Everything is built around a solid form, and everything afterwards is a set of conflicting requirements settled in a particular way. Here are fifteen decisions inside any pair.
1. It…
There is a difference between materials that are gathered and materials that are extracted, and it explains why some textiles were cheap and others were not.
Wool is gathered. It…
There is a category of object where the useful part is the absence rather than the substance, and netting is the clearest example.
A net is mostly nothing. The material…
There is a small group of building materials that go round in a circle, and lime is the clearest.
The cycle is truly closed. A rock is heated to drive…
There is a common misunderstanding about coloured windows that makes the craft seem simpler than it was.
The assumption is that the glass is a canvas — clear material with…
There is a useful question to ask about any traditional material: what problem does the processing solve, and what happens if you skip it?
For leather the answer is unusually…