assembly of new tables

When assembling a table made using round tenons, you have to be very careful to check that it is flat and square, so I am using a carpenter's square to check. Rectangular tenons go together one way and one way only, but round ones can fit together at many very wrong angles, so checking and rechecking is a must. When the glue is set, however on the parts in this design, they have a great deal of strength and each glued tenon reinforces the positioning of the rest. I do my gluing on a flat surface to make very certain that the table will rest evenly, with each leg touching the ground. This table and one similar to it will be ready for applying finish and attaching the top tomorrow and will be ready for delivery to a gallery later in the week.

rest assured

There is an old saying, "I love work. I can sit here and watch it all day." Rest assured that doing real work rather than just watching is immeasurably more fun. I have been using the rotary chisel in the Roto Zip to texture the edges of the table top and remove material from the edges that is too badly decayed. In fond memory of completing my Rustic furniture book, I am taking advantage of the beautiful day to work outdoors.

trial fit

As you can see in the photo above, the tenons and mortises holding the table are formed, and I have done a trial assembly just to check the look. I will take the table apart for sanding prior to gluing the joints. I know there will be changes in the next tables, and I see this as the beginning of a series that will evolve over time, just as this particular piece is one that incorporates several of my earlier investigations in design and technique. The woods used are black walnut and spalted fiddleback soft maple.

tapering legs

Today I am tapering legs for the tables I'm making. These will be an unusual design, combining rustic edges, a meandering cut through the top, and legs that have the elegance of more traditional furniture. Like nearly everything else I do in the wood shop, these tables are experimental. If I know exactly how something is going to turn out, what will I learn from it?

The simple tapering jig in use above is made with a piece of plywood and has a runner underneath like those used in more common table saw sleds. The jig carries the wood through the cut with the angle determined by the fence. To change the adjustment of the fence, you just reposition it with screws, and a small block at the end keeps the stock from sliding out of position.

One added benefit I'll note concerning my new saw. The riving knife that rises from the saw at the back edge of the blade serves to hold the stock in position throughout its cut, making this task far easier and providing better, safer control throughout the operation.

I can hardly describe for my readers the pleasure one can find in the creative process. You watch things happen in your own hands, guided by tools that have become old friends having shared so many creative adventures in your past. It is amazing to me that in our educational system and in our culture, we do so much to distract our children and ourselves from our creative potentials and the deep psychic rewards thereof.

In the photos below, you will see some additional progress, first a trial fitting of the stretchers, then the holes drilled for the triangulating side to side stretchers. If you have read my book, Making Elegant Custom Tables, you will find this design technique in Chapter 4.

incense burners...

The Clear Spring juniors and seniors in the economics block finished their incense burners which they are making as a marketing/production research project. They had fun and did some creative designs. In the photo below they look goopy and gross with the graphite/shellac finish, but when they have been rubbed out with a scouring pad, they will look like hammered steel, and far more interesting.

knights, boats and treasure?

This morning in the CSS wood shop we continued work on the chess sets (5th and 6th grades). The students have been playing chess in their spare time and have really gotten into the game. The designs for the knights and bishops seem to have worked out well, and we came up with an agreed plan for the kings and queens which we will make next week. I wish I could get them to observe their work more closely, but that will come in time. I can remember my first work. There are things we just don't see until later when our sense of quality has matured.

This afternoon in the wood shop we continued work on the boat (9th and 10th grades), and made jigs for stamping letters and numbers on the hardwood lids for Pete's periodic table of elements. I got a set of large letter stamps, which combined with the smaller set allow for writing the abbreviations for the elements along with atomic weight.

I was asked to sit quietly on some news over the last week, and that gave me some time for quiet reflection. I got the letter today from the Arkansas Arts Council making official my selection as an "Arkansas Living Treasure," for my contributions to traditional crafts. That means that my selection is now a matter of public knowledge, so I can mention it to you, my readers. I haven't any real sense of what all this means, except for the following:

1. No craftsman is an island unto himself. We function in our work because we are encouraged by others to do so. We pay attention and apply care to our work because people notice and reward us with their kind thoughts. Things that are made with quality are made because there is encouragement for their making. It takes a village to raise a craftsman. If a single craftsman is honored, all are honored, along with the community and culture in which he or she has grown.

