Ten seconds of a chisel
Essays · Photographs · Interviews
I write about attention, and the slow work of making things. Mostly I sit still and watch other people do it properly.
Two books, a fortnightly letter to 4,812 readers, and a podcast about people who work in decades.
Spoken at
Start anywhere
Four ways into the archive.
Start wherever the title catches you: everything cross-references everything else.
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Attention
14 postsWhat we look at, for how long, and what it costs to look away.
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Craft
8 postsThe parts of making a thing that nobody photographs.
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Reading
7 postsBooks I keep going back to, and what was still there on the second reading.
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Workshops
6 postsNotes from other people's benches: stone, lead, wood, thatch, lime.
Videos 14 videos
The Desk
Short films made at other people’s benches, and a few at mine.
Latest writing
Newest first, across every subject.
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Attention
The middle is where the work is
Every project has a long, unglamorous stretch after the idea stops being interesting and before the end is in sight. That stretch is the job.
4 min read
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Reading
Reading forty books a year, honestly
How many I finish, how many I abandon, and the rule that changed both numbers.
3 min read
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Working Life
What I got wrong about mornings Members
It is 4:52 in the morning in February and I am standing in a cold kitchen waiting for a kettle, because at five
4 min read
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Workshops
What the stonemason said
Nineteen years on one cathedral, and one sentence that reorganised how I think about a desk.
4 min read
Praise
What readers say
Ada Speight, Reuters
The clearest writing on attention I have read all year. I have started rationing it.
Tomas Rowe, The Frontline Club
Every fortnight it arrives and every fortnight I forward it to someone. Worth the whole inbox.
A reader in Bristol
I came for the photographs and stayed for the sentences.
Marguerite Hale
The only newsletter I have never once thought about unsubscribing from.
Nadia Okonkwo, Nesta
I keep sending the podcast to people who tell me they have no time for podcasts. They all write back.
Elliot Vance, WaterAid
Careful, unhurried, never once padded. It is the only thing in my inbox I read the week it arrives.
Projects
Selected work
None of these started as a project. Each one is a thing I did twice and then could not stop doing.
Commission
The Stoneyard
A year in the stoneyard at Wells, photographed for the cathedral’s own archive.
Community
Field Notes
The fortnightly letter, written since 2019. Four thousand eight hundred readers, no sponsors, no growth plan.
Audio
Making It Slowly
Conversations with people who work in decades, recorded in their workshops rather than a studio.
Programme
The Bench Award
A £2,000 bursary for one apprentice in an endangered craft, funded entirely by the letter.
Podcast 14 episodes
The Uncommon Way
Fortnightly conversations with people who work in decades. In every podcast app worth having.
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The stonemason who works in centuries
with Ellen Marsh · 1h 04m
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A sign painter on getting the R right
with Devon Aluko · 58m
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A luthier on listening to wood
with Tomás Bergh · 1h 11m
Listen on
Photographs
Benches, hands and weather
Field Notes