craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

this country has never been very good at being european. but i guess ya gotta try. or move to quebec.

Something very American and un-European about this movement's heavy reliance on novelty, actually.

hurting consistently otm

But whatever, if the people who can afford this stuff want to pay for it, I don't really see the loss. If anything, it goes with my general belief in wealth recapture via overcharging the rich.

especially this. back in the 80s, the yuppies had the brilliant insight that we could all live basically as wage slaves no matter how much we happened to make, so long as our sense of "the necessities" were properly calibrated to our income bracket.

that's why i said this country has never been very good at it!

x-posts

people can't just make their lovingly crafted stuff and be quiet about it. gotta have an angle and a little razamataz. hotchacha!

gotta hava gimmick!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jakehimself/flint-and-tinder-premium-mens-underwear

"flint and tinder"

would set fire to all this menswear

which part is the flint and which is the tinder?

i'm guessing the penis is the tinder. and flint balls.

Incidentally, can someone explain kickstarter projects to me? Like why do people "pledge" money for someone's for-profit venture?

Well they often get products in return for one thing.

yeah but in this case it's like $5 or more for some matches.

Some projects make sense -- they take a certain amount of money to get off the ground, so you're basically paying for the first round of a product in advance for a discount, or you want the product to exist so you throw in a few bucks.

The ones where there's a ton of levels of funding but you don't get anything are... more nebulous

louis black on the daily show yesterday touched on this artisanal thing.

pretty good routine: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-may-1-2012/back-in-black---artisanal-foods

tbf that's more about the "artisanal thing" being picked up on by industrial food than about the "artisanal thing" itself.

A sour grapes review of Googa Mooga that doesn't really say very much:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/food/2012/05/the_great_googamooga_and_elitism_what_brooklyn_s_food_festival_says_about_foodies_.html

Hmm, sour grapes...artisinal food light bulb!

http://brooklynintegers.com/

http://remodelista.com/img/sub/uimg//11-2012/barn-the-spoon-at-work.jpg

spoon carver Barnaby Carder "sits in the window at 260 Hackney Road carving spoons for eight hours at a stretch.

http://remodelista.com/posts/a-spoon-carver-in-spitalfields

Dude is making me nervous.

some of those are plainly spatulas

does he use an entire tree for each spoon he makes? i'd like to think that he does.

"When I've made a good spoon I feel good within myself"

lol burnout

probably doesn't make forks and knives because they contain hostile energy

it's kind of remarkable how handcrafting have been come to be so revered, in part by disregarding the grinding physical labor that a lot of it consists of

in 30 or 40 years, will this generation of artisans display their arthritic hands, hunched backs, and ruined eyes as badges of authenticity?

has^

he's called Barnaby.

sorry guys, i can't go out tonight, i'm making a spoon

he's on his third set of hands this week

wooden leg fits real nice now, doesn't chafe at all.

I initially misread the post as saying that it takes him 8 hours to make a spoon, btw

I do kind of wonder how fast he can make them.

"On the other hand, when I make a lop-sided spoon full of hairline cracks that probably won't last a year, I feel kind of meh. But, what the hey; it's still a fucking handmade spoon."

http://gawker.com/5961169/unionmade-retailer-of-expensive-fashions-that-are-not-union-made

relevant

http://www.bitlaw.com/source/15usc/1125.html

I'm not a hunter-gatherer. I buy my food in the shops. I have a rucksack with everything I need for a camp in it: tarpaulin, bivvy bag, sleeping bag, mat, metal cup, coal tar soap and a little nail brush for cleaning. Each day I cut wood, carve spoons, then head into town and sell them in the street for £5-£30 each. You meet so many people: smack addicts heading for their daily fix, other street sellers, beautiful girls who talk to you for ages and buy lots of spoons. The end of the day comes and I feel brilliant.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2012/mar/16/weekender-barnaby-carder

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gUTjdLuOz0Y/UDt7JnvN0lI/AAAAAAAAAWU/3bmM-STtV3w/s1600/IMGP2575.JPG

For November only I'm taking online orders for cooking/serving spoons (minimum order - 10 spoons).

£100 plus £10 postage get's you a mixture of 5 octagonal handled and 5 Roma style spoons. I carve initials on the Roma Spoons (maximum 3 initials). If you make payment before 11th November i will carve the initials for free otherwise they are £1/ character.

2 hr workshop (Friday only): “The ten most important knifegrasps in carving. How to use the knife and your body and sharp soul to make functional and beautiful spoons.”

that's seems like a lot of waste. I'd rather have a wooden spoon that was carved by a CNC machine and designed to get the maximum number of spoons out of a piece of wood.

although I guess at night he probably unpacks his rucksack and nests into that pile of shavings.

haha true

http://i.imgur.com/042Np.jpg

lol, 3 days!?

I'm picturing an army of Barnabys rambling across the english countryside, doing their best to finish off the deforestation of the UK.

SPOONSMITHS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

I'd just roll up with my lathe and kick those dudes asses

or just start up HANDMADE SPOONS INC., sourced from chinese factories

You don't understand. Handmade is the name of my computer-operated lathe.