Objects Born, Not Made

Almost 20 years ago I got lucky and spent a few months working in San Francisco. I was very junior, did not know much about anything. The local MD recommended me a book. The Unknown Craftsman by Soetsu Yanagi, adapted by Bernard Leach.

I did not read it right away. But when I did, it stuck.

The book is basically the manifesto behind the Mingei movement. An appeal to simple aesthetics, basic form, the value of handmade objects. Yanagi and his long-time friend Bernard Leach talk about “objects born, not made.” Things that emerge from repetition and care, not from trying to impress.

It is a challenge to modern ideals of materialistic beauty. And it is a wonderful starting point if you want to understand Japanese craft philosophy. There is also a nice reading list on Sentomono’s blog if you want to go deeper.

I still think about this a lot. About what craftsmanship is. In software, in engineering, in more aesthetic design topics. The best code I have seen has that same quality. Not clever, not showy. It just works. As if it was born, not forced.

Recently this came back in a very different way.

My son Noah wanted a fitness watch. Fair enough. But something about it bugged me. A watch tracks fitness. It does not create it. So instead of just buying the thing, I tried to redirect him toward actual fitness.

This story has many turns. But we ended up agreeing that he will get a custom surfboard from Santosha Surf.

We met with the shapers a few days ago. Very cool guys. We asked them if we could be involved in the process, learn the craft of shaping. They said they had never done this before but they had been thinking about it a lot and thought it was a super cool idea.

So now we have a project.

We need to plan this properly. How we document everything, what we have to learn, how we can showcase it. I am still figuring out the details:

• learn the fundamentals, materials, tools, foam blanks, templates
• document every session, photos, notes, what went wrong
• understand the shaper’s eye, how they see a board inside a blank
• share the journey, here and maybe in other formats too

But the most important thing for me is this: we are learning a craft. And this craft is not something that AI can take away. Ever.

I spend most of my time in software. I build products, I write code, I think in systems. I watch AI get better at all of these things every day.

But standing in that shaping bay, talking to people who read waves and translate them into curves with their hands, I felt something different. The knowledge is in the body. It is in the hours. It is in the failures that teach your hands what your mind cannot explain.

Yanagi understood this almost a century ago.

I am excited to see what Noah and I build together. Not just a board. A shared experience of making something with our hands.

More updates to come.

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