We’ve all been there. Trying to cook that perfect meal. You pull out the recipe book, prepare all the ingredients, follow the instructions to the letter, and still, it’s not quite what you imagined. Because a recipe isn’t a fully resolved design of a meal. It’s a guide. It needs to be interpreted. It relies on the cook’s experience, knowledge, and judgement. The result doesn’t come from the recipe alone. It comes from what happens while you’re cooking.
In my own craft, I build bicycle frames in much the same way. Recently I heard Richard Sachs put it like this. Before he starts a frame, it exists as a kind of dream in his head. He has the materials. He has a sense of what it will be. Some features are already decided. But the frame itself is not fully resolved.
That happens at the bench.
So what happens when the outcome is predetermined in advance?
Stone carving
Traditionally, a sculptor might work from sketches or a small model. The form is guided, but not fully specified. It still has to be worked out in the stone. Even the early stages, what we might call roughing out, aren’t just mechanical removal. They involve decisions about where the form sits, how far to go, what to leave. Now compare that to a process where the entire statue is modelled in CAD beforehand. The surfaces are defined. The geometry is fixed. A CNC machine can then remove the bulk of the material to that exact form.
At that point, something has shifted.
The roughing out is no longer a site of judgement. It’s the execution of a fully specified model.
A useful distinction
There’s a useful way of looking at this.
Two kinds of making:
Workmanship of risk: the result is not predetermined. It depends on the judgement, care, and skill of the person making it as the work unfolds.
Workmanship of certainty: the result is already decided. The process is set up so the outcome is assured.
If we look at the stone carving again, the traditional process sits much closer to workmanship of risk. The form is guided, but it is still worked out in the stone. But once the entire form is resolved in CAD, and the material is cut to that model, the making shifts towards certainty.
The risk has been designed out of the process.
So what happened to the craft?
Was it extended by the technology? Or was part of it removed? If the result is already decided before the work begins, what role is left for the craftsperson at the point of making?
Bicycle making
Look at bicycle making. What I do is, for most riders, just as functional as the latest carbon frames. They are light, efficient, and engineered to a very high standard. But they come from a different kind of process. What I do is resolved at the bench, through judgement in the act of making. Most carbon frames are manufacturing. The form is resolved in advance, and the process is designed to produce that result consistently. Both can produce excellent bicycles. But they are fundamentally different kinds of work.
Why this matters
For me, this isn’t really about whether craft is better, higher quality, or more efficient. You can argue those points either way.
It’s about something else. Some people are drawn to making physical things. They think through doing. They work things out in the act of making.
That’s where they are at their best.
They may not excel in more abstract fields. But that doesn’t make their way of thinking any less valuable. Craft gives them a place to express that.
The question
Is craft the process of making? Or the aesthetic of the object?