Crafts, Hobbies & Home
Home Improvement & Design
![Mark Ellison - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0BHQ2D3ML.jpg)
Building: A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work
A visionary carpenter shares indelible stories on building a life worth living, revealing powerful lessons about work, creativity, and design through his experience constructing some of New York's most iconic spaces.
For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you've never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named "Apartment of the Decade." His projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.
Building: A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York's elite, before they're camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.
Blending Ellison's musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a life worth living, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.
For forty years, Mark Ellison has worked in the most beautiful homes you've never seen, specializing in rarefied, lavish, and challenging projects for the most demanding of clients. He built a staircase that the architect Santiago Calatrava called a masterpiece. He constructed the sculpted core of Sky House, which Interior Design named "Apartment of the Decade." His projects have included the homes of David Bowie, Robin Williams, and others whose names he cannot reveal. He is regarded by many as the best carpenter in New York.
Building: A Carpenter's Notes on Life & the Art of Good Work tells the story of an unconventional education and how fulfillment can be found in doing something well for decades. Ellison takes us on a tour of the lofts, penthouses, and townhomes of New York's elite, before they're camera-ready. In a singular voice, he offers a window into learning to live meaningfully along the way. From staircases that would be deadly if built as designed and algae-eating snails boiled to escargot in a penthouse pond, to the deceptive complexity of minimalist design, Building exposes the tangled wiring, scrapped blueprints, and outlandish demands that characterize life in the high-stakes world of luxury construction.
Blending Ellison's musings on work and creativity with immersive storytelling and original sketches, photos, and illustrations, Building is a meditation on crafting a life worth living, and a delightful philosophical inquiry beyond the facades that we all live behind.
Editorial Reviews
"Mark Ellison is known for building beautiful rooms, but here he has crafted a gorgeous book. This cross between Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Kitchen Confidential contains fascinating insights about working with your hands, the nature of talent, and how to create a meaningful life, whatever your craft is. Oh, and lots of juicy stories of pain-in-the-ass clients. Even if you aren't handy-I can barely hang a picture frame-you'll find this book a wonderful read."-A. J. Jacobs, bestselling author of The Puzzler
"Who knew Mark Ellison's handiwork would include a book this exquisite, purposeful, absorbing? Building merits reading and rereading-it's a book with much to teach us all."-Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies
"Reading this amazing book is like listening to a very wise and funny man share the best stories in the world, wound up with wisdom, craft, and hard-won philosophy, and told with such eloquence. Clearly, Ellison had this book waiting inside him for years. I'm so glad that it's out in the world, where it will find its readers for years."-Burkhard Bilger, author of Fatherland
"On a job site, Ellison will make irreverent banter while scribbling measurements on the back of a pizza box, as work of astonishing complexity and precision materializes under his direction. Now he has applied the same offhand but exacting craft to unspooling his ascent to the summit of one of the most demanding construction habitats on earth. Building is absolutely fantastic."-David Hotson, architect, Skyhouse
"Mark Ellison is an amazing polymath and an Olympic-level aesthete. Unlike many polymaths and aesthetes, when he gets up in the morning, it's to make real, physical things. Some lucky people get to live in them. Now the whole world gets to share in his wisdom."-Craig Nevill-Manning, engineering director, Google
"Who knew Mark Ellison's handiwork would include a book this exquisite, purposeful, absorbing? Building merits reading and rereading-it's a book with much to teach us all."-Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Homeland Elegies
"Reading this amazing book is like listening to a very wise and funny man share the best stories in the world, wound up with wisdom, craft, and hard-won philosophy, and told with such eloquence. Clearly, Ellison had this book waiting inside him for years. I'm so glad that it's out in the world, where it will find its readers for years."-Burkhard Bilger, author of Fatherland
"On a job site, Ellison will make irreverent banter while scribbling measurements on the back of a pizza box, as work of astonishing complexity and precision materializes under his direction. Now he has applied the same offhand but exacting craft to unspooling his ascent to the summit of one of the most demanding construction habitats on earth. Building is absolutely fantastic."-David Hotson, architect, Skyhouse
"Mark Ellison is an amazing polymath and an Olympic-level aesthete. Unlike many polymaths and aesthetes, when he gets up in the morning, it's to make real, physical things. Some lucky people get to live in them. Now the whole world gets to share in his wisdom."-Craig Nevill-Manning, engineering director, Google
Short Excerpt Teaser
Chapter 1
Belief
I believe I am things that I am not, and have disbelieved I could be things that I assuredly am.
