> [!NOTE]+ Meta > Author:: Julie Satow > Reference:: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/nyregion/hand-craft-evan-o-hara-janos-papai.html > Date:: 2024 > Tags:: #warp > WeftLinks:: [[Creative value of craft]] [[Historical value of craft]] > Claim:: [[Claim - Makers are creative]] > [!SUMMARY] Summary > Parsons College has a program Closely Crafted to encourage apprentices for languishing crafts. Evan O’Hara is a leather craftsman learning traditional skills from his mentor, Janos Papai, who has decades of experience. As interest in old-fashioned crafts rises, O’Hara and others are working to preserve these skills before they disappear. Their work highlights a shift away from fast fashion towards more sustainable, handmade creations. ### Highlights Mr. O’Hara is a member of a burgeoning generation of “makers” who eschew new technologies like 3-D printing and computer-generated designs and instead embrace old-fashioned handicrafts like leather-making, millinery and lacework. In recent years, as skilled craftsmen like Mr. Papai retire and close their factories, Mr. O’Hara and others like him are working to glean their knowledge before it is lost. Some are using these new skills to open ateliers, or small custom garment-making studios, in pockets like Chinatown and Brooklyn’s Industry City. There has been a “resurgence of interest in craft” since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, said Fiona Dieffenbacher, an associate professor of fashion design at the School of Fashion at Parsons School of Design. In 2022, inspired by Mr. Papai’s mentorship of her husband, Ms. Burris launched a nonprofit, [Closely Crafted](https://www.closelycrafted.org/). “We are in a crisis,” she said. “These crafts, the ability to make things, is on a dramatic decline.” Closely Crafted educates young artisans and next month will launch a pilot apprenticeship program, with the selected applicant working at a multigenerational factory in the garment district, [Tom’s Sons International Pleating](https://internationalpleating.com/). “There is an aging work force nearing retirement and a generation of younger people who were conditioned to want to get a higher education, but not to want to sit at a sewing machine,” Ms. Burris said. “Not everyone can be a designer.” Ms. Dieffenbacher of Parsons said this mind-set is shifting. The school opened its Making Center in 2016 and has reimagined its undergraduate curriculum to better integrate design with making. “We got rid of this hierarchy,” she said, “and are framing making as design.”