2. The message of the wisdom of the hands is one that people in the arts and craft community understand and wish to encourage.

3. I plan to use this acknowledgment of my work to further the cause, the promotion of crafts, woodworking and hands-on learning in schools, homes and lives. Wish us all luck.

more owl... more students, too

Today in the wood shop the 3rd and 4th grade students worked on more pin wheels to be used as decorations during the Clear Spring fund raising auction in May. With the first and second grade students we continued work on kangaroos, with the children beginning to nail their pouches in place and making baby joeys to go inside. We added two new students to the lower primary grades this week, so it seems that the school is on a gradual increase in enrollment. The current national trend is for declining enrollment in independent schools, but we are doing many things right and parents notice.

My owl is again on his(or her) favorite perch.

barred owl again

This may get boring to readers though it never would to me. I heard the barred owl in the woods this afternoon, and then this evening, he (or she) was sitting on a branch posed for photos. While the camera was on a tripod, the photo was taken with low light conditions and with a telephoto lens, so focus isn't perfect. I take pleasure in my encounters with wild things. You will notice a slight difference between these and earlier photos. You can see dogwood leaves opening in the background. Tonight we are expecting below freezing temperatures.

what is the value and meaning of work?

Today I will spend another day competing with the Chinese. I have some small boxes to make to fill holes in my inventory and I will work on two tables I've started. I will spend some time at school getting ready for tomorrow's classes.

When something is made, start to finish, by a real human being, the consequence is greater than the shaping of the object made. The materials used in making the object came from someplace where their loss may be felt, like the opening in the woods where a tree once stood. The time used in making was allocated away from other things; Less time in front of the TV, perhaps. The maker of the object was also shaped in profound ways. Perhaps he or she had done the same things thousands of times before, and worked mindlessly and to little internal effect. Or perhaps the maker worked attentively, caring for the perfection of each detail, shaping his or her inner landscape with unseen consequences. While one maker may have cared nothing for the act of making, another may have envisioned it as a process of unification with the creative forces inherent in the universe.

As I wander off to the wood shop to compete with the Chinese, which shall I choose today? You, as a maker or consumer will make choices of your own, either *building culture and society by grasping your own creativity and enabling others,* or by choosing expedience over quality and shopping for best price regardless of consequence to community. When these decisions are made by an individual, the consequences seem small, almost unmeasurable. But when a whole society makes the same choices, the impact is enlarged to the point of overwhelming. We see this in the degradation of our planet. So we now are challenged to change things. See *above* to know what.

memory lane #2 Fine Woodworking #117

We Traveled Rivers. Doug Stowe built this reading table on commission for a traveling exhibit on Arkansas literary history. The piece features Arkansas Ozark sugar maple, loose rocks Stowe collected himself, and a center-gap design that accommodates seasonal wood movement. Stowe finished the piece with Deft Danish oil and added a top coat of satin polyurethane spray. The work was first featured in FWW 117.

Photo: Doug Stowe

memory lane #1 Fine Woodworking #181

The free-flowing, irregularly shaped top on Stowe's planing bench (20-3/4 in. deep by 67 in. long by 37-/4 in. tall) was salvaged from an 8/4 walnut plank resting in his barn. Choked with wandering pith and pocked with checks and decay, the plank was unsuitable for fine furniture, so Stowe cut away the defects and retained the irregular edges created in that process. The gaps in the assembled top are handy spots to locate clamps. After applying the finish (linseed oil, Danish oil, and paste wax), Stowe and his wife christened the bench with a candlelight dinner, complete with fine wine, fancy tableware, and good friends.

From Pestalozzi to Froebel

You can see Pestalozzi's principles illuminated in Froebel's method. Froebel, in the process of "Inventing Kindergarten," developed "gifts", educational objects that grew in complexity from the simple colored balls on strings to his 19th gift, "sticks and peas" from which Buckminster Fuller discovered the geodesic dome. His last gift, the 20th was modeling clay. Associated with each gift were "occupations," actions that might be done with each to express learning. The belief was that learning and expressing both in the concrete and abstract were essential to development, and that concrete expression was the foundation for the abstract. If you want to know what abstract expression means, think of a standardized test. If you want to know what concrete expression means, think of something you might actually make or do. If you note that the outcome of our present system of education is complaisant consumerism, you can rest assured that the outcome of progressive education is active citizenship... something too scary for those with authoritarian ambitions to contemplate, which may explain why Freobel's schools were shut down by the Kaiser of Germany.

