‘Craftsmanship’ may suggest a way of life that waned with the advent of industrial society–but this is misleading. Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.
Every good craftsman conducts a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding. The relation between hand and head appears in domains seemingly as different as bricklaying, cooking, designing a playground, or playing the cello–but all these practices can misfire or fail to ripen.
There is nothing inevitable about becoming skilled.
~ Richard Sennett “The Craftsman”
