Posts Tagged ‘craft’
“I don’t consider it my violin. Rather, I’m its violinist. I am passing through its life.”*…
Jennifer Sandlin is (perfectly understandably) blown away by cellist-turned-photographer Charles Brooks’ images of the interiors of rare musical instruments…
… Each instrument appears as if it’s straight out of a dream — some look like futuristic structures, some like fantasy castles, and others like secret lairs of fantastical creatures. It’s hard to believe they’re real, and I’m just in awe of Brooks’ photography talent.
The photographs are part of Brooks’ “Architecture in Music” series, where, he explains, he “explore[s] the hidden spaces inside fine instruments” which have included a Steinway Grand Piano, the St. Mark’s Pipe Organ, and the Lockey Hill Cello (c. 1780, England), among many others…
Read on for more of the story: “Photographer captures the stunning interiors of rare musical instruments,” from @boingboing.net. See more of Brooks’ remarkable photos on his site. And hear him tell his story here:
* Ivry Gitlis (speaking of his 1713 Stradivarius violin)
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As we cherish craftsmanship, those among us with a preference for reeds might note that today is Saxophone Day– a commemoration of the birth (on this date in 1814) of Adolphe Sax, a musician and inventor who created several new musical instruments (e.g., a redesigned bass clarinet still in use today), most notably the one that bears his name– the saxophone…
… while the brassier might celebrate the birthday (in 1854) of John Philip Sousa. A composer and conductor known primarily for American military marches (e.g., “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” National March of the United States of America. and “Semper Fidelis,” official march of the United States Marine Corps) he is widely acknowledged in the U.S. as “The March King.”
The press of unusually-intensive meetings is going to prevent posting tomorrow, so (R)D will be away for a day, returning on Saturday…
“For the largest part ill handwriting in the world is caused by hurry”*…
Happily, there are some with the virtue of patience– and as Todd Oppenheimer (the founder, editor, and publisher of Craftsmanship) explains, with equal measures of creativity and resourcefulness…
One of the things I love most about publishing a magazine on craftsmanship is that it continually leads me to little-known but fascinating subcultures.
Almost without fail, these communities are filled with highly talented sorts, who pursue their endeavors with uncommon passion and commitment. That was certainly the case, in extremis, when I dove recently into the world of calligraphy.
I know—the practice of calligraphy is no secret. First introduced in China, it has been around since 1600 BCE, and over the centuries took shape in one form or another in virtually every culture across the globe. What I didn’t know about—even though I’ve been fussing with fountain pens and my own versions of calligraphy since I was a teenager—are the craft’s complex dimensions behind the scene, and its numerous, much-admired innovators. By some measures, we might even be in the midst of a kind of calligraphy renaissance. Hundreds of different calligraphy societies are operating across the globe today, many growing vigorously. Perhaps most surprising, the craft seems to be attracting a new generation of young enthusiasts, particularly in the U.S…
The fascinating story, beautifully illustrated: “Calligraphy’s Magicians.”
* Lewis Carroll/Charles Dodgson
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As we practice our hand, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that two gentlement whose pen work was hugely consequential (if not beautiful) met for the first time: Beatles songwriting team John Lennon and Paul McCartney met for the first time at the St. Peter’s Church Rose Queen garden fête in Woolton (near Liverpool), England, at which Lennon’s skiffle group The Quarrymen were playing. In the audience was 15-year-old Paul McCartney. At the Woolton Village Hall across the street, where The Quarrymen were scheduled to perform that evening, McCartney borrowed Lennon’s guitar to play Eddie Cochran’s “Twenty Flight Rock” as well as Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” on the hall’s piano. Lennon later told biographer Hunter Davies, “I half thought to myself, ‘He’s as good as me.’ If I take him on, what will happen? It went through my head that I’d have to keep him in line if I let him join. But he was good, so he was worth having. He also looked like Elvis. I dug him.”
“The pencil is mightier than the pen”*…
Carson Monetti on an industrial rivalry that yielded the finest pencils in the world…
It was the summer of 1952, and the executives of Tombow Pencil were about to revolutionize the Japanese pencil industry—or, possibly, fall flat on their faces. Hachiro Ogawa, the son of founder Harunosuke Ogawa, was Tombow’s managing director, and he had just finished a years-long project, at enormous cost, to make the best pencil Japan had ever seen.
