Theme for 4.3

What is the place of craft in the 21st century textile industry?

The story goes… In the 19th century, industrialisation was at odds with traditional crafts, particularly hand-weaving. In the 20th century, this conflict was diffused with the emergence of the studio craft movement, which found a secure place for the handmade in the context of art. The reduction of craft skills in factory production continued with relative little resistance.

In the 21st century, much textile manufacturing has moved West to East, particularly southern China. While this was initially associated with lower consumer prices, it is now linked to loss of jobs in the West. As many question the future of the consuming West, craft skills are being re-valued as testimony that not all productive capacity has been lost: there is still a place for local manufacture. Some craft artists are using denim as a natural medium of democracy. What does denim, and other ‘industrial crafts’, say to us now?

This article is by Gillian Montegrande , the founder of Made by Hands of Britain, which promotes British craftsmanship and makes work from otherwise remote regions available for sale online.

Work by Rachel Carter featured in Made by Hands of Britain

What to do?

While there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution there are, in my opinion, things that can be done to provide these people once more with a sense of doing, being and purpose; to justify their existence.

What better way to show evidence of our existence and identity (apart from creating children), than to leave behind a tangible object created by hand?

Today the media is full to bursting, of programmes and articles dedicated to the tangible handmade achievements of the past, such as the Antiques Road Show, Victorian/Edwardian Farm and most recently, Handmade in Britain (to name but a few), where experts extol the virtues of craftsmen and craftsmanship. They talk about the detail, the design, the skill, the workmanship and the fact that many of these items are still in working use, literally hundreds of years later.

These antique objects and artefacts were as a result of ‘skilled manual labour’ the by-product of which was being usefully occupied. There was a time when the term ‘manual labour’ meant and (maybe in some eyes) still does mean today, demeaning, soulless work. However, we have forgotten (or choose to ignore) that manual labour, although sometimes hard, was also associated with an honest day’s work and more often than not there was something tangible to show for the efforts expended at the end of the day. In that time, it is possible, even likely, that when such a person put their head on the pillow at night, tired and aching, they did not realise the significance and importance of their exertions and maybe would not have been aware that they were satisfying an innate need to be manually as well as mentally occupied.

Today, not only is very little built to last but also few people expect things to last, in their constant search for ‘the next thing’, this ‘have it all and having it now’ approach has been of no help and indeed has caused the financial mess the planet now finds itself in.

Nevertheless, there are some who are fully aware of the significance of such noble exertions, which I repeat; we celebrate on a regular basis. Manual occupation is still one of the best ways to satisfy this primeval need and that there is nothing wrong in going to bed tired and aching, knowing that the day has been used to its full with something to show at the end of it. Some have become obsessed with jumping the gun, to get to the destination without going on the journey, let alone enjoying it! The concept of physical struggle is now perceived as bad, to the extent that we are desperately trying to eliminate it (in the western world at least), to our cost. The advancement of human knowledge and discovery has done much to improve the plight of humanity but it has also done much to take away the privilege of physical occupation and endeavour. Many children, from underprivileged and privileged backgrounds alike, with their parents’ blessing are very ready, to replace hands-on experiences with virtual ones; the gaming industry was worth $105 billion in August 2010.

But physical exertion, endeavour, struggle even, is still to this day, necessary in every human life. When that is not present, an emotional as well as physical vacuum is created, which as we all know, must be filled. Are our lives any “easier” today? I doubt it. We’ve simply replaced physical struggle with mental anxiety.

Art, Craft and Manual Production satisfy that need on every level.

When making, a process is gone-through, which uses pretty much all of our faculties, including desire and/or need; concept; design; sourcing of materials; establishing the strengths and weaknesses of both material and maker and then through trial, error and ingenuity working with or around those attributes and limitations, to finally be confronted with something that is real, knowing that so much of oneself has gone into the very fibre of the work.

But there are obstacles in the form of modern-day fears and insecurities that currently pervade every aspect of modern life which is so readily passed on to our children. They are no longer allowed or encouraged to go out, to discover the world around them, in order that they might take risks, to discover how things work, how they themselves work and how the two work together. They no longer have the opportunity or are encouraged (as previous generations were) to find discarded raw materials such as pieces of wood or old bicycle parts, to transform into go-carts or wooden boats, that really do work. Making is as much a way of discovering how they work as how the world around them works. We need to restore this human right to them and making – structured or otherwise, can do that.

