IN PRINCIPIO ERAT VERBUM
ET VERBUM ERAT APUD DEUM
ET DEUS ERAT VERBUM.
Sc. Joannem 1.1.
VIDITQUE DEUS CUNCTA QUÆ
FECERAT: ET ERANT VALDE BONA.
Genesis. 1.31.

MAN uses these good things, and when MAN first discovers how to make anything, that thing which he makes is good.

For example: this book is printed upon one of the first iron presses to be made in this country. The press is a good press; it would be difficult to make a press which would enable the printer to print more clearly. The wooden press was a good press & the printing from it has not been surpassed.

Further, this quality of goodness of a first discovery may persist for many years.

But there is a tendency to avoid Quality Street. We are choosing rather Quantity Street & the Bye paths of Facility & Cleverness; we have become accustomed to the hum of the Time & Labour saving machinery; and we are in danger of forgetting the use of good things: indeed the tradition & practice of goodness has been lost in a considerable number of trades.

For instance: a carpenter has become so used to buying his timber in planks from a yard that he has nearly forgotten its relation to the tree. The man who works to designs conceived by somebody else with wood sawn by another man's machine must be deprived of the natural strength of the tree.

And this is not an exception to, but an example of, the way we are choosing to do things.

It is impossible to buy linen as good as that normally used by every tradesman in the XVIII century. It is nearly impossible to get cloth, paper, bread, beer, bacon and leather equal to that in common use 150 years ago.

IN VIEW OF THE BEGINNING it is desirable to record what still survives of the traditions of making good things; and I shall endeavour to publish the instructions & advice of men & women who still follow these good traditions.

Douglas Pepler.