Village Carpenter ?

This village carpenter feeling comes from the book with the same name, written before 1937 by Walter Rose. He tells the story of his grandad's and dad's carpentry business, describes his childhood in the workshop with many people working around and at the clients. One of my big pleasures, is the interactions with the client. Especially the client that feels positive about fixing their lovely house, and who knows that a regular maintenance avoids most of the bigs costs that this sort of building can have. There's so much more than just chisels and saws in carpentry. Village carpenters seem to be building a sort of intimacy with people's houses, those people who also have a different type of intimacy with their habitation.

 At the moment, A lovely client gives me some work fixing little things in her house. Cladding, doors that don't fit anymore, reveals, window cills, new barn door, new well-cap... 

It feels like that type of regular maintenance slowly fades away in the mass of the new builds that mostly relies on cement, plastic and rubbery stuff as sacrificial materials. It's not that the quantity of skill involved in replacing those modern bits is less important than with wood, stone and metal.

Putting aside the ecological, cultural and économical point of view, it seems to me that there's much more involvement and interest when you have to shape the replacement piece yourself. Not just order it. When modern construction relies on standards and highly thought repetitivity, traditional carpentry is a constant search for a new solution that fits any of this infitniy of cases that provides a vernacular building.