Mary May

10 Things You Can Count on When Hiring a Professional Craftsperson

Out of the corner of my eye, there was something long and large rolling off our porch roof. The thud when it hit the ground made me shudder.  I was relieved when it was only a few strips of shingles, but I knew our impending roof repair could not be put off any longer.

New roofs are costly and can be messy.  Through it all, the experience with Bill Cahill and the Cahill Contracting team reminded me how experiences with good contractors have a lot in common with experiences you can expect from a professional craftsperson.

1. They come with a recommendation from others in the construction business.  If you are looking for a craftsperson or a subcontractor to help you with a home improvement, ask builders about whom they work with and why.  The “why” is just as important as the name because selecting a craftsperson should be the beginning of a relationship which starts with their approach to your job and continues with your confidence in the work they have created for you.  Unlike the phone book or internet, builders understand the importance of relationship when choosing their preferred craftspeople.
2. When you call, the person who answers cares about your business.  Whether it is the craftsperson you speak with or a member of their team, you want to have the sense they are confident in their company and care about your business whether you ultimately use them or not.
3. Before giving a quote, they make certain they understand the job.  Almost all good professionals can offer a rough estimate over the phone, but before giving you a quote, craftspeople will take the time to visit the job site and/or carefully go over the project details before providing an estimate upon which you can base a realistic budget.
4. They want to give you what you need and not just what they can get you to pay.  In the case of our roof, we were very interested in getting a metal roof for durability and their potential to add solar panels.  I expressed our desire to Bill Cahill, who was happy to price and place a metal roof for us, but first and foremost wanted us to understand the different installation methods for metal roofs. To replace our asphalt roof with a metal roof which met our longevity expectations could cost almost three times more and as he pointed out, the trees around our house limit the visibility of our roof.  I knew we were dealing with an unusual contractor when he was less interested in taking our money and more interested in getting us the best roof for our needs.
5. They encourage you to check out examples of their work.  Craftspeople stand behind their work and are happy to tell you where it can be seen around town.  Driving around looking at Cahill’s different roofs not only gave me the chance to see their work but also to speak with any homeowners I encountered while driving around.
6. They answer their phone and return calls when you leave a message.  If they are not available before the job has been completed, you can bet they will not be available after the job is done.  Good craftspeople want to hear from you and answer your questions.  This is not license to stalk them, but as long as you are respectful of their time, professional craftspeople will be respectful with yours.
7. They show up when they say they will.   When working with a craftsperson, there are multiple schedules including yours, theirs, and even the project’s schedule.  Things happen and schedules can shift, but as long as you hold up your end, you can count on a  professional to hold up theirs or give you notice and reasoning why the schedule needs to be changed.
8. They leave the work site better than when they found it.  Good craftspeople and subcontractors do not just leave your house with a new roof or piece of craftsmanship, they want you to see it in its best light so do not be surprised to find them going the extra distance to clean the job site, picking up trash, and even sweeping or raking.
9. There are no surprises with the bill. Once you have been given the service offered by the previous eight points, paying a craftsperson’s bill feels more like making an investment than turning over dollars. By this point, you have likely realized your craftsperson is not just in it for the money, but also for the opportunity to share their craft.  Their bill is the same as their initial quote or you understand why the costs have changed.
10. The relationship does not end with your payment. Craftspeople cared about your job when they were working on it, and still care after the job is finished.  They know that their work is their best advertising.  If there is a question, problem, or even a wonderful realization as their work lives in or on your home, they want you to call them. In fact, quality craftspeople stand behind their labor for their lifetimes.

Have you worked with craftspeople who offered these levels of service?  What were the things you noticed? Share their names because I would love to interview and profile them.

Why Carving Craftsmanship Matters: Mary May with Cornerstone Creations

Mary May, with Cornerstone Creations LLC, actively seeks wood and stone carving commissions from homeowners, designers, churches, preservationists, and furniture builders. She blogs about carving, sells instructional DVD’s, travels the country leading wood carving workshops, and develops plans for a subscription based on-line carving school. She does this because hand carving is her profession, and she fears it is on the brink of extinction as CNC routers are able to cut, carve, and etch at a speed and price which a human cannot deliver.   For a consumer, only focused on price and availability, the conversion from the hand made to the computer/machine is called progress, but is it?  Is the loss of a trade the same as the loss of an old technology for a cheaper newer one or are we risking the loss of something the hand and custom crafted offer which technology cannot replace?  Would the ancient cathedral carvings Mary saw backpacking across Europe 20 years ago have been as inspiring if they were carved by machines and not by hand?

It excites me to find a group of people interested in learning to carve, knowing that without their interest, carving could be a dying art.   Mary May

Mary saw something in those ancient carvings, something which inspired her to try and create such beautiful things, and something which stayed with her until she committed to a wood carving class as soon as she returned to Minneapolis. She is not alone.  Many people are moved by the hand crafted and perceive a difference between them and the machine made, even if they are not able to explain the difference they sense.

