The Craftsman

In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifying deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values. The Craftsman is a personal and social history of craftsmanship from antiquity to today, including chapters on learning from masters past, the modern artist, and making music. Sennett writes with passion about Handel’s artisanal labor of musical composition; about Michelangelo’s focus on chisel work that created singular sculpture from marble; about Benjamin Franklin’s developing mastery of printing in colonial Philadelphia; about the artisanal training involved in becoming a full-fledged watchmaker or printer; about how hard it is for professionals to produce good work when clients are not personally involved; about why the nineteenth-century Parisian guilds decided not to include photography among their trades: because taking a photograph required too little skill compared with other forms of visual art. Sennett also pays tribute to several contemporary artists who attempted to make their own cameras, as well as to some writers who took up their pens in order not only to write but also to learn how their writing could be made more perfect through physical action.