Take a look at this video about a Korean potter. It's important. It's not about woodworking, cabinetmaking or anything like that and that's a good thing because you won't be distracted by the tools or the projects. It's a profile of an Korean person, about my age, who decided first to become an artist and then a crafts-person. I don't agree with all of his choices but his narrative is compelling. If you are a furniture maker or carver, professionally or as an amateur the question that we ask ourselves all the time is "why" and especially for the professional the answer, and the approach to an answer is critical.
When you design something how do you know when it is any good? Is it worth the effort? How do you produce something that first meets your standard in your minds eye, and what challenges keep you going year in year out. These are all tough questions because unlike being a professional billionaire the choices we make will allow us to follow our dream or not.
These decisions anyone in crafts has to make, which is why I found this video so interesting and thought provoking.
In other news we are still looking for space. :(
In other news we are bumping up our offerings of measuring tools and we will have squares by Chris Vesper (update - discontinued) and depth gauges by Sterling tools on the website in the next few days. Floats (update - discontinued) have been selling and we are almost out of inventory (some sizes are gone already). We have been shipping hardware store saws pretty steadily and I still cannot promise that new orders will ship before Christmas but production is up and we are catching up.
By the way if you do not live in the United States, Gramercy Tools products are available in Canada from Lee Valley, Europe from Dieter Schmidt, Australia from Colen Clenton (no website email him at: colwhat62@hotmail.com ) and bow saws products from Henry Eckert. In England Ray Iles stocks a lot of our stuff.
Join the conversation
12/09/2015 Michael Rothman
Thank you for this amazing video. Watching him work while describing his journey is inspiring and can be a lesson to us all. The beauty in our lives needs to be found within our selves and hopefully will be expressed in our craft.
12/09/2015 chad
Thanks for sharing that video. Its great to hear how dedicated people pursuing arts or craft view their process, their work, and lifestyle.
12/09/2015 Patti
Thank you. At first 35 minutes seemed like a lot of time to invest. Then I found the video mesmerizing.
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