If you understand the relationship between Pestalozzi, Froebel and Salomon, you begin to come to a greater understanding of Sloyd. When Uno Cygnaeus was given authority by the Russian Czar to establish the Finnish Folk Schools, he was inspired by Froebel's Kindergarten movement and realized that crafts were the perfect means through which to extend Pestalozzi's Anschauung and Froebel's "self activity" throughout the school, and well beyond the Kindergarten years. Salomon realized the importance of Cygnaeus discovery and developed his teacher training school at Nääs to spread the gospel of progressive education.

The photo above is from Edna Anne Rich's 1905 book Paper Sloyd showing kids just beyond the Kindergarten age, preparing for woodworking Sloyd through work with paper. On the shelves and bulletin board you see finished paper models and on the blackboard, the design of the object being made. Edna Anne Rich was a graduate of Gustaf Larsson's School in Boston and Otto Salomon's School at Nääs. As a point that might interest you, my 3rd and 4th grade students at Clear Spring School love paper sloyd.

Pestalozzi

You may wonder where the educational precepts, "from simple to complex," "from concrete to abstract," from "known to unknown" came from. They were derived from Pestalozzi's doctrine "anschauung", which was intended to eliminate the verbosity involved in teaching, and lead children from passive learning toward activity.

"To get rid of the 'verbosity' of meaningless words Pestalozzi developed his doctrine of Anschauung - direct concrete observation, often inadequately called 'sense perception' or 'object lessons'. No word was to be used for any purpose until adequate Anschauung had preceded. The thing or distinction must be felt or observed in the concrete. Pestalozzi's followers developed various sayings from this: from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract.

To perfect the perception got by the Anschauung the thing that must be named, an appropriate action must follow. 'A man learns by action... have done with [mere] words!' 'Life shapes us and the life that shapes us is not a matter of words but action'.

Out of this demand for action came an emphasis on repetition - not blind repetition, but repetition of action following the Anschauung." --William H. Kilpatrick in his introduction to Heinrich Pestalozzi (1951) The Education of Man - Aphorisms, New York: Philosophical Library.

To come to an understanding of Educational Sloyd, if you are of a mind to, you must first come to an understanding of Pestalozzi and then Froebel. If you miss those two parts of Educational Sloyd's foundation, you will not fully understand what Otto Salomon's purposes were. When teachers attended the Sloyd Teacher Academy at Nääs, only part of their lessons involved woodworking. They were also taught the theories of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel and other important educational theorists through Salomon's lectures in Swedish, German, French and English. You can also see in Pestalozzi, the foundation for the system of models used in Sloyd. Each model offered repetition and refinement of earlier efforts, each adding greater sophistication in the understanding of the tools, their use, and the materials from which objects of increasing complexity and beauty might be formed.

Asking children to design first, before the materials, their best use, the tools and their effective use, and the potentials of both are understood, is an effective roadblock to the student's successful engagement in creativity and design. I had a clear experience of this on Thursday as students proposed projects. One wanted to make swords. I asked, "how are you on the table saw? Can you set up for those complicated cuts?" I assured them that my job was not to make things for them. By examining what the students knew how to do and the time constraints of the project, their desires to be creatively involved as individuals, and the available materials led us to their choice of making incense burners. They have one class day available next week to finish the project.

The value of starting from a model...

Richard Bazeley sent this photo of student work. All his upper level students are working on a version of the same table. Each may have more or less success than that shown, but each has learned important lessons about the materials, the tools, the geometry of his or her own body, the workings of human attention and more. We are not the first to observe this.

"Let the youth once learn to take a straight shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without faltering, or lay a brick level in its mortar, and he has learned a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could ever teach him" --John Ruskin, "Time and Tide", 1883.

Does having made this table limit his students' capacity to do more creative work, or empower it? What if it captures for them a sense of what it takes to make, the rewards of creativity and the value of craftsmanship? It can be addictive... the feedback loop that Kelly Lambert calls, "effort driven rewards."

