The craftsmanship revival we kept predicting might finally be real

In 2019, I published a book whose English title would be something like From Graft to Craft. I argued that craftsmanship isn’t a sector but a model of work that could in principle apply to any job. The distinction I built the book around was between graft (fragmented, deskilled, industrialized toil) and craft (a finished piece of work you can put your name to). To work as a craftsperson means autonomy, responsibility, creativity, and mastery of a result you can be proud of. A developer, a nurse or a consultant should all be able to work that way. Instead, too many of us are handed the deskilled version and feel alienated or bored. A fascination that never quite matched reality For years, the story of graduate-degree holders walking away from bullshit jobs to become bakers, cheesemakers, brewers, restaurateurs kept coming back in the media. These reinventions fascinate everyone, journalists first of all, forever hunting for seductive stories about rediscovered meaning, hands deep in the grease. But our collective fascination always said more than the phenomenon warranted. The neoartisans were, statistically, a rounding error, a marginal trend inflated into a movement because it fla…