General view of the Handspring Factory

For those who’ve read the statement of practice from Handspring Puppet Company, you might be interested in the following short interview with Adrian Kohler:

How did you first become involved in puppetry?

My mom was a puppeteer and art teacher. Made and performed figures from an early age.

How did you learn puppetry skills?

From puppet manuals by John Wright and Hans-jurgen fetig and Margery Batchelder. Built puppets as a kid. Occasional films on bunraku and Czech puppet animation. Studied sculpture at art school. Mentored by Lily Herzberg at the Space Theatre in the mid seventies. Interned at the Canon Hill puppet Theatre in Birmingham uk for 6 months. Taught puppetry at Weld Community centre, Birmingham. Ran Popular Theatre program in Botswana in late seventies Where puppets were used. Formed Handspring inn 1981 and continued to learn on the hoof.

Is there a particular school of puppetry in South Africa?

Other puppeteers.

What do you think of the work of William Kentridge? Is your work in dialogue with his at all?

I and many others think William is a Renaissance man. A broad approach to art. Generous and fearless, particularly of new technology. My work continues to be influenced by what I have learnt from William and he says the same about me. As we are not making anything new together at the moment, this dialogue carries on at a distance.

In between performances, do you think it would be worthwhile exhibiting puppets like the war horses on their own?

Yes, the horses look good just standing there.

What are your upcoming projects?

A piece called ‘True’ with Neil Bartlett slated to open at the Cottlesloe Tyeatre in October. About which I am so excited it cuts down on my sleep.

The replica is, in a way, the realm of pure craft … Its objectness, its materiality, its form absorb the force that would otherwise arise from its “content.”

So wrote Rachel Weiss in the second issue of this journal, in an article on the Cuban contemporary art group Los Carpinteros.[1]

It is a fascinating but contentious idea: What if creativity as such lies outside of the realm of craft? What if the act of copying, which requires skill in an unadulterated state in order to achieve success, is the truest version of this journal’s core subject? What if the notion of a successful copy varies according to culture or context? What are the differences between content and intent?[2]

This issue provides ample opportunity to test this idea, in two very different cultural contexts. First up is a pair of complementary articles about Japan, by Christine Guth and Kida Takuya. The articles bring us from the long-established customs of the tea ceremony (chanoyu) to the delicate politics of the nation’s craft world during the reconstruction period immediately following the Second World War. Together, the two authors show that Japan’s tradition of copying, while very different from the emphasis on individuality in Europe and America, is no less likely to produce confusion and conflict.

Later in the issue, we are off to South Africa where, as Anitra Nettleton shows, there is a more informal but equally widespread practice of imitation and emulation. This is an unsettled (and perhaps unsettling) craft landscape, in which authorship and creativity are difficult to fix with certainty. In the entrepreneurial stalls of Johannesburg’s fleamarkets, tourists are faced with a dizzying array of wares, and geographically rooted traditions are lost in a shuffle of stereotype and repetition. This process of market homogenization is itself of great interest, and Nettleton details its mechanisms at length. As she demonstrates through an ensuing analysis of South African basketry, the only way to combat such erasure is through the specifics of production. In this same spirit, we have commissioned a Statement of Practice in which the potters at Ardmore Ceramic Art (also in South Africa) speak of their experiences at a socially progressive craft enterprise. Here we encounter another form of repetition, as many of the makers voice similar attitudes (gratitude, pride, ambition). How close do we get to these men and women? As the proprietors of Ardmore note in their introduction, it is difficult to capture the “true” voice of a craftsperson who makes within a highly structured entrepreneurial context, even when he or she is sitting directly in front of you. (The statements were originally delivered as oral testimonies in Zulu; Ardmore’s shop manager, Happiness Sibisi, translated them for us. While there are grammatical inaccuracies in these translations, the Ardmore proprietors decided not to make corrections. This appeared controversial to us but we let their decision stand.)

Elsewhere in the issue we explore the linked histories of queer identity and craft-based art practice—a subject first discussed in our pages a year ago by Julia Bryan-Wilson, in her brilliant reading of the rug works of lesbian sculptor Harmony Hammond. Now Australian scholar Sally Gray gives us a glimpse of the elusive aesthetic rites of underground gay New York in the 1980s. Artist David McDiarmid’s leather garments evoke a time and place in which self-fashioning was so important that it became an all-consuming craft in its own right.

