Sometimes FOCUS requires trying something new. This seems counter-intuitive, but it's not.
Imagine this. It's the turn of the 19th to 20th century. You are traveling to market each spring to sell items you have made in the long cold winter. Every year, every year, your wagon or horsecart gets stuck in the mud on the way to town. The mud becomes a major issue to accomplishing your goal (selling goods). So someone has the bright idea to cover over the muddy road with slats of wood so the vehicles don't get stuck.
Here is a graphic from the 1882 Wide Awake book
of a girl trying "the new circle comb".
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| 1882 Wide Awake Pleasure Book |
Traditionalists like to do things the same way with the same materials. If it was good enough for great-grandma, then that's the way it ought to be done. It's nice when old crafts and folk art are carried on. There are many processes we don't want to see get lost. But I don't turn my nose up at new techniques or materials that might work better to do the same purpose. Sometimes the old materials were toxic. Sometimes they are just not available (whalebone ivory). And so we must change and flex.
Back to the road analogy. Imagine this - instead of driving on asphalt roads, we are still driving on muddy dirt roads. "It was good enough for Great- Grandma!" we say. ;-) But Great Grandma, if she had the options we have today, might be making very different choices!
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| Cover of 1882 Wide Awake Book |
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