Craftsman Hands Quotes

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.

A man who works with his hands is a labourer. A man who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. A man who works with his haands, his head, and his heart is an artist.

That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains.

Art with a big A makes professionals uneasy. All art is one, and there is no difference in the mystery of the craft, only in the hand and eye of the craftsman.

A man who works with his hands is a laborer. A man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman. A man who works with his hands, brain and heart is an artist.

I thought of a Saint Francis of Assisi quote. He said, “He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

A man with battered hands is shown to be a craftsman only when he puts them to work.

I was becoming aware that a good life was not some Shangri-La waiting to be stumbled upon. One constructed it from the materials at hand.

Craftsman Ilmarinen wept Every evening for his woman, Weeping sleepless through the nights And fasting through the days; In the early hours complaining, Every morning sighing for her, Lamenting for his lovely lost one, For his dear one in the grave. For a month he swung no hammer, Did not touch the copper handle, and the clinking forge was silent. Said the craftsman Ilmarinen: "I poor fellow, do not know How to live or how survive; Sitting up or lying down Nights are long and time is tedious. I am troubled, low in spirit. 'Lonely are the nights now,lonely And the mornings dreary, dreary. In my sleeping I am troubled, But the waking is the saddest. It's not for evening that I'm lonely, Not for morning that I'm dreary, Not for olden times lamenting, But I'm lonely for my loved one, Dreary for the missing of her, Lamenting for my dark-browed lovely. 'Often in these days it happens, Happens in my midnight dreaming that I stretch my hand out touching, touching something that is nothing...

The man who uses his hands is a laborer. The man who uses his mind is a master. But the man who gives his heart to the passion is a craftsman.

Sometime look at a novice workman or a bad workman and compare his expression with that of a craftsman whose work you know is excellent and you’ll see the difference. The craftsman isn’t ever following a single line of instruction. He’s making decisions as he goes along. For that reason he’ll be absorbed and attentive to what he’s doing even though he doesn’t deliberately contrive this. His motions and the machine are in a kind of harmony. He isn’t following any set of written instructions because the nature of the material at hand determines his thoughts and motions, which simultaneously change the nature of the material at hand. The material and his thoughts are changing together in a progression of changes until his mind’s at rest at the same time the material’s right.

Subtle and coy, the cemento at Maalouf's did not speak of war, or frontiers, and the spaces they narrowed, but, rather, grandeur. The tiles returned one to a realm where imagination, artistry, and craftsmanship were not only appreciated but given free reign, where what was unique and striking, or small and perfect, or wrought with care was desired, where gazed-upon objects were the products of peaceful hearts, hands long practiced and trained. War ends the values and traditions that produce such treasures. Nothing is maintained. Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they lull the world to calm.

It occurred to him now to ask himself if this was how it happened : was it possible that the mere fact of using one's hands and investing one's attention in someone other than oneself, created a pride and tenderness that had nothing whatever to do with the response of the object of one's care - just as a craftsman's love for his handiwork is in no way diminished by the fact of it being unreciprocated?

A mind willing to learn deserves commendation even when it has no teacher. What is of importance to me is not what you find but what you seek to find. Wax is soft and easy to mould even where the hands of craftsman and modeller are wanting to work it.

Our biggest mistake is that we always think that we are the subject of that truth. We feel as the origin of truth. When in fact we are just a jug in the hand of the craftsman. Without the presence of the craftsman, we are just a lump of clay which has no meaning

It is up to the craftsman, whether he wants to make a cauldron or a pot. He wants to make a jar or a jug. Truth may only come from the hand of the craftsman and not vice versa. No matter how hard the clay desires to make itself something, it will never exist without the craftsman's blessing.

