Als Ich Kann

For those who've been reading my blog for a while, you may remember a stint last summer when I was obsessively reading every issue of The Craftsman magazine, published by Gustav Stickley from 1901 until 1916. This magazine was at the forefront of the development of the Craftsman movement, best known for mission-style furniture and the bungalow architectural form.

At its heart, this movement was not about style. It was about honesty. The leaders of this movement believed in honest craftsmanship resulting from honest work and the use of quality materials. They also believed in forming a strong relationship with the land, which must be completely honest. (You cannot be dishonest about watering the garden and expect your food to grow!)

Stickley used a phrase as the slogan for his work. It is said to be Flemish in origin, "Als ik kan." In German, which I understand, it would be "Als ich kann" and the meaning is just the same - "In the best way that I can."

The more I reflect on it, the more applicable it becomes to my own work. It's very easy to analyze my work in terms of pure profitability, making decisions that will result in a higher volume of sales at any cost. If I did this, I think that the honesty and joy would drain from my work very quickly and I'd be left slogging through it, no better off than if I worked an unfulfilling job for a boss I didn't like.

I use Stickley's motto to push me in a different direction. "IN THE BEST WAY that I can." The best. That's a moving target, isn't it? Every piece of cloth that I produce teaches me ways to improve my craft. Sometimes I need to build new equipment to create a better result or speed up the process. Sometimes I learn valuable lessons about the limits of my materials or ways to make them perform better. Sometimes I learn that there's a new tool that will improve my craft. I'm wary of that last one, though. It's easy to tell myself that some new tool would make me a better weaver, and rare that it's actually the case. A tool, especially an expensive one, needs to fill a clear and present need before I'll consider it. I'll exhaust all of my possibilities first.

"In the best way THAT I CAN" This tells me that I shouldn't settle for producing a lower quality of cloth because I think that the customers won't notice. I need to make sure that every piece of cloth is up to the highest standards that I can set. Sure, most customers may not have the skill to recognize the reasons for the high quality of my cloth, but I'll bet that they can sense that quality anyhow. What will nurture me as a craftsman is the admiration of experienced weavers. This will come, not only from the quality of the cloth, but from the low prices I'm able to charge because of my efficiency in producing it.

In winding the current beam, I made some choices that are costing me time, but producing a much better result. I've begun using very thin thread and loosely plying it together with a cone winder. It takes a few days to ply the first set of cones and about 20 minutes a day to keep the winder busy, replacing cones that run out while I wind the beam.

There are a few other time costs associated with this new method. While winding, it takes an extra 15-20 minutes per section to tie a knot in each thread. This is necessary so that I know which tiny threads were plied together in the winding.

I'm also sinking a bit of time into the thread patterning. There's a very noticable feature in this beam - a mottled grey and brown stripe running down the center of the cloth and fading to white at the edges. There are several other subtle things happening as well. There are noticable threads in each section, two shiny champagne threads, 5-15 dark threads, and 1-2 thick/thin white yarns. I am using my lifelong obsession with finding the repeats in manufactured patterns to create micro-interest in this cloth and help it to look more organic. For the shiny threads, I move them around in each section so that the 2" repeat isn't obvious. For the dark threads, I reduce the number as I move out from the center and move them around to hide the repeat. For the thick/thin white, I gently increase the occurence as I move toward the edges. This whole process takes about 5 minutes per section.

There's one last time cost that I'll be mitigating before the next beam. I'm weaving cloth with a color pattern that's roughly symmetrical. This means reversing the order of the cones on the floor for each section and rethreading the spacer. This 20 minute per section cost will disappear when I build a rotating table to hold the cones and the spacer, letting me easily turn them together without rethreading.

Another way to mitigate these time costs will be to buy a bigger beam. As it stands, the time that I invest in setup needs to be paid for by the 80 yards of cloth I can produce. If I produced 200 yards of cloth, the time cost per yard would be 40% of what it is now. Instead of paying for 45 minutes of setup time from each yard of cloth, I'd only be paying for 18 minutes.

So, with a bit more investment in equipment, I'll be producing higher quality cloth with the same time investment per yard that I spent on cloth of a lesser quality. This never-ending pursuit is my application of Stickley's motto, "als ich kann."