Scan barcode
A review by katlynn_tay
Cræft: An Inquiry Into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts by Alex Langlands
4.0
I won this book as a goodreads first-reads win.
Such a beautifully written treatise on the value and place of craeft in our lives (more importantly, MISSING from our lives), and a break-down on how craeft originates in the environment around us, our natural resources determining the kind of crafts our ancestors created from those resources, from willow baskets to hazel woven hurdles, various types of thatching, and the manner in which boats were created.
This book DOES focus almost exclusively on the British Isles, with slight mental journeying into the Viking Era and Sweden and Denmark. To that end, those who are looking to read about craefts from the Middle and Far East, Africa, Australia, or North and South America will be a bit disappointed to find nothing of their ancestry featured here. It does allow one to look at the craefts of ones own ancestors and do a bit of creative thinking about how those ancestors craefted from their own native environments.
My ONE criticism of this book is the lack of diagrams or pictures. When the author is discussing the making of hurdles or trugs or managing a hedgerow, it would be helpful to have pictures to aid in understanding what the various terminology means without pulling up videos on youtube.
Finishing this book, I'm highly inclined to try a bit of willow-weaving of my own, from the stand of willow in the corner of my front yard. At the very least, creating my own walking stick from that same willow, would be a delight after the inspiration offered by the author.
Such a beautifully written treatise on the value and place of craeft in our lives (more importantly, MISSING from our lives), and a break-down on how craeft originates in the environment around us, our natural resources determining the kind of crafts our ancestors created from those resources, from willow baskets to hazel woven hurdles, various types of thatching, and the manner in which boats were created.
This book DOES focus almost exclusively on the British Isles, with slight mental journeying into the Viking Era and Sweden and Denmark. To that end, those who are looking to read about craefts from the Middle and Far East, Africa, Australia, or North and South America will be a bit disappointed to find nothing of their ancestry featured here. It does allow one to look at the craefts of ones own ancestors and do a bit of creative thinking about how those ancestors craefted from their own native environments.
My ONE criticism of this book is the lack of diagrams or pictures. When the author is discussing the making of hurdles or trugs or managing a hedgerow, it would be helpful to have pictures to aid in understanding what the various terminology means without pulling up videos on youtube.
Finishing this book, I'm highly inclined to try a bit of willow-weaving of my own, from the stand of willow in the corner of my front yard. At the very least, creating my own walking stick from that same willow, would be a delight after the inspiration offered by the author.