Using our hands to create things of beauty, use or both; using the raw materials we find around us, where a battle of wills ensues between maker and material, grappling and tussling with that material, until a truce – a compromise and understanding – is achieved and something beautiful emerges. It is this struggle that helps define us as human beings and we need this affirmation, pretty much on a daily basis, to keep us sane and healthy.

If we know this then why can making not become once more an integral part of our society and the way we (parents and teachers) teach our children? What happened to Woodwork, Metalwork, Needlework, Home Economics in the classroom? The old adage, “The only way to learn how to do something is to do it” has never been more true. It is in the classroom and at home where we need to start again, showing little children that those appendages called hands have a direct link to the wellbeing of their mind and psyche as well as their sense of place and belonging. Today, a three year old child has far more idea of what to do with a computer game controller than he does with Plasticine, Playdoh, Lego or Crayons. I fear that the prophetic vision depicted in the (ironically) computer-generated animation Wall-E, is much closer than we think!

If such a vision is to be believed, then we may be further down that path than is comfortable to admit. I would argue that the recent inner city riots have been carried out by people who have come to believe that there is no point in having a go at anything because it “won’t work” or at least they have not been shown that it could. Some of us know it can work and that trying is part of the fun, adventure and fulfilment. These unfortunate people are afraid to take the risk of discovering how to do something that may or may not have a positive outcome, but from which they can learn and improve. Instead they do something, which achieves instant gratification with the least effort and ironically they feel more secure in doing because they are sure of the outcome. You throw a brick through a window; you know what’s going to happen! But that is all that is ever going to happen- no wonder frustration and violence are never far away. With making, there is always new territory to be discovered, in the skill and in oneself.

If we could only pass on to others that sense of achievement and what it feels like to stare upon the tangible and positive result of one’s own useful endeavours, then it will go at least some way to improving the lot of individuals who currently have no hope.

Steampunk is the intersection of technology and romance. www.steampunkworkshop.com

Daniel Kreibich 'William Morris' 2006 (combined technique on cardboard 100 x 70cm)

Could there be some bond between Morris’s interest in the Middle Ages and Steampunk enthusiasm for the Victorian era? Is it ironic perhaps, that with a time gap of almost one and a half century and all the disparities, there still seems to exist an enemy common for them both – ever-accelerating progress? Further connections might start springing to mind.

There is much in common between Morris’s nostalgia for genuine medieval workmanship and Steampunk longing for ‘the days before machines were build to build other machines’ (as Ele Carpenter comments in the current JMC issue, p 148). In both cases, their romanticization of a historic period is tied to a desire to opt out of the dreary reality.

Steampunk has been accused of glorifying the past. Fictional author Paul Jessup criticizes Steampunk as ‘escapism that tells us Empire is grand.  (Indeed one could say with Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray) that ‘the one of the charms of the past is that it is the past.’ Escapism and its troubled relationship to utopianism would surely make a fascinating topic for a discussion. Let’s try to approach this from a different angle for the moment.

The portrait of William Morris by Czech artist Daniel Krejbich reproduced here hints that there is more to Morris than the black and white picture we’re often presented with tells. As Edward Palmer Thompson brilliantly noted, Morris was “absorbed in a world of “romance””, however, “the world of “romance” was not incompatible with the closest observation and study wherever his interests directed him…” (E. P. Thompson William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary Merlin Press, London 1977, p 17).

It has often been suggested that Morris was a Luddite. This is quite true after all. Morris, just as Luddites, was revolting against replacement of human power and creativity by machinery. Positively, though, this didn’t mean he wanted to ‘go back to some rose tinted vision of Middle Ages’ – to borrow words from Robin Wood’s comment to the previous post on Craft and Utopianism. Morris’s position is quite clear from his lecture Art and Its Producers:

I do not mean…that we should aim at abolishing all machinery: I would do some things by machinery which are now done by hand, and other things by hand which are now done by machinery: in short, we should be the masters of our machines and not their slaves, as we are now. It is not this or that tangible steel and brass machine which we want to get rid of, but the great intangible machine of commercial tyranny, which oppresses the lives of all of us.

In short, what he despised was not machines, but the human drive to move forward at all costs without any forethought for consequences. Similarly, today’s Steampunk does not object against technology. Let the Steampunk computers, Steampunk ipod cases or Steampunk electric guitars speak for themselves. However, their retro style gadgets have their own way of suggesting, that although time flies, it doesn’t necessarily need to fly as quickly as our obsession with all things new makes us believe.