Like all serial dropouts, I spent the first few years of my career flailing about. I lived in a string of cockroachy apartments, took work where I found it, and slept on enough couches to develop a liking for it. An artistic bent mesmerized me into thinking that was the way I was ultimately headed. My guitar accompanied me everywhere; I painted pictures, carved stones, and even scribbled down a few listenable songs.
A neighbor on the Lower East Side belonged to an itinerant theatrical troupe. They could be found every weekend in Washington Square Park, encircled by gawkers, tossing around old vaudeville jokes and juggling clubs. He would spend evenings teaching me circus skills, encouraging what he took to be my "naturally performant" side.
Despite my misgivings, my neighbor decided I needed to get out there and take my place on life's stage. My only experience in front of audiences until then had been in sweaty-palmed trepidation of my turn at the piano recital bench. I had no memory of having basked euphorically in any audience's adulation. A knotted stomach and wish to disappear was all I could recall. But my neighbor maintained that nothing matched the energy exchanged between audience and performer; in his estimation, it verged on the sacred, or at least the narcotic. He had a practiced exuberance and an endearing tenacity. After several evenings of caviling, I was convinced enough to play along.
December of that year came with its damp New York cold. My neighbor knocked on my door and announced that he had a gig for me. An upscale Fifth Avenue department store was running a promotion for a denim-centric clothing line with a western theme and they needed a banjo player to set a suitably oaty mood. Nothing about this announced itself as my big break. I had hiked Fifth Avenue's canyon and felt out of place amid the Saks and Pecks and Taylors. Moreover, I was really more of a banjo owner than a banjo player. My entire oeuvre consisted of a decelerated version of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and the opening theme from The Beverly Hillbillies. Fashion had eluded me all my life, and even more markedly in my seventies adolescence, when the only flair I exhibited was for owning the wrong brand of everything.
My neighbor lured that they were paying $250 for two hours' work. I took the bait.
The appointed day arrived; mushy, gray, and dank, it was well matched to my expectations. From the meager offerings of my closet, I cobbled together a poor man's cowpoke ensemble: boots, bandana, jeans, and a piped shirt. My banjo, freshly strung and inadequately practiced, was secured in its case and tucked under my arm for the trek uptown, the handle lost long ago.
I had been directed to appear at the store's service entrance, my first in an entire career spent going in the back way. I was bounced from Security, to Personnel, to Sportswear, and finally found a familiar face: a clown I knew from the theater troupe who doubled as their booking agent. She took my arm and led me to the "artistic coordinator" who was to instruct me in my duties. My clown friend wished me luck and passed me the cowboy hat she was wearing, saying, "Looks like you need one of these." Clowns are often awkwardly kind. I tried to twist it down around my brow; it was ludicrously small. I perched it on the back of my head in the manner of unthreatening buckaroos and felt the gnawing creep of coming discomfort.
The artistic coordinator led us to a dressing area. A piano player of considerable skill was wending his way through a catalog of singing cowboy classics. "You know this one?" he'd ask, before launching into a swinging-doors version of some lost ode to manliness and verve. "Mmm," I'd answer, "that's a good one." Nearby, three models were busily assessing their self-worth in banks of mirrors set up for the purpose; the first wore a tailored tennis dress, the second a feminized sweat suit, and the third an ensemble of skin-tight, eighties-embarrassing workout togs. Something was amiss.
The artistic coordinator gathered us up and announced that the theme of the promotion had changed: "Jesse's is super excited to introduce their new sportswear line, just in time for Christmas! Ted, you play your piano here by the sales desk; Christie and Melanie will stay by you. Jill, you walk the floor; Mark will trail you with his banjo attracting everyone's attention!"
What a plan.