This discussion goes back years. G. Stanley Hall found Sloyd models to be limiting and restrictive of children's expression. Swedish architect Carl Malmsten fomented open rebellion when he taught at Nääs. It won't be solved in the pages of this blog. But, here, at least, we are talking about it.

how can they be ready for that?

I stopped off at UALR while I was in Little Rock yesterday to visit with their woodworking program director and a visiting artist. The visiting artist had been taking students through the lengthy, abstract process he uses for designing work, and a small sketch of proposed work on a board by a student was shown to me as a bad example of the process of design... something that was to be avoided. I was in the awkward position of guest who disagrees with what was being taught. So I tried to politely suggest the dramatic contrast in methodologies between the beginning days of Sloyd and how it is currently practiced in Scandinavia. I often start my projects with no sketch at all. I may have a view in my mind's eye of the joinery to be used, and have some sense of what the wood will look like and how I want the finished object to appear. But I often start projects with few if any of the important decisions made in advance.

Children (here I use the word very lightly as we are all children at times as we learn, full of wonder and making connections with new things) move in their learning from the concrete to the abstract. And those who are involved in science know that one's relationship with the concrete never comes to an end. All scientific speculation must be tested against the hard edges of physical reality. It is the same with art, craft and design.

Piaget, in his theory of cognitive development recognized the time between ages 6-12 as "the concrete operational stage," and some theorists believe that computer gaming has actually delayed arrival of this stage as settings are pre-imagined and gamers work within sets of predetermined conditions set by game designers rather than by physical reality. This means that even at the time of entrance to college, many students have barely emerged into comfortable relationship with the abstract.

Drawing has immense value in the development of concepts and designs. But for beginners, to start with required drawing overlooks the important requirements of understanding the tools and materials and their participation in the creative act. So you put a blank piece of paper in front of a kid and ask him or her to make a bench? You are so much better off giving a kid a board and a saw. From that you will have a much greater opportunity to actually engage the child in creative work.

The director of the woodworking program at UALR is concerned about how to get more students involved. The place was empty but for us on a Friday afternoon, when it could have been packed with noise and activity instead of completely idle. I will offer this... we never outgrow our relationship to the concrete. To focus too strongly on design as being of greater importance than the making is but one more roadblock standing in the way of creativity. I am so grateful that I am able to walk to the barn and pick up a piece of wood and make. If my objective were to become a designer for industry, I may not be in the best position to do that. I would never be engaged with the kinds of materials I use for that. But if my objective is to be a craftsman and maker, actively involved in my wood shop, the relationship between the abstract and concrete is important to me. You start with the concrete, journey into the abstract and then reemerge into the concrete with a finished object which you can share and which becomes the next platform or foundation from which to continue exploration of the abstract.

Unfortunately most schools have journeyed too far from the fundamentals of tools and materials, and it is very hard for our kids to catch up.

I was surprised in my visits to Scandinavia that Sloyd has moved so far from its foundation of engagement in tools and materials. Now, instead of working from models, the children are supposed to work from their imaginations first. Sloyd teachers are told to have their children draw first and then make so that what they make will be more expressive and unique. It is as though participation in the world of the abstract is more important than participation in the real world. But how can children be expressive and unique and express any reasonable level of quality in their work if they have no understanding of the tools and materials first?

Originally, Sloyd was intended as the necessary second step. Play and manipulation of objects in Kindergarten was to lead to the making of useful objects as children matured and became more engaged in the real world as responsible citizens. But children starting out know very little about the materials and their qualities. They know very little about the tools and their uses. They know very little about the geometry of their own bodies in the use of tools. And these things are extremely important parts of the child's engagement in the creative experience.

I can tell you from my own personal experience as a teacher, you can spend a bit of time on design, but children can hardly wait to get their hands on real things. They can hardly wait to test the ways things work or to feel the transformation of materials in their own hands. If you want to build a great program, even at the university level, you start with the concrete by engaging the hands. There is plenty of time for the abstract, if it is all that important, to come later.

