David Pye was a professor of Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art and in this book, he proposed his best known concept — the workmanship of risk. Pye defines the workmanship of risk as “workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity, and care which the maker exercises as he works”

Pye discusses the aesthetic importance of workmanship and its future. Good workmanship depends on the combination of the following things:

• Highly regulated workmanship that yields a thing done in style

• Free workmanship that allows the workman to be spontaneous but avoids unstudied improvisation

• Diversity that extends the aesthetic experience beyond the specification down to the smallest scale that the eye can distinguish

The workmanship of risk can be applied to two different purposes — preparatory and productive. The preparatory stage includes making the jigs, tools, and other devices in order to make the workmanship of certainty possible. The productive stage turns out products for sale. Both these stages can slide in between the workmanship of risk and certainty and often, when an artifact is created, it moves in and out of the two types of workmanships. David Pye — The Nature and Art of Workmanship