Why Craft Matters More in an Age of Infinite Reproduction
In 2024, a single AI image generator can produce ten thousand variations of a chair in under a minute.
Catherine Avery · 2025-02-06
Craft
Artisanal traditions, maker culture, and the handmade.
Showing 1–20 of 167 articles
How One Ceramic Studio Tests Glazes at Volcanic Temperatures
At the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana, resident artists fire ceramics in a wood-burning anagama kiln reaching temperatures exceeding thirteen hundred degrees Celsius, comparable to the base of a lava flow.
James Alderton · 2025-02-05
The Art of the Handstitched Leather Edge
In the workshops of Hermes on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, an artisan spends twenty minutes finishing a single edge of leather.
Catherine Avery · 2025-02-05
What Apprenticeship Models Can Teach the Modern Workplace
Germany's dual apprenticeship system, in which young people split time between vocational school and workplace training for three to three and a half years, produces some of the world's most skilled workers and is credited with Germany's manufacturing dominance and youth unemployment around six percent, among Europe's lowest.
Oliver Ramsey · 2025-02-04
The Felt Maker Whose Material Insulates Alpine Shepherds' Huts
In the Austrian Tyrol, felt maker Maria Zierler produces thick, dense wool felt using techniques passed through generations of Alpine pastoral communities.
Daniel Hurst · 2025-02-04
Why Handmade Chains Command Fifty Times the Price of Machine-Made Ones
A hand-fabricated chain from a goldsmith can cost five thousand dollars for the same weight of gold producing a machine-made chain retailing for one hundred.
Sebastian Cole · 2025-02-03
The Mosaic Artist Reconstructing Roman Floors Tile by Tile
In the conservation workshop at Fishbourne Roman Palace in West Sussex, mosaic artist Ruth Sheraton works to restore a pavement laid by Roman craftsmen in approximately 75 CE.
Daniel Hurst · 2025-02-03
How Artisans Grade Mother-of-Pearl for Button Production
In the workshops of Irminger in Meersburg, Germany, one of Europe's last dedicated mother-of-pearl button makers, each shell is graded by hand before a single blank is cut.
Marcus Wei · 2025-02-02
The Pipe Maker Still Sourcing Briar Root from Corsican Hillsides
Every autumn, Fernand Motroni climbs the maquis-covered hillsides of southern Corsica to dig briar root, the raw material from which the world's finest tobacco pipes are carved.
Marcus Wei · 2025-02-02
What a Fifty-Year-Old Workbench Reveals About Its Owner
A fifty-year-old workbench is an autobiography written in wood.
Marcus Wei · 2025-02-01
The Timber Framer Building Barns Without a Single Blueprint
Jack Sobon, a timber framer based in Windsor, Massachusetts, has raised over two hundred structures using traditional methods predating architectural drawing.
Daniel Hurst · 2025-02-01
How Traditional Gilding Techniques Survive in a World of Gold Paint
Gold paint, the aerosol-sprayed substitute adorning picture frames in every homeware shop, is not gold.
Catherine Avery · 2025-01-31
The Sail Maker Stitching Canvas for the Last Wooden Schooners
At Ratsey and Lapthorn in Cowes, Isle of Wight, sailmakers have been cutting and stitching canvas since 1790.
William Ashford · 2025-01-31
Why the Best Chisels Are Hollow-Ground, Not Flat
A chisel sharpened with a hollow-ground bevel, the concave profile left by a grinding wheel, outperforms a flat-ground chisel in the critical operation of paring: controlled removal of thin shavings.
Thomas Nakamura · 2025-01-30
The Welder Whose Sculptures Start as Structural Engineering
Richard Serra, whose monumental steel sculptures weigh hundreds of tons and curve through public spaces worldwide, trained not in sculpture but in steelworking.
Marcus Wei · 2025-01-30
How One Workshop in Jura Turns Horn into Spectacle Frames
In the village of Morez in the French Jura, Maison Bonnet has produced spectacle frames from natural buffalo horn since 1950.
Thomas Nakamura · 2025-01-29
The Ancient Art of Cloisonné and Its Modern Practitioners
Cloisonne, the technique of creating designs using thin metal wires soldered to a surface and filled with vitreous enamel, has been practised continuously since at least the twelfth century BCE when Mycenaean goldsmiths applied it to jewellery.
James Alderton · 2025-01-29
What Handmade Paper Tells the Fingertips That Machine Paper Cannot
Close your eyes and run your fingertips across a sheet of handmade paper from Hayle Mill in Kent or Khadi Papers in India.
Thomas Nakamura · 2025-01-28
The Taxidermist Serving Natural History Museums Worldwide
Jaap Sinke and Ferry van Tongeren, the Dutch duo behind Sinke and van Tongeren, produce taxidermy of such anatomical precision and artistic composition that their work hangs in the Rijksmuseum alongside Rembrandt.
James Alderton · 2025-01-28
How Porcelain Painters Train Their Hands to Ignore Tremor
A porcelain painter at Sevres, France's national manufactory founded in 1740, begins training by spending six months painting nothing but straight lines.
Thomas Nakamura · 2025-01-27