From: jeq@i88.isc.com (Jonathan E. Quist)
Subject: Sigh.  What have I done now? (Re: Question about this Newsgroup)
Organization: Lachman Technology, Incorporated, Naperville, IL
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1993 18:47:04 GMT



I wrote:
> That seems strange.  What's wrong with viewing onesself as a craftsman,
> and one's skills as a craft?

Jim Kirkpatrick wrote:
>Oh, please, let's not dig this all up again!  To be brief, most of the
>metalworkers considered "crafts" to be akin to basketweaving and textiles.
>Metalworking can be viewed as a science, an engineering discipline,

Design any fabrics lately?  Textile design involves a bit of engineering
as well as artistry.  For that matter, if you ever have the chance, examine
a Jacquard card-programmable loom in operation.  It's a truly magnificent
engineering feat.

>and so on; something more than most people think of when they hear the
>word "crafts".  Others disagreed, especially the net.gods who don't
>know aluminum from luminance.

Well, I know the difference between chromium and chrominance, and I don't
personally believe the way to correct a common misapplication of a term
is to run away from it.  (But I'll stop referring to metalwork as
a craft if someone builds me a shrubbery.)

> Also, an objection to "crafts" was that
>there is a group rec.woodworking, not rec.crafts.woodworking, and that
>the old group was trial.rec.metalworking, not trial.rec.crafts.metalworking.

This argument I'll buy, this makes perfect sense.

In article <1i7iuhINNg0l@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu> cf036@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (G. Gary Preckshot) writes:
>
>In reply to Mr. Quist:
>
>There's nothing wrong with regarding yourself as a craftsman if
>that's what you want to be and you are happy with it.  However,
>I doubt you would like to have someone name you as something
>that either you are not or leaves out something you consider
>important.  The issue for some of us is whether craft is inclusive,
>and we don't think it is.  One of the things left out of
>crafts training, for instance, is much depth in history.  For
>a balanced look at your roots, see for example "The Medieval
>Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages" by
>Jean Gimpel, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1976.  Even in the 1200 to
>1400 time frame the antecedents of craft, labor, and engineering
>were clear.  Even in the middle ages there was a gradation in
>skills and breadth of understanding from labor to engineering (
>least to most).  Craft still occuppies the middle slot - and that's
>not an insult.  That's what craft means.  If you choose to call
>yourself a craftsman, then you've named what you are.  To chafe
>at the limits of your self-labeling is the same as being insulted
>if you name yourself a bastard and someone remarks that you mean
>your parents were unmarried.


Well, I'm not sure what to make of this.  You seemed to start out saying
I can call myself by an appropriate term, but that if someone then
attempts to clarify the meaning, I should be insulted....  Maybe I
just didn't read this correctly.

At any rate, my grandfather was a master blacksmith - after emigrating
from Sweden in the early 1900's, he joined a logging operation in
Ontario (Thunder Bay region, if anyone cares) where he invented an
efficient horse drawn snow plow that was soon copied throughout
the region.  He eventually started a truck body business in Chicago,
and designed a throttle-in-gearshift mechanism for delivery trucks
which made "stand-and-drive"  vehicles practical.  Of the tools that
have survived from his shop, most were of his own design and construction;
very few of the commercially produced tools are unmodified.
Perhaps he didn't know how to work with sintered nickel-titanium alloys,
but I daresay he could probably hammer rings around anyone reading this.
And he referred to his trade - his life - as his craft.  What's the point
in getting so upset over such petty details?  Life is too short.


Maybe I'll just sit back, stack some firebrick around my workstation,
and see if I can build the first Usenet-flame-fired forge.

-- 
Jonathan E. Quist                              Lachman Technology, Incorporated
jeq@i88.isc.com  '71 CL450-K4 "Gleep", DoD #094        Naperville, IL
 __       There's nothing quite like the pitter-patter of little feet,
 \/                   followed by the words "Daddy!  Yay!"