The designer as craftsman

In his book The Craftsman (2008), the sociologist Richard Sennett makes a case for homo faber (or "man as maker"). Harking back to the workshops of the medieval guilds and to the studio of violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, Sennett set out to prove Immanuel Kant's dictum that "the hand is the window on to the mind". It is only through making things, he says – by trying and failing and repeating – that we gain true understanding. He is not, like some latter-day John Ruskin, arguing that handmade things are better than machine-made ones. He is simply saying that skilled manual labour – or indeed any craft – is one path to a fulfilling life. (Justin McGuirk, The Guardian).