"Craftsmanship is a deeply rooted heritage of humanity that must be responsibly nurtured."

Furniture crafting as a cultural technique

The work of our own hands is one of the most fundamental ways we as humans engage with the world. Craftsmanship is its cultural distillation.

Handcraft makes visible that the essence isn't canonical knowledge - the content of books - but what emerges from the interplay of eye and hand, from a feel for material, tools, and proportion. This experiental knowledge, passed down across generations, is increasingly marginalised by a prevailing logic of utility and output. What is lost when it disappears?

What we lose matters: familiarity with a foundational technique of our culture — but also a path to experiencing agency and self-efficacy, and an understanding of what good work can mean. As a third-generation cabinetmaker, these questions are quite immediate for me. Since 2020, Open Furniture Culture has evolved from these questions.

What is Open Furniture Culture?

Open Furniture Culture is an initiative in appreciation of more than 3500 years of furniture making, its techniques, tools and knowledge. It is intended to contribute to the preservation and open proliferation of traditional woodworking knowledge.

It particularly considers the state of craftmanship and furniture making in the 21st century and paths into the future.

Open Furniture Culture connects people with different perspectives on this topic - and is equally a project space, document archive, knowledge pool and a collection of designs, drawings and plans.

Values

Woodworking is a cultural technique that has been passed down through many generations. Both in terms of technique and style, it is firmly based on knowledge sharing.

An increasingly important aspect of contemporary furniture culture is sharing product designs and build them independently in local craft tradition, using regionally sourced raw materials.

Thus Open Furniture Culture also contributes to an alternative approach to industrial serial production that values traditional crafts and helps preserving craftmanship techniques and cultural heritage.

What it is not

It's explicitely not a complement to movements like Open Design Furniture, Open CNC Furniture or marketplaces like Thingiverse.

The primary goal of these projects is to provide designs for manufacturing objects via computer-aided equipment like CNC mills or generative techniques (3D printing, laser sintering).

While these are approaches in their own right, their principal objective is to overcome the knowledge and manual mastery of traditional craft by technology.

Today is the good old time of tomorrow: A witty pun by Bavarian icon Karl Valentin, who was a carpenter himself.

Looking at thoughtfully handcrafted furniture from centuries past, it becomes obvious that their quality has a reason.

Emphasizing key elements - such as century-proven joining techniques as well as a thoughtfully decent style beyond extroverted design - sets the foundation for the antiques of tomorrow, lasting for generations.

Don't hesitate to contact me if you want to learn more: mail@schatzl.studio