︎ zazen bozo ︎


︎︎︎ September 21st, 2023 ︎︎︎



My brother showed me a door today that was being sold for almost a quarter of a million dollars. It was ugly, and it was poorly, or at least strangely, made. This door was clearly designed by someone who does not do a great deal of woodworking. The person who made it for them may have, but they were doing that thing that never resulted in any good whatsoever: just following orders.

The door was made of laminated blocks, the way large east-asian crates often are. It’s the sort of wood people recycle into coffee tables and sell on etsy. That second-hand wood was covered in half-baked psuedo-colonial carvings, just sorta tossed on there. This was a thing combobulated by a person who has never done woodworking. How do I know this? Because people who do a craft are changed by it.

It’s the same in glassblowing, maybe moreso. 

Glass blowing, unlike woodworking, is difficult at the very start. Woodworking is challenging and has infinite depth, but so does glassblowing, the key difference is that the learning curve for glassblowing is a cliff. You can fail for months at glassblowing before getting even a single finished piece. On the other hand any one of you reading this blog could make a cutting board tonight given the proper tools and instruction. Your bodies and brains are capable of it. It is easy. 

Given that learning curve, by the time you are capable of making anything out of hot glass, what you want to make is changed. You have a muscle-deep understanding of what glass wants to do, and you let it do that, you help it do that. You and the glass converse and make beauty together. 

This understanding of material, technique, history, and self, is what makes a master a master. It is also what makes many architects and artists total shitheads. Not all of them are, of course, but it’s a theme, a trend, a plague, a nightmare to which we are subjected each time we set foot in a public urban environment. 

People who have not learned to live with an object, or to give birth to one, dictate from their half-baked, over-read minds to people who have. I don’t know how this happened, I don’t know the history of the tyranny of designers but it’s stupid and we all deserve better. 

I should reread some Christopher Alexander.
And so should you. 

Bozo