Life In 19x19

There are quite a few go players who appreciate the aesthetics of go equipment, and some of them may therefore appreciate the following clip.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29222164

It is sad that flamenco seems to be under some sort of threat, though there was a hint in the commentary (to do with a fashion for castanets matching costumes) that it may be re-inventing itself in some way.

So this is a threat to pay-per-click?

I was quite sad when Paco de Lucia died. He was excellent.

Now that we're on the subject of dying-out trades, watch these excellent 2 videos about the last company in the UK who still make scissors by hand.

Here is the video about a scissor-worker from the BBC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lg6GDGi6v98

(Chinese subtitles, sorry, couldn't find the original)

Look here for the original viral video which saved the factory from closure a year ago

http://vimeo.com/98953952

There are things that are arguably better when made by hand. Then there are also things, which aren't (just more expensive). I believe e.g. scissors belong to the latter group (but I'm by no means an expert on scissors, and it may well be that e.g. some specialty scissors are an exception).

tj86430 wrote:There are things that are arguably better when made by hand. Then there are also things, which aren't (just more expensive). I believe e.g. scissors belong to the latter group (but I'm by no means an expert on scissors, and it may well be that e.g. some specialty scissors are an exception).

Talking about scissors as not being arguably better when handmade and making an exception for specialty scissors is like talking about coffee tables vs Japanese floor gobans. In my opinion, things which are well made by hand ARE specialty items. Try researching Japanese handmade scissors for hairdressing.

I'd take the article/video with a large pinch of salt. Every 3 months or so an article appears somewhere with "the lost art of shoemaking" where they interview some wannabe chump (occasionally some good artisan, though, but these are rare) while making him/her look like the second coming of John Lobb and the only one of his kind. Where in reality, there are a few tens of thousands of handmade/semi-handmade shoemakers in the world, only in Spain I think we are at least 200-300.

As for handmade tools, I have a handmade shoemaking rasp (AFAIK is the only tool I have purchased directly as being handmade, but I have a set of old shoemaker's tools which are likely handmade, since they are likely more than 80 years old), where a worker has carefully laid all the spikes with his training, instead of a machine with a random number generator. It was ~20€ more expensive than a machined one, but if I can value the job I do by hand, I can also value the experience this skilled worker transferred to my rasp.

A friend of mine had a hand-made, organic, artisan Jenga set. The problem was the pieces were all wonky which made it rather tricky to play with .

Uberdude wrote:A friend of mine had a hand-made, organic, artisan Jenga set. The problem was the pieces were all wonky which made it rather tricky to play with .

Hand made doesn't automatically equal well made.

Hand-made Jenga, compared to mass-produced Jenga, is like field-hockey on grass compared to field-hockey on Astroturf: the precision is missing but the fun is enhanced by the intrinsic uncertainty. It's like skiing slopes that have never been graded or sailing dinghies on the ocean instead of an inland lake.