Why We Make Things and Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman

"The style of Peter Korn’s lovely, patient and fastidious ode to craft, Why We Make Things and Why It Matters, mirrors the technical precision and style he has used in his career as a furniture maker and teacher."―The New York Times

The pursuit of material things often leaves some essential part of us malnourished. We may find ourselves starved for something more satisfying.


Furniture making, for woodworker Peter Korn, is the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one’s own vision is exactly what generates the authenticity, meaning, and fulfillment for which many of us yearn. In this moving account, Peter Korn explores the nature and rewards of creative practice. We follow his search for meaning as an Ivy-educated child of the middle class who finds employment as a novice carpenter on Nantucket, transitions to self-employment as a designer/maker of fine furniture, takes a turn at teaching and administration at Colorado’s Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and finally founds a school in Maine: the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, an internationally respected, non-profit institution.


This is not a “how-to” book. Korn gets at the why of craft in particular, and the satisfactions of creative work in general, to understand their essential nature. How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves?