You will find something more in wood than in books. Trees…will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. —St. Bernard of Clairvaux

He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist. —St. Francis of Assisi

Longtime readers will know that my family is my everything. Small but mighty, though four individuals, we are one unified front. My mother, father, and brother push me, they guard me, they guide me, and they lead me.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the love of my mother, the kindness of my father, and the joy of my brother constitute my who, my what, my how, and my why.

Indeed, alongside my faith and friends, my family constitutes one of those three pillars that form the foundation of my life. A stool provides a useful image and powerful metaphor:

Each leg stands singular and tall and strong.

And yet, in their numbers rest their strength:

One is insufficient.

Two is unsteady.

Three joined together make up a distinct, robust whole.

Sounds familiar, no? As they say, blood runs thicker than water.

I mention all this because of my brother John’s new venture: Cannery Camp.

In his words:

[T]he story of Cannery Camp begins back in the 1950s in a wood shop in the heart of Queens, NY. 

My grandfather was the owner and operator of Thomas J. White Jr. & Co. Wood and Metal Patterns, a workshop dedicated to producing wood and metal patterns for industrial applications such as ship propellers and engine gears.

I never had the privilege of meeting my grandfather, he died long before I was born. For a long time I only knew his memory through stories, pictures, and old tools. A lot of old tools.

That all changed about two years ago when I quit my consulting career to chase down a lifelong dream of woodworking professionally. The stories, pictures, and tools that my grandfather had left behind took on new life. I could smell the sawdust in the pictures, I could appreciate the complexities of his craft, and I could quite literally use the same tools he had held so many years before. 

Leaving behind a “steady corporate career” to pursue a passion like woodworking is a scary thing, but I always found serenity because, as Hank Williams Jr. would say, I was just carrying on an “ol’ family tradition.”

Cannery Camp is proud of and committed to this tradition.

We believe in the tradition of true furniture making, building by hand in a workshop as opposed to programming computerized machines in a factory.

We believe in the tradition of using real American hardwoods that have been sustainably forested, as opposed to unnatural, engineered materials like plywood.

Finally, we believe in the tradition of the American craftsman, a tradition around which my grandfather and so many others built a life.

I hope one of our handmade pieces finds its way from our shop in Brooklyn, NY into your home, and I hope it adds a distinct accent with its natural character and personal story.

Though close siblings, our work takes very different forms: John thrives with his hands and I with my words. He is the engineer to my thinker, the quant to my poet.

And so, using the tools I have been given, I craft this edition of White Noise in honor of my brother and my grandfather before him.

Made with words and not wood, more mental labor than manual, a Verbal Portrait is a specific, hyper-detailed description of the reality an individual sees in front of him/her. The below excerpt sheds a bit more light on this idiosyncratic format:

From vivid descriptions of my most minute observations, I attempted to create a coherent verbal “image.” Like the pointillistic brushstrokes of Seurat, my words would obfuscate if read individually, but render clarity when taken as a whole. Hence, the idea of verbal portraiture was born.

I scrawled the below on a wrinkled scrap of paper during the dog days of New York’s summer. Transfixed while watching him measure twice and cut once, I sought to capture the ethos of John’s wood shop.

Verbal Portrait of a Woodworker

The sun’s sharp morning rays pierced the mammoth warehouse’s windows. Like a row of oversized magnifying glasses, their panes focused the light as it wound its way through the whirling, dust-filled air. From the outside, there seemed nothing fancy or remarkable about the brick structure; the magic was what happened inside.

The shop was far cry from the cubicle he once inhabited. It was more full of motion, action, life—wood and dust and stain and stank and sweat together all mixed as sensory melange. The air seemed to have a sonic, haptic texture one could hear and taste and touch in this old building turned small workshop.

What he did was messy, shower-inducing stuff. Unlike most, his uniform was dirty before his workday began. Laminate, paint, and stains all splayed over old, hard-worn flannel, frayed jeans, and broken-in boots. If you squinted, you could see traces of Paul Bunyan in him.

He ran his hands over the uneven lumber. From afar it looked like he was massaging the wood, rather he was feeling for every last knot and imperfection as though a blind man reading braille.

Soon each notch and pockmark would be gone. During long hours at work he had learned that patience can smooth away the most stubborn of difficulties. Grit is a hell of a sandpaper.

His sinews and ligaments danced across each forearm as he hacked, sawed, sanded, sharpened, stained, lacquered, and dried. Like Michelangelo with his marble, so too White with his wood. Or so he hoped with every plank planed, gash whittled, and curled shaving chiseled.

His touch was light and precise, but his body was tense. The simplicity of his craft belied how seriously he took it. He was man on mission pursuing dream and honoring tradition. What they called him—woodworker—always struck him as funny. Having worked in many a shop with many a tool, he often thought it difficult to discern which was working the other. It was sheer test of wills—one animate, the other not.

It was hard work, this. Like blood on gauze, passion and love seeped into his work. In this way, each stool had a story. There was a metaphor in how he worked the wood—art imitates life and all that.

Each piece was unique. This made it special. If he wasn’t careful, he would ruin it. Without proper treatment, it would deteriorate beyond all recognition. It was meaningful and precious and rare.

At twilight, the frenzy died down and the staccato rhythm went mute. Like a top losing its spin, the heartfelt, tightly-wound process slowly unraveled into more relaxed evening. He shut the door, fiddled with the lock, and inserted the paint-stained key just so.

As he sat in his truck, he let out a sigh and rubbed his red-tinged eyes. Yet another hard-won day.

This craftsman’s path wasn’t the easy one, but it was the right one. That much he knew for sure.

He thought to himself:

It's not much, but it's honest.

It's not easy, but it's simple.

It's not labor, but it's love.

And that's a lot more than can be said for most people.

Be the first to hear new White Noise. Subscribe to my free, weekly newsletter below!