Within an era when there are countless competing claims on one’s attention, how does one find the internal focus to be creative? For professional furniture craftsman Gary Rogowski, the answer is in the action of creative function itself. The discipline of working with one’s hands to create unnecessarily beautiful things shapes the contractor into a more complete individual.

In the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Shop Class as Soulcraft, Rogowski’s Handmade is a profound meditation for the eternal value of manual function, creativity, human fallibility, and the stubborn quest for quality function. Rogowski tells his lifestyle tale of how he became a craftsman and how years of prolonged function have trained him patience, resilience, tolerance for failure, and a love of pursuing beauty and mastery for its own sake.

Part autobiography, component guide to creativeness, and part guideline to living, Handmade is a reserve for craftspeople, artists, and anyone who all seeks clarity, purpose, and creativeness in their work-and it is the great antidote to today’s world that feels human being labor is obsolete.