Preservation of Craftsmanship at National Level

Rivkin · 11th April 2005, 06:04 AM

I used to be very interested in building ship models. While these guys are enormously beautiful, and have a wide appeal, nevertheless - ship modeling died on my own eyes.

First of all it was replaced by mostly machine made models, that looked 50% worse, but costed just 5% or the real thing. Than the whole industry went to China, with an exception of a few guys who make 10,000$+ models for museums and a few very rich buyers.

Why Stradevarius is still the best out there ? Same story - semi-mass production, multiplayed by the high costs of manual labor, multiplayed by non-growing demand.

We must remember that in the past centuries a lot of artisans had a choise in between of being a starving peasant, spending all his life in the field, or to be a less starving (but still very poor) artisan. And many were ready to sacrifice many years of apprenticeship in order to get there.

This epoch is gone. Manual labor will never get to its past heights - third world's labor force is mostly unskilled and the first world's labor force is too expensive.

ariel · 11th April 2005, 04:08 PM

Exactly right! The market favors cheap stuff.
I would guess that 99% of amateur martial artists buy cheap but functional replicas made in Taiwan, China etc and do not care about any preservation issues.
A tiny fraction of high-class martial arts afficionados buy custom made blades and even smaller fraction collects the real stuff.
All of them train with wooden/bamboo/plastic sticks being concerned about the safety of both the weapon and the opponent.
Thus, the entire demand for martial arts swords of whatever kind can be satisfied with a single mass-production outfit. Indians can do it now but the Chinese will take over in no time. And that is the end of the tradition, whether we like it or not.
Such an outcome does not make me unhappy since I collect only real stuff. I know that many people will be very sad and I sympathize with them. No offence meant but to each his own.

Mark · 11th April 2005, 04:44 PM

My hope would be that the sword would return as a status symbol, and/or as a symbol of the connection and appreciation of heritage, in those areas where currently it is not so viewed. I think that the status of the keris in Malaysia is a good example of how a smithing tradition can retain relevance in the modern age. And of course, the nihonto enjoys a similar place in the culture of Japan, but that is what started this discussion.

tom hyle · 11th April 2005, 07:11 PM

Actually, I think it is the third world that still has the skills. The problem with the overculture, or why swords are "dead" in it, is that it, as a social tenet, considers them dead, considers closerange weapons barbaric, obsolete (this is not always a logical value judgement; they're not technical/magical enough to be nobsolete to the overculture), and primitive, thus it has a force of disarmament toward edged weapons (in addition to its general force of personal disarmament) that tends to quash the market (growing, living, but certainly not what it was 300, 400 years ago, at least relative to populations....), while it's workers are typically (this is insidious, too, IMHO) and increasingly highly specialized, and while highly skilled in the standard practices of their specialties, are discouraged (by market forces) from imaginativeness and from fanatical craftsmanship, and also, are intrinsically isolated from other skills. And the skills, abilities, and lore (knowledge) of making (using) quality swords is not one of the highly valued/often highly paid feilds in said culture, so it exists, and will exist partly/largely as what FC called a "surrogate activity"; the best work and ideas and discoveries and artisans will intrinsically come out of the hobby feild; the amateurs, who work for love, not money. Thus, for instance, it may well be that the only people building truly quality ship models now are people with sharp knives and tiny saws who love it so much they make the whole thing up out of some wood.

Antonio Cejunior · 12th April 2005, 07:24 AM

Gentlemen,

I feel so happy to be in this Forum.

You all are wonderful people each one very unique.

I threw in this theme and have been following it as close as possible. Not intervening is not lack of interest but viewing and thinking.

I would think that on such topics there are the first issues that are what we call in Portuguese as breaking the stone, which is brainstorming.

Then I guess we should go into analysing the issues, which is actually putting forth different scenarios with different measures as much as possible native to the context.

Later it would be time to sumarize everything by discussing how to come up with ideas for measures or just simply conclude there are no measures to be taken...

Shall we proceed?

Thank you all.

tom hyle · 12th April 2005, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antonio Cejunior

Then I guess we should go into analysing the issues, which is actually putting forth different scenarios with different measures as much as possible native to the context

Thank you all.

This is similar to Ariel's concern about the Chinese making reproduction swords from other cultures, yes? To me, in a way, it's no big deal, because I am interested in swords; and it is not oldness or some impossible ideal of cultural purity, BTW, that defines a real sword, but whether it is a real sword for really using as a sword. I've seen some real crap out of China, but then I've seen quite a lot of good metalwork, too, and I've seen crap from almost everywhere (Germany, believe it or not). Of course, what is a real cultural object is a quite seperable matter. Viewed from the perspective of the sword as a living art form, the problems of removing styles from their native cultures and of mass production are huge, but we're fighting the whole drive of the overculture to internationalize, to economize, and to standardize everything. It's a steep wall to climb there; I climb it in my own way; I salute you for standing at the bottom of it and trying to figure out where you're gonna grab on.

