First of all, I'd like to say here the fact that I'm not naturally a craftsman has made me work very hard.
Where I grew up, there was a mysticism and creativity to everything. Everyone made things with their hands.
The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect: as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name.
Not all of us are painters but we are all artists. Each time we fit things together we are creating - whether it is to make a loaf of bread, a child, a day.
My father was a watchmaker and an inventor. I saw him working in the house every day. The work ethic, I got from him. He worked hard and he never complained about it.
Consider how wool is turned into an elegantly designed carpet by coming into contact with an intelligent person.
We have received a heritage of craftsmanship, of aesthetics, of taste, of identity. Our brands have the beauty to preserve and perpetuate it.
We're at a moment where people are rediscovering their ability to design, to create (engineer)and in essence, to become a true maker.
My mission in life is to preserve craftsmanship.
My father was a very good craftsman. He made furniture, he made silverware and he had an incredible gift in terms of how you can make something yourself.
We are a very crafty family.
Craft is not a category; it's a means. The folks running the museum [Museum of Arts and Design]are sharp, and they know this, but they are in a bind.
Architects, sculptors painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a 'profession.' There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.
...the number one reason knitters knit is because they are so smart that they need knitting to make boring things interesting.
Here in America we're doing the most wonderful crafts.
150 years ago in [Charles] Dickens's time there was at least a sense of craft. So some of the things people had inside of them, they had the possibility of expressing in the making of things - even in a daily way with their clothes or their food. People made a good deal of both themselves. Now our daily lives are almost all consumption. Craft plays a tiny role.
The foundation of service and your real training lie in spinning khaddar.
I tell a student that the most important class you can take is technique. A great chef is first a great technician. 'If you are a jeweler, or a surgeon or a cook, you have to know the trade in your hand. You have to learn the process. You learn it through endless repetition until it belongs to you.
I am constantly amazed at how little painters know about painting, writers about writing, merchants about business, manufacturers about manufacturing. Most men just drift.
I’m interested in vernacular cultures, where people lived a little closer to the source of materials and the making of objects for use. And for me, not to rely strictly on the history of art has always been an interesting process, to be looking into areas that we call craft and trades.
If man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles, or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
As a young girl, I watched my mother hand-stitch thobes while sitting on the floor with a lamp at her side. She would make the small designs of flowers and different shapes. Just thinking about it brings up so many memories of my mother and how proud she was of being Palestinian.
Our appreciation of folk art will strengthen our identities, our pride in belonging to a community. People trained in the creative use of their hands soon acquire skills, excellent craftsmanship which will be the most important measure of how well we can industrialize.
Every woman will tell the curious that with the disappearance of the spinning wheel vanished India's happiness and prosperity.
Hat-making is laborious and time-consuming. It's a very tactile medium, and you can develop the skills, but it's one of those things: you either have it, or you don't. I love bringing something to fruition with my hands that gives people pleasure.
