Inner Workings

The end of year scramble is on - clients would like to have their gifts of new and refurbished books in time for giving and displaying and I want to finish up lingering projects and start fresh in the new year. The Vinegar Hill WorkShed is packed with materials, tools and works in progress. Seems like no matter what brilliant organizational scheme I come up with, there's never enough room for all the stuff.

The state of the WorkShed is embarrassing when I think about inviting a customer or friend inside. No horizonal surface is unoccupied-including the couch and chair-and there are cobwebs. Tools and materials all over the place, and scraps, stuff that tidy folk would throw away, but I retain for some fantastic future project yet undreamed. Fact is, the WorkShed is an intensely private place. If pressed to tell, I couldn't say where to find that No. 2 bone folder, but in my own work-rhythm, I'd surely locate it by touch be it under or between a stack of torn leaves on the bench or balanced on the edge of the finishing press.

When I ride my bicycle, I feel the machine becomes a part, an extension of my body. When I'm in my Shed, I sense that I become a part of it, intimately related to the history and potential of all of its other contents. Paper, tools, scrap and all.