It was called “HOMO,” because in comparison with other Japanese pencils of its day, Tombow’s new model had a much more homogenous core. Pencil cores are a mixture of graphite and clay (thanks to Nicolas-Jacques Conté’s invention of the modern pencil in the late eighteenth century), and the components in early cores were not always evenly mixed. This was particularly true in Japan, where pencils had only been made since the turn of the century and advanced industrial equipment was just starting to become available.
Hachiro’s team at Tombow was determined to do whatever it took to produce more consistent cores. They struck up a working relationship with scientists at the University of Tokyo, a visionary move that yielded crucial technical research in 1948. Then, to implement the research findings, Tombow had to import more advanced industrial mills from the United States.
It was a gamble, but it worked, and suddenly Tombow could make much finer particles of graphite and clay than any other Japanese manufacturer. HOMO cores were stronger, smoother, and more consistent than anything else on the domestic market. They came in 17 grades, from 9H to 9B, a wide and finely graduated range that hadn’t been possible with Tombow’s old process.
They were also incredibly beautiful. Another import that had become available in the wake of World War II was incense cedar, the material of choice for high-quality pencils. Most of the pencil industry’s incense cedar comes from California, and Tombow quickly restarted its imports of the aromatic red wood. HOMO’s design takes full advantage of the material upgrade, with a subtle transparent lacquer that highlights the cedar’s color and grain.
For Hachiro Ogawa and his father Harunosuke, the completion of the HOMO project was the culmination of a dream, and it was undoubtedly a pioneering moment in Japanese industry. But as the company prepared to introduce HOMO at the grand Tokyo Kaikan meeting hall, the skeptics must have been hard to ignore. In the early 1950s, a Japanese pencil cost five or ten yen (about 25-50 cents in 2022 dollars.) Tombow’s technical leap forward had produced a model far superior to those inexpensive pencils, but they would also be pioneers in price. HOMO would cost 30 yen (about $1.50 today) for a single pencil, with boxes of twelve priced at 360 yen (about $19 today.)
Japanese consumers weren’t used to spending that kind of money on a pencil. But if Hachiro, Harunosuke, and their colleagues were nervous, their fears were surely resolved at the first-ever Tombow New Product Presentation. Tokyo Kaikan was the esteemed meeting place of foreign dignitaries, corporate titans, even heads of state—and now it was absolutely bustling with stationery wholesalers, curious people from other companies, and the press. Tombow took orders for 720,000 HOMO pencils on launch day alone.
Tombow’s surprising success with Japan’s first premium pencil, along with the ambition and competitive spirit of midcentury manufacturers, led to the most intense period of development the global pencil industry has ever seen.
We call it the Golden Age of Japanese Pencils.
The Golden Age began and ended with two Tombow launches: Hachiro’s pioneering HOMO launch in 1952 and the MONO 100 launch in 1967, fifteen years later. During this period, Tombow and its crosstown rival Mitsubishi Pencil created many of the greatest pencils of all time, including the two best-regarded models offered today…
[Monetti tells the story of that fertile period…]
… although Mitsubishi and Tombow didn’t know in advance that the Japanese pencil industry would reach its peak in 1966, both companies clearly saw it coming, and they had already prepared themselves for a future beyond pencils. One wonders why both companies continued to expend research and development resources on high-end pencils in the late 1960s, but they did—and on a personal note, this sometimes inexplicable tendency of Japanese manufacturers to perfect what doesn’t need to be perfected is a major reason why we’re so passionate about our Japanese imports…
[More detail…]
… In this pencil merchant’s opinion, there’s simply no need for a pencil more perfect than the best of Japan’s Golden Age. We can admire the heady moment and the strong personalities who created these pencils, and we can be forgiven for daydreaming about the even-more-perfect pencil, the one that would make our handwriting beautiful and our drawings perfectly proportional.
But when I sit down to sharpen my pencil (usually a Hi-Uni HB or Mitsubishi 9852 “Master Writing” B), my primary feeling is gratitude. The designers and engineers who created these tools didn’t know they would be made for 70 years, but they treated their seemingly small task with intense seriousness of purpose, and that passion produced outstanding tools that have still not been surpassed. Today, in 2022, I frequently speak with artists who tell me how much these pencils inspire them and enable their best work.
So I’m not regretful about the end of the Golden Age of Pencils, because in the ways that matter most, it never ended. Mitsubishi, in particular, has loyally maintained its midcentury product line, continuing to manufacture its pencils in Japan and even adding a minor new model now and then. (There’s an antiviral-coated Mitsubishi in light blue, new for 2022.) Artists and writers still debate the merits of Hi-Uni and MONO 100.