I was amongst them – the first female pilot who had got admission to the Sturmoviks…Since my childhood I’d been lucky enough to meet good people. Wherever I studied, wherever I worked I would meet loyal friends, kind-hearted tutors. I was trained at the factory school by the old craftsman Goubanov, I was assisted by the engineer Aliev, who was the shift boss, in my transfer to the most important sector of operations – the tunnel. I was trained by the superb instructor Miroevskiy in the aeroclub, the secretary of the Ulyanovsk District Comsomol Committee gave me a hand at a very hard moment of my life, then there was Maria Borek from Leningrad, the Secretary of the Smolensk District Comsomol Committee, the Commissar of the Smolensk aeroclub…Was it really possible to count all those who had warmed my soul with their sympathy and human kindness and helped me to realize my dream!

No sketches first, no studies, that's long past: I do what many dream of, all their lives, --Dream? strive to do, and agonize to do, And fail in doing. I could count twenty such On twice your fingers, and not leave this town, Who strive--you don't know how the others strive To paint a little thing like that you smeared Carelessly passing with your robes afloat,-- Yet do much less, so much less, Someone says, (I know his name, no matter)--so much less! Well, less is more, Lucrezia: I am judged. There burns a truer light of God in them, In their vexed beating stuffed and stopped-up brain, Heart, or whate'er else, than goes on to prompt This low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand of mine. Their works drop groundward, but themselves, I know, Reach many a time a heaven that's shut to me, Enter and take their place there sure enough, Though they come back and cannot tell the world.

This is how the truth is present in our lives. It is the origin of everything. It is the cause of everything. It is all-encompassing. Therefore it is not an effect. But from that result we can realize and understand the existence of the truth. It is the subject of all the important questions in our lives. So it is a big mistake if we place it as an object. It is not the object of our search. On the contrary, it is us, who are the object of its existence. As we are the jug in the craftsman's hand.

Just because I, finite man, do not understand everything that God, the infinite, does is no reason to doubt God’s purpose. I may go into someone’s workshop and see all the tools and gadgets that are important to the man’s work. I may see laying on the table, for instance, a little tool that I can make nothing of and have no understanding of its purpose. But in the hands of the craftsman, that little tool has a well-defined purpose and does what it’s supposed to do. Just because the man’s worktable looks cluttered and as if everything is out of place does not mean in his mind there is not order and purpose. In the same regard, I am not going to accuse God of creating a lot of unnecessary things that have no purpose in God’s total scheme of things, just because I don’t understand them. I give you that

It has been noted in various quarters that the half-illiterate Italian violin maker Antonio Stradivari never recorded the exact plans or dimensions for how to make one of his famous instruments. This might have been a commercial decision (during the earliest years of the 1700s, Stradivari’s violins were in high demand and open to being copied by other luthiers). But it might also have been because, well, Stradivari didn’t know exactly how to record its dimensions, its weight, and its balance. I mean, he knew how to create a violin with his hands and his fingers but maybe not in figures he kept in his head. Today, those violins, named after the Latinized form of his name, Stradivarius, are considered priceless. It is believed there are only around five hundred of them still in existence, some of which have been submitted to the most intense scientific examination in an attempt to reproduce their extraordinary sound quality. But no one has been able to replicate Stradivari’s craftsmanship. They’ve worked out that he used spruce for the top, willow for the internal blocks and linings, and maple for the back, ribs, and neck. They’ve figured out that he also treated the wood with several types of minerals, including potassium borate, sodium and potassium silicate, as well as a handmade varnish that appears to have been composed of gum arabic, honey, and egg white. But they still can’t replicate a Stradivarius. The genius craftsman never once recorded his technique for posterity. Instead, he passed on his knowledge to a number of his apprentices through what the philosopher Michael Polyani called “elbow learning.” This is the process where a protégé is trained in a new art or skill by sitting at the elbow of a master and by learning the craft through doing it, copying it, not simply by reading about it. The apprentices of the great Stradivari didn’t learn their craft from books or manuals but by sitting at his elbow and feeling the wood as he felt it to assess its length, its balance, and its timbre right there in their fingertips. All the learning happened at his elbow, and all the knowledge was contained in his fingers. In his book Personal Knowledge, Polyani wrote, “Practical wisdom is more truly embodied in action than expressed in rules of action.”1 By that he meant that we learn as Stradivari’s protégés did, by feeling the weight of a piece of wood, not by reading the prescribed measurements in a manual. Polyani continues, To learn by example is to submit to authority. You follow your master because you trust his manner of doing things even when you cannot analyze and account in detail for its effectiveness. By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another.

