The Knife Maker
Made By Hand is a short film series by Brooklyn’s Bureau of Common Goods that explores and celebrates the handmade. The second episode tells the story of Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn, who turned his back on writing to become a knife maker. Deeply thoughtful – and at times painfully honest – Joel talks about what it means to make something by hand in an age of mass production.
“So you go into the shop and you cut yourself, burn yourself, fuck stuff up, you ruin something you worked on for three weeks and you never make that mistake again. So this is how I learned… It takes buckets of blood and sweat. “
– Joel Bukiewicz
His notion of creativity is not some rarified indulgence, but instead a dedication; the act of investing time and energy into physically making something. This idea of patience, care and sheer grit, focused for hours onto a single object, is what separates it from something bolted together by a robot on a factory assembly line.
If you enjoy this film, be sure to check out the first film from the series, in which they visit Breuckelen Distilling; Brooklyn’s first post-Prohibition gin distillery.
– Via kottke.org