the means and methods of work that reflect the essense of our humanity.

But then, we could just forget about all that hands-on stuff and live virtual lives though our desktops and PDAs. We'll download our music and our thoughts instead of making music and thinking thoughts of our own. We can shape our schools and education to prevent our children taking risks and having experiences that might lead them to creative lives. Oh, wait a minute...aren't we doing that already?

You might enjoy the book. It is an entertaining one. Then when you're done, make something. Invest your attention and integrity. It doesn't even have to be a boat.

The woodshop and afterschool meetings wore me out today, so I'm going to avoid the subject of zen except to mention that the empty cup referred to in yesterday's post is exactly the same thing as "undifferentiated consciousness." Most religious leaders would like to shape and mold your world view, filling your cup with beliefs to match their own rather than allowing you to see things clearly with your own eyes. Of course you are free to disagree, and hopefully you will explore on your own rather than accept my authority. I hope you will do the same in the exploration of your hands. Don't take what I say for gospel. Study your own hands and their relationship to your learning. If you arrive at the same conclusions I've reached there will be at least two of us. Most important, we will have arrived at authority based on experience rather than dogma.

The photos above were taken today in the Clear Spring Woodshop. Brian finished his model of the solar system along with others in the 3rd and 4th grade study of space. An item of note...to the disappointment of most students, in the planning of the project we chose to ignore Pluto. The second photo is of Clear Spring High School senior Ike Doss turning a curly maple bowl on the lathe.

One of the special programs at Clear Spring School is called "Travel School." Students from Clear Spring have been all over the US on school trips to bring education to greater meaning and relevance. It is one of the "hands-on/hearts-engaged" features of our school. Travel school really kicks in at 4th and 5th grades when our students begin their travels throughout Arkansas. They learn the 4 specific geographic regions of our state and visit each one. One trip includes digging for actual diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds State Park, and digging for quartz crystals near Hot Springs.

The photo above is Caleb making an Arkansas cutting board/map. The students cut the boards out using a scroll saw and then locate the various features of the state on the wood.