Matthew Crawford, in a section of his recent book “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction”, explores the way that contemporary organ makers and restorers both build upon and extend a craft tradition that stretches back centuries. He describes the relationship they have with both their predecessors, whom they study and from whom they learn, but also future practitioners, who they have a reasonable expectation will study and learn from their own work centuries from now. Crawford characterizes it as a conversation in which they see themselves extending something ancient. They participate fully in a tradition neither as devotees of the past nor as revolutionaries dedicated to overturning it. When I was reading the book I was struck by how unusual it is for any craftsman to imagine (realistically) that his work might be if interest to anyone four hundred years from now. Thomas Ely, however, certainly belongs in that rarefied set. I loved his description of the interest he took in the book binding technique he encountered early in his life. I think I am going to start paying closer attention to this craft myself.
I love books, but I haven’t really considered them until just now as the physical repository of an ancient craft. And yet they surely are. Perhaps I felt it intuitively, since I still have a somewhat irrational bias for purchasing the hardcover option of a book when I have the option to do so. If it wasn’t 2:30 in the morning I’d get up now and go look at some of the books in my own library and see what’s there, physical things beautiful in their own right quite apart from the explicitly semantic content which they carry through time.
Matthew Crawford, in a section of his recent book “The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction”, explores the way that contemporary organ makers and restorers both build upon and extend a craft tradition that stretches back centuries. He describes the relationship they have with both their predecessors, whom they study and from whom they learn, but also future practitioners, who they have a reasonable expectation will study and learn from their own work centuries from now. Crawford characterizes it as a conversation in which they see themselves extending something ancient. They participate fully in a tradition neither as devotees of the past nor as revolutionaries dedicated to overturning it. When I was reading the book I was struck by how unusual it is for any craftsman to imagine (realistically) that his work might be if interest to anyone four hundred years from now. Thomas Ely, however, certainly belongs in that rarefied set. I loved his description of the interest he took in the book binding technique he encountered early in his life. I think I am going to start paying closer attention to this craft myself.
I love books, but I haven’t really considered them until just now as the physical repository of an ancient craft. And yet they surely are. Perhaps I felt it intuitively, since I still have a somewhat irrational bias for purchasing the hardcover option of a book when I have the option to do so. If it wasn’t 2:30 in the morning I’d get up now and go look at some of the books in my own library and see what’s there, physical things beautiful in their own right quite apart from the explicitly semantic content which they carry through time.
Thank you for this. As a retired artist (erstwhile composer/arranger) I salute you and all the artists you have brought to our attention.