Short description
Journalist and woodworker Gibson profiles 33 American small woodshops most only big enough for one or two workers. He includes color photographs of the shops, the artisans, and their products. He does not provide an index or bibliography. Annotation 2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Long description
This book is a guided tour of woodworkers' workshops where artists, craftsmen, students and enthusiasts imagine, design, fix, build and transform themselves and their materials. It provides an inspiring look at the many faces of wood craft from making furniture to building boats. A workshop is more than a space that contains tools so that we can work. The very existence of a shop is a reflection of the creative impulse to turn something that exists in the mind into a tangible reality. What someone makes in a shop and why influences how the shop is configured, what tools it holds, where it is. The maker, the process, the ultimate product, and the space are intimately connected. This book explores those connections by using the space - the shop - as the point in which these inter-related themes intersect.
Review
This is not just another book about shops--not that I ever mind the opportunity to snoop around other woodworkers' shops and shop solutions. Instead, Scott acknowledges that our shops are, in essence, a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) expression of their owners--and that breathes life as well as lessons into these stories of workspaces around the country.