It’s Simple Things That Stir the Soul

Everyday things can be beautiful. We owe ourselves that much, at least.

I’m holding in my hand the humblest of household objects. But there’s no dime-store ordinariness here. In this implement, function fuses with sculpture. It is an encounter between the artistry of nature and the artistry of a human.

Sensate, tactile, beautiful, it is a wooden spoon.

It is the work of a man who has spent 30 years carving unique, whimsical and exuberantly purposeful kitchen utensils from hardwoods in the arid, windblown mountains east of San Diego. Just right for, say, stirring that all-day pot of chili bubbling on the stove top, or maybe swirling the pasta water.

William Chappelow is a pioneer in a trend that has taken deep root in the U.S. The artisan is back with us, making our lives more pleasant and expressive.

Grasp one of Bill’s gracefully elongated cocobolo spoons. Or one of his tiny, hatchet-like butter knives carved from osage orange. Or his “left-handed elk-burger with bell pepper and extra garlic stir fryer” shaped from the bent limb of a lemon tree. An old, dormant node reactivates in the primordial memory.

Since few of us carry clubs anymore, the wooden spoon and its kitchen work-tool cousins may be the oldest and most widely shared implements of human existence.

I’ve come here to this unpretentious, stone-walled gallery--where the spoon and the spatula and spurtle and stirrer are celebrated--to remind myself that America is not as uniform, as single-minded, as bland, as hectically efficient, as coldly without soul as so often portrayed.

We Americans live in duality.

Many of the things in life, and some of the best of things, are industrially produced and mass-marketed. But not all things. Growth mania, the runaway assaults of marketing, the obsession with mergers and the drone of macroeconomic news account for neither the vigor nor the importance of resurgent artisanship in our culture. Two trends pull in opposite directions, but one of them gets forgotten. Almost any technology gizmo that some knucklehead can dream up is sure to draw breathless news, although few of them prove half as useful as a figured walnut mayo paddle with “hand-feel.”

A generation ago, there were only a handful of craftsmen who could make you a pair of custom cowboy boots in traditional fashion. Today there are schools to teach the craft. Quilting, long a hobby, now achieves the level of art. Shade-tree cheese makers and hot-sauce bottlers abound. Not long ago, I met a man who traveled America selling handmade brooms so artful that you wanted to grab one and sweep. An old friend makes and sells deeply mysterious bookends from fossilized whalebone he finds on secret beaches. When an oak tree blew over in the yard 30 years ago and Bill Chappelow withdrew his first spoon from it, he knew of no professional kitchen utensil makers anywhere. Today, he can count perhaps two dozen.

Yes, there are the many hapless people with bad taste or bad luck who are going broke in their booths at the crafts fairs. But our growing hunger for something handmade rather than machine-produced has meant all the success that true artisans like Chappelow can handle, and then some. At one time, his utensils appeared in 40 galleries and 1,000 more wanted his work.

“Back then, I had five or six part-time employees. To meet the demand, I calculated that I’d have to hire 60 people,” the easy-going Chappelow recalls. “In contemplating that, I made a conscious decision to do just the opposite.”

Entrepreneurs, we can remind ourselves, are not all out to conquer the world. A good many have a different purpose in life. Today, Chappelow is down to just three galleries and two employees. Most of his work is sold from his shop on a two-lane road to nowhere in particular, where he can offer each visitor a natural history lesson on wood and conservation and sometimes an informal wine tasting.

His advertising consists of leaving brochures at a few B&Bs; and tourist spots when he heads out for a hike. And he’s cutting back on that too.

Ever since Sept. 11, business has soared. Right now, he cannot keep the display walls filled.

People trickle in all day long. They rub their hands over his wood creations and buy one or two, and many aren’t sure why, says Chappelow.

I’m guessing it has to do with that pot of chili ready for the stove back home, and those essentials that come without circuitry or garish logos or celebrity endorsements. The simple things, made beautiful to exalt the everyday.