Antonio Cejunior · 14th April 2005, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tom hyle

This is similar to Ariel's concern about the Chinese making reproduction swords from other cultures, yes? To me, in a way, it's no big deal, because I am interested in swords; and it is not oldness or some impossible ideal of cultural purity, BTW, that defines a real sword, but whether it is a real sword for really using as a sword. I've seen some real crap out of China, but then I've seen quite a lot of good metalwork, too, and I've seen crap from almost everywhere (Germany, believe it or not). Of course, what is a real cultural object is a quite seperable matter. Viewed from the perspective of the sword as a living art form, the problems of removing styles from their native cultures and of mass production are huge, but we're fighting the whole drive of the overculture to internationalize, to economize, and to standardize everything. It's a steep wall to climb there; I climb it in my own way; I salute you for standing at the bottom of it and trying to figure out where you're gonna grab on.

Hi Tom,
Actually I am convinced that the region of Long Quan was the craddle to Chinese steel swords.
It would be of great interest to study Chinese swords, not in books but in physical terms, for the jia-gang (sandwiched steel) and other forms existed in China.
Why it has not been kept so alive is something I am still to understand in depth.
However I may found a natural-cultural reason. The Chinese were not expansionists by nature.Their concept of Zhong Guo (The Middle Kingdom) was much more important. Only the Yuan Dynasty and Qin (Ching) Dynasty were respectively Mongol and Manchu, perhaps a reason that the self enclosure did not rely on any paramount legend about the sword.
Overculture, on another aspect of your post, seems to be unstoppable. Uniformization is the word of the day which carries benefits, if we see it as a way (not being carried out) to redistribute wealth to the less developped countries (which is more utopic then doable in a willing way).
But it does have these lost things. The issue in the end is that the overculture is so full of its political righteousness that it is like a tsunami...

Rick · 12th April 2005, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Antonio Cejunior

Gentlemen,

I feel so happy to be in this Forum.

You all are wonderful people each one very unique.

I threw in this theme and have been following it as close as possible. Not intervening is not lack of interest but viewing and thinking.

I would think that on such topics there are the first issues that are what we call in Portuguese as breaking the stone, which is brainstorming.

Then I guess we should go into analysing the issues, which is actually putting forth different scenarios with different measures as much as possible native to the context.

Later it would be time to sumarize everything by discussing how to come up with ideas for measures or just simply conclude there are no measures to be taken...

Shall we proceed?

Thank you all.

Hi Antonio , I think in the case of the S.Philippines we can have no real resurgence until some sort of a solution has been reached in the Christian/Muslim question . I truly fear for the future of my beloved Moro weapons .

Mark · 12th April 2005, 11:39 PM

I was searching posts on the old forum and re-discovered Dan's post about his visit to Lung Som in Aranyik. Among other things, Dan writes:

Quote:

Lung Som is 57 now and a 4th generation sword maker. He pretty much owns the entire village there in Aranyik but he still gets his hands dirty on a regular basis. As a young man he was given a royal commission and when he presented the sword to the king, the king gave him a mandate to keep traditional sword making alive in Thailand. He has made several swords for the royal family and has the pictures to prove it throughout his shop.

So at least Lung Som's shop is working to preserve the Thai swordmaking traditions, under royal patronage. Perhaps this sort of trend will spread, even in non-monarchial countries.

The full thread is here: http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002324.html

Antonio Cejunior · 14th April 2005, 06:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick

Hi Antonio , I think in the case of the S.Philippines we can have no real resurgence until some sort of a solution has been reached in the Christian/Muslim question . I truly fear for the future of my beloved Moro weapons .

Hi Rick,

I fully understand. I myself love those moro keris.
Let us hope positions do not get more intransigent.
Peace should be the most easy thing in the world to achieve.

Rick · 12th April 2005, 03:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rivkin

I used to be very interested in building ship models. While these guys are enormously beautiful, and have a wide appeal, nevertheless - ship modeling died on my own eyes.

First of all it was replaced by mostly machine made models, that looked 50% worse, but costed just 5% or the real thing. Than the whole industry went to China, with an exception of a few guys who make 10,000$+ models for museums and a few very rich buyers.

Why Stradevarius is still the best out there ? Same story - semi-mass production, multiplayed by the high costs of manual labor, multiplayed by non-growing demand.