Finally, we are pleased to offer our most extensive and important Primary Text to date. Taken from the pages of Overseas Education magazine (an organ of the British colonial administrative establishment) and Arts of West Africa, this set of texts offers a window into interwar modernist attitudes to African craft. The authors were themselves educators, and it is disturbing to imagine them inflicting their combination of paternalism and enthusiasm on young African woodcarvers. Yet these previously unexamined texts have tremendous historical value. As Tanya Harrod notes in her Commentary, “Only in the field of colonial art education was the relationship between modernism and primitivism examined systematically and a dialogue set up between the West and its ‘others.’ It may have been an imperfect, impoverished dialogue, but it did at least take place.” The contents of Overseas Education also resonate uncomfortably with the present day. Imperial rule in Africa may be history, but the tensions between progressivism and tradition (even if we no longer think of it as “primitive”) have certainly not been resolved.

[1] Rachel Weiss, “Between the Material World and the Ghosts of Dreams: An Argument about Craft in Los Carpinteros,” The Journal of Modern Craft 1(2) (2008): 258.

[2] For further consideration of this idea in the context of contemporary art, see Glenn Adamson, “Analogue Practice,” in Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner, The Studio Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2010 [forthcoming]).

JMC 3-1 OFC

First issue of 2010

Editorial Introduction

Articles

The Multiple Modalities of the Copy in Traditional Japanese Craft by Christine M. E. Guth

“Traditional Art Crafts (Dento¯ Ko¯gei)” in Japan: From Reproductions to Original Works by Kida Takuya

Crafting Hip and Cool: David McDiarmid’s Handcrafted Lamb Suede Dancefloor Outifts, 1980–1989 by Sally Gray

Life in a Zulu Village: Craft and the Art of Modernity in South Africa by Anitra Nettleton (pdf)

Statement of Practice

Ardmore Ceramic Art introduced by Fée Halsted and Jennifer Fair Cohen

Primary Text Commentary

Overseas Education and Arts of West Africa by Tanya Harrod

Exhibition Reviews

Industrial Ceramics, or Ceramics at Home? by Alan C. Elder

Crafting Modernist Aesthetics by Hana Leaper

A Crafted Presence by Russell Baldon

Book Reviews

The Craftsman and the Critic: Defining Usefulness and Beauty in Arts and Crafts-Era Boston reviewed by Kenneth L. Ames

The Saturated World: Aesthetic Meaning, Intimate Objects, Women’s Lives, 1890–1940 and “Make It Yourself”: Home Sewing, Gender, and Culture, 1890–1930 reviewed by Leah Dilworth

The dominant but false idea – shared by many Africans and many donors – is that the act of creativity is necessarily a collective act; that African artistic forms are not aesthetic objects per se but ciphers of a deeper level of the ‘real’ that is fundamentally ethnographic and expressive of Africa’s ontological cultural difference of ‘authenticity’. It is this African ‘difference’ and this African ‘authenticity’ donors are keen to find, support and, if necessary, invent.

Achille Mbembe ‘Art and Development’ Art South Africa 8/3 2010 pp.70-74

Beauty Ntshalintshali and Mavis Shabalala (2009). Guineafowl Tureen, 29 x 35 x 28cm. Masterpiece Collection: Ardmore Ceramics. Photo used with permission.

I agree with Bickford Berzock & Frank that ‘it is clear that today the market for African ceramics is outpacing scholarship. Published research on African ceramics is highly idiosyncratic and uneven in depth and cultural representation. Only a few traditions have been the focus of in-depth study by multiple researchers offering complementary perspectives’ (Bickford Berzock & Frank, 2007). Notwithstanding the lack of scholarly research, here I discuss the question of whether African ceramics is harboured or hindered by European industry, influence and appetite and its impact on village and studio practice.

