The Nature and Art of Workmanship

by David Pye

Overview

This is a digital reprint of David Pye's original 1968 edition. Within it he argues that the aesthetic quality of our environment depends as much on its workmanship as on its design, and that workmanship has been largely ignored. He proceeds to develop a new theory of the aesthetics of workmanship which can be applied to architecture, to the products of industry and to craft work. Mr Pye shows how and why we are conscious of finish and workmanship, goes on to ask why so much of our environment is impoverished and asks what can be done about it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521293563
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	09/21/1978
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.70(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

David Pye OBE (1914-1993), was Professor of Furbaniture Design at The Royal College of Art from 1964 to1974. Pye was an accomplished wood-turbaner and carver, as well as an important writer on the theory of design and handcraft. 'The Nature and Aesthetics of Design', first published in 1964, and 'The Nature and Art of Workmanship', first published in 1968, were both hugely influential for the development of craft studies and design history.
Ezra Shales is Associate Professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and the author of Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (Rutgers University Press, 2010).

Table of Contents

Plates; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. Design proposes, workmanship disposes; 2. The workmanship of risk and the workmanship of certainty; 3. Is anything done by hand?; 4. Quality in workmanship; 5. The designer's power to communicate his intentions; 6. The natural order reflected in the work of man; 7. Diversity; 8. Durability; 9. Equivocality; 10. Critique of 'On the nature of Gothic'; 11. The aesthetic importance of workmanship, and its future; 12. Commentary on the plates; Index.