Visible over Madame’s shoulder was a clock, hanging on the wall between a flag and a poster. The poster was for a new brand of beer, featuring three bikini-clad young women sprouting breasts the size and shape of children’s balloons; the flag was of the defeated Republic of Vietnam, three bold red horizontal stripes on a vivid field of yellow. This was the flag, as the General had noted more than once to me, of the free Vietnamese people. I had seen the flag countless times before, and posters like that one often, but I had never seen this type of clock, carved from hardwood into the shape of our homeland. For this clock that was a country, and this country that was a clock, the minute and hour hands pivoted in the south, the numbers of the dial a halo around Saigon. Some craftsman in exile had understood that this was exactly the timepiece his refugee countrymen desired. We were displaced persons, but it was time more than space that defined us. While the distance to return to our lost country was far but finite, the number of years it would take to close that distance was potentially infinite. Thus, for displaced people, the first question was always about time: When can I return? Speaking of punctuality, I said to Madame, your clock is set to the wrong time. No, she said, rising to fetch the beer. It’s set to Saigon time. Of course it was. How could I not have seen it? Saigon time was fourteen hours off, although if one judged time by this clock, it was we who were fourteen hours off. Refugee, exile, immigrant—whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time travelers. But while science fiction imagined time travelers as moving forward or backward in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles.

The state of you,’ Senan says in disgust. ‘I’m grand,’ Bobby says, miffed. ‘Mr Dwyer,’ Mart tells Cal, ‘is the finest distiller in three counties. A master craftsman, so he is.’ Malachy smiles modestly. ‘Every now and then, when Malachy has a particularly fine product on his hands, he’s gracious enough to bring some of it in here to share with us. As a service to the community, you might say. I thought you deserved an opportunity to sample his wares.’ ‘I’m honoured,’ Cal says. ‘Although I feel like if I had any sense I’d be scared, too.’ ‘Ah, no,’ Malachy says soothingly. ‘It’s a lovely batch.’ He produces, from under the table, a shot glass and a two-litre Lucozade bottle half-full of clear liquid. He pours Cal a shot, careful not to spill a drop, and hands it over. ‘Now,’ he says. The rest of the men watch, grinning in a way that Cal doesn’t find reassuring. The liquor smells suspiciously innocuous. ‘For Jaysus’ sake, don’t be savouring the bloody bouquet,’ Mart orders him. ‘Knock that back.’ Cal knocks it back. He’s expecting it to go down like kerosene, but it tastes of almost nothing, and the burn doesn’t have enough harshness even to make him grimace. ‘That’s good stuff,’ he says. ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Mart says. ‘Smooth as cream. This fella’s an artist.’ Right then the poteen hits Cal; the banquette turns insubstantial beneath him and the room circles in slow jerks. ‘Whoo!’ he says, shaking his head. The alcove roars with laughter, which comes to Cal as a pulsing jumble of sound some distance away. ‘That’s some serious firepower you got there,’ he says. ‘Sure, that was only to give you the flavour of it,’ Malachy explains. ‘Wait till you get started.’ ‘Last year,’ Senan tells Cal, jerking a thumb at Bobby, ‘this fella here, after a few goes of that stuff—’ ‘Ah, now,’ Bobby protests. People are grinning. ‘—he got up out of that seat and started shouting at the lot of us to bring him to a priest. Wanted to make his confession. At two o’clock in the morning.’ ‘What’d you done?’ Cal asks Bobby. He’s not sure whether Bobby will hear

