I come from farming roots. Both my parents grew up on farms in North Dakota. My cousins are still farming the land my grandfather and great grandfather farmed. There is some kinship between the craft potter and the farmer. The story of Seagrove North Carolina is a story of farmer/potters who worked hard with their hands and their minds all year long. There was a season of planting, cultivating harvesting and potting. They knew the land and the soil on their land. They also knew the clay that was troublesome to their farming but gave them raw materials for their winter "crop".
There are still enclaves of potters who continue the tradition of making pottery from local clay and producing useful and beautiful work for the local and global market. North Carolina carries this tradition on through Mark Hewitt and his many protege potters that have come through his shop as apprentices over the years. I have visited several of these potters and I feel a strong respect and appreciation for the work they do and the way they do it. There are others in NC, SC and GA that carry on the traditions handed down from early american potters.
I have my feet in both worlds: an industrial ceramic engineer creating turbine engine parts by day and a potter by night. I also have a love-hate relationship to modernity and what this industrial world has brought forth. It has broadened the middle class and given the nobility of work to so many people. It has also impacted knowledge, craft and work in ways probably not anticipated by those who started the ball rolling. Before I try to articulate this conundrum I'm going to share with you some thoughts from someone who can communicate far more clearly and eloquently than i can. Listen to what Wendell Berry says about the farm/business push in this country and substitute the craft potter for the family farmer.
"In their dealings with the countryside and its people, the promoters of the so-called global economy are following a set of principles that can be stated as follows. They believe that a farm or a forest is or ought to be the same as a factory; that care is only minimally necessary in the use of the land; that affection is not necessary at all; that for all practical purposes a machine is as good as a human; that the industrial standards of production, efficiency, and profitability are the only standards that are necessary that the topsoil is lifeless and inert; that soil biology is easily replaceable by soil chemistry; that the nature of ecology of any given place is irrelevant to the use of it; that there is no value in human community or neighborhood; that technological innovation will produce only benign results.
These people see nothing odd or difficult about unlimited economic growth or unlimited consumption in a limited world. They believe that knowledge is property and is power, and that it ought to be. They believe that education is job training. They think that the summit of human achievement is a high-paying job that involves no work. Their public boast is that they are making a society in which everybody will be a "winner" --- but their private aim has been to reduce radically the number of people who, by the measure of our historical ideals, might be thought successful: the independent, the self-employed, owners of small businesses or small usable properties, those who work at home."
Conserving Communities - by Wendell Berry
Now I'm not a farmer; nor do I make my living as a craft potter. But in my time working for what was once a medium company (Howmet - around $800M in sales annually when I hired on in 1989), and has now become (acquired by Alcoa in 2000) a multinational top 100 company ( $24B in sales and 60,000 employees), I have seen some of the realities referenced here by Wendell Berry. The difference in the culture between the company when I started and now is stark. I've benefited in many ways by being a part of this organization. I've had stable employment in a solid company managed so that my security and that of the company was not at risk. I've had benefits of health care and hope to see some retirement benefit materialize in the future. However what felt like a family of employees in the 80's and 90's became an invasion of lawyers, accountants and heavy handed overlords in the new millennium. A lot of the fun was sucked out of it and maybe even the affection for the work we did. My personal path has brought me full circle to a place that suits me (R&D) with a team I've worked with now for almost 20 years. So there are many satisfactions in my work on a daily basis.
However, there are unavoidable realities of working in the "corporate" environment that make it different than in the family farm or craft pottery. On a family farm or in a craft-based business run by the master all the "business" including the planning, designing, engineering, purchasing, manufacturing, maintenance, marketing and selling is done or at least directed by one person. That person has knowledge of each of those areas and is especially passionate about the process and product. All other functions support the "main" purpose: the product. The distinctive difference in my mind between a farm/pottery and today's factory is the division of labor and of knowledge inherent in modern industrialization. We have moved from masters to specialists. The company is an assembly of specialists: accountants, business managers, purchasing folks, maintenance, salesmen, engineers, etc. This has fostered the largest and quickest expansion of wealth over the past millennium and ushered in the modern world. It has exploded the ranks of the middle class and allowed wealth to flow to members of all classes. However it has also come at an enormous cost of individual knowledge.
So you can see the dilemma: I like the stuff this modern world has made possible. However I regret the lack of real knowledge most people have. How so few people in my company could actually make the products we sell, and how those who are the most hands-on are not the most generously compensated. I don't take any comfort in being a Luddite. I don't want to unrealistically pine for a by-gone era that glows in the misty nostalgia that ignores all the down side of the past. So, let's begin a conversation that looks forward. How can we use current technology, and current culture to create work environments that value skilled crafts-persons, and honor the combination of knowledge and skills. I invite your comments.\
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