Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
distributing enterprises, merchants could bring the products of crafts-manship to villages,
and the wandering expert fell on hard times.
All craftsmen, however, whether they operated from the fixed workshop or wandered
abroad, worked with their hands, with occasional help from their feet and legs, or their
mouth, on natural materials. They had only a few machines such as the woodworker's
lathe, the potter's wheel, the smith's bellows, the spinner's wheel, the weaver's loom, and
the rice-pounder for removing husks. Their tools were planes, saws, chisels, knives, and
shears, all of very fine quality, for the swordsmith's superb forging of steel was only the
apex of a whole tradition of skilful manufacture in this metal. All the delicate techniques
had to be instilled into hand and eye from an early age. The apprentice, who might be the
younger son of some other townsman, or a country boy from a large family, would live in
his master's home, and be under a filial obligation to him. The real son of the household
would also learn his father's trade, but his hope would be to take over the workshop when
hisfatherretired.Theapprenticeexpectedtobeabletosetuponhisown.Histrainingperi-
od was normally seven or eight years, and at the end of that time he was expected to work
out of gratitude to his master for a further six or 12 months. After this, he might be given
a share of his master's
clientele
as a foundation for his own business, or have his status as
an independent workman recognised by employers. Alternatively, he might stay on at his
master'sasajourneyman.Histrainingwasnotonlyintheactualtechniquesrequiredinhis
craft, but also in what might be called its lore and its vocabulary, the latter amounting to a
secret language in which the craftsman could communicate, partly with the object of con-
cealing their hard-won knowledge from the public at large, and partly as a code whereby
one trained man might recognize another.