River Market Art Space, table with rocks

I made my delivery today to the River Market Art Space Gallery, and the photos are of the completed table on display.

contemporary rustic, upside down but you'll get the idea

It's upside down and you can't see the rocks inlaid on top, but the contemporary rustic walnut table is ready for delivery to Little Rock tomorrow. The two base sections are made of white oak and colored with black leather dye, then attached to the two sections of the top using lag bolts. was I started this table during my furniture design class at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock in 2007 and have finally finished it. Tomorrow I will take photos in the gallery setting.

economics class

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Clear Spring School juniors and seniors are studying economics, so as an interesting wood shop exercise, we are attempting to bring a product to market. The process involves business planning, product design, cost analysis, marketing, and many of the same considerations that any small business would face. Today, after exploring many of the ideas of things that the kids wanted to make, we settled on one of their suggestions, incense burners. Each one they are making is unique, and next week after they are finished with graphite shellac to make them look like hammered steel, the students will take them to shops for feedback from merchants as to whether they are salable merchandise, and what the selling price might be. We quickly realized that to make minimum wage, we would need to be able to produce at least 10 per hour, and that is without including overhead and cost of tools and materials. Business can be tough.

working on boat, adding ribs

Today we continued work on the boat, adding ribs and considering names for the thing. It may be called the blue whale of doom. First of all, the skin will be a blue tarp purchased at Walmart, and then we don't know yet if it will float.

reArt

We had a very successful reArt fundraiser last night, raising thousands of dollars for our Eureka Springs School of the Arts. The money will help pay staff salaries and expenses as we prepare for yet another spring and summer of great classes.

Normally in Eureka Springs, artists are asked to contribute work for charity auctions and we contribute because it is often easier for us to give work than to give money. But reArt allows all the community to give art and raise money. Community members dig old art out of closets, contribute to ESSA, and we sell it back to suport the school. We have both a live and silent auction, and last night's highlights were aprons designed by local artists that sold for hundreds of dollars each. Now, who in their right mind would spend hundreds of dollars for an apron? Well, these were pretty special aprons, each designed by well known artists and members of our community know that they are not just buying art, they are supporting the school and what it does for our region.

rooks

Today we added rooks, or "castles" to our chess sets and figured out through discussions how to make our knights. Next week we will work on designs for the kings and queens. This is a fifth and 6th grade project. The students sanded the tops of their chess boards flat using a random orbit sander. Also, the kids are playing chess in their free time at school.

today in the wood shop

The third and 4th grade students finished their project of making pinwheels for the pre-school. We followed patterns and directions from Ednah Anne Rich's book Paper Sloyd, having used the earlier models to perfect the students' skills at measuring and cutting.

The first and second grade students began making toy kangaroos for their study of Australia. It is a challenging project with lots of cutting. We will finish the project next week.

tomorrow in the woodshop

Today I have been finishing a coffee table with rocks as shown in the photo above, and getting ready for tomorrow's classes. The first and second grade students will be making wooden kangaroos for their study of Australia, and the 3rd and 4th grade students will be finishing pinwheels to give to students in our pre-school. I have a lot of work to do in the morning, as I still don't know how to make a kangaroo. Wish me luck.

The walnut table as you can see from the snap-shot in my crowded finish room has a contemporary white oak base, dyed black. It should harmonize with the colors of the natural stones inlaid in the top and the lead bullet inlaid by a hunter's blast in the edge. If you look closely you can see it a few inches up on the right edge.

G.K. Chesteron and capitalism

A friend, Dan Krotz, sent me the following from G. K. Chesterton:

"The mark of the modern industrial state as it now exists is precisely that its workmen do not possess capital. I call it capitalism when property is so unequal that the small man cannot live on his own property, but must hire himself out as a servant to work another man's property... I call it capitalism when the small farmer is forced to become a farm-labourer to the big farmer..The real problem of the present civilisation, which is not property but the disproportion of property, and, for most people, the absence of property... It is not the Conservatives who have defended property; they have hardly succeeded in discovering property..."

G. K. Chesterton
Illustrated London News

We are able to own homes if we are very lucky, and whether we own or rent, our lives may be filled with meaningless consumer goods, but how many in America now possess the means through which to produce real goods? I am one of the very lucky ones. I have tools. I also got an order this afternoon via email... so I even have a small market for the things I produce. Is it luck, or related to application of energy to a specific cause over a distinct period of time?

do others see beauty?

