The Domestic Revolution is a fascinating tour of the ways relatively minor changes snowball, changing the way people interact with the material world and with one another, but it’s also a tremendous pleasure for its lucid, practical explanations of how these things actually work. Goodman is deeply familiar with her tools and materials in a way that’s quite unusual today. Of course anyone who really makes things will have this familiarity — ask a software engineer about programming languages or his favourite text editor — but in most walks of life actually making things has become increasingly optional. Of the objects I interact with on a daily basis, the only ones I can really be said to have made (my kids don’t count) are the things I cook and the chairs I refinished and upholstered.1 Beyond that there’s the garden I planted with seeds and perennials I bought at a nursery, the furniture I assembled out of pieces some nice Swedish man machined for me, and the various bits of plumbing I’ve swapped out, but none of that is really “making” so much as it is “assembling things other people have made”. It’s mostly the productive equivalent of last mile delivery — nothing to sneeze at, but a far cry from the sort of deep involvement with the material world that was common only a few centuries ago.
This makes perfect sense, of course: I don’t have a deep and intimate knowledge of these things because I don’t need one. Still, though, it’s important to have a certain very basic familiarity with how the things around you work — enough, say, to know what to Google when something breaks and how to put the results into practice, or to turn fifteen feet of arching blackberry cane into an actual bush — because it gives you power over your world. The particular powers don’t really matter (it’s easy enough to pay someone else to fix your plumbing or grow your berries); the key is the patterns of thought they engender. There are, for example, apparently some enormous number of people who don’t change the batteries in their beeping smoke detectors. I have no idea whether it’s drug-induced apathy, ignorance of how things work (in the same way that drilling a hole in your wall to hang something seems scary if you don’t know that your wall is
a liejust painted drywall in front of empty space between the studs), or simply a pathological lack of personal agency, but it’s hard to believe you can change anything dissatisfactory about your life if you can’t change a 9V battery.Making and doing things, even when you don’t have to, is practice in believing that you can change your own world. It’s weightlifting for agency. You can outsource the making of your physical world, but social worlds — the arrangement of your family life, your personal relationships, the organizations and institutions you’re involved in — must be created by the participants themselves. A good society would be one where the default “builder-grade” scripts lead to human flourishing, but unfortunately that isn’t ours, so you have to be able to decide on your own changes. Start practicing now: find one little thing about your physical environment that annoys you and fix it. Put the new toilet paper roll actually on the holder. Replace the burned-out lightbulb. Hang the artwork that’s listing drunkenly against the wall. Pull some weeds. And then, once you’ve warmed up a little bit, go and make something new.
Jane Psmith, “REVIEW: The Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2023-05-22.
1. They’re oak dining chairs, probably (judging by the construction) about a hundred years old, and they looked a lot better on Facebook Marketplace than in real life. When I showed up to buy them, the sellers turned out to be an elderly couple moving to assisted living in six hours; they admired my baby and showed me pictures of their grandchildren and explained they had inherited the chairs from the wife’s mother, who in turn had gotten them from her friend’s mother, and by this point I couldn’t really say “yeah I can tell” and leave, so home they came. When I took apart the seats to recover them I discovered the original horsehair padding and some extremely questionable techniques applied over the years, but anyway now my chairs have eight-way hand-tied springs and I have some new calluses.
August 26, 2023
QotD: The psychological value of “making”
July 13, 2023
This “simple” bench made me humble when I tried to build it
Rex Krueger
Published 12 Jul 2023It’s just nails and pine, but this piece was full of tricks.
(more…)
May 19, 2023
I Built Three Moravian Stools to Find the Best Design
Rex Krueger
Published 18 May 2023I can’t stop making these stools … but I’ve found the best ways to make one.
(more…)
May 11, 2023
This 100 Year Old Bench Should Have Fallen Apart
Rex Krueger
Published 10 May 2023This old bench changes everything I thought I knew about building furniture.
(more…)
May 10, 2023
How to Make a Wall Shelf | Episode 1
Paul Sellers
Published 13 Jan 2023This was one of Paul’s first teaching and training projects he developed specifically for his hands-on classes for early woodworkers to start on. That was in the early 1990s, so 30 years ago, and many a thousand students have made it to learn about shelf making.
The goal is the mastery of accuracy using sharp tools to develop two types of housing dadoes, the stopped and the stepped.
This video gives the first woodworking joint most woodworkers start with and shows how to get a snug fit every time.
(more…)
April 13, 2023
Build the Moravian Stool with Sliding Dovetail Joinery
Rex Krueger
Published 12 Apr 2023
(more…)
February 25, 2023
Making a Simple Stool | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 26 Aug 2022I am always surprised how few woodworkers have made a simple three-legged stool, and every woodworker should make at least one. I developed this for benchwork instruction, which makes the whole methodology different and unique.
