Friday 23 March 2018

Art, craft, trade, blag?...

So often one reads in comments about an averagely nice job done that it's a "work of art", etc, when actually it's probably just a nice job, done by a half competent craftsperson.  There is little or no "art" in it. It's just a well planned and excecuted job of craftsmanship and none the worse for that.  Frankly I get very annoyed with the way the word art is thrown around as some kind of superlative.  Look, if you will, at most art these days.  It's execrable garbage for the most part, so I really don't want someone who hasn't thought it through calling what I've happily practiced my craft on, "art".  It is NOT art, it is craftsmanship.  Cut the legacy class crap and deal with the fact that craft is good.  Not bloody "crafting", for God's sake, that dead end glorified recycling of household goods, but real, hand made, mind conceived, eye checked (constantly), craftsmanship, borne of years of instruction and practice.
I regard a few particular crafts as Godlike.  Horology, Coachbuilding, Graining and Marbling (where a little artfulness might reside), Fine Cabinet Making, Silversmithing.  Can't think of that many others.

Trades?  Well there is some crossover there, hence the term Craftsman Plumber for instance, meaning doing that noble trade like it used to be done with wiped joints and hand formed zinc flats, church roofs and rainwater furniture, not sticking PVC pipes together with a pot of glue.  No shame in trade either.  Regardless of what the Victorian snobs reckoned.

All the rest is bodgery, blagging and conmen. Cowboys as we now call them.

I would like to be thought of as a Master Craftsman, but I have not studied one narrow craft long enough or sufficiently thoroughly to be called that.  I was today described as a "Real Craftsman", and that, I regard as a true compliment.

Tuesday 6 March 2018

Plus ca change....

He said, with a nod towards his best chum's current predilection for trotting out the odd expression in Yer Akshul School French.  And it's not even right, because what I really wanted to say was the very opposite of that well know phrase.  I wanted to say, "The more things stay the same, the more they change, but my school French was no better than to give me fully 2% in the mock O-Level, for I seem to recall, spelling my own name in French with my tongue firmly in my cheek, so cleverly turning that phrase back in on itself is beyond me.

It occurred to me when I was pressing on with a master made at my choice in the hope someone would adopt it, of the achingly beautiful Morgan SLR.  Four cars were built.....the first on a TR4 chassis, the rest on Morgan frames.  This left the Triumph chassised version a few inches shorter in the section forward of the screen. 

That, you would assume would normally be the end of that.  But NO! Closer examination reveals that all three are different from each other.  Odd, when one assumes the great Williams and Pritchard, coachbuilders to the world of racing cars for so long would have made a wooden buck over which their four similar bodies will have been checked.  Well, if they did, it is not obvious.  OK, the general shape of the red, green and even the blue TR based ones are close (leaving out the 4 inches in bonnet length of the latter), but what gives with the natural metal one?  Same underpinnings of the other two longer wheelbase cars, but  the front wings are sensually raised, the shoulders are softer.  How could this one have fitted the buck?  OR, was it this one rebuilt elsewhere after a fire?  Hmmmm, could be.

Oh well, I like it best, so will make the master this way and concientious kit bashers can file some off the wings and build up some filler on the shoulders.  Oh and reshape the bonnet bulge and remove the smaller one.  Oh and yes, the windows are all treated differently, being largely Perspex, rivetted in.  Getting that effect with vacuum formed plastic on a 1/32nd scale slot care body (requiring as it does a very thin edge to the window aperture inside which the window proper goes) is almost impracticable.  The natural metal one has rubber seals. Much easier to represent. 

Back to the grindstone.