A Life's Work: The Philosophy of a Craftsman

when they made Peter they broke the mold he is a one-of-a-kind guy there's an outstanding visionary having three minds three hats that he wears as a craftsperson hat kind of a philosopher's hat and then there's this sharp businessperson hat that he has on and there's this jean-jacques rousseau quote that I love that a crass person finds himself in the workshop toiling day after day but finds himself a philosopher in his freeness of his mind I'm not surprised by what he's done and I wonder if this doesn't give him some contentment that the separation of the hand and the mind and Peter's own life now had finally come together in the in the beginning they were quite separate [Music] I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in a reasonably well-to-do family my mother was a historian my father was a lawyer and so they sent me from seventh grade through 12th grade to a Quaker school called Jeremy town friend's primary among the Quaker values they say there's that of God in every man and I'm not a religious person but you do learn that what matters in life is some sort of spiritual fulfillment much more so than the sort of values that our society puts forward as the goals of life now which is mostly Fame and money [Music] being a teenager in the 1960s there seem to be in addition to a sensitive with belly in and a reverence a great optimism about the future our parents having achieved a certain sense of status and success we were then looking to the next thing which is how do you live a fulfilling life not not how do you live a life where you attain financial and social security but how do you actually live a life that is somehow more passionate and rewarding than that what happened I think is the 50s was a system but the sixties people for any number of reasons broke through that system questioned it it basically questioned the tenants the foundation of the system that they had been told had to happen in order to succeed and they said politely screw that it's not for me there was a pivot point in about 1968 when things changed values changed there was this veneration for natural back to the earth gone back to the earth movement it was a time of a great deal more freedom we were told we could do anything [Music] [Music] the first job that came along after college was carpentry and I found that working with my hands was very different than what I'd been led to expect I never met a carpenter before I mean in my dad's world and the world I grew up in at Germantown friends I never met people who worked with their hands and when I became a carpenter he was sure that I was not going to lead to a very happy adult life because it was going to be mentally stultifying work and working with your hands where you start to develop skill not just muscle but trust in your hands and and you start to see the result of what you do at the end of the day that was that was a wonderful way to start to become an L the changes in my hands were amazing it was like went from having skinny weak little fingers to these sort of over a year to sausage-like fingers you know and my dad said that he came up to visit he said your fingers look like sausages and I said yeah they do it's pretty cool [Music] in November that I'd been a carpenter for about a year and a half it was November and I had some friends who are having a baby and I went into this unheated barn of the house I was caretaking on Nantucket and in three days made a cradle fashioned after a picture that I'd seen in a book those were three days that completely changed my life I walked out of that barn having seen this actual beautiful object come into existence under my hands it was transformational I walked out of there wanting to rediscover what seemed like the lost art of Kharkov of furniture making and proceeded to try to do so [Music] as I rented this little 1950s ranch-style house and had a one car garage below where I set up my shop because I didn't know anyone and I was so isolated I would never even get a chance to speak to anyone unless I went to the grocery store and said hello to the cashier or if the phone rang I would have to sort of I hear ringing upstairs I go running out of my through the basement through my shop through the basement up the stairs and I'd be practicing saying hello before I got to the phone cuz if you don't speak all day your voice gets like hello hello hello and so I have to practicing I love before I got to the phone I was really starting to realize that if I was going to make a living at this I had to develop a recognizable personal style so that people walk into a gallery would say oh there's a piece by Peter Korn it's a some part of every day I'd be drawing furniture I was compulsive about it there's some conscious purposeful part of your brain that turns off a judgmental part I should say and the pencil starts to actually do the thinking you know it's a thing show up that you're not really consciously saying I want to make this line connect to that it's just your drawing and then there's the dictionary stand and it was quite nice and so I build it and that was the piece where I really found my voice the chance and discovery plays a role if everything is predictable if it's factory-made if it's humdrum if it's absolute it can even be beautifully made but if it's totally predictable it doesn't have the panache that discovery has design products that are uniquely yours if you are really successful at it in time they will be identified as your work and what are those characteristics I can't even begin to tell you there's so much repetition going on sometimes I have to say no I can't jury this show because I go to look at all the pieces and they're beautifully made but they're a replica so and so you want to be known for something and for most successful craftsmen it's a style of chair believe it or not [Music] I found it really hard to make a living as a furniture maker the year I was in Maryland which was the third year as a furniture maker I've lived on brown rice and I had this jar with my brown rice in it and when the jar would get down to like a 2 or 3-day supply I'd have to call my dad and say dad could you send me a check for $100 I got to eat and he was supportive and kind and did that when I went to New York I was also poor but I was selling more work probably cause of having the store fund because of having an a small article in New York magazine and I became for the first time financially independent at it although living quite modestly and that was a really good thing [Music] well there aren't that many examples out there of people