In this moving account, Peter Korn explores the type andrewards of creative practice. We follow his search for meaning as anIvy-educated child of the center class who discovers employment being a novicecarpenter on Nantucket, transitions to self-employment being a developer and manufacturer offine furniture, requires a turn at teaching and administration at Colorado’sAnderson Ranch Arts Center, and founds a college in Maine: the Centerfor Furniture Craftsmanship, an internationally respectable about Why We Make Stuff and just why It Issues: The Education of a Craftsman nonprofitinstitution.

Furniture building practiced being a art in the twenty-firstcentury is a decidedly marginal occupation. Yet the view in the peripherycan become illuminating. For Korn the challenging work of getting something newand significant into the globe through one’s very own volition-whether in the arts,your kitchen, or the marketplace-is what creates the meaning and fulfillment that so many of us seek.

This isn’t a how-to book in any sense. Korn really wants to getat the why of art in particular as well as the satisfactions of innovative work ingeneral to understand their essential nature. So how exactly does the producing of objectsshape our identities? Just how do the merchandise of creative work inform culture? Inshort, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves?Korn pulls on four years of hands-on experience to response these questionseloquently, and frequently poignantly, within this personal, introspective, and revealingbook.