“The most interesting thing about wood for me is that it has a grain, as people do. That is, each piece of wood has a personality and, as we know from our relationships with people—trying to work with them, live with them—personality could almost be defined by the way resistance (to what I want) is expressed in it. In wood the recalcitrance of the grain, little whorls and eddies like cowlicks that won’t be combed down, the fixed expressions of its accustomed shape, give each piece of wood its own face. Resistance is only resistance, however, in reaction to a force brought to bear on it—there would be no resistance if I weren’t there chopping away with chisel and mallet. Everyone is easy to get along with if you let him have his own way, but there is no relationship without difficulties. In like manner the wood resists me, it resists my plans for it, and it does so in a way that is particular to it, so that the relationship is always personal.”

—Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft (London: Arkana, 1986), 87.