Yesterday it snowed all day and we would have had significant accumulation if the ground had been cold enough for the snow to have stuck. It was beautiful and set off a round of panic buying at our local grocery store. This morning I saw our barred owl neighbor in the woods. It was caught by surprise when I stepped out the door and it flew from its favorite perch about 40 feet from the wood shop door.

Do you think the beauty of a snowy day or a bright morning of sun that follows is something that is ours alone, unshared by the other species that share our planet and inhabit what's left of our wilderness?

Human beings have ways of categorizing with the purpose of marginalizing the experience of others. In our American thirteen colonies as we embarked on our journey to independence, it was decided that a slave was 3/5th a man, being lesser in intelligence and potential for joy. When Woodrow Wilson signed the Smith-Hughes Act, creating federal funding for separate schools for industrial arts, he was acting on the idea that some of us should be trained in service of the select group of liberally educated, but detached from reality scholars from the Ivies.

Some would say there is danger in Anthropomorphism, and I would say there is far greater danger in our failure to understand the common thread of life, beauty and wonder that connects us all.

When an owl takes wing on a sunny morning following a long day of falling snow, I cannot help but think that it and I are connected through the sense of beauty that surrounds us.

more fund raisers!

We have more local fund raisers in the next few days in Eureka Springs, and I believe that the economic times will make people more aware of the needs in our own communities.

Tomorrow is a Friends of the Library luncheon and I have given up my ticket to allow another to attend since it is already sold out. As you can see from the poster above, our Eureka Springs School of the Arts has our nearly annual ReArt fundraiser this week. One of the auction items will be a spoon I made, along with a spoon carving knife and one hour of spoon carving instruction, all materials supplied. Unlike the Friends of the Library luncheon, ReArt is open to the public without buying tickets in advance. It should be a fun event. Bring money. Go home with a fresh supply of art. Support the growth of ESSA and the personal growth of artists at the same time.

old work and new

One of the things that you learn as a craftsman is that you are not in it alone. And you will also learn that those who are most supportive of your work will quite likely be those who have some sense of the creative capacities of their own hands. You remove crafts education from schools, and you also remove an understanding of the patronage that is required to sustain the great works of human culture, period. My very best customers have been people who are creatively engaged in their own work. I can name names, and I am completely surprised that we don't have a clear and widely held understanding that when you commission work, you also commission growth, and the objects that serve as the foundation of human culture don't arise on their own from the blue, but arrive through the encouragement of others.

Jim Nelson is an example of an artist who understands his own role in the nurturing and sustenance of the arts within his own community and the first photo at the top of the page shows the entry hall of his home. The bench is the one I did with help from the students at Clear Spring School, and the wall sculpture is one of Jim's creations.

Following below are some photos of the works that I did for Jim and Susan Nelson over a period of years as I developed (with their encouragement) as a craftsman. The last photo below is a piece of Jim Nelson's most recent work.

table with rocks

This is Saturday, so once again, I am competing with the Chinese. They make things, but generally speaking, Americans do not. We have been hungry consumers passing things through our lives from storefront to landfill, caring little for the quality or cultural connections of the objects that smother our sensibilities.

So, you may ask, how can one compete with the Chinese? You do it by making things that last and that tell the more interesting stories of our civilization. Everything in a sense is storytelling, but we have to be careful editors of the stories we tell. Are they meaningful? Do they connect us more deeply with the important issues facing us and the survival of our planet? You can tell the story of what you saw on TV last night. It may have been oh, so funny at the time, and it may have successfully diverted your attention from reality for long enough to fall off to a good night sleep. But are human beings destined to be only the retellers and retailers of the stories made up by others, or are we to engage in real reality, guide our own lives toward significance and telling the significant stories of our own making?

Wood is a great way to tell our own stories... it can record our growth for others to see and share. The photo above is just one more table with rocks. This one was started at a weekend class I taught at Mia Hall's furniture design program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and after some distraction and delay, I am nearly done.

Also, I posted photos of my Crystal Bridges bench on the Fine Woodworking Gallery pages. It can be found here and the first piece in this series can be found here.

