December 12, 1998

Dear Reto,

While I’m writing this to you, it is intended for all the players at your establishment. I count ten signatures on your Happy Holiday mailer and think back to the time when I spent day and night building the first benches in the little building on Cape George Road, in the autumn of 1976, transforming an empty shell into a one-stall shop. I started with a vision, an ethic, a lot of energy and little else, besides hope that the enterprise would keep me in food and shelter. What Circle & Square has become in your hands gratifies me beyond description, not only because of its increase in size, productivity and sophistication, but because the intent, the heart, is still in it.

I may never have related the whole story of its name. When I moved to the Pacific Northwest from Alaska, I had intended to wear an entirely different hat. I was going to become a partner in a printing business which specialized in old, lost and nearly-lost methods of putting words and images on the page. I carried with me the vision of Leonardo DaVinci’s illustration of the proportions of man, which utilized the circle and the square, and had already settled on the logo. As the printing dream evaporated under the heat of emotional turmoil, both mine and another’s, and I turned my efforts to the job of setting up the repair shop, I learned of the classic geometric problem known as the squaring of a circle: to construct the two, so that their areas are equal. And of the symbolic use of the two forms to gesture toward the hard-edged, earthbound on the one hand and softly curved, all-embracing spiritual on the other. All these influences anchored the circle and the square, and their relationship to each other, more and more firmly in my mind as a metaphor for an effort of high integrity in a world (and in a business) dominated by the exploitative and mediocre.

When it came time for me to take another direction, I lost a great deal of sleep agonizing over the fate of my “child,” not so much about whether the business would survive in the hands of another, but about what would become of its intent and ideals. I was a good enough mechanic, but I was a lousy businessman, forever giving away far too much, not knowing how to balance the need to charge fully for my effort, against the nagging reputation of the auto business for ripping off. The eternal problem, the squaring of the circle, the marriage of spirit and material.

I needn't have worried, because into the shop one day came an inquiring Swiss gentleman who, I knew within minutes, was the right person to take the helm. You have steered my little enterprise to a very gratifying state of success. I can’t tell you how proud I am of what Circle & Square has become. It has taken a level of dedication and persistence far beyond what I, or most people, could have brought to the task, not only from you, Reto, but from Jana and all of your sterling crew. Kudos, salutations and congratulations to you all. The circle is squared.

Warmest regards,

Alex Fowler