Friends,
Many of you probably subscribed to this newsletter when you came across my site, The Hand & Eye. I started this project in 2013 as a way to flex my writing and photography skills after leaving Reuters, where I was the small business editor.
I wanted to meet makers and designers and entrepreneurs, and I didn’t want to have to pitch editors to tell their stories. Since then, the Hand & Eye has been featured in The New York Times (When I interviewed Gay Talese), Cool Hunting, The Observer (Before it became a total POS) and other outlets, and, it helped me bring a lot of creative ideas to life, like custom bandanas, a short documentary, and a little leisure swimming newspaper called Swim Call.
But now, I’m taking the advice of one of my favorite makers and I’m killing my darlings.
The truth is, the site gets almost no traffic anymore and it exists as a creative anchor of sorts. It’s something I feel like I always should work on, not something I want to work on, and it kills me to think of it languishing away. I also want to live more offline. In 2019, I quit drinking and Facebook, and in 2020 I aim to become slightly more monastic and cut out other distractions. I’ll say goodbye to blogging, to Twitter and probably to Instagram too. I’ll keep up the creative projects (I always will), but I want my work to be physical—not digital—in nature.
This also means I’m putting this newsletter to bed for a bit until I can figure out what to do with it, if anything.
So onward to the next chapter! Whatever that may be.
But first, a huge thank you to everyone who let me interview them, take their picture and tell their stories for the site. Meeting you and sharing your work was a huge privilege. I hope I did it all some justice.
And thank you to everyone for reading, commenting, sharing, emailing me and being part of this journey over the last six years.
Most importantly though, a BIG thank you to my wife and true creative partner Elsa Jenna. She’s the reason the site always looked so nice and has always been endlessly supportive.
If you feel like revisiting any of the work before it disappears from the internet, I’ve included a few of my favorite posts below.
Onward!
John
A Watch We Love: The Seiko SKX007
Scenes from the Brooklyn Army Terminal
Make Beer in Your Small Apartment
Q&A: Blank on Blank Creator David Gerlach
On the Job with Tall Cotton Supply
At Last, New York Made Sunglasses
In Praise of Great Jamaican Sound Systems
A Day on the Farm with Island Creek Oysters
Studio Visit: Patrick Weder Design
Anvil’s Hand Poured Fishing Lures
A night at Sunny's with Smokey Hormel
New York’s Surreal Fall Landscapes
William Eggleston’s Democratic Forrest
Jon Batiste and The Dap Kinds at Electric Lady Studios
Shop Visit: Talking with Friends & Family's Taavo Somer
Dispatch from Mount Desert Island
An Insane New York City Sunset Timelapse
No-Knead Bread Taking You Through the Winter
Getting Out on a Hinckley Pilot
On The Wall with Colossal Media
On Great Bars and the Napoleon House
Old School New York with Mike’s Sharpening
At the Gatehouses, the New Kings County Distillery Outpost
A Brief History of Our Throwaway Society
*Full archive here.
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