that are making furniture every single day and they're able to balance all that out financially needs a family etc so it's it's a difficult equation you know people want to do this they how can you not want to be in a shop with yourself or with some of your mates making beautiful objects in the world comes and buys it and Peter's very upfront was saying hey this is a hard road to go down for ten years I really didn't think about much else but how you make furniture and and I didn't think about how you make a living I wasn't very practical about the whole thing and eventually I gave up being a furniture maker when I was in my 30s because I couldn't make a living but I tried to design for manufacturer instead and I took the job at Anderson ranch to buy me time to do that and then I found that I really enjoyed being part of that nonprofit school and making the classes work and helping to teach them the reason I become a furniture maker in the first place was I thought that by developing the skills and practicing them I would cultivate more of the qualities of integrity and simplicity and grace within myself and that's where I started I really started to see that for me craft was very much first and foremost an effort or process of self transformation the craft itself is a vehicle to bring out an understanding of yourself when you first hear comments like that I think it's easy to say and I would be the same way like what does that mean but once you're involved in it I do think that's true every piece of furniture or every artwork is someone's exploration it's it's an idea it's a it's an idea that the artist is putting out in the world and for me the way I look at it when people buy that they're really buying into consciously or not the ideas that are embodied in your work so the whole making showing and selling as a form of communication and their furniture reflects the personality of its maker it's the DNA that we're talking about the way that I want to live my life and do live my life is somewhat represented in the furniture that I make in the process of creating crafts you're you're expressing yourself in a way that's very different than just a recreational activity you're creating something you're making something it's coming from you from your vision from your artistic sensibilities from your whole life time and wealth of experiences you bring all of that into this item and there's a release there that I think is important for people as as humans and I totally agree that you learn about something about yourself every time you make something [Music] [Music] he called me and said I'm coming to Maine I'm gonna set up my own school and so that's what he did he bought an old barn here in Rockport Maine and started classes and now I'm going to say 25 years later he's been incredibly successful in many ways I I started the son of furniture craftsmanship as a reaction to aspects of working at the Anderson ranch Art Center in Colorado those values were such that they looked at the making of useful beautiful things which is what interested me as sort of second-rate human activity a sort of regressive activity and one way to characterize the values of the art world are that what matters is the conceptual and novelty and that the measure of value is money and fame the trade that we're involved in it's very it builds functional things it's not like a painter we still need more paintings that's plenty of room for original and artistic intent here but we're trying to satisfy so many things at the same time the functional and just the aesthetic that you can go nuts trying to figure out where you belong in that function is really great and very exciting but I think having your mind kind of spit something abstract out and then stepping back and looking at it and really reading it as to where you are in the world and how you're functioning is just as important furniture can be as expressive as an artistic movement as any painting or sculpture or musical composition or dance the elements are really all there the packaging is just different so I wanted there to be an institution in the kind that essentially stood up for the dignity of designing and building useful beautiful things as an expression of the human spirit tying back connecting to that crane off observation that skill is the beginning of freedom and if you have the skill to make things you really can't be rewarded it can't be more complete or fulfilling than that he has created this space this environment for people like myself to come into and to be able to learn about and grow into this furniture making craft idea but as the years have gone on it's the space the supporting environment that he has created he's just masterfully made with other people that has allowed me to not only learn from but to now teach in and be part of a community that surrounds that and not just a community locally but globally from Australia to tell you know Tasmania Wales all over the place these people that we now have this body of knowledge and this kind of family of woodworkers that was created from his idea he wants to be the institution that he and I did not have a place to go to to really study learn better learn more about yourself while you're doing it but it's not just the craft because if it was that he would still be building the school is his life this institution and it'll succeed way beyond you know his passing he's made sure that which is really neat so this doesn't depend on his force of will at all but the school is Peter [Music] I certainly find that it's nice to have accomplished things but really that's pretty bare-bones to go on in life it's really when you're actively engaged in making things which is always hard and so you always have your sights set high and you're slogging through the muck of reality of the real to get it to make it happen it's challenging and it's when you're in the midst of those challenges when you wake up in the middle of the night and you're thinking through the steps you have to go through the next day not to screw up the table you're making it's when you're deeply engaged in working through those things that I think you're using your human capacities as fully as possible and you have the greatest sense of being alive in a meaningful way [Music] you

Channel: WoodschoolMaine

Views: 214,137

Keywords: Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Peter Korn, Woodschool, workshops, furniture making, furniture design, maine woodworking, furniture classes, craftsmanship, craft, furniture, woodturning, wood carving

Id: zweMkuQc3pU

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2019