Architect, builder, and author, Christopher Alexander, believes he can explain the difference.  In his 2006 acceptance speech for the Congress of the New Urbanism’s Athena Award, he challenges the popular erector set myth that the pieces make the whole:  follow the instructions, put together these pieces, and you will get the perfect picture on the box.  Putting pieces together creates something, but as Alexander points out, the results are incomplete and soulless because the myth’s key assumption misses a natural truth: pieces such as arms, legs, eyes, and even cells do not make the whole, a whole is the complete person within which the pieces make sense.

Eighty percent of my students are retired engineers who have spent their professional lives doing precise work with their minds and now want to do precise work with their hands.  I love to challenge them by asking them to carve down “about” 1/8 inch. This drives an engineer crazy who is ready and eager to measure with their micrometers and depth gauges. It causes them to reach out of their locked-in precision thinking.

Like all craftspeople, Mary sees in three dimensions so her hands can work in multiple dimensions. She does not study the pattern to visualize how its pieces fit together so she can write a program for a machine to do the work.  She notices the whole pattern, the layers within it, the spaces which are full, the spaces which are empty, and how it all relates together so her hands and carving tools can unfold each piece out of the whole.  She sees “the complete person within which the pieces make sense” and the response by the humans who see her work is to connect with that humanity, forgive its imperfections, and acknowledge its individuality.

Carvers quickly come to understand that when everything stands out, nothing does.

Machines and their developers, programmers, or operators learn from experiences, issues, and even on-line comments.  Version 3.0 corrects previous mistakes, but only to dismiss 2.8.3  and the other previous versions as obsolete, leaving those with anything but the latest version feeling inadequate and in need of replacement.

Craftspeople learn from conversations with their product installers and users, feedback from their hands, as well as experiences they have acquired on their own and from masters under which they have apprenticed. Apprenticeships for craftspeople are as essential as medical school is for surgeons because they are safe places to learn the fundamentals, carry on what makes sense, and identify one’s own unique gifts. When Mary removes shavings and chips on her carvings, she adds generations of experiences, traditions, and relationship.

To own something Mary May has carved not only caries her signature style, but all of the lessons she has learned from her experiences to date and the experiences of all those who have guided her along the way including her drawing teacher who introduced the idea of space between objects; her first carving teacher  Konstantinos Papadakis -the master carver who returned her Minneapolis phone call for classes and then took her under his wing for three years; his instructors at the Woodcarving Studio of Theofilos Andravidiotis who shared their understanding of Byzantine carving with him and later with Mary during a three month apprenticeship in Athens, Greece; the instructors at London’s City Guild and Arts College with whom she was able to further her knowledge of classical European carving; the workshop in Cambridge, England where she had an opportunity to help carve the Corinthian capitals on the stage at the historic Globe Theater; and even the professional English framer under which she carved frames or the carving team with which she worked in Malaysia creating wood and stone carvings for a hotel magnate’s European mansion.

The work she creates today can be as inspiring and enduring as ancient carvings because the new incorporates the experiences of the tradition in a manner which neither diminishes its predecessors or fears its successors.  This is why high end furniture reproducers as well as many building and furniture restorers will only use a hand carver such as Mary, because her work, done in the same way of the original, does not seek to compete, improve, or mimic but to relate with the original like a family member.

In his response to a question at the end of his Berkeley lecture posted on Feb. 12, 2012, Christopher Alexander notes that while producers produce for production sake, makers must constantly consider possibilities and ask questions such as which effort “will bring more life or which would be a better gift for my maker.” The answers he points out are empirical, but they must be answered with an honestly which moves past stereotypes: an honesty which computers can never obtain, no matter how fact based and programmed they are.  In much the same way a frequented door knob is warmed and shaped after being touched by human hands, touching and shaping a hand carving certainly brings more life to the final product than moving it along a conveyor belt.  The honesty of which Alexander speaks recognizes this connection may sound corny or difficult to measure but none the less real.   Just as real and possibly even more challenging to explain past stereotypes is the making of space for that which has been created to come to life.

The cozy workshop Mary’s husband Stephen built for her behind their John’s Island home is full of roaring lions, angelic smiles, religious icons, and the first of four faces she is carving for keystones at a Doctor’s new home.  The keystones are of the same face and yet carved separately each will uniquely come to life as the pupils unfold – an experience she loves but admits can also be a little disturbing.  Sometimes the moment is magical like when her carving of two dolphins playing in curling waves was set into place and the water started flowing. Commissioned by a couple who wanted a fountain to capture their love of dolphins, Mary developed the design, created a scaled model for approval, and then carved into 8 feet of limestone with everything from large power tools to small chisels.  She had carefully considered and shaped the sculpture’s finest details, but it was not until the first drops of water fell into place and the stone shimmered to life that she understood what she and the stone had created together.

Carving a crucifix for a local church was so humbling.  I had to get away and finish it in a remote cottage in the mountains of NC to fully concentrate on the sculpture, and not be distracted.

It is this willingness to dig deep and push for greater life, beauty, and human connection in the making of things which would be lost if Mary May and all true craftsmen were replaced by computers or machines. She unabashedly acknowledges that she constantly seeks to choose the course of her life and her chisels to make a better gift for her maker. As she shares her gratitude about receiving a gift she “intends to use and not lose,” one only can hope that our culture starts to feel the same about her craft.