Gardener Joe—that great and renowned figure—had a mouth like an ‘O’, but of what interest was that alongside his wheelbarrow full of surprises? This website resembles a wheelbarrow in several ways: it is no doubt full of (rather poor) surprises, generally of the how-not-to-do-things variety, it is all balanced rather precariously on one wheel and could pitch over any moment and make a mess, and it is liable to be forgotten for months and then overworked on a hot summer’s afternoon. It is, in short, a website about things, not people or ideas. Now things are infinitely (or rather, categorically) less important than people and ideas. It is for that reason I do not scatter these latter over the pages of the internet. Ho! anyone who thirsts for philosophical or theological ramblings, let him seek elsewhere! 1 Fools barge in where Angels fear to tread (for instance, in an over-crowded under-tidied workshop).
In real life I am other things, here I am simply one who makes things, and makes things other things, and makes things which were made not to work again to breathe: one who resurrects, betimes, the dead and dying things a dead and decaying civilisation has for debris left in its wake. For they don’t make ’em like they used to. And so we must do it ourselves.
Some of the things shown here were made by doing things it would probably not be a good idea to repeat. Those of us who live learn like that: I’m much more wary now, say, of mains electricity than I was ten years ago. I’ve had the odd mild shock and I don’t want any more: so I’m mildly careful. But it follows that what I now think a good idea will probably, in ten years’ time, seem daft. You have been warned! Anyone who repeats any of this does so at their own risk.
Similarly there is very little original here. I’ve tried to indicate some of the places I found things. But no man is an island: no idea is home-grown. If I should have indicated you and haven’t, contact me and I’ll rectify it. The header photo, for instance, comes from the incomparable Boy Mechanic of 1925. Lastly: this site is largely a vanity project. Vanity of vanities, all here is vanity. I’ll try to get back to any serious messages I receive. But there are better people out there. Jack one may try to be of all trades, but one must resolve: master, then of none. Or at any rate, I won’t admit it here.
For instance in Dorothy Sayers, who observed that no badly built table ever came from the carpenter’s workshop in Nazareth, or in the excellent reflections on work of Jacques Maritain. ↩︎