We must remember that in the past centuries a lot of artisans had a choise in between of being a starving peasant, spending all his life in the field, or to be a less starving (but still very poor) artisan. And many were ready to sacrifice many years of apprenticeship in order to get there.

This epoch is gone. Manual labor will never get to its past heights - third world's labor force is mostly unskilled and the first world's labor force is too expensive.

Hello Rivkin ,
Authentic plank on frame ship modeling is very much alive and well in the U.S.
A friend of mine supports his family quite well by building custom models . Some are in museums , some in corporate hq.'s and in the hands of very wealthy individuals .
Not a dying art here .

12th April 2005, 07:24 AM	#5
Antonio Cejunior Member Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Macau Posts: 294	Brainstorming, Analysis and Measures Gentlemen, I feel so happy to be in this Forum. You all are wonderful people each one very unique. I threw in this theme and have been following it as close as possible. Not intervening is not lack of interest but viewing and thinking. I would think that on such topics there are the first issues that are what we call in Portuguese as breaking the stone, which is brainstorming. Then I guess we should go into analysing the issues, which is actually putting forth different scenarios with different measures as much as possible native to the context. Later it would be time to sumarize everything by discussing how to come up with ideas for measures or just simply conclude there are no measures to be taken... Shall we proceed? Thank you all.

11th April 2005, 06:04 AM	#1
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	I used to be very interested in building ship models. While these guys are enormously beautiful, and have a wide appeal, nevertheless - ship modeling died on my own eyes. First of all it was replaced by mostly machine made models, that looked 50% worse, but costed just 5% or the real thing. Than the whole industry went to China, with an exception of a few guys who make 10,000$+ models for museums and a few very rich buyers. Why Stradevarius is still the best out there ? Same story - semi-mass production, multiplayed by the high costs of manual labor, multiplayed by non-growing demand. We must remember that in the past centuries a lot of artisans had a choise in between of being a starving peasant, spending all his life in the field, or to be a less starving (but still very poor) artisan. And many were ready to sacrifice many years of apprenticeship in order to get there. This epoch is gone. Manual labor will never get to its past heights - third world's labor force is mostly unskilled and the first world's labor force is too expensive.

11th April 2005, 04:08 PM	#2
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	Exactly right! The market favors cheap stuff. I would guess that 99% of amateur martial artists buy cheap but functional replicas made in Taiwan, China etc and do not care about any preservation issues. A tiny fraction of high-class martial arts afficionados buy custom made blades and even smaller fraction collects the real stuff. All of them train with wooden/bamboo/plastic sticks being concerned about the safety of both the weapon and the opponent. Thus, the entire demand for martial arts swords of whatever kind can be satisfied with a single mass-production outfit. Indians can do it now but the Chinese will take over in no time. And that is the end of the tradition, whether we like it or not. Such an outcome does not make me unhappy since I collect only real stuff. I know that many people will be very sad and I sympathize with them. No offence meant but to each his own.

11th April 2005, 04:44 PM	#3
Mark Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 987	My hope would be that the sword would return as a status symbol, and/or as a symbol of the connection and appreciation of heritage, in those areas where currently it is not so viewed. I think that the status of the keris in Malaysia is a good example of how a smithing tradition can retain relevance in the modern age. And of course, the nihonto enjoys a similar place in the culture of Japan, but that is what started this discussion.

11th April 2005, 07:11 PM	#4
tom hyle Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Houston, TX, USA Posts: 1,254	Actually, I think it is the third world that still has the skills. The problem with the overculture, or why swords are "dead" in it, is that it, as a social tenet, considers them dead, considers closerange weapons barbaric, obsolete (this is not always a logical value judgement; they're not technical/magical enough to be nobsolete to the overculture), and primitive, thus it has a force of disarmament toward edged weapons (in addition to its general force of personal disarmament) that tends to quash the market (growing, living, but certainly not what it was 300, 400 years ago, at least relative to populations....), while it's workers are typically (this is insidious, too, IMHO) and increasingly highly specialized, and while highly skilled in the standard practices of their specialties, are discouraged (by market forces) from imaginativeness and from fanatical craftsmanship, and also, are intrinsically isolated from other skills. And the skills, abilities, and lore (knowledge) of making (using) quality swords is not one of the highly valued/often highly paid feilds in said culture, so it exists, and will exist partly/largely as what FC called a "surrogate activity"; the best work and ideas and discoveries and artisans will intrinsically come out of the hobby feild; the amateurs, who work for love, not money. Thus, for instance, it may well be that the only people building truly quality ship models now are people with sharp knives and tiny saws who love it so much they make the whole thing up out of some wood.