The Ideal of Craftsmanship by C. Wright Mills

  

The Ideal of Craftmanship

C. Wright Mills(1916- 1962)

Craftmanship: a skill that someone uses when they make beautiful things with their hands; the quality that something has when it is beautiful and has been very carefully made.

 

      Craftmanship is a fully idealized model of work gratification for artistic production with creative skills. The author presents six major features guided by work gratification.

 

1.      The hope in good work is the hope of product and hope of pleasure in the work itself with the quality of the product and the skill of its making. There is inner relation between the craftsman and the thing he makes. It is more related to work gratification, reputation, or salvation than money.

 

2.      In most statements of craftsmanship, there is confusion between its technical and aesthetic conditions and the organization of the worker and the product. The tie between producer and product is more psychological than legal. The craft man has an image of the completed product, even though he does not make it all.

 

 

3.      The workman is free to begin his work according to his plan and, he is free to modify its form and the manner of its creation. The craftsman is the master of the activity and of himself in the process. He is responsible for its outcome, his problems and difficulties must be solved by himself.

 

4.      The craftsman's work is a means of developing his skills as well as a means of developing himself as a man.

 

 

5.      In the craftsman's work there is no split between work and play, or work and culture. play is something one does to be happily occupied, but if work occupies you happily, it is also a play. Work and culture are dealing with means and ends in themselves.

 

6. The craftsman's work is the mainspring of the life he knows, he brings to his non-working hours the values and qualities developed and employed in his working time.

Paul Bourget says 'the world of art requires less self-consciousness, an impulse of life which forgets itself, the alternation of dreamy idleness with fervid(passionate) execution. According to Henry James, "we have practically lost the faculty of attention" meaning…. that unstrenuous, brooding(tolerating) sort of attention is required to produce or appreciate works of art.

 

 

Questions: 1. What are the six major features associated with craftmanship?

                  2. A craftsman is an artist and their work is an act of satisfaction and joy for them. Justify the statement.