In 1990, several years after dropping out of university in England, I was living in south-central Indiana, working as a cabinetmaker, and found myself starved for intellectual stimulation. I began taking classes at Indiana University-Bloomington while working full time. One of my professors in the Religious Studies Department (I believe it would have been Jim Hart) mentioned Ruskin in the context of critiquing capitalism, so I went out and bought the first Ruskin book I could find, the 1985 Penguin edition of Unto This Last and Other Writings. I was so enthusiastic after reading "Ad Valorem" that I wanted to learn something about its author. Happily, this edition contained a substantial introduction by Clive Wilmer, which I devoured, then read again--twice--along with "The Nature of Gothic" and "The Veins of Wealth."
From time to time over the next 15 years, as I specialized increasingly in researching and building pieces of English Arts and Crafts furniture, I dipped back into the book, not only because I found Ruskin's thoughts and writing spot-on-relevant to so much of contemporary life, but also because I admired his genius at drawing critical distinctions (often as a means of avoiding self-contradiction; the world needs more such intellectual brilliance).
Last modified 7 April 2024