the workmanship of risk

“craftsmanship........means simply workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgement, dexterity and care which the maker exercises.....the essential idea is that the quality of the result is continually at risk during the process of making; and so I shall call this kind of workmanship ‘The workmanship of risk’.........With the workmanship of risk we may contrast the workmanship of certainty, always to be found in quantity production, and found in its pure state in full automation. In workmanship of this sort the quality of the result is exactly predetermined before a single salable thing is made. In less developed forms of it the result of each operation done during production is pre-determined."

David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship, Cambridge U. Press, 1979, page 4.