BEAKERS, BOOKS, AND BELT SANDERS

Location

This week we’ll meet from 3:30 to 5:30pm at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, at 20 West 44th Street in Manhattan. 

Agenda

Considering the entangled legacies of mechanics’ institutes and public libraries, and the evolution of the General Society in particular, we’ll explore the past and present of education in craft and the skilled trades; the social valuation of such “training;” its perceived relationship to the liberal arts; and its gendered, classed, and racialized dimensions. We’ll also consider how we might reimagine craft and skilled labor as realms of public study and social intelligence. Angelo Vigorito, the Society’s Technical Director and Archivist, will be our primary guide, but we’ll be joined this week by Jennifer Tobias, an artist/librarian who’s studied the history of applied arts education across NYC; and Or Zubalsky, an artist; teacher; CRC advisor; co-organizer of Trade School (2009-19), a barter-based learning community;  and current co-organizer (with Caroline Woolard) of Pollinator, a residency program. 

To Prepare for This Week:

• Please read Wallace Kirsop, “Museums, Lyceums, Athenaeums and Mechanics’ Institutes,” Script & Print 30:4 (2006): 210-22. And just for fun: check out the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 🙂
• Review the General Society for Mechanics and Tradesmen’s website and their Wikipedia page. Don’t miss their Mossman Lock Collection, which we’ll get to explore during our visit! The New York Center for Independent Publishing was (and maybe still is?) housed within the Society, too.
  • Skim through Mechanics’ Magazine, vol. 1 (New York, 1833) and the General Society material included in Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York, a cross-institutional repository that METRO manages for the NYC region. This list of rules for the Apprentices’ Library (1832) and the range of topics addressed in the 1842-3 lecture series help to capture the vibe 🙂 
• Now, please watch Jennifer Tobias, “Working with the Hands: Applied Arts Training in New York City, 1800-2020,” Bard Graduate Center (January 21, 2021) [22:40, plus Q&A], and skim through the accompanying document.
• Please explore, too, Or Zubalsky and Caroline Woolard’s work on Trade School (2009-19). To learn more, read Nana Asfour, “Trade School: Bartering for Skills with OurGoods,” The New Yorker (March 24, 2011) and skim through Woolard’s “How to Start a Trade School” (2012).
  • You can learn more about Or on their website; they’ve highlighted a few projects, like their collective newsletter and circulating digital keys, that exemplify their work on socio-technical infrastructures to support public study. 
• Consider other contemporary spaces for trade and craft study. Check out the embroidery classes at Tatter, glass-blowing at Brooklyn Glass, boat-building at Village Community Boathouse or Brooklyn Boatworks, creative and critical coding and hardware-building at the School for Poetic Computation, woodworking at Bien Hecho or Makeville (I’m intrigued by women’s carpentry classes!). What else? 
• Let’s think, too, about what role libraries have played, do play, and/or could play in this realm. How are libraries’ career readiness and workforce development programs structured? Do libraries offer access to trade training programs? What about craft spaces (like Madison’s Bubbler) and craft supplies (like the BPL’s new Craft Supply Library)? The Goethe Institut has launched a program, “Common Crafts-Common Libraries,” to enhance the presence of craft in libraries.