The largest pottery studio in South Africa, Ardmore Ceramics, is an interesting case. It was founded by white South African artist, Fèe Halsted after she had trained a disabled black South African, Bonnie Ntshalintshali, and discovered a powerful dynamic in combining European and African craft traditions. By ingenuity, by thrift and by chance, Halsted developed the style that has made Ardmore Ceramics internationally renowned (Ardmore Ceramics, 2010). Not quite African nor European in neither aesthetic nor sensibility. Intricately decorated ware in a Western ceramic tradition, the work is brightly coloured and the forms unique, featuring flora and animal motifs with almost mythological figurines in fantasy narratives. The only thing African about them is perhaps the subject matter, the style of modelling and colouring. They seem to evoke a familiar African aesthetic, however they do not have a sense of traditional tribal pottery, the work more resembling narrative-based wood carvings of Malawi and Zimbabwe. Ardmore pottery would be most comfortable in an upmarket home, office or gallery; the concept is technologically European with an African aesthetic spin and justifiably heavy price tags. In 2008 eight Ardmore pieces fetched over GB£20,000 at Bonhams in London (Prendini Toffoli, 2008). The Ardmore website currently has a set of candlesticks for GB£7,500. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve coveted Ardmore Ceramics for years but have never quite had the funds to shell out for one. They are a fabulous example of co-creative practice. Each piece is made in stages of construction, sculpting and painting by different artists to produce a shared outcome.

The influence of the European drive for production and saleability might be a strong influence in the style evolution of the potters’ wares.

It seems that the successful African potters are for the most part discovered then engineered into greatness by Europeans. Without European business entrepreneurship these potters would, it seems have continued in their craft serving their communities. Their craft would then have remained in its pure, traditional and primarily functional form.

Ardmore is in stark contrast to traditional craft pottery of the African village. With the latter, clay is dug by hand, dried and ground like grain, hand built by coiling and burnished. Then wood or smoke fired in aloe leaves as the first firing and a final firing in umTomboti wood – toxic while burning, its oils stain pots a deep lustrous black. The pots are finally glossed up with animal fat.

The now internationally renowned Nesta Nala from the Tugela Ferry area of Zululand worked exclusively in that tradition. Nala was the foremost potter who brought Zulu pottery onto the world stage. She passed on her skills to her daughters and at her death in 2005 many in South Africa considered her a national treasure. She represented South Africa at the Cairo International Biennale for ceramics in 1994, received South Africa’s prestigious Vita award for craft in 1995, in 1999 participated in the Smithsonian Institute’s Folk Life Project in Washington. Her work is represented in major collections in South Africa and worldwide (Ceramics Today, circa 2001). Her pottery was traditional in the true sense – functional pots used in everyday Zulu tribal life and prized by the local rural community for its beauty. Considering the rudimentary equipment and method, her work is startling, exhibiting purity of form, perfect proportion and embellished with exquisitely simple reliefs. While much of her decoration style was in the Zulu geometric patterning tradition, she later experimented with fish and other motifs. Hints of European influence are found in her later pieces where she was encouraged to sign and date her work – a very unAfrican practice. Nala’s promotion and exposure at the Association of Potters of Southern Africa and Corobrik National Ceramics Exhibitions of the 90’s generated interest in traditional Zulu pottery. Had Nala not been discovered and catapulted onto the world art stage, her work would have remained in rural obscurity. Although world-renowned she remained a rurally based, traditional village potter until her death, never crossing the divide to a studio tradition. She left her legacy in the Nala family of potters and paved the way for other Zulu potters like the Magwaza family and the noteworthy Clive Sithole.

Clive Sithole is an exception—a true studio potter who studied traditional techniques under Nesta Nala. Heavily influenced by Nala, his works feature traditional Zulu form with added sculptural elements and a more Western style pit-firing. His work is considered a new development in the history of the craft. Successfully positioning his pot-making as an art form, he developed a style that incorporates bovine reliefs from the Zulu tradition of young boys making clay bulls (Van Wyk, 2010). His pots fuse the form and functionality of Nala’s and his own decorative style. While there are other examples, one hopes Clive Sithole heralds the future of African potters – creative practice unfettered by European influence yet relevant on the world art scene.

Bernard Zondo and Zinhle Nene (2009). Porcupine Tureen detail, 29 x 27 x 20cm. Masterpiece Collection: Ardmore Ceramics. Photo used with permission.

