Deep Craft: Go Beyond Etsy and Make Toward Slow Design and the Good Life (VIDEO)

Discuss "craft" with Scott Constable, whose training includes apprenticeships under master woodworkers and who specialization in traditional joinery, and you're likely to hear about such things as traditional bodgery and English guilds.
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Scott Constable is a craftsman who designs utilitarian objects like furniture skateboards and handcrafted homes to the more esoteric, such as a mobile micro radio station or a mobile biodiesel processor (see Wowhaus: craft, tiny architecture & back-to-land home/studio). Discuss "craft" with Constable, whose training includes apprenticeships under master woodworkers and specialization in traditional joinery, and you're likely to hear about such things as Windsor chairs, traditional bodgery and English guilds.

At a time when the idea of craft has become closely linked to Etsy or Make or any number of DIY blogs and zines, Constable wants to take back the word: "The whole Deep Craft concept was a way for me to rebrand the word 'craft.' I was starting to see things like Etsy come out and craft was becoming ubiquitous and the same time it was becoming devalued."

Borrowing from the idea of Deep Ecology, Constable created the term "Deep Craft" and began to create a manifesto as a set of working principles. It's not an academic treatise; instead it's filled with ideas such as, "trust in an ethos of 'exuberant frugality'" and "What makes a good day?"

Watch Kirsten's feature-length documentary on tiny homes, "We the Tiny House People: Small Homes, Tiny Flats & Wee Shelters in the Old and New World."

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