And I can’t speak for everyone who works here [St. Louis Art Supply], but personally, I’m excited every time I ship a fresh, unsharpened dozen to a new customer. For them, the Golden Age is just getting started…
A celebration of dedicated craft: “The Golden Age of Japanese Pencils, 1952-1967,” from @monetti.bsky.social, via Spencer Wright and his wonderful newsletter, Scope of Work.
See also: The Pencil, by Henry Petrosky
* Robert Pirsig (and here)
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As we find poetry in the prosaic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1970 that the inaugural gathering of pencil users and their fans that we now know as San Diego Comic-Con was held. Originally called “San Diego’s Golden State Comic-Minicon,” it has grown into the the largest pop and culture festival in the world.
“Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts”*…
In Amritsar, at India’s oldest and largest chess manufacturing company, artisans have hand-carved the most complicated pieces in the game for generations. Roxanne Hoorn reports…
In the bustling streets of Amritsar, India, the markets are lined with shops full of colorful tapestries and sweet treats like warm local chai served in clay mugs. But the real treasures are kept behind closed doors. Beyond stacks of gnarled logs, inside unsuspecting brick buildings off the main streets, generations of master craftsmen carefully carve, sand, and polish intricate chess pieces, carrying on a long legacy in the country where the earliest versions of chess were played over 1,500 years ago.
These are no basic sets. The pieces make up elaborate professional and collector’s chess sets that sell for up to $4,000 U.S. dollars on the international market. That price is well deserved. Each set is a collective labor of love, with every component handcrafted by a man who specializes in one type of chess piece. (Traditionally, women are not chess carvers.) There are pawn makers, queen craftsmen, and the most coveted—the knight carvers.
“The knight carvers are only knight carvers,” says Rishi Sharma, CEO of the Chess Empire, India’s oldest and largest chess manufacturing company, which was founded in 1962. “The person who is making the queen, we don’t give him the pawn. Otherwise, he’s going to ruin it.”
Of all the chessmen, knights are considered the most difficult and require the most skill to carve. While pawns and other pieces can be shaped under lathes, the knights—resembling horse heads usually with wild flowing manes—are carved completely by hand. A chess carver won’t graduate from pawn to knight or any easier piece to harder ones, but instead will learn his craft from the start of his career, usually from their father or a mentor from one of the well-established chess companies. Surinder Pal, a knight carver at the Chess Empire, learned from his father at 18 years old. Now, he has been working on the craft for over 35 years. With his advanced and highly specialized skill, he can make up to 30 simple knights a day, or spend up to three days on a single ornate knight.
Today, chess pieces are carved from local species like boxwood or imported trees like rose and dogwood. But they were once made of a far more elusive and illicit material. Amritsar was originally known for its ivory carvers, who produced everything from hair combs and jewelry to furniture and sculptures. And of course, chess sets. After the international trade of ivory was banned in the 1990s, the craftsman turned to the similarly smooth but far more accessible medium.
With raw materials readily available, it’s the demand for these fine chess sets that determines how many are produced. And demand has fluctuated in recent years. The COVID-19 pandemic left many people secluded in their homes, leading to a boost in demand for many indoor games, says Sharma. In October 2020, that enthusiasm for chess was compounded by the release of The Queen’s Gambit, a series about a fictional American chess prodigy. “The Queen’s Gambit had a very big role in spreading awareness of chess,” Sharma says. “And after that, we see a big boom.” Despite the show’s creator stating they have no plans for a second season, Sharma stays hopeful. “We hope the next season comes as soon as possible.”…
Equipping the Royal Game: “Masters of the Knight: The Art of Chess Carving in India,” from @atlasobscura.com.
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As we prize the pieces, we might recall thatt it was on this date in 1996 that then-world chess champion Garry Kasparov and an IBM supercomputer called Deep Blue played game four the first of their two six-game chess matches. They played to a draw. Kasparov won the match– but by a margin of only 4-2 (two draws and a loss to the computer). They met for a rematch the following year, and Big Blue beat Kasparov (3 1/2- 2 1/2).
“Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration”*…
Christopher Payne is watching Gay Burdick work, and I am watching Christopher Payne work.
