Fixing Mistakes
Saturday 14th October 2023
Hello friends,
Fixing mistakes, I have come to realise, is not a deviation from good craftsmanship.
It is a part of good craftsmanship.
I was listening to a maker talking about his journey. He made fine fitted furniture and worked for architects and designers to realise their designs.
One of his architect clients asked him, “Should I be expecting handmade perfection from you?”
To which his answer was, “No. You should expect handmade imperfection”.
You see…we are human.
I don’t know of a project where something didn’t go wrong, and it is then that you have to take a step back, look at what you have done, and fix the problem.
There are really three approaches when fixing a mistake:
First, you can simply replace part of the piece. If you can make a new part to replace the one that went wrong, this this is the best way forward. No-one need know!
Secondly, you can hide it. I have, for example, drilled holes in a leg of a chair that I thought was going to be covered up, only to have it show up as I worked more on the piece. I then rectified this mistake by covering the entire side of the chair leg with a veneer the same as the wood. The holes were covered, and…no-one need know!
Quite often, however, covering the mistake would look too obvious. Then we have to take the third approach and go entirely in the opposite direction - celebrate it! Once when I was making a table with a mortice and tenon joint, the edges of the joint were way too loose - too many gaps. It was quite obviously a flaw in the piece.
Instead of trying to hide it, I put a contrasting stringline around the whole thing. This then became a feature of the piece. Everyone who looked at it loved the detail. A mistake had unwittingly become a beautiful feature.
And this is such an important thing to remember.
In our search for perfection as we delve into our craft, sometimes our humanness comes through. Our own imperfection. The challenge then, is to find a way to celebrate that imperfection in the piece.
Find a way to celebrate that this, actually, is not something printed off a factory production line. It is a unique piece, made of a natural material, by a person
With all the flaws that might entail.
And can we, like my maker friend above, effectively communicate to our clients that this is to be celebrated.
Until next time,
Stay sharp, friends.
~sh