Here then, unfolds the connection between Morris’s medieval and Steampunk Victorian nostalgia. Neither Morris nor steampunks want to stop the clock. Yet, if implicitly, they’re asking what it is that is driving us forward this fast? And, more importantly still, do we want to be driven there?

In his Social change with respect to culture and original nature (1922), William Fielding Ogborn coined the term “cultural lag” to describe the common phenomenon when the changes in material culture (technology especially) often outpace the changes in the non-material culture (ideas, beliefs, symbols etc). Adaptation to new technology thus becomes difficult, as one part of culture virtually lags behind another. Although the term “lag” may suggest so, this doesn’t mean there is no choice and we should simply adapt to and be constantly dragged by technological innovation. The possible misreading of Ogborn’s concept was thus addressed in Alvin Toffler’s famous book Future shock (Random House, New York 1970), where Toffler makes clear that rapid change is not inevitably beneficial and that it might be for our own good to slow down “the future” and adapt to innovation at our own pace. He writes: “… we need neither blind acceptance nor blind resistance, but an array of creative strategies for shaping, deflecting, accelerating, or decelerating change selectively” (p 331).

Perhaps Morris and steampunks are doing just this.

You could call Neal Stephenson the ‘prophet’ of steampunk. Much of his fiction anticipated the nostalgia for the steam age. Rather than look forward to a future filled with virtual technologies, as in William Gibson, Stephenson saw ahead to mechanical world, similar in feel to the nineteenth-century. In his wake were the first popular computer game Myst and Tim Burton films.

This paradox of a 19th century future was conjured particularly in the idea of the ‘Castle of Turning’, which evokes the origins of computer technologies in mechanical engineering. This again reflects the paradox that the cog, as the very antithesis of the Arts & Crafts Movement is today a the source of authenticity.

The chain was flat. Each link had a toggle: a movable bit of metal in the centre, capable of rotating about and snapping into placed in either of two positions, either parallel or perpendicular to the chain.
Neal Stephenson The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer New York: Viking, 1995, p. 313

The Principle of Hope is all but an account of the easy ways to get by. Quite on the contrary, it draws us into the labyrinth of imaginative curiosity, anticipation and the aspiration to cross over the limits of the up to now experience and explore what lies beyond. Utopia, in Bloch’s terms though, is not a country that no one has ever been to. Rather, it is the hopeful, if often intricate, journey from our deepest (day-) dreams toward their possible realization.

Is it possible then, that utopian thinking and craftwork might actually have a lot in common? Do craft and utopianism, perhaps, share the curiosity and also the courage to ‘begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing’ as Ruskin writes in Stones of Venice. Or could their willingness to take the risk of thinking and working at the limit of one’s own competencies be a connecting point too? The history of social and political debates in which craft played a catalyst role for re-imagining the status quo suggests that craft and utopian quest for a better future have often walked hand in hand.

Let’s think of the significance of craft in the history of intentional communities – Quakers, Shakers or Amish people – to name several obvious examples. Remember craft’s crucial role in utopian socialism and in the reform started by Ruskin, Morris and continued by the Arts and Crafts Movement later on. Moving on to the twentieth century, start with the emphasis put on craft in guild socialism, craft’s importance for the Indian Independence Movement and its role in the late twentieth century DIY culture. The most recent examples would surely include the craftivism movement, that has, quite fittingly in this context, been given a whole recent issue of Utopian Studies – the journal of the Society for Utopian Studies, and perhaps even steampunk phenomenon – the theme of the current JMC issue.

Surely, another analogy between craft and utopianism could be exemplified on the never ending tension between the ‘make do’ and ‘make better’ -the dilemma between the instantly practicable solutions versus the desire for the ideal, that has long been haunting not only social reformers and activists but generations of craft theorists and practitioners alike.

In short, neither utopian thinking nor craft necessarily offer the easy way scenarios. But, shall we agree that the common strength of both might lie in a determination that is well illustrated in the following extract of one of the stories from the 2008 anthology of steampunk literature (Brown, Molly: The Selene Gardening Society, in: Vandermeer, Jeff and Ann eds.: Steampunk, Tachyon Publications, San Francisco 2008, cited in: Steampunk Magazine n7, 2011, p. 3)?

