This Incredible Book Unexpectedly Rewired My Brain

James Fox is a Cambridge art historian whose book is about British craft and craftsmanship, primarily about crafts that have a long history in Britain, and that are often at risk of being lost forever. The author has several stories about going to see the person he last worked with only to find out that person had passed away between the time the meeting was set up and the actual date of the meeting. One of the things Fox writes about in this book that really stuck with me is that we now think of crafts as hobbies, like knitting, basket making, blacksmithing, and so on. But these crafts and trades arose out of necessity. Clothes, knives, and baskets for catching lobsters were not always mass-produced.

Some of these crafts I knew a little about. A cooper is a craftsman who makes wooden barrels used for brewing beer and storing ships and other objects. Then there were artifacts I had never heard of, like dry stone walls. If you’ve ever seen photos of the English countryside, you may have noticed the patchwork pattern created by stone walls about four and a half feet high. Throughout the book, I learned that these are handcrafted and maintained, with no mortar between the stones. The stones are beautifully combined by shape and size, held together by weight, gravel, gravity, and physics. These walls are teeming with life and are an integral part of the ecosystem. I was completely fascinated. Did you ever expect to be this excited about walls?! No, I wasn’t, but still here I am. Each story of the craft, each person he told, was so deep and interesting, even if he thought what they were doing was mundane.

I learned a lot from this book and was completely fascinated. Dr. James Fox is a wonderful, fascinating, and inspirational storyteller.