I see how this works!

Richard Bazeley in Australia sent the photo above of his students working on small tables using mortise and tenon joints. You can see the student's thoughts, "I see how this works!" as he assembles the half-lap joint between stretchers in the base. Theirs is not an easy project, and it will be one long remembered both in the making and in the physical form.

We had a wonderful evening fundraiser at the home of art patrons Jim and Susan Nelson. The food was fantastic, the guests loved the walnut bench, and we raised money in support of the Wisdom of the Hands program. Jane Tucker, mother of three former Clear Spring School students made the chocolate cake with tools and hands. The hand shaped cookies were made by Donna Doss and the shapes were those of real Clear Spring School students,collected by tracing hands on paper. The real saw in the photo? Jane Tucker used it to cut the cake.

The food prepared by Jane and Donna was on an Asian theme and you can see the beautiful table set for guests in the photo below.

that was then and this is now

Today I am preparing for a small exhibition of the Wisdom of the Hands program, including the bench for Crystal Bridges. It will be from 6-8 PM at the home of my good friends, Susan and Jim Nelson. A bit of fundraising will take place and my readers are welcome to contribute to the Wisdom of the Hands by sending a check to Clear Spring School. PO Box 511 Eureka Springs, AR USA. Please make note on the check that it is for Wisdom of the Hands. We are a 501-3C charitable organization and all contributions are tax exempt.

Today in Time magazine there is an article about the advantages of our current recession... that it will lead us to a new era of practicality and creativity. It is the official end of the idiocy of the Reagan era and an end to thoughtless consumerism (I hope).

I was explaining yesterday to my students, the advantages of self-employment. First is that you can keep on learning with no limits, and secondly, because you do everything yourself, you can diversify or contract at a moment's notice to fit yourself to the marketplace.

According to the article in Time, "It's time now to be more artisan-enterpriser and less prospector-speculator, to return from Oz to Kansas." Welcome to the world that I have been discussing in the Wisdom of the Hands for years now. I told my students that when I started my business over 30 years ago, that I made a sales trip to Dallas, Texas, and found that nearly everyone was selling something, but no one was making a cotton-picking thing. Now, after a 30 year Reagan induced coma and lapse into laziness and destructive consumerism, it is time to rediscover Kansas. I hear Toto barking at the dead wizard. Click your heals for the wonderful journey home.

today in the woodshop...

The photos show progress on the chess sets and boat. We've made pawns, and are adding ribs to the boat, using the ribs already in place to guide the making of more. this afternoon I will have the 11th and 12th grade economics class visiting my home workshop as part of their hands-on investigation of economics.

three things...

These are all proven by research and centuries of observation and the three together form a compelling rationale for revolution in education. (If you are new to the blog, read deeper for confirmation.)

First, the use of the hands in learning provides greater intelligence and retention of learning.

Second, the use of the hands creates emotional resiliency by alleviating symptoms of depression, allowing greater energy for engagement in learning.

Third, hands-on learning creates a sense of the dignity of all labor and brings the student into a moral framework in which effort and skill are recognized as important building blocks of culture and civilization. Hands-on learning invites each student to take a creative and responsible role in human culture.

So, we are left holding the bag. But reach in. What you will find in your exploration of the empty bag are your own hands, and with hands you have power to bring change.

problems in wood...

Dr. Belfield, Chicago Manual Training School Association, June 19, 1884:

"The young workman is engaged on a problem in wood, just as, a few hours earlier, he was engaged on a problem in algebra. He has before him a drawing made to a scale. The problem is this: He must gain a clear conception of the object represented by the drawing; he must imagine it; he must select or cut a block of wood of the proper dimensions and of the right quality. It must not be too large, for he must guard against waste of material and waste of time. It must be large enough, for there must be no incompleteness about the finished product of his labor. Observe him as the work grows under his hand; observe the selecting of the proper tools for the different parts of the process; observe the careful measuring, the watchful eye upon the position of the chisel, the speed of the lathe, the gradual approach of the once rectangular block to the model which exists in his brain--and you must admit that this work demands and develops, not manual dexterity alone, but attention, observation, imagination, judgment, reasoning..."

