Category: The Anarchist’s Tool Chest

So many men to-day, doing work that is far removed from the making of things, the many professional workers, office workers, salesmen, factory workers – whose work may seem to be making but whose sole contribution is constant repetitive action in one infinitesimal part – lack contact with that real world in which a man can exercise his creative gifts.

They barely realise that such a world exists.

Theirs is the world of hard bargaining, of nimble wits or the routine job, which leave a great part of their natural human instincts unsatisfied, even though in all probability they do not know the reason for their perennial feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration.

— The Woodworker, January 1954

A dog kennel carved and inlaid may be rare but it is not valuable, and the man who carved and inlaid it was not a genius but a lunatic.

— Herbert Cescinsky, 1924, antique furniture expert

New values have come in, new prospects of easy money are for ever enticing young men still further away, but it is doubtful they are happier for all that, for one can have easy money and an empty life, which is a poor substitute for creation. The wise ones will provide for it in their leisure and wood seems the natural medium for most of us. It is kind stuff to handle, it is creative work which keeps us close to first essentials by helping to provide necessities for the home, and it gives scope for every bit of skill and judgment we can develop, with always the promise of beauty in the end.

— The Woodworker, March 1951

Now and again in our topsy turvey world we get glimpses which show us with sudden clarity what an odd scale of values men are building up for themselves to-day. And that, in spite of the general scramble for money, the true riches for all of us lie in our tools and our skill.

These, in the dawn of the world were a man’s first, best friends. They remain his best friends still in a world grown old and infinitely complex. By means of them he can unlock the doors to a life of creative activity that is full of interest. Without them he is mere shadow of the man he might be.

— The Woodworker, May 1954

No wonder we feel so much at home with wood as a material, at once our most faithful servant and best friend. But the men who are keeping alive the tradition of fine furniture are the little men, scattered over the country who still in their workshops give the lie to the cynical modern view that in these days people will only work for money and that the satisfaction of the work counts for nothing.

Just as there are the men who do woodwork in their spare time, finding in it the kind of pleasure and satisfaction which their own daily work too often denies them.

— The Woodworker, April 1951