We’re at the MTA’s 207th Street repair shop, which Payne has, for some time, been photographing for the New York Times. Payne says he wants to wrap up the shoot and publish the photos; the MTA has experienced some turnover since the project began; they want to meet with Payne (and writer David Waldstein) and get a better understanding of what his goals are. While we’re here, Payne wants to see Gay’s workstation again…
Spencer Wright with an appreciation of photographer Christopher Payne— and his chosen subject matter…
I became aware of Payne through his previous work in the Times, where he has published shoots from factories that make colored pencils, container ships, and the paper version of the Times itself. His photography is striking, and from the accounts in his most recent book, Made in America, his process is meticulous. Payne will apparently return to the same factory dozens of times, waiting for the moment when a production run lines up just right, or the material being processed is just the right color, or — I don’t know — his subject finally lifts their hand in a particularly elegant way. Payne is an artist, and his art documents, explains, and valorizes manufacturing, fabrication, and maintenance work.
Aspects of Payne’s work might be categorized as genre art. He captures moments in everyday time; he captures human intention and effort; he captures the infrastructure required to make stuff. His subjects are often highly engineered (he has photographed ASML’s EUV machines, Boeing’s 787 assembly line, and NASA’s Space Launch System), but just as often they’re highly soulful (Payne published a book about Steinway pianos; he has also photographed Martin’s guitar factory and Zildjian’s cymbal production process). Regardless of what he’s shooting, Payne’s photographs often feel just as carefully assembled as the objects in them…
…
… In the introduction to Made in America, Simon Winchester writes about industrialization, consumerization and the abstraction of knowledge and skill that occurred in the past few centuries. Before factories, it took forty-three individual craftsmen to make a block for the British Navy; in 1803, with the invention of Henry Maudslay’s block-making machines, that number was reduced to ten. Winchester writes of this transition with reverence, but he also suggests that Made in America “poses questions which, given the uncertain condition of our present-day planet, sorely need to be addressed.” I asked Payne what these questions were, and his answer mirrored something that he had written in the book’s afterward: “My photographs are a celebration of the making of things, of the transformation of raw materials into useful objects… They are also a celebration of teamwork and community…These are the people who make the stuff that fuels our economy, and in this time of social polarization and increasing automation, they offer a glimmer of hope.”
But I think that Payne himself is the one who offers a glimmer of hope. The factories he visits are complicated, complex, kludgy. Factories take knowledge away from craftspeople and turn it into bureaucracy and institutional anxiety. Factories pollute our waterways. Factories take razor-sharp lathe swarf and try to convince us it’s jewelry; factories enlist workers to help someone else fulfill their dreams. But then Christopher Payne comes in, and he crawls around for a few months, and he finds parts of the factory that we can be purely and unabashedly proud of. I don’t think that Payne’s work is asking questions at all; he’s just taking something messy, and pointing a spotlight on the honorable parts. And, to be honest, I think that’s probably what we need…
Documenting the making and maintenance of things– fascinating and beautifully illustrated: “The Honorable Parts,” from @the_prepared. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Abraham Lincoln
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As we pay attention, we might recall that it was on this date in 1919 that fiery hot molasses poured into the streets of Boston, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others– the Great Boston Molasses Flood:
The United States Industrial Alcohol building was located on Commercial Street near North End Park in Boston. It was close to lunch time on January 15 and Boston was experiencing some unseasonably warm weather as workers were loading freight-train cars within the large building. Next to the workers was a 58-foot-high tank filled with 2.5 million gallons of crude molasses.
Suddenly, the bolts holding the bottom of the tank exploded, shooting out like bullets, and the hot molasses rushed out. An eight-foot-high wave of molasses swept away the freight cars and caved in the building’s doors and windows. The few workers in the building’s cellar had no chance as the liquid poured down and overwhelmed them.
The huge quantity of molasses then flowed into the street outside. It literally knocked over the local firehouse and then pushed over the support beams for the elevated train line. The hot and sticky substance then drowned and burned five workers at the Public Works Department. In all, 21 people and dozens of horses were killed in the flood. It took weeks to clean the molasses from the streets of Boston.
This disaster also produced an epic court battle, as more than 100 lawsuits were filed against the United States Industrial Alcohol Company. After a six-year-investigation that involved 3,000 witnesses and 45,000 pages of testimony, a special auditor finally determined that the company was at fault because the tank used had not been strong enough to hold the molasses. Nearly $1 million [over $15.5 million in today’s dollars] was paid in settlement of the claims… – source
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