Working with Our Hands
Since 1893, Berea College has operated a student craft program that teaches students to create crafts that are important in the Appalachian region, including broom making, pottery, weaving, and woodcrafts. Third college president William G. Frost whose wife had the idea for the Historic Boone Tavern Hotel, realized that the college could help Appalachian families by buying their crafts and selling them at the college’s Log House Craft Gallery, which also sells crafts students have made. Today the gallery displays creations by more than 500 artists.
The town of Berea has also become a craft center. It is home to the state-owned and operated Kentucky Artisan Center at Berea and to other small craft stores. We particularly enjoyed a visit to the Lindsay Gallery, located on Artist Circle.
I was thrilled when the owner let us watch him create filigree jewelry. Filigree is an ancient jewelry craft, dating to the time of Moses. God commanded Moses:
You shall speak to all the skillful persons
whom I have endowed with the spirit of wisdom,
that they make Aaron’s garments to consecrate him,
that he may minister as priest to Me.
These are the garments which they shall make:
a breastpiece and an ephod and a robe
and a tunic of checkered work, a turban and a sash,
and they shall make holy garments
for Aaron your brother and his sons,
that he may minister as priest to Me.
They shall take the gold and the blue
and the purple and the scarlet material and the fine linen.
Exodus 28:3-5
Those skillful persons were to make a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe, and a tunic of checkered work. To create the ephod, they were to engrave the names of the sons of Israel onto two onyx stones and to set them in filigree settings of gold.
As a jeweler engraves a signet,
you shall engrave the two stones
according to the names of the sons of Israel;
you shall set them in filigree settings of gold.
Exodus 28:11
They were to make the breastpiece of blue, purple and scarlet material and fine twisted linen. On it they were to mount four rows of stones. These were to be ruby, topaz, emerald, turquoise, sapphire, diamond, jacinth, agate, amethyst, beryl, onyx, and jasper and were also to be set in gold filigree.
The skilled workers followed God’s instructions for making the ephod and breastpiece, also making filigree settings and gold rings to attach the ephod and breastpiece to each other.
Proverbs 31 speaks of the worthy woman who “works with her hands in delight” (Psalm 31:13). We got to enjoy watching this jewelry maker work with his hands in delight.
An essential lesson for our children is to help them learn how to work with their hands with delight.
. . . make it your ambition to lead a quiet life
and attend to your own business
and work with your hands,
just as we commanded you,
so that you will behave properly
toward outsiders
and not be in any need.
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12