A scaffold, when it is erected and prepared, has indeed a profoundly disturbing effect. We may remain more or less open-minded on the subject of the death penalty, indisposed to commit ourselves, so long as we have not seen a guillotine with our own eyes. But to do so is to be so shaken that we are obliged to take our stand for or against. Joseph de Maistre approved of the death penalty, Cesar de Beccaria abominated it. The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral. He who sees it shudders in the most confounding dismay. All social questions achieve their finality around that blade. The scaffold is an image. It is not merely a framework, a machine, a lifeless mechanism of wood, iron and rope. It is as though it were a being having its own dark purpose, as though the framework saw, the machine listened, the mechanism understood; as though that arrangement of wood and iron and rope expressed a will. In the most hideous picture which its presence evokes it seems to be most terribly a part of what it does. It is the executioner's accomplice; it consumes, devouring flesh and drinking blood. It is a special kind of monster created by the judge and the craftsman; a spectre seeming to live an awful life born of the death it deals. This was the effect it had on the bishop, and on the day following the execution, and for many days after, he seemed to be overwhelmed. The almost violent serenity of the fateful moment vanished: he was haunted by the ghost of social justice. Whereas ordinarily he returned from the performance of his duties with a glow of satisfaction, he seemed now to be assailed with a sense of guilt. There were times when he talked to himself, muttering gloomy monologues under his breath. This is a fragment that his sister overheard: 'I did not know that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become so absorbed in Divine Law that one is no longer aware of human law. Death belongs only to God. What right have men to lay hands on a thing so unknown?

Diderot's solution to the limits of language was to become himself a worker: "There are machines so hard to describe and skills so elusive that ... it has often been necessary to get hold of such machines, set them in operation, and lend one's hand to the work.

The baker kneads; the weaver knits; The smithy plies the sun-bright steel; The potter turns; the farmer plants; The miller grinds his dusty meal. While I my quill in trembling hand Pen odes to please the fickle throng; The greatest craftsman of them all, Save only she who sings my song.

It’s not the capability of the tool, but the skill of the craftsman. And if the product that we’ve created doesn’t exceed the capability of who we are, we’ve placed ourselves in the hands of a craftsman who’s less than the God we need.

If I lay aside the demands to be the craftsman and embrace the role of being the tool, in the right hands the impossible becomes impossible.

How To Get the Exact Position You Desire. Everyone enjoys doing the kind of work for which he is best suited. An artist loves to work with paints, a craftsman with his hands, a writer loves to write. Those with less definite talents have their preferences for certain fields of business and industry. If America does anything well, it offers a full range of occupations, tilling the soil, manufacturing, marketing, and the professions. First: decide exactly what kind of a job you want. If the job doesn’t already exist, perhaps you can create it. Second: choose the company or individual for whom you wish to work. Third: study your prospective employer, as to policies, personnel, and chances of advancement. Fourth: by analysis of yourself, your talents and capabilities, figure what you can offer, and plan ways and means of giving advantages, services, developments, ideas that you believe you can successfully deliver. Fifth: forget about “a job.” Forget whether or not there is an opening. Forget the usual routine of “have you got a job for me?” Concentrate on what you can give. Sixth: once you have your plan in mind, arrange with an experienced writer to put it on paper in neat form, and in full detail. Seventh: present it to the proper person with authority and he will do the rest. Every company is looking for men who can give something of value, whether it be ideas, services, or “connections.” Every company has room for the man who has a definite plan of action which is to the advantage of that company. This line of procedure may take a few days or weeks of extra time, but the difference in income, in advancement, and in gaining recognition will save years of hard work at small pay. It has many advantages, the main one being that it will often save from one to five years of time in reaching a chosen goal. Every person who starts, or “gets in” halfway up the ladder does so by deliberate and careful planning.

