> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: Dirk van Bekkum > Reference:: van Bekkum, Dirck. "Beauty and Grace in Making Artifacts: An Anthropological Gaze Upon Crafting in the World." _Crafting in the World: Materiality in the Making_. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. 99-123. > Date:: 2025 > Tags:: #warp > WeftLinks:: [[Psychological value of craft]] > Claim:: [[Claim - Craft improves well-being]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > Making beautiful things increased well-being ### Highlights *Tao is eternal and not to be spoken of in words (Lao Tzu, sixthcentury BC China)* *Art without Craft is Cruelty (John Ruskin, nineteenth-century UK)* crafting in the world in this chapter denotes everyday human processes of making 'things', such as manufacturing a dinner table, model building, weaving a scarf, painting a painting and crafting a standing lamp *Style, Grace and Information in Primitive Art* (1967). Grace was defined as pleasurable, temporary, knowing (conscious) and feelings (unconscious) of being in the world by an awareness of being co-dependent with all living systems (Bateson 1987/1972, 1991; Bateson studied motor patterns in partridges, dolphins and sea otters and granted them with aesthetic experiences (Welsch 2004). Ellen Dissanayake she shares the idea that making (tools, utensils, masks, etc.) and doing (playing, singing, dancing) art is targeted at creating beauty and feelings of well-being. Levi-Strauss' work on 'savage thinking' as untamed thought, which considers the metaphor of the bricoleur (tinkerer) as a systematic improviser. The bricoleur will use things that are readily available in order to craft, in contrast to 'civilised' scientific, measured and systematic thought used in order to provide the optical outcome (1962a). He equates our minds-bodies-hearts 'crafting the world', with the 'mental crafting' of stories and mythologies. During my interactions with Feisal, I saw how the decision process, the designing and crafting of the incense burner, temporarily restored his distorted connection with reality, and mitigated his desperate feelings that accompanyed his psychosis. Every time Feisal immersed himself in crafting his puja bowl, his psychotic experiences disappeared. At his release from our hospital, he told me that his little puja bowl would get a spot beside his bed next to the photo of his grandmother and deceased grandfather. motor skills, crafting and perceiving something aesthetic in making artifacts release 'happy chemicals', such as endorphins (Young [1996;](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/352115205/#page-11-5) Tomohiro and Saki [2013)](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/352115205/#page-9-3) and crafting impulse (ACI) (Van Bekkum [1994)](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/352115205/#page-11-1) Young, R. P. (1996). The acute effects of exercise on mood state. *Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 40* (2), 123–141.