Anything that has been made by hand will age better than something that has been manufactured.
Tiina Laakkonen
I have been considering the issue of “half-life,” not as it applies to the decay of radioactive isotopes; rather I have been considering the concept as it relates to the collection of pieces created by an artist or artisan. Let's define the half-life of such a collection as the number of years it takes for half of the creator's works to be irrevocably burned, buried, tossed or lost. Think of Picasso's works: in any given year, all will likely remain intact, even if stolen. If anything, collectors are busy trying to find a previously unknown piece. The half-life might even increase, but, nonetheless, it's likely measured in centuries. The earliest known wooden furniture found in Egyptian and Turkish tombs enjoy half-lives measured in millennia. Put a roof over it, better yet a tomb, wood will last indefinitely.
Tiina's point is well-taken. Handmade works will outlast manufactured ones, not so much because they are intrinsically more durable, though often that is the case, but because people will hang on to them much longer, typically passing them down to the next generation. The half-life of any creator's collection does, indeed, increase proportionately to the fame of the creator or circumstance, but even works by humble, unknown artists and craftspeople might enjoy a half-life of decades, even a century or more. If you are such a maker, our works will most certainly outlast us. We leave a tangible legacy.
Thus, if you are a maker, a creator, of whatever it might be, take comfort in your tangible legacy because you will be affording bits of happiness, cheer and pleasure to people you don't even know, many years into the future. Perhaps that can be of some consolation to you, insofar as society tacitly considers your activity inferior to that of the professional.
From an early age I myself was not destined to use my hands. All my education and training were intended to produce an individual of the mind, mostly like an academician, a professor. Unfortunately, a fair amount of my thought process during college was spent on dismantling the rationale of spending the next decade of my life paying the necessary dues to move up the academic ladder. Though even with that doctorate you are not done. What follows are many more years of publishing, compromising, avoiding offense. Eventually, one might obtain a professorship or even better, a chair. Alas, I never did attain that chair but instead made them.
Yet if this career path were not to be derailed by my own thinking, a comment from one of America's foremost literary scholars did the trick. Columbia University Professor Emeritus Lionel Trilling, in our personal chat at the end of the senior year colloquium, remarked to me, “Kurt, don't go into academics; it's a nasty business.” At times I've felt guilty about taking his advice, but any regret is soon quashed by a lifetime of genuine independence. We did, it turns out, share a common goal of authenticity.
In truth, the deepest, yet fleeting, part of this woodworker's legacy is the relationships built with my customers, many of whom became friends, but the most durable part of the legacy is the wooden works. Alas, I did not end up leaving any academic papers, textbooks or tomes, but instead I leave solid things, like a handcrafted wooden desk, a part of someone's everyday life, replete with elbow grease, coffee rings, stored memories, child's markings, nicks and stubbed toes. The patina guarantees its survival, not a bad place to hang out.