If you are a craftsman you will find the Bible placed in your workshop, in your hands, in your heart; it teaches and preaches how you ought to treat your neighbor. Only look at your tools, your needle, your thimble, your beer barrel, your articles of trade, your scales, your measures, and you will find this saying written on them…“use me toward your neighbor as you would want him to act toward you with that which is his.” MARTIN LUTHER

Today I’m wearing a light-blue Savile Row hand-tailored suit, Lilly Pulitzer tie, Hermès pocket square in the breast pocket, and Bedfordshire bespoke shoes custom made by G.J. Cleverley’s lead craftsman on Old Bond Street. I

This is something I have frequently encountered in my research: an engineer or IT expert working for a car manufacturer enjoys a senior professional position, a good income and a high level of security. But alongside the plant where he works there are now other research and development service companies, where engineers and IT experts work for the same car manufacturer, but on a subcontract basis. They also earn well, but not quite as well as their colleagues employed directly by the main firm, nor do they enjoy the same participation rights. For many highly qualified staff, activity of this kind is quite attractive, up to a certain point. As long as they are young and flexible, they value working for a good salary in different places for a different firm each time. Even a master craftsman, employed by an agency, opined in an interview: ‘When you’re young, you think: never mind, I have two good hands.’ But this generally changes over the years. Then the need for greater security makes itself felt even among engineers, especially if they want to start a family.

The Stable Abstractions Principle (SAP) sets up a relationship between stability and abstractness. On the one hand, it says that a stable component should also be abstract so that its stability does not prevent it from being extended. On the other hand, it says that an unstable component should be concrete since its instability allows the concrete code within it to be easily changed.

15For a father consumed with untimely grief When his child was soon taken from him Made an image of the once-dead human being And honored him now as a god, And handed down to those under him secret mysteries and initiations. 16Then the ungodly custom, strengthened by time, was kept as a law, And at the command of tyrants carved images were worshiped. 17When men could not honor a tyrant before his face Because he lived far away, They imagined his face from a distance And made a visible image of the honored king, That by their zeal they might flatter the one absent as though present. 18Then the ambition of the craftsman encouraged Even those who did not know the king to increase their worship. 19For wishing perhaps to please the one who ruled over him, He skillfully forced the likeness into a more beautiful form, 20And the multitude, attracted by the popularity of his work, Now considered him as an object of worship Whom a short time before they honored as a man. 21But this became a trap for their life, Because men, in bondage either to calamity or to kingly power, Conferred on stones and wood a name not shared with another.

Every child is born of a father and mother. But what about the first father and mother? Where did they come from? How were they born?” Diarmid shrugged. “I suppose I never gave it much thought.”“An important matter to consider. If we don’t know where we are from, it is immensely difficult to tell where we are going.” “According to our legends, Ask and Embla were first molded from earthen clay. The All Father, the master craftsman and creator of all creatures, took earth into his hands and carefully formed our flesh. Our lives and every member. Thus the earth itself became our mother, the soil the very womb from which we were born. When the All Father commanded, when he breathed upon the clay form of man, life entered the body. These clay forms were known, in legend, as Ask and Embla. “They were beautiful beyond description, the finest of all the All Father’s creatures. The closest of all in resemblance to the All Father’s heart. So he made them his stewards. His representations. He charged them to assume care for all the earth, all creatures. Not to rule them, but to guide them, serve them, express the All Father’s love and goodness unto all.

The one who works with his hand is a LABOURER. The one who works with his hands and head is a CRAFTSMAN, and The one who works with his Hands, Heads, and Heart is an ARTIST.

How different everything is for the craftsman who transforms a part of the world with his own hands, who can see his work as emanating from his being and can step back at the end of a day or lifetime and point to an object — whether a square of canvas, a chair or a clay jug — and see it as a stable repository of his skills and an accurate record of his years..

The race across the mountain continued, but the mountains still glowed when it was their time to glow. They still cried when it was time for rain. And they still told you stories, if you only knew how to listen to them. But I was no longer one of those who knew how to listen … who knew how to laugh and cry with them … I was an athlete … I was an alpinist. I spoke of walls and overhangs. I ran and trained and counted my ascents. I fell prey to the folly of categorization, adding up points, comparing myself to others and making myself poorer and poorer. I was turning into a shallow and stupid craftsman. All I saw were numbers, summit heights, sizes of walls, estimations of difficulty. I only saw Roman and Arabic numerals, commas and plus and minus signs. My hands and legs were strong and unstoppable but my head became empty and my heart no longer beat faster because it was being overwhelmed by beauty – only because of physical effort. My path was rapidly turning downhill while the curve of my success continued to rise. One climb became indistinguishable from another. I functioned like a well-oiled machine that will continue to run on empty if no one stops it. And thus the wheels of my machine kept turning without purpose, faster and faster, until my children reminded me that the birds in the forest were still singing.” Excerpt From: Bernadette McDonald. “Alpine Warriors.

