Waking Ideas Publishing - Culture & Critics Corner

John Neeman - The Birth of a Tool

Written By Danny Nicolas

John Neeman Tools writes,

We are a small crew of craftsmen from Latvia who use our heritage of craftsmanship handed down through many generations to design and create woodworking tools. Our process, our method and mission, keeps these traditions and crafts alive and well. In this high-tech age, our own traditional craftsmanship is flourishing.

Founded by two craftsmen, John Neeman, a blacksmith whose passion is bladesmithing, and his friend Jacob, a carpenter, with a love for traditional woodworking – this bond has created our company.

We use our hands to produce tools that will live on, to tell their story in the hands of the craftsmen after us. Each tool we make is born with energy and personality – a love and care that will be felt daily by each craftsman, a resonance from the heart of the tool.

Towering factories and belching chimneys are not our game. All our tools are made in our small traditional workshops using equally traditional methods and techniques. Our focus is on uniqueness and quality, not quantity. We want to help people to remember how to use their hands, to relate their own human energy to their tools – to achieve the true joy of creating something from humble beginnings, as we did.

Our traditions of blacksmithing and woodworking walk step by step together. We are uniting our history, traditions and craftsmanship in one ancient craft - tool making.

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When someone asks - “Why? Why are you making hand tools in this high-tech age?” - we usually answer them with a quotation from Mahathma Ghandi:

Its a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God.
-Mahathma Ghandi

These videos show the process of these tools being made:

Given the brilliantly crafted works of art that these appear to be, I feel that they're almost underpriced and John Neeman and his friend will be kept busy as long as they wish to be busy. Given the nature of their business and marketing, I suspect that time period might be as long as they're living and able.















Published on Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 at 12:22 am | Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.











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