Research Question
Personal experience in making
Throughout my time as a woodworker, I am often disappointed in the reactions of others to my personal work. After completing a piece, the reaction from family and friends is often not what I wanted or expected. They were often impressed with the finished object and my skills as a craftsman but it would end there. For some reason, that reaction was not enough and did not reflect the effort I put into the project.
As I explored the literature for this thesis, I found it focused on the final product—similar to my friends and family. It looked at the maker and their position within society and focused more on the completed work than the process . As I explored Ingold, I began to see why my expectations of the reaction from others was different from reality. For example, when my friends and family saw a chair I built, they would see a beautiful chair they could sit in. They may have liked the wood I selected for the frame, the leather I chose for the seat, or the finish I used to protect it, but they could not understand what I put into the piece. When I looked at the chair, I saw the tools I used to cut and shape the wood, the wooden pieces I selected for each part of the chair, how the grain and colour impacted the overall feel, the challenges I faced during the build, and the various modifications I executed. I saw much more than a chair. I saw an experience in making that culminated in a useful object through tool use, material selection, and process.