Whether you are a seasoned woodworker or a raw beginner, there is so much to learn about hand tools, wood, technique, and grain structure in this simple stool. It’s just a few hours of very pleasant woodworking and it can be completed with just a handful of common woodworking tools.
I hope you enjoy making yours.
——————
(more…)
February 2, 2023
Stop FAILING in your woodwork. Use these strategies instead.
Rex Krueger
Published 1 Feb 2023Simple steps lead to great progress, the same is true in your woodworking.
(more…)
January 20, 2023
Drawer Making | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 11 Aug 2022This is part of our Paid Membership Drinks Cabinet series! To check out more visit: https://woodworkingmasterclasses.com/…
Paul went into a detailed explanation in this dovetailing of the drawer for the drinks cabinet for everyone to truly master drawer making.
It’s the small details that these explanations demonstrate, and we hope that you truly enjoy the whole process of dovetailing for the rest of your life.
Oh, and the videography throughout the episode is stunning for everyone to learn through too. You don’t see this normally. Superb! The calm serenity captured in a man’s work, the confidence, and the love of the craft.
You’ll enjoy seeing the whole drawer come together by every stroke of the different planes Paul uses and then, too, the dovetails tying the whole together and glued up. Such a beautiful art form!
(more…)
September 8, 2022
Fixing a HUGE crack in a live edge slab table
Rex Krueger
Published 7 Sep 2022A tough crack requires creative problem solving, can I do it?
(more…)
August 22, 2022
Sellers Home | Paul Sellers
Paul Sellers
Published 25 Apr 2022You are going to want a hot cup of tea or coffee with this one. It is something a little different. Paul has been working to build for his home, Sellers Home, all the hand-made furnishings that can practically be made from wood. This is the story of Paul, the story of woodworking and the story of Sellers Home.
We sometimes do something short and snappy for viewers but this is for those of you who want a deeper dive. Enjoy!
The full detailed projects are available with premium membership over on woodworkingmasterclasses.com (we will be switching to sellershome.com soon).
(more…)
May 19, 2022
Furniture Forensics with a Craftsman End Table
Rex Krueger
Published 18 May 2022Is this confusing end table garbage or a glimpse into history?
(more…)
May 12, 2022
Build the English Cricket Stool // Limited tools build
Rex Krueger
Published 11 May 2022Build this handy & beautiful stool. Work space and work bench optional!
(more…)
January 12, 2022
QotD: Baumol’s cost disease in architecture and furniture
If stonemasonry is a low-tech industry, and new high-tech industries are arising all around it, stonemason wages could get prohibitively high (compared to everything else) until nobody wants to hire them anymore. This would create pressure for architectural styles that require as little masonry (or, generalized, human labor) as possible.
This has gotten me thinking about furniture.
I got a new place recently and have been looking for furnishings. Sometimes I look at people’s furniture Pinterests. If Pinterest is any kind of representative window into the soul of the modern furniture-enthusiast, people really like Art Nouveau. […] As far as I can tell, you can’t buy any of these anywhere — they’re a combination of antiques and concept pieces. The people who pin these and pine after these end up getting minimalist Scandinavian furniture with names like UJLIBLÖK, just like everyone else.
Anything that even comes close to the above costs high four to five digits. I don’t know if this is because it’s antique, because it requires more labor, or both.
I’m harping on furniture because it avoids a lot of the complicating factors in architecture. There isn’t some vague collection of “elites” making our furniture decisions. It’s a pretty free market! There are lots of normal middle-class people spending big chunks of money on furniture, lots of them really really like the old stuff, and the old stuff is still either unavailable or unaffordable. It seems like it used to be affordable — it wasn’t just kings and dukes who had the old Art Nouveau stuff — but for some reason that’s changed. I think Baumol effects offer a tidy explanation here, and if we use them to explain furniture, then they start looking really attractive for architecture.
I want this one to be true, because it exonerates our civilization. If we could make things like the Art Nouveau furniture above, or the Taj Mahal, relatively cheaply and easily, then the question of why we aren’t doing that demands an answer. If it’s just a quirk of basic economics, then our civilization is fine, and maybe we can hope that stoneworking technology advances to the point where we can do this kind of thing again cheaply.
Scott Alexander, “Highlights From The Comments On Modern Architecture”, Astral Codex Ten, 2021-10-04.
November 11, 2021
Furniture Forensics with a Secret Expanding Table
Rex Krueger
Published 10 Nov 2021This unassuming table hides an amazing ability and tons of history.
More video and exclusive content: http://www.patreon.com/rexkrueger
(more…)
