Perfection12 Jan
Isn’t it curious how so much of our woodworking world now professes to sell perfection. What’s so great about perfection? Where in your life is anything perfect? And where is the life in perfection? In our world of woodworking we now have so many jigs and incremental systems and ideas and notions that this time we’ll have Perfect glue-ups or Perfect finishing or Perfect results Everytime! This pursuit of perfection is different in so many ways than the pursuit of excellence.
Perfection, at least in my shop, is not possible. Perhaps it is in yours. In mine, mistakes are the loud children of my profession. They run around, make noise, tip things over, dent finished pieces, crack wood in unexpected places, dull a rubbed out finish. Tools dull by leaping off my bench to the floor. This is a normal day.
Perfection in my shop is simply a concept, fleeting or fled. It is a vision perhaps glimpsed across the room if I squint my eyes. [Oh wait, that’s a flashback.] No perfection is a chimera, a ghost, an idea of an idea that I try every day to dispel. For it is perfection that is my ball and chain. It is an endless sentence of disappointment and finally a movement of the standards when I realize I cannot achieve it.
Think about this. Greene & Greene are so admired now because their aesthetic or perhaps that of the Hall brothers, the builders of their work, admitted to imperfection. The square plugs in the Gamble House aren’t all square. Some are out of square, some are rectangular. They are not perfect but you can sense in them, the hand of the craftsman, the skill with which they were produced. But they are not perfect or regular. The edges of their work are rounded, eased like it was the work of the wind and sand on the beach. The builders who try to make perfect reproductions of this work miss the point of the aesthetic.
So let me just say that I pursue excellence every day in my work. But on the days when I can let go of perfection and do good work, I am a happy woodworker.
3 Responses to “Perfection”
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Gary, I couldn’t agree more!
The notion of perfection is really a naive dream. Worse, it can needlessly intimidate, even paralyze, developing woodworkers (which really is all of us).
A good craftsman knows that consistency in workmanship and aesthetics are the truly important matters. We’re not perfect; we manage tolerances.
I hope for an educated, perceptive excellence in my work – not perfection. Understanding is better than hype.
I wrote about this here:
http://www.rpwoodwork.com/blog/2008/09/12/perfect-nope/
Thanks again. It is great to hear this from a teacher of your stature, Gary.
Rob
Hi Gary,
Indeed. It’s the same thing that, to me at least, makes the work of James Krenov so interesting as well.
I once wrote a little blog post on this topic myself.
For what it’s worth:
http://rhpwood.wordpress.com/2008/05/26/on-tool-marks/
An absolutely on-point comment. My father in law is well known in the tennis industry, and he used to call his Tennis College a “mistake center” to clear away any notion that the purpose was to create perfection. The point was to get through all the mistakes during practice, and hone a particular skill to a point where consistency, practice, and an understanding of good mechanics drove a player to be the best that they could be. Perfection is an admirable aspiration that drives us towards success, or the creation of great design in this case, but in my view perfection should not be the ultimate goal, merely the driver and motivation to create something spectacular.
There is a song by Sting with a line that goes ” The search for perfection is all very well, but to look for heaven is to live here in hell”……. True but oh so necessary.