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Ingrained: An Uplifting Memoir about Woodworking and Craftsmanship
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About This Book
The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing lessons in his father's workshop. In time he became his father's apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path—to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects and establish a workshop of his own—drew him away. Faced with the end of his business, his team, and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most. In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop and to the wood, to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it and then pass it on to the next generation—an antidote to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature and the physical act of creation—and we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son. Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world—one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.
Reviews
"Anyone who enjoyed Tracy Kidder's House or Matthew B."
"She luminously spins the story of Buckingham's attempt to orchestrate a triumph of international and marital relations."
"Robinson's immersive recounting of that difficult but ultimately gratifying experience, interspersed with flashbacks from his childhood in a rambling 18th-century farmhouse and years apprenticing his father...proves he's equally skilled at turning a phrase as turning wood."
"The best books about work manage to transcend the individual author's experiences; we learn from them not just the lingo of truck drivers or the jargon of geobiologists but something about the changing labor market in which all of us consciously and unconsciously operate—the exploitative economics of low-wage domestic jobs, say, or the fraudulent tactics of bond salesmen."
"A woodworker shows he's equally gifted with words."
"Robinson avoids wooden prose and reports that not all his passions began in the forest."
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