Against the backdrop of an alienating, technologizing and ever-accelerating world of material production, this book tells an intimate story: one about a community of woodworkers training at an historic institution in London’s East End during the present ‘renaissance of craftsmanship’. The animated and scholarly accounts of learning, achievement and challenges reveal the deep human desire to create with our hands, the persistent longing to find meaningful work, and the struggle to realise dreams. In its penetrating explorations of the nature of embodied skill, the book champions greater appreciation for the dexterity, ingenuity and intelligence that lie at the heart of craftwork.
Table of Content
List of Figures
Preface: Toiling to Live
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Pursuit of Pleasurable Studies with Woodworkers
Chapter 1. An Anthropologist’s Journey into Craftwork & Apprenticeship
Chapter 2. The Carpenters’ Company & Early London Apprenticeships
Chapter 3. The Building Crafts College: a history
Chapter 4. Getting Started
Chapter 5. Crafting Craftspeople
Chapter 6. Vocational Migrants to Craftwork
Chapter 7. The Intelligent Hand
Chapter 8. Problem Solving at the Bench
Chapter 9. Managing Pleasurable Pursuits
Chapter 10. Skill and Ageing
Epilogue: Towards a Hands-on Curriculum
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Trevor H. J. Marchand is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at SOAS, University of London, and recipient of the Royal Anthropological Institute’s Rivers Memorial Medal. He is also a trained architect (Mc Gill University) and qualified as a fine woodworker at London’s Building Crafts College. Marchand has conducted fieldwork with craftspeople around the world and published extensively, including the monographs Minaret Building and Apprenticeship in Yemen (Routledge, 2001) and The Masons of Djenné (Indiana, 2009).
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