The end-use of African ceramics is fascinating and requires more research. Where the potter creates traditional ware, it is functionally useful to Africans as everyday or special occasion ware. The very same piece in the hands of Europeans becomes an art piece separated from its context and devoid of its utilitarian function yet prized for its beauty and market value. African Art Centre in Durban assists craft producers to sell their ware to collectors, interior decorators and particularly tourists. The high-end work is earmarked for galleries and collectors and the remainder is generally relegated to tourist curios. An unsurprising phenomenon is the plethora of studios of previously disadvantaged potters industriously churning out Africanesque pottery for Western consumption. Far worse is white South Africans churning out Western ceramics decorated in a kitsch quasi-African style. This is unduly harsh criticism of black craft studios as tourist patronage keeps bread on the table of these craftspeople who otherwise have no source of income.

The success of traditional pottery seems inextricably linked to Europeans; either as facilitators or business leaders on the one hand or the purchasers on the other. This symbiotic relationship has the drawback of the best artefacts ending up overseas, however the benefit is increased interest and trade in pottery (even from the tourism sector) allowing potters to develop and refine their practice and supports more people in the community learning the craft, ironically ensuring its survival as a tradition. At this juncture whether an African potter is studio-based or works traditionally does not seem to affect their fortunes, only that they are discovered and promoted. It is likely that as more potters like Clive Sithole come up through the ranks, African pottery will organically develop its own aesthetic and become increasingly self-assured. And that which is created in studios will influence the village potter.

Bibliography

• African Ceramics (2010). Arts and crafts from Africa. Retrieved 20 February, 2010, from http://www.ceramicsafrica.co.za/index.htm
• Ardmore Ceramics (2010). Ardmore’s history. Retrieved 20 February, 2010, from http://www.ardmoreceramics.co.za/about/history.php
• Bickford Berzock, Kathleen & Frank, Barbara E. (2007). Ceramic arts in Africa. African Arts (Spring). Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0438/is_1_40/ai_n18646981/?tag=content;col1
• Capolo, Mark (2008). Traditional Zulu village and pottery. Travel Blog 17 March. Retrieved 28 September, 2009, from http://www.travelblog.org/Africa/South-Africa/KwaZulu-Natal/Pietermaritzburg/blog-257001.html
• Ceramics Today (circa 2001). Nesta Nala & Clive Sithole Retrieved 21 February, 2010, from http://www.ceramicstoday.com/potw/zulu.htm
• Chennell, Louise, & Talbot, Kathy (2008). Exhibition review: Sankofa: Ceramic tales from Africa. Interpreting Ceramics (10).
• Colleen (2010). Traditional smoke firing. Ceramics South Africa, (15 January). Retrieved from http://ceramicssouthernafrica.blogspot.com/search/label/Traditional%20South%20African%20Ceramics
• Davern, Fiona (2006). Made in South Africa. Design Seven, p. 76–80.
• ELC Art and Craft Centre Rorke’s Drift (2010). The passion. Retrieved 20 February, 2010, from http://www.puul.de/centre/index.html?=ceramic_studio.html
• Folk Art South Africa (2010). Ceramics and pottery. Retrieved 20 February, 2010, from http://www.folkartsouthafrica.com/category.php?cid=1
• Inkosi Imported Crafts (2010). Zulu clay pots. Retrieved 19 February, 2010, from http://nkosiimportedcrafts.com/Zulu_Clay_Pots.html
• Prendini Toffoli, Hilary (2008). Evermore Ardmore. Financial Mail, September 5, p. 86–87.
• Sizana Craft (2010). Homepage. Retrieved 19 February, 2010, from http://www.sizanacraft.co.za/contentpage.aspx?pageid=3643
• Tatham Art Gallery (2008). Ardmore Ceramic Studio: HIV/AIDS exhibition. Retrieved 15 February, 2010, from http://www.tatham.org.za/ardmore-ceramics-studio.html
• The Pottery Studio (2010). About the potters: Nic Sithole. Retrieved 10 February, 2010, from http://www.potterystudio.co.za/about.html
• Van Wyk, Gary (2010). Interview with Clive Sithole. African Arts, 21 February. Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0438/is_1_40/ai_n18646986/
• Zizamele Ceramics (2010). The art of changing lives. Retrