Craftsmanship

30 Apr 2007

One more big weekend in the new place behind us. We slept in pretty late on Saturday, but once we got up it was go, go, go all day.

We spent a few hours at IKEA browsing things. We found a desk, some chairs and a bunch of odds and ends. I got to show Holly what I had in mind for shelving. We looked for the old dining room table that we had liked and were thoroughly underwhelmed when we saw it. It wasn’t anything like either of us had remembered. I believe we have found a new table though.

There was some talk before picking out a table. Last week I read a really great article, The Craftsmanship of Code, that changed how I view quite a few things. It made me think more about the furniture that I normally buy. As a whole it made me think about almost everything that people buy in today’s world.

I am a geek. I won’t deny it. I know my way around computers and most electronics backward and forward. When it comes to picking a TV, DVD player or new computer I don’t really cut corners. I certainly don’t go buy the cheapest mass produced thing available that looks nice. I look for quality products that will last. I spend a great deal of time doing research on items. I get pieces that will work together. I don’t buy from companies like AKAI.

Yet, when it comes to furniture, quite often I do head to a place like IKEA or some other large store that sells cheap crap. Now, just to be clear, not everything that IKEA makes is crap. A lot of it, the more expensive stuff, tends to be quite good. I am also not trying to say that all mass produced things are crap.

Anyway, this boils down to the fact that I had started to think that I wanted a “real” dining room table. Not something mass produced by machines. By no means did it have to be a singularly unique piece, but I wanted to know that there was a human, a heart and a soul, behind it’s construction.

It made me think back to a lot of the large pieces of furniture that we had growing up that my Father had made. They may not have won any awards, but they are solid examples of good craftsmanship. Everything was built to last. They have stood the test of time. The test of moving over and over again. The test of hyper children and claw wielding cats.

If that furniture had been put together out of some cheap press board and a few nuts and bolts out of a box, there is no way it would have ever lasted so long. It has a presence of stability about it. Something which I consider to be important in today’s world.

I would like to craft that same sense of stability in the home for my own little family. That calming sense of safeness because everything is the same. No matter how many times you move, how many places you live, how many things happen in the outside world, I believe that home should always be the same. This isn’t to say that change is bad, or that things should never change, but I do think that core stability is important.

That’s the way it is with my family now. I might only get to see them once a year, but when I do, it always feels like I never left. It’s a wonderful feeling.

Ultimately we decided that we will get something from IKEA for now, but when we have a house we will decorate with furniture that exhibits craftsmanship.