Every now and then I run across something that feels like it steals the thoughts out of my head and conveniently scribes them on paper. Laura found this commencement speech given to a class of craftsmen. I cannot recommend enough reading it (though some will find it more enjoyable than others). It is located here:
Some of the highlights:
-“A durable and beautiful built environment provides the best physical and spatial context for human life, and thereby supports the different kinds of inventiveness and daring that modern life demands.”
-“You, however, know that matter is real; you know and respect its properties; you know what good work is.”
-“Beautiful things judge us; they change us, and make us want to be better than we are. Beautiful things elevate us.”
And finally I’ll end with the poem by Dorothy Sayers:
“The Makers”
The Architect stood forth and said: “I am the master of the art;
I have a thought within my head, I have a dream within my heart.
Come now, good craftsman, ply your trade with tool and stone obediently;
Behold the plan that I have made—I am the master; serve you me.”
The Craftsman answered: “Sir, I will, yet look to it that this your draft
Be of a sort to serve my skill—you are not the master of the craft.
It is by me the towers grow tall, I lay the course, I shape and hew;
You make a little inky scrawl, and that is all that you can do.
Account me, then, the master man, lay my rigid rule upon the plan,
and that which serves the plan—the uncomplaining, helpless stone.”
The Stone made answer: “Masters mine, know this: that I can bless or damn
The thing that both of you design by being but the thing I am;
For I am granite and not gold, for I am marble and not clay,
You may not hammer me or mould—I am the master of the way.
Yet once that mastery bestowed then I will suffer patiently
The cleaving steel, the crushing load, that make a calvary of me;
And you may carve me with your hand to arch and buttress, roof and wall,
Until the dream rise up and stand—serve but the stone, the stone serves all.
Let each do well what each knows best, nothing refuse and nothing shirk,
Since none is master of the rest, but all are servants of the work—
The work no master may subject save He to whom the whole is known,
Being Himself the Architect, the Craftsman and the Cornerstone.
Then when the greatest and the least have finished all their labouring
And sit together at the feast you shall behold a wonder thing:
The Maker of the men that make will stoop between the cherubim,
The towel and the basin take, and serve the servants who serve Him.”
The Architect and Craftsman, both, agreed the Stone had spoken well;
Bound them to service by an oath and each to his own labour fell.
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