1941, historian Lawrence Wroth wrote eloquently of the “harassed individual with ink-stained fingers, half craftsman, half man of letters, who in dim and cluttered shops in all the considerable towns of the continent was fighting the battles of the Nation long before most of his fellow citizens realized that a war was in progress or that a Nation was being born.

MYTH-1: Handmade items are costly! The items are modest yet the commitment of the craftsmen behind the items we offer is costly The vast majority of the cycles engaged with making the item are finished by the creator – the plan, however, the choice of the materials, the working out of how to cause the materials to go together, gathering the item, capturing the item, advertising the item, planning the bundling, and posting, conveying, or action selling. In spite of this, the items that the fasten organization offers you are truly sensible. Haven't viewed our list? here you go! (click here) Have you ever discovered such wonderful hand-made items at such modest rates?? I GUESS NOT! MYTH-2: HAND-MADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT STYLISH On the off chance that you believe that way, I have an inquiry for you – did your grandmother convey such a shopping pack when went out to get for food supplies or did she have such telephone and individual embellishment sacks? Certainly not. The crafted works are not, at this point unfashionable or old-fashioned. Actually, they are intended for pioneers. Simply being an aspect of the pattern and following it has neither rhyme nor reason. Be the person who sets it MYTH-3: HANDMADE GOODS ARE OF POOR QUALITY I can't envision how individuals have such misguided judgment. The machine-made merchandise is to some degree bargained with quality. In any case, with regards to hand made items, they are taken well consideration of by the craftsmen as referenced above, there is no trade-off with the quality. They are made of cotton and jute which are solid and strong. They are lightweight and simple to deal with. MYTH-4: THEY ARE SAME OLD PATTERNS You can't quit lecturing about the handcrafted items which are extremely extraordinary as it will never be equivalent to some other the explanation being that they are delivered by the hands of a craftsman and not a machine. The sack so made is a result of devotion, love, energy, and the enthusiasm to serve the client. Individuals love block prints due to the strong and straightforward plans that can be made, yet that effortlessness finds a way to accomplish. The strategy is brilliant for pictures with only a couple of tones and fewer subtleties however can be hard to use for pictures with bunches of little content, or extremely fine subtleties that will, in general, sever the square with such a large number of employments. One of the benefits of square printing is that it very well may be done on a surface of practically any size and surface. I print on texture, paper, canvas, wood, and different materials, and you don't need to stress over fitting it through a printer or a press. MYTH-5: HANDMADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LONG LASTING Recollect the last cowhide sack you had? Which lost its covering not long after getting wet in a downpour or subsequent to utilizing it for 3-4 times. That is not the situation with hand-made cotton packs. They are launderable which makes it look clean with each utilization. No problem with the upkeep.

I open the book I'm currently reading and find this: He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.

Every craftsman starts his or her journey with a basic set of good-quality tools. A woodworker might need rules, gauges, a couple of saws, some good planes, fine chisels, drills and braces, mallets, and clamps. These tools will be lovingly chosen, will be built to last, will perform specific jobs with little overlap with other tools, and, perhaps most importantly, will feel right in the budding woodworker's hands. Then begins a process of learning and adaptation. Each tool will have its own personality and quirks, and will need its own special handling. Each must be sharpened in a unique way, or held just so. Over time, each will wear according to use, until the grip looks like a mold of the woodworker's hands and the cutting surface aligns perfectly with the angle at which the tool is held. At this point, the tools become conduits from the craftsman's brain to the finished product—they have become extensions of his or her hands. Over time, the woodworker will add new tools, such as biscuit cutters, laser-guided miter saws, dovetail jigs—all wonderful pieces of technology. But you can bet that he or she will be happiest with one of those original tools in hand, feeling the plane sing as it slides through the wood.

