Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION

A captivating memoir that immerses 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 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--to chase ever bigger and more commercial projects and establish a workshop of his own--drew him away. 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 onto 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.

Callum Robinson makes all manner of things from all manner of woods for some of the most influential brands in the world. He is creative director at Method Studio, the company he established with his wife, designer and lecturer Marisa Giannasi, almost fifteen years ago. Taught by his father - now one of the UK's foremost "Master Woodcarvers" - his work has been exhibited widely. He works and writes from a studio and workshop in a forest, beside a loch, nestled in the Scottish hills.

Review Quotes:

"Charming . . . Some of [Robinson's] best prose attends to the natural world, and to the way our manufactured world makes use of and mimics it. . . . Extraordinary precision is Robinson's forte: a necessary gift for his career, and a boon to his writing. . . . He is eloquent not only on how he makes the things he makes but on how he himself was made--the tender if thorny relationship between father and son; the stabilizing yet propulsive forces of marriage." -- Casey Cep, The New Yorker

"[A] sensually written, impeccably detailed memoir. . . [Robinson] is equally skilled at turning a phrase as turning wood. For him, going out on his own was about 'getting out of my father's considerable shadow. About showing him, everyone, and perhaps most of all myself, that I could stand on my own two feet, blaze my own trail.' For readers, Robinson's metamorphosis into a man in charge of his own destiny is no less meaningful." -- Washington Post

"A wry, wise and deeply felt memoir." -- Wall Street Journal

"A lovely meditation on growth and resilience." -- Los Angeles Times

"A first-rate memoir about understanding his master woodworker father, running a business, and - at the edge of financial disaster - reorienting himself to nature, beauty, and objects that last." -- Christian Science Monitor

"An invitation to reflect on creativity and labor, our relationship to nature, and the things we value most. . . . [Robinson's] writing--natural, never over-polished, accessible, and finely wrought--makes his memoir one to savor. In a world obsessed with speed and convenience and the acquisition of the disposable, it's a true pleasure to read about how one craftsman has worked so patiently, so intentionally, to create objects of beauty that will endure. In writing this book, Robinson has done so again." -- Nicole Chung, Esquire "Best Memoirs of 2024"

"A book that is covertly a love poem disguised as a father-and-son story, an apprentice's learning of an exotic craft, a hymn to the eternal mystery of trees, and a tribute to the flat-out joy of gifting. Enchanting." -- Bill Buford, author of Heat and Dirt

"I didn't think it possible to blend the tones and sensibilities of James Herriott and Anthony Bourdain, but Callum Robinson has managed to do it - in wood! This wise and wonderful book takes the lucky reader as deeply into the grain of Britain's primal medium as it does into the psyche of one its most gifted practitioners. Trees, chairs, and woodworkers alike will resonate differently once you've become Ingrained." -- John Vaillant, author of Pulitzer Prize finalist, Fire Weather?

"Honest, original and true - written like a good novel, with that very rare merit of exploring the doubt and criticism necessary for any great art or craft, be it writing or carpentry." -- Lars Mytting, author of Norwegian Wood and The Sister Bells Trilogy

"A debut that's both a paean to the art of woodworking and a memoir about creative endeavors." -- Observer