Artist / Artisan

    When the word "maker" is used these days, it usually refers to people who tinker in a workshop or ply a handicraft and generally generate things that could be sold on Etsy.  It should be remembered that the word "poet" derives from a Greek word meaning "maker." 

    William Blake was a maker in every sense.

    We know him now as the man who wrote Songs of Innocence and Experience and "Jerusalem," raging against the "dark Satanic mills" that blackened the skies and souls of 19th century London. Blake was both a mystic, a visual artist, and a mechanic. When not composing some of the most imaginative verse in English, he worked tirelessly to create new ways of printing and illustrating it by hand.

 

   

     Blake invented whole new printing techniques in the course of making his books. This video explicates his innovations:
 

 

 

    For a man who claimed to regularly converse with angels, William Blake clearly know how to operate in the nitty-gritty of the physical world.