"My own opinion is that an hour in the shop of a well-conducted manual training school develops as much mental strength as an hour devoted to Virgil or Legendre..."

Or more?

from Felix Adler, 1880

Is the education of the hand education necessary to preservation of democracy? Felix Adler and many other early advocates of manual training believed so.

The English nobility have deliberately adopted hunting as their favorite pastime. They follow as a matter of physical exercise, in order to keep up their physical strength, a pursuit which the savage man followed from necessity. The introduction of athletics in colleges is a move in the same direction. But it is not sufficient to maintain our physical strength, our brute strength, the strength of limb and muscle. We must also preserve that spiritualized strength which we call skill--the tool-using faculty, the power of impressing on matter the stamp of mind. And the more machinery takes the place of human labor, the more necessary will it be to resort to manual training as a means of keeping up skill, precisely as we have resorted to athletics as a means of keeping up strength.

There is one word more I have to say in closing. Twenty-five years ago, as the recent memories of Gettysburg recall to us, we fought to keep this people a united nation. Then was State arrayed against State. Today class is beginning to be arrayed against class. The danger is not yet imminent, but it is sufficiently great to give us thought. The chief source of the danger, I think, lies in this, that the two classes of society have become so widely separated by difference of interest and pursuits that they no longer fully understand one another, and misunderstanding is the fruitful source of hatred and dissension. This must not continue. The manual laborer must have time and opportunity for intellectual improvement. The intellectual classes, on the other hand, must learn manual labor; and this they can best do in early youth in the school, before the differentiation of pursuits has begun... Let manual training, therefore, be introduced into the common schools; let the son of the rich man learn, side by side with the son of the poor man, to labor with his hands; let him thus practically learn to respect labor; let him learn to understand what the dignity of manual labor really means, and the two classes of society, united at the root, will never thereafter entirely grow asunder.

If you think about our current crisis, the greed amongst highly educated individuals who brought it on through arrogance and irresponsibility, you can begin to understand what happened. We have created educational systems in which students are kept completely out of touch.

completed bench

These are photos of the finished walnut bench.

Today in the Clear Spring School Wood Shop

I have been working on the bench over spring break and have made a mess of the Clear Spring School wood shop, so today I will be cleaning and preparing for tomorrow's classes. I am also trying to find out whether my glass drill will drill holes in rocks which will allow me to add a bit stronger connection in attaching the rocks in the bench. At this point on the bench all that remains to be done is a thin spray of urethane satin finish to harden the surface for longer wear, and gluing the rocks.

Artists and craftspeople have a growing function in today's economy. Some in Michigan are buying abandoned homes and turning them into studios. In the next few days, the Hand Made Toy Alliance will present their case to the US Congress, advocating more reasonable regulation, providing some exemptions for American made wooden toys, from the oppressive regulations designed to protect our children from lead and other dangerous additives in foreign made toys.

Something that most people just don't get (because we are no longer a nation of makers) is that craftsmen are non-religious proponents of civility and moral values, as the making of things involves important distinctions between choices. So we've stripped craftsmanship from our schools at every level, preschool through university. Are the current moral meltdown, excessive greed, destructive corporate policies and the resultant economic collapse of our economy the result of anything other than the loss of emphasis on making things to last generations? I doubt it.

Just in the nick of time, we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the CCC and WPA, two government programs that built a legacy of craftsmanship on behalf of the American public. It is interesting, that through craftsmanship, two things are formed. The object and the simultaneously created craftsman, a person of moral standing within his community.

You want to get a strong economy back? It has to be crafted.

woodworker's showcase

All across eastern and central New York State, woodworkers are busy getting ready for the Woodworker's Showcase. Hundreds of woodworkers, members of the Northeastern Woodworker's Association will have works ready to exhibit and compete. Last year I was one of the judges and was amazed at the volume and quality of work. John Grossbohlin is working on a knitting chest of white oak and walnut as shown in the photo below and that should be finished just in the nick of time. The Showcase is probably the largest woodworking club function in the world, drawing a very large crowd for two days. There will be demonstrations, lectures, vendors selling tools, hands-on opportunities for kids and a huge assortment of fine work on display. March 28th & 29th, 2009 Saratoga Springs City Center, Saratoga Springs, NY.