This is a craftsman cabin, built for my great-grandfather by masters, not one of the more usual settler’s shacks made from whatever came to hand and which have long since rotted away, and good riddance.” His smile was real this time. “You always have been a snob, Torvingen.” “I like well-made things.

But tell me one thing, why do Bengalis still use surnames that indicate their caste? We used to do it in Kerala fifty years ago, now we don’t do it any more. But you people still use Mukherjee and Chatterjee and so on.’ I did not have an answer to his question, but I knew that the question was a well-meaning one, asked out of innocent curiosity by one member of the communist society to another presumed member. He did not know that I actually hailed from the Hindi heartland, where people wear their caste names like medals. Casteism in Uttar Pradesh is so rampant that it can lead to embarrassing situations in day-to-day life because of two certain surnames—Sharma and Verma. There are two varieties of Sharma, one the Brahmins and the other the craftsman community, such as carpenters, called Vishwakarmas. And there are two varieties of Vermas, one the Kayasthas and other the mallah or the boatman community. The uppercaste Sharmas and Vermas never miss a chance to point out that they are not to be confused with the other set of Sharmas and Vermas. I was witness to such an incident, while in college in Kanpur. Among my many friends, there were two Sharmas, one Anil Sharma, a boy from a well-to-do family, and another Sunil Sharma, who rarely spoke about his family. One winter afternoon, while I was having a smoke with Sunil at the parking lot, Anil came by. I introduced them to each other. ‘Meet Sunil Sharma,’ I told Anil. Anil somewhat hesitated to shake Sunil’s hand but when he finally did, the first thing he asked was, ‘Are you the Brahmin Sharma or the Vishwakarma Sharma?’ Sunil’s face went red with embarrassment, but he mustered a smile and said, ‘Vishwakarma Sharma.’ ‘No wonder. I could tell that,’ Anil grinned and took leave, leaving me red-faced. But that was then. Today, Anil could have been lynched for that arrogant grin, because power has gone to the hitherto-suppressed classes. Either way, the fact remains that caste rules. Compared to Uttar Pradesh, Kerala might be a paradise, where caste is nearly irrelevant in public life, but are there not people who still take pride in being called a Nair or a Nambiar or a Menon? I wanted to ask Mr Sankarankutty that, but I let it be. His question was, after all, a well-meaning one. By now, I had completely forgotten that a whisky bottle was sitting there. The conversation with him had distracted me from my hypochondria and I felt perfectly fine. After he left, I reached for my skipping rope and jumped five hundred times non-stop. I knew I was in perfect shape to climb even a mountain.

But he’s the best leatherworker in Serin,” Cayla insisted, “and he’s so honored to be crafting your holsters. I told him you greatly appreciated his efforts, and he was so flustered, he spilled half a shelf of sheaths on the ground. I helped him clean it all up, though, and then he posted a beautiful, hand-soldered sign in his front window that says ‘Personal Craftsman to the Honorable Baron Flynt.’” Now, I turned around. “He’s not my personal craftsman,” I clarified, “he’s yours, and I don’t know that I like--” “Mason, he’s eighty-three years old and has seventeen great grandchildren running around his shop,” Cayla informed me, and any irritation I had just poofed into dust. “Oh,” I replied as my women giggled. “Well, then Hugo’s my personal craftsman. But I don’t really think I need a whip.

What begins as a quest for an object that at first seems intangible (the horn of a unicorn, for example) usually turns out to have a more prosaic origin (such as that of a whale's tooth). Perhaps it is true of all knowledge: when it is placed in the hands of a craftsman after a long and devious journey from a far country, its patina of mystery is soon scraped away to reveal an object of more sedate hue.