Richard Sennett | The Craftsman

"Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake." Richard Sennett

Please note: For personal reasons, Richard Sennett hasn't been able to sign the books, which are still numbered and limited. We apologise for any inconvenience. 

Our Choice

Even someone who has never heard the name Richard Sennett or read one of his books is familiar with his thoughts. Sociologists are rarely famous, even if they are better thought of as “public intellectuals,” as in Sennett’s case. He belongs to the small group of thinkers who coin terms that make it into our regular vocabulary and are essential to describe the modern world. In The Craftsman, Sennett looks for solutions to the problems of modern work organization while everyone is still dreaming of the inexhaustible possibilities of the Internet. Sennett returns to major subjects: experience, authority, and autonomy. It also reads prophetically when Sennett points out that we need to radically question ourselves if sustainability and resource-conserving treatment of our planet are not to remain hollow phrases.

For TOC Publishing, from the founding to today, Sennett’s reflections in The Craftsman have been cornerstones of our approach. TOC follows the desire to make books excellent in every way, to value people’s knowledge and skills, but also to give ourselves room: for dedication – an old-fashioned but beautiful word. It is, therefore, no surprise that TOC was founded between printing presses and typesetting boxes.

About the Author

Richard Sennett, born in 1943, founded the New York Institute for the Humanities, taught at New York University and at the London School of Economics, and served as President of the American Council on Work. Over the course of the last five decades, he has written about social life in cities, changes in labor, and social theory. 
Richard Sennett grew up in the Cabrini Green housing project in Chicago. He attended the Julliard School in New York, where he worked with Claus Adam, cellist of the Julliard Quartet. He then studied social relations at Harvard, working with David Riesman and independently with Hannah Arendt. 

About the Typography and Design

For the first time, we include a complete photo gallery in the middle of the book, illustrating all steps of traditional typesetting and printing.
The cover, designed by Susanna Dulkinys, also picks up the idea of the craft. The pattern is based on Drillich, a particularly durable and coarse fabric from which clothing for all crafts is still made today.
The text face is Century Supra, designed by Matthew Butterick, a type designer turned lawyer. ("Supra" is used in legal citations to mean "the source I cited earlier.") It started as a hybrid of Century Expanded (designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1904) and Caledonia, designed by William Addison Dwiggins in 1938 for the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, and commonly used in book design.

About the production and materials
Letterpress printing: Die Lettertypen Berlin on a 1954 Original Heidelberg Cylinder
Book jacket printed on Gmund Cotton Paper 
Paper: 90g Schleipen Werkdruck  
Endpapers: Peyer Surbalin Linea 
Cover linen: Schabert Brillianta 
Set in Century Supra by Matthew Butterick & ATF Franklin Gothic by Mark van Bronkhorst
288 p.

All photographs by Norman Posselt 

ISBN 978-3-949164-07-1

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