Allen Rinne - Making a Life

Working by Hand and Discovering the Life You Are Meant to Live

PHOTOGRAPHS BY RINNE ALLEN

ARTISAN | NEW YORK

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Annie Dillard

For Chris, Ben, Mom, Dad, Arthur, Jeff, Gina, Auntie Lee, and Uncle Elliottfor believing in this idea and in me, always

Contents

In the summer of 2012, I attended the Yale Publishing Course, a one-week professional workshop on the schools campus in New Haven, Connecticut. At the time, I had already been working in the book industry for more than two decades and was the publishing director for STC Craft / Melanie Falick Books, an imprint of the New York publishing house Abrams. In this role, I focused on subjects I enjoyed and valued, such as knitting, sewing, quilting, printing, pottery, and other forms of creativity. I took great pride in my work and, having written five books myself, was in the somewhat unique position of genuinely understanding many of the challenges my authors faced when transforming the seed of an idea into a physical object to present to the world.

When I heard about the Yale program, which was billed as five days of lectures and discussions on the future of book publishing in the new global and digital landscape, I was intrigued. Once I arrived, however, I quickly realized that the emphasis would be more on the financial side of the business than the creative, leaving me feeling a bit like a square peg in a round hole.

Late one afternoon, I was relieved when Nigel Holmes entered our amphitheater-style classroom and gave an energetic presentation about his career as a graphic designer, art director, and illustrator. Holmes is internationally renowned for his work in information graphics (distilling complex data and ideas into appealing, easy-to-understand visual forms), and he began and ended his lecture by holding up a simple wooden boat that he had carved for his grandson. With that small handmade object, he reminded us to never let the lure of technology or business overshadow the value we place on working with our own hands. I left the classroom, walked straight to the bathroom, looked down at my hands, and started to cry.

Before going to sleep that evening, I wrote an email to Nigel to thank him. Early the next morning, I was happy to wake to a response:

What a nice message... thank you very much for taking the time to write (and at such a late hour!). Like you, I feel a bit lost at conferences such as this one, and I know that I should really attend all the sessions as a participant (not as a nervous presenter, just waiting for the one before mine to end), but I have generally gone through life using intuition more than focused reasoning, and it seems to have supported me so far. I very much like the feel of the books I can see on your site... you seem to be making beautiful books that encourage the kind of lifestyle that I was advocating last night: Technology is a great tool, but it will never be a substitute for human work and ideas. Keep looking at your hands.

Lavender at Chateau Dumas (see page 134).

Just shy of three years later, I left my full-time job at Abrams without a definitive plan for what I would do next, feeling sure I was making the right decisionand also excited and a little nervous. Looking back now, I realize that it was in the bathroom at Yale, after Nigels lecture, that I began to accept that it was time for me to move on professionally. I was in tears because he had broken through the mental facade I had built to protect myself from confronting the scary reality that I was in a job that had, for a long time, been ideal but that would not suit me much longer. Although I was making a good living, I was no longer making a good life. I was so caught up in emails, deadlines, profit-and-loss statements, sales reports, social media stats, and worries about being financially prepared for retirement that I wasnt enjoying the present. Although I was publishing books about creativity, personally, I felt stuckstressed and disconnected from my own dreams and values. I knew that if I didnt make a change, I would come to regret it.

My ideas for the future were vague: Aside from part-time freelance work I had lined up to cover bills, a two-week intensive graphic design course that Id been talking about enrolling in for years, some family obligations, and an intention to spend more time in the garden, I didnt know what I wanted to do next. I just knew that I needed time to be quiet and let my mind wander. I recognized that after working for fifteen years within a corporate structure, I needed to set myself free of certain conventional dialogues about what was and wasnt possible, plausible, dreamable, so that instead of feeling trapped, I could reignite my passion and identify the opportunities that I knew had to exist but that I could not yet see.

During an idyllic visit to Chateau Dumas for two weeks of making, I felt I was exactly where I was meant to be. In my bedroom each evening, I would open the windows and shutters to welcome the breeze, and in the morning, I would close them to block out the days heat, a simple ritual that contributed to my sense of connection and belonging.

Not surprisingly, given the calm and satisfaction that handwork brings mea realization I came to when I became an avid knitter in my twenties (and then quickly decided to meld my interest in it with my burgeoning career in publishing)over the next few months, I spent many hours making things. Most of my endeavors were easy and small but required that I try something new. I did some shibori dyeing with indigo, carved stamps, lattice-laced my sneakers, and dyed socks with madder root. I learned to use a strap cutter and a beveler to make leather bracelets, and I inserted my first zipper when I hand-stitched a pencil case out of repurposed Tyvek. Together with a woodworker friend, I built a bed swing for my porch. To my surprise, the most enlightening project was the simplest and seemingly most mundane: a box I created by strategically folding an ordinary piece of paper. Transforming that commonplace material, in just a few minutes, into a receptacle in which I could store something felt magical. It was so basicalmost primal. It was a skill that, like making my own clothing and growing my own vegetables, could have helped me survive if I had lived a very long time ago. In that box, I might have safeguarded seeds, small tools, or precious stones.

As I held my box in my hands, I realized that, in a circuitous way, during the last few months, I had been attempting to connect to my own survival. Even though I didnt need to make my own clothing, boxes, or bedor much of anythingto stay alive, I needed that bond to feel whole, competent and grounded, connected to my heart and soul, to my community, to my ancestors, and to the natural world around me. And, as a result of giving myself time to wander and to make, I no longer felt lost: I understood myself better and had found a new course. For starters, I would meld my personal and professional interests by writing another book of my own, one investigating and celebrating the role making by hand can play in making a good life. As an editor, I always told prospective authors that I was interested in the ideas that were bubbling out of themthe books that they couldnt imagine