Bruce Gardner, owner of Homestead Timber Frames, recently presented this lecture to the Crossville Rotary Club in Crossville, Tennessee.

I recently had the honor of dining with Al Hudson in Knoxville.  Al is a cabinet maker with 75 years of experience devoted to his craft.  His shop wall bears the inscription “The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”  Chaucer penned these lines in 1380 in his The Parliament of Fowls. 

Al, at age 89, designs and builds extraordinary pieces of furniture and so I asked him if he considered himself a Master.  He slowly shook his head and replied that he was merely a thirsty student of his craft.  I have had the good fortune to visit with many fine craftsmen—none of whom would dare describe themselves as “Master” and all of whom would describe themselves as “Student”. 

• Lenny Bracket, who trained as a temple builder in Japan

• Dave Hickman, chair builder in Murfreesboro

• Peter McCurdy, timber frame restorer in London

• Ed Levin, designer and timber framer in Canaan, New Hampshire

• Natanel Aranof, architect and restorer of Moorish temples in Tashkent

• Jesse Butcher, Clinton, Tennessee who built beautiful oak baskets

None of these craftsmen need to openly brag about their work or their skill.  Their work speaks for them and their work will live beyond them, enriching the lives of later generations.

An obscure poet named Henry Austin Dobson expressed it well in 1876 in his “Ars Victrix”.  Dobson wrote:

All passes.  Art alone
Enduring stays to us;
The bust outlasts the throne
The coin, Tiberius

I use the word “craft” and the word “art” interchangeably.  Craft, to me, is neither a birdhouse at a craft fair nor a macramé plant holder.  Craft is art.  Craft is the product of a lifelong pursuit.  Craft (or art) possesses that certain something that we can recognize but never adequately explain.

I once read of the efforts of mathematicians to define beauty in a woman’s face.  They drew angles, calculated distances form eye to chin, chin to cheek, hairline to nose.  The product of their work fell far short of our built in ability to discern and appreciate beauty at a glance.  The perfect symmetry of a butterfly wing, the nose of a Jersey calf, the muscled shoulder of a stud horse, the practiced hand of a skilful carpenter, a beautiful building.

Excellent craft earns near immortality by being cherished, and hence maintained, by it’s keepers.  We have examples in America of good craft such as the Fairbanks House in Dedham Mass., circa 1637, the landscape architecture of Olmsted, the writings of Melville and Poe, and the stone bridge we crossed to gather here today.  Our lives are enhanced by these works.

I would like to describe for you a week in our small shop. 

First of all we like each other.  We begin our week by sitting down together.  The first order of business is “the word of the week”.  We take turns presenting an obscure word, giving three definitions for that word, guessing together which definition is correct, and formulating a sentence with the new word.  The word, definition, and sentence are posted on the shop wall and throughout the week we make new sentences with that word.  Seems trite, but the effort is great fun.

We have added to our repertoire words such as Luddite, felicity, crepuscular, capstan, foudroyant, and lambent.

Here’s a sentence from a recent week—“The Luddite, whilst working in his shop, turned up his oil lamp creating a lambent glow across the surface of his oak timbers.”

We go on to outline the work ahead of us.  Tuesday we applied our wax finish on the Burke timber frame and buffed the individual oak timbers.  Wednesday we delivered the frame and began assembly on the house site.  Thursday we completed the assembly.  Friday we started with a talk on safety, a short reading, and the crane arrived for the timber frame raising.  We put our hard hats on and went to work.  Within six hours we had completed the raising of the timber frame that had required 100 hours of my time to design and eight weeks for the shop to build.  It is the best timber frame we ever built, until we build the next one.

After building my first timber frame in 1985 I felt quite expert.  By the third or fourth frame I had begun to feel like maybe there was much more to learn.  After a couple hundred projects I am near completely intimidated by what I do not know.

I am hungry and thirsty for the knowledge that was possessed by the guild trained craftsmen of the 15^th century. The guild system and capitalism are antithetical.  In America why would a young person apprentice themselves to a master for seven years when land could be his for the taking.

Succeeding generations of workers received ever-less training in their trade and so today I must begin my interview with an applicant by handing him a tape measure and asking him to show me 16-9/16 inches.  Lest I leave you with a gloomy prospect, I hasten to add that there are signs of improvement.  It may come to pass that craftspeople will both find opportunity to be trained and be recognized appropriately for their growing skill.

The Timber Framers Guild will soon have an apprentice and journeyman program in place.  It has taken us three decades to give voice to the question, “Who will train the trainers?”   We have taught each other.  We have taken apart old buildings and studied them.  And we have messed up a quantity of otherwise perfectly good timber in our quest for knowledge.  And we have joyfully worked very hard.  In timber framing everything is either heavy or sharp.  And many things are both.  Two weeks ago I could not pick up my end of an eight hundred pound timber.  My son could but I could not.  The clock ticks.  Time to hasten on.  Time to teach others.

Let me tell you about work.  I treasure work.  The English craftsman Eric Gill wrote, “Leisure is secular, work is sacred.” 

The John C. Campbell School of Crafts has as the school motto, “I sing behind the plow.”  And finally from writer Annie Dillard who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Annie wrote, “How you spend your days is, after all, how you spend your life.”

May each of you spend your days in joyous pursuit of your life’s work.

Thank you so much for your kindness in having me here.