Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

For fans of H Is for Hawk and Shop Class as Soulcraft comes a captivating literary memoir, immersing readers in the life of a Scottish carpenter as he perfects his craft, builds a business, and reflects on what inheritance and shared responsibility really mean.

The eldest son of a master woodworker, Callum Robinson spent his childhood surrounded by wood and trees, absorbing craft lessons in his father’s workshop. In time he became his father’s apprentice, helping to create exquisite bespoke objects. But eventually the need to find his own path led him to establish his own workshop and chase ever bigger and more commercial projects, until the devastating loss of one major job threatened to bring it all crashing down. Faced with the end of his business, his team, and everything he had worked so hard to build, he was forced to question what mattered most. 

In beautifully wrought prose, Callum tells the story of returning to the workshop and to the wood, to handcrafting furniture for people who will love it and then pass it on to the next generation—an antidote to a culture where everything seems so easily disposable. As he does so, he brings us closer to nature and the physical act of creation—and we begin to understand how he has been shaped, as both a craftsman and a son. 

Blending memoir and nature writing at its finest, Ingrained is an uplifting meditation on the challenges of working with your hands in our modern age, on community, consumerism, and the beauty of the natural world—one that asks us to see our local trees, and our own wooden objects, in a new and revelatory light.