beautiful tools for a better job?

Does a beautiful tool do a better job?

And is it completely irrational to invest emotion in the tools we use?

Doing an updated design recently for a new veg patch, I discovered a need for an old-fashioned compass to draw circles with - something I've not used since high school. I couldn't find one in the comprehensive mess that is my study, so set off to buy one. It felt purposeful and invigorating to march into the local shops and search for just the right tool for the job, and the one I came home with certainly got the job done.

But it was no fun to work with.

It's much-trumpeted safety features - to ensure no nasty pricks - rendered it ugly to look at and awkward to hold and use. I didn't like it and I didn't trust it. I realised my desired compass - my Platonic ideal of a compass - demanded something shiny and silver and sharp. I no longer had a wooden-topped desk to carve an enduring mark in, but perhaps I needed to know that my compass could still do that if called upon.

Howver, dismissing such irrational reservations, I dutifully added the compass to my permaculture design kit.

And then a week later, I stumbled on a 'Mathematical Instruments' kit at an antique market. The tin is battered and creased; its lid features a drawing of a happily concentrating student casually inscribing a circle on a sheet of paper. Inside is a lovely metal compass, a protractor (now that would have been useful when doing my garden bed drawings), a ruler, a set square, and another indeterminate instrument that may or may not be broken. That set square has already done measuring duty in the garden.

We work best, with our favourite tools. They have there own magic. Whether they are favoured because they work so well, or work so well because they are favourites, is almost beside the point. Like a cricketer with a favourite bat, or a writer with a favourite pen, there are both practical and mystical explanations for this special relationship. We know their feel, they become an unconscious easeful extension of ourselves, we associate them with past successes, but they have also - without reproach or recrimination - been partners in disappointments and failures.

If it's a tool we've fashioned ourselves or discovered serendipitously, the effect seems even greater. So in that category I could put:

• Mathematical Instruments kit (found at the Mill Market in Geelong)
• set of 72 Derwent pencils (clearance sale in Castlemaine) for plans and drawings
• pull-along metal cart (clearance sale on Heathcote/Kyneton Road)
• metal file-card drawer (found at a local Castlemaine garage sale, prompting me to start a plant file)
• stake-hole starter (fashioned by Chris from a broken piece of exterior-blind runner that fell off the house, the handy dogleg allowing safe hammering, a necessity given our hard ground)

Perhaps it just comes down to this: We approach a job with greater confidence, enthusiasm and joy when we are working with a favourite tool.