To her credit, a shapely eighteen-year-old in neon spandex trai...
Belief
I believe I am things that I am not, and have disbelieved I could be things that I assuredly am.
Like all serial dropouts, I spent the first few years of my career flailing about. I lived in a string of cockroachy apartments, took work where I found it, and slept on enough couches to develop a liking for it. An artistic bent mesmerized me into thinking that was the way I was ultimately headed. My guitar accompanied me everywhere; I painted pictures, carved stones, and even scribbled down a few listenable songs.
A neighbor on the Lower East Side belonged to an itinerant theatrical troupe. They could be found every weekend in Washington Square Park, encircled by gawkers, tossing around old vaudeville jokes and juggling clubs. He would spend evenings teaching me circus skills, encouraging what he took to be my "naturally performant" side.
Despite my misgivings, my neighbor decided I needed to get out there and take my place on life's stage. My only experience in front of audiences until then had been in sweaty-palmed trepidation of my turn at the piano recital bench. I had no memory of having basked euphorically in any audience's adulation. A knotted stomach and wish to disappear was all I could recall. But my neighbor maintained that nothing matched the energy exchanged between audience and performer; in his estimation, it verged on the sacred, or at least the narcotic. He had a practiced exuberance and an endearing tenacity. After several evenings of caviling, I was convinced enough to play along.
December of that year came with its damp New York cold. My neighbor knocked on my door and announced that he had a gig for me. An upscale Fifth Avenue department store was running a promotion for a denim-centric clothing line with a western theme and they needed a banjo player to set a suitably oaty mood. Nothing about this announced itself as my big break. I had hiked Fifth Avenue's canyon and felt out of place amid the Saks and Pecks and Taylors. Moreover, I was really more of a banjo owner than a banjo player. My entire oeuvre consisted of a decelerated version of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" and the opening theme from The Beverly Hillbillies. Fashion had eluded me all my life, and even more markedly in my seventies adolescence, when the only flair I exhibited was for owning the wrong brand of everything.
My neighbor lured that they were paying $250 for two hours' work. I took the bait.
The appointed day arrived; mushy, gray, and dank, it was well matched to my expectations. From the meager offerings of my closet, I cobbled together a poor man's cowpoke ensemble: boots, bandana, jeans, and a piped shirt. My banjo, freshly strung and inadequately practiced, was secured in its case and tucked under my arm for the trek uptown, the handle lost long ago.
I had been directed to appear at the store's service entrance, my first in an entire career spent going in the back way. I was bounced from Security, to Personnel, to Sportswear, and finally found a familiar face: a clown I knew from the theater troupe who doubled as their booking agent. She took my arm and led me to the "artistic coordinator" who was to instruct me in my duties. My clown friend wished me luck and passed me the cowboy hat she was wearing, saying, "Looks like you need one of these." Clowns are often awkwardly kind. I tried to twist it down around my brow; it was ludicrously small. I perched it on the back of my head in the manner of unthreatening buckaroos and felt the gnawing creep of coming discomfort.
The artistic coordinator led us to a dressing area. A piano player of considerable skill was wending his way through a catalog of singing cowboy classics. "You know this one?" he'd ask, before launching into a swinging-doors version of some lost ode to manliness and verve. "Mmm," I'd answer, "that's a good one." Nearby, three models were busily assessing their self-worth in banks of mirrors set up for the purpose; the first wore a tailored tennis dress, the second a feminized sweat suit, and the third an ensemble of skin-tight, eighties-embarrassing workout togs. Something was amiss.
The artistic coordinator gathered us up and announced that the theme of the promotion had changed: "Jesse's is super excited to introduce their new sportswear line, just in time for Christmas! Ted, you play your piano here by the sales desk; Christie and Melanie will stay by you. Jill, you walk the floor; Mark will trail you with his banjo attracting everyone's attention!"
What a plan.
To her credit, a shapely eighteen-year-old in neon spandex trai...
![Danielle Walker's Healthy in a Hurry: Real Life. Real Food. Real Fast. [A Gluten-Free, Grain-Free & Dairy-Free Cookbook] book cover](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/covers/c_1984857665.jpg)
