jvhovey

You think YOU'RE surprised that these things work!

No contest - this one's the best.

JYA, the journeyman requires the apprentice to copy what the journeyman does over and over again because it teaches the apprentice patience - a virtue usually lacking among apprentices - and because it is the best way to pass the journeyman's wisdom on to the next generation. As for the apprentice, he soon learns that he can have no better place to learn craft than at the side of a master. And indeed, for the apprentice, the first step toward originality is to copy the work of a master- and to hear the master say: No! No! You must do it this way, my way! For it is only if we understand the wisdom of the master that we can come to have a little wisdom of our own; indeed, if we are to become masters at all, it can be only because we possess so intimate a knowledge of that wisdom as to be able to re-create the work that sprang from it. In this way also do we find it possible to hear the conversation of the masters who went before us - I mean the "conversation" that we hear in their works. I am at age 64 a mere apprentice. God grant me time to become a journeyman.

It takes a mere glance at Mr. Loeser's work to understand what makes FWW so valuable. Those who make furniture for the real world tend to think of the practical, the useful; we see a bed as something to be slept in, a chair as something to sit on, and so on. What useful purpose did Mr. Loeser have in mind in creating that boat thingy? None, certainly. He wanted to do art, and the bad news is that his art seems actually to mock the idea of the useful. We who read FWW and make things like boxes and chests of drawers don't think much of art as Mr. Loeser seems to define it. We think of the everyday, and we strive to make things useful in everyday life - and to make them with as much craft as we can muster. And therein lies the value of FWW: It focuses on the making of useful things, not artsy thingys that come at you with the stench of mockery. Keep on keeping on, FWW!