Sylvia (my wife) and I have stayed in the Dolomites (in South Tirol) for 2 weeks, enjoying the holiday together. This most northerly province of Italy offers a phenomenal combination of South-European craftsmanship, and you find traces of it all around you. The ´simple´ wooden-pin construction in the wooden barrier, which is dividing two mountainsides at 2000 meter, is a great example of this.
After my architecture studies (already some 35 years ago), I am enjoying these beautiful examples of craftsmanship more and more. Weather it is at the Guggenheim in Bilbao, with its brilliant rhythm of 30-50 plates, (natural stone and metal, inside and outside)or 25 year old port matured in sherry casks, or a couple of handmade shoes from Vass (Budapest), it is all created according to the ‘gulde smede’. The same though is true for beautiful made bread from a land-bakery, the excellently functioning cow-farm in Algund, of the traditional leather trousers of the waiter at the Waidmans-Hüfte, who by the way sees his profession as a host as an extremely honorably vocation.
Naturally, in our daily lives we are often surrounded with cheap tasteless and poorly produces ´garbage´, but if one looks for it, you may find (as I am doing more and more) how there are beautiful examples of good craftsmanship all around.
To grow within your own craftsmanship it is imperative to be inspired every day by other craftsmanship (big or small). A quite nice byproduct of looking around you for such expression of craftsmanship is that you learn to be amazed again.
Hence, vision, courage, the art of life, is somewhat of the subtitle of our book ´Meesterschap’. We invite you to rediscover the wonders of your daily life!
Enjoy doing so,
Paul Donders
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