That's a really nice piece and he's right about all of it. I have two hobbies, bicycles and woodworking. In both cases, my eye is drawn to those "inefficient" details and it's what I love most about both of them.
With bicycles, it's the consistency of a fillet braze from someone who has spent decades honing their craft. It's the lugged frames with their sharp points, transitions and painted outlines and accents that tell the story of someone who actually laid their hands on the frame during its production and cared about the aesthetics of the outcome, even in areas where most people may not even look, such as under the top tube or bottom brackets. Or, in the case of custom bikes, the choice of tubing and how its diameter and thickness were taken into account with the rider's size, weight and preferred riding style to make a bike that becomes more an extension of the body rather than a vehicle atop which the body sits and controls. With woodworking, you can see this same beauty in the "imperfections" and small details in a piece of furniture. The surface marks left by a hand plane, a rasp or a mallet can not be reproduced by a "perfect" machine and you know someone spent time and poured sweat into the production of the piece, using their eye as the guide instead of a formula. You can see it in a dovetail that has a tiny gap which exposes that no automated machine cut the pins and tails. It can be found in how the grain of multiple boards in a glue-up are aligned or alternating to make a pleasing pattern or fluid pattern. In both of these areas, beauty extends beyond the immediately visible and into the experience; exposed over time through working on, riding and using the end product. These are all indications that somebody took pride in their work and that they weren't just trying to increase margins with mechanized efficiency but actually care not just about the object being made but about the experience of those who will continue to use it for years and decades in the future. On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 5:44 PM John Rinker <jwrin...@gmail.com> wrote: > That was a fun read. Thanks, Eric! I totally align with the idea that > making functional things beautiful can make the experience of using them so > much more pleasurable. > > Cheers, John > > On Wednesday, October 4, 2023 at 8:02:46 AM UTC-7 Eric Marth wrote: > >> Hi everyone — I was going through some of my many stacks of Riv ephemera >> and found this short article written by Grant and published in the August, >> 1999 issue of Bicycling magazine. >> >> Enjoy! >> > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "RBW Owners Bunch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/0d11dffc-c252-4852-a8bb-4f9b7e3e2e15n%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/0d11dffc-c252-4852-a8bb-4f9b7e3e2e15n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- Ted Wood < ted.l.w...@gmail.com > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/CANCvShqyzXjvdC5pLTxQBiRHOwRs-YCiV9eMKm1FZm3AW-NqMg%40mail.gmail.com.
