Handmade: Creative Focus in the Age of Distraction

"Gary Rogowski leads us gently but surely upon the path to a type of success we may not have previously considered. (Hint: it involves blisters)." --Nick Offerman

In an era when there are countless competing claims on one's attention, how does one find the internal focus to be creative? For master furniture craftsman Gary Rogowski, the answer is in the act of creative work itself. The discipline of working with one's hands to create unnecessarily beautiful things shapes the builder into a more complete human being.

In the tradition of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Shop Class as Soulcraft, Rogowski's Handmade is a profound meditation on the eternal value of manual work, creativity, human fallibility, and the stubborn pursuit of quality work. Rogowski tells his life story of how he became a craftsman and how years of persistent work have taught him patience, resilience, tolerance for failure, and a love of pursuing beauty and mastery for its own sake.

Part autobiography, part guide to creativity, and part guide to living, Handmade is a book for craftspeople, artists, and anyone who seeks clarity, purpose, and creativity in their work -- and it's the perfect antidote to a modern world that thinks human labor is obsolete.

Gary Rogowski is a furniture maker, designer, teacher and author. Since 1974 he has built public and private furniture commissions for clients and galleries nationwide. He was a contributing editor for Fine Woodworking Magazine for fourteen years and has written hundreds of articles and several books, including the best-selling Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery. He is also a playwright, novelist, and essayist. Rogowski has taught and lectured throughout the United States and in the United Kingdom, Iceland, and Germany. In 2015, he gave the first-ever lecture in English at the Ecole Boulle in Paris. Rogowski is the founder and director of The Northwest Woodworking Studio, A School for Woodworkers, in Portland, Oregon. In 2015 he founded a nonprofit organization, Woodworking Ideas Northwest (WIN) to mentor high school students at the bench