“Calm down, Maston,” said Mr. Barbicane. “I merely said it was impossible. I never said we wouldn’t find a way to do it.”

A History Apparatus - Vessel, Craft and Beacon, by Chris Reynolds (1993)

As someone who lives in Melbourne with an interest in sculpture, I’ve been quite curious about a work of public art in Russell Street. The sculpture A History Apparatus – Vessel, Craft and Beacon, by Chris Reynolds (1993) was a collaborative effort of the artist, the Australian Metal Workers Union and Aerospace Technology of Australia. It’s an enduring local example of the Steampunk genre. The Australian Victorian Heritage Register contains history of the interesting choice of site. The Chris Reynolds sculpture is placed on top of a 1930′s public toilet, the first in Melbourne to reflect gender equality. Because of changing sensitivities on access to public toilets, the toilet was decommissioned and capped in January 1994.

There is a hint of Steampunk, perhaps cyberpunk, on a smaller scale in the work of Melbourne jewellery artist Dougal Haslem. Dougal creates jewellery and small objects that are full of whimsy, including zoomorphic and anthropomorphic shapes with intricate moving mechanical parts. There are parts that are recognisable in his work and others that allude to something unworldly. They express an intriguing combination of imagination and mystery.

Dougal Haslem Pants and Drongo (2009) Sterling silver, Copper, Collection object. 75 x 70 x 30mm

Metalsmiths, watchmakers and engineers too might have strong associations with Steampunk as common components appear to be analog watch or clock parts. The artists in this genre have freedom of expression in abundance, the only thing stopping them is the limit of their imagination.

As technology develops so fast and makes so many useful bits and pieces obsolete, it is sometimes hard to part with interesting facets of a possession, like watches, old computers or broken toys. In the workshop, or on the workbench, parts are saved to be used in another situation, perhaps reconstructed into a piece of art.

Personally, Steampunk connects me to memories of a childhood of racing cars. My father made me a billy-cart with a go-cart motor; mounted on the chassis were bells, levers and mechanical ornaments which made it quite an eccentric vehicle. Playing with Universal joints and gears developed my interest in engineering, metalsmithing and being creative. Each time we choose to recycle rather than discard, we are unleashing some potential Steampunk.

Theme for 4.2

‘Steampunk’ reflects a retro-Victorian machine aesthetic. Currently in vogue, the contemporary phenomenon of ‘steampunk’ raises some curious questions.

This ‘back to the future’ nostalgia seems to contradict the modernist aesthetic normally projected onto technology. It also evokes the industrial revolution against which the Arts and Crafts movement reacted. But is it possible that the ‘mechanical age’ of the nineteenth-century have a craft value, at least from the perspective of the 21st century?

Furthermore, Is it the destiny of all technologies to become a potential inspiration for craft, once they are no longer useful? Guest bloggers are Mila Burcikova and Linda Hughes.

Flickr image from Urban Don, with Creative Commons license
‘Satanic mills’ reference is from William Blake’s poem Jerusalem .

This can be a hindrance both mentally and practically for makers. In highly competitive markets, both in terms of government funding and in commercial settings, you have to be careful what you call yourself. Pigeonhole yourself and you run the risk of only being allowed to take opportunities from one box – the one with your crafts name on it.

I spoke to several makers, who for the sake of ease here we will call jewellers, about the issues surrounding the labelling of their craft. What do they call themselves? Designers? Artists? Jewellers? Gold and Silversmiths? Not surprisingly they offered up different answers to this labelling conundrum.

Liana Kabel, a maker based in Brisbane, has a reputation for turning the brightly coloured plastics of Tupperware into beautiful and wearable pieces. She has a strong online profile and uses social media to great effect to promote her work. Kabel takes a practical half and help approach to labelling her practice

I have the words Art Design Jewellery on my business card/website because I feel in between all these things. I’d say jeweller if I were pushed.

Danielle Maugeri, whose work is stocked throughout Australia, takes a different approach given her complex road to becoming a jeweller.

I have battled with this question for 10 years now. I am formally trained as an industrial designer- but I have never been an industrial designer. I turned straight to making ceramics with no training, then jewellery with minimal training. I call myself a designer/maker. If I say ceramicist or jeweller, those that are these things look upon me as a fake. Does it matter if i have not done the hard yards like them? Granted, I don’t know all that they know…but does this mean I’m not real? Designer slash maker is the best I’ve come up with.

Linda Hughes began as a sculptor before moving into the formal world of study at RMIT in their world renowned Gold and Silversmithing course. Despite this she has allowed herself the ultimate freedom in labelling. When posed the question her email response was a simple one:

art·ist
noun
1. A person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.
2. A person who practices one of the fine arts

New Zealand born, Melbourne based Vicki Mason, displays a more flexibly mindset.

I tend towards calling myself a jeweller. I could use all those other words as I’m all of those as well, but for me personally I decided to keep it simple and jewellery is what I make. I think it’s a term that sums up everything and although it leads to confusion sometimes and the need to explain to others what sort of jewellery I make, it seems more honest to me.

I’m a jeweller, perhaps not as some would know in the traditional sense, but I make objects to wear essentially and this is what jewellery aims for the most part. It is about making objects to be worn.

It’s a big word (jewellery/jeweller) once you start to think of nuances and this can be good I think as it unites all of us who make these objects to be worn, art jewellers, trade jewellers, costume jewellers, contemporary jewellers, studio jeweller etc.

Sometimes I say contemporary jeweller but less so these days and sometimes I call myself an art jeweller but its dependent on who I’m talking to and who how I’m feeling that day.

The way we label ourselves can go some way in indicating to our audience our style and sensibility and perhaps we need to allow for multiple branches from the one tree. At the end of the day we are all makers and that label will always be one to be celebrated.

My honest answer is that there are not. While criticism itself exists somewhere between journalism and theory, the sad fact is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make a living as a freelance critic of any sort: art, music, dance, theater, and yes, craft as well. Blogs are all good and well, and call attention to individual practices, but criticism doesn’t really pay the bills. As well, I think there is a real dearth of serious readers in our field. This is mainly because the scholarship and inquiry lags far behind the high quality of artistic practice. That is, there are too many people making, and not enough people writing.

Also, while craft has moved away from an object-only sensibility, its marketplace has not. SOFA and other large-scale craft shows here in the States privilege the individual maker, and have not yet found a way to expand vis-à-vis contemporary art, where the group show model is more prevalent. The world of craft magazines is highly dependent upon gallery-based advertising, which is dependent upon supporting the one-artist model, which, in turn, are featured as singular impressarios.

I do not enjoy reading monographic, single-artist feature articles, I find them horrendously trite: usually full of clichés, and without the comparative analysis or historical context that the craft historian/theorist can provide. But the problem is less the writer than the structure: contemporary craft doesn’t yet have a platform for supporting true analysis. It is almost hard to remember that American Craft, with its anti-intellectual, faux-mainstream content, is the poor relation of Craft Horizons: a discursive and controversial forum that ran from 1941 until 1979, during the so-called “golden era” of post-war craft.

As a maker myself I can also be confronted by the task of articulating work. Recently I made an exhibition application to recreate a Tennyson poem by making a garden of hand dyed and beaded cotton flowers. ‘Into the Garden Maude’ would be recreated on the gallery floor, with over 700 blooms. I had to make connections between Victorian mourning tradition, women’s handiwork and the parallels between poetry and textiles. Really I wanted to say ‘this exists in my head, fully formed and I want the opportunity to create it’. Often when connecting theory to practice the maker can feel fraudulent. As if attaching a more complex idea to a single object makes you somehow complicit in prescribing more meaning than it actually has.

Craft in a fine art environment does pose a challenge for makers but I think it’s a healthy one. Concerns over functionality, production, marketing can be put aside momentarily. Ideas, tenuous and as they often are, can be teased out and explored. I recently wrote a press release of a jeweller having a major solo show. This was a task the gallery had put to her several months before. She had been so challenged by the idea of distilling her body of work to 150 words that she crumbled under the pressure. She believed somehow the work to be at fault, as if it should come with its own text panel to support its existence. Within 30 minutes of talking to her, gently and slowly about the work, I was able to build a simple paragraph that was cohesive and engaging. There were plenty of ideas there, it was a matter of connecting the dots.

Is writing a skill that makers can or should acquire? From a purely self serving position I  say not necessarily. Inviting someone into your process who can  help navigate through this element of work can be a rewarding and enlightening experience that may have you going in different directions. But writing is just like any craft, with practice, technique and patience it is a skill that can be honed over time and can serve the maker well.