Black Rock Manufacturing Company is my attempt to find elevation and transcendence in the careful making of ordinary things that we use every day. I grew up in a small farm town in Utah next to a dormant volcano called Black Rock. I learned about slow living and doing things by hand. I learned about finding beauty in the natural environment which, for me, was the desert. As I got older, I found that cultures all over the world appreciated some of the same things I’d learned in my Utah home. I studied Chinese Daoism. I educated myself about Wabi Sabi in Japan, and its appreciation of natural beauty in every part of the cycle of life and death. I looked at ancient Stoic ideas about summetria: the harmonious proportionate relationship of everything to everything else. Closer to home, I thought about the Navajo ideal of Hózhó: finding beauty, balance, and harmony with nature. These ideas resonate with me. I believe life is about doing the long, hard work of living in harmony and beauty. It’s not easy finding the extraordinary in the ordinary – the transcendent in the simple, but that’s what I strive for. I discover it in the diligent, day-to-day work of growth and maintenance, of thoughtfully making and caring for things. It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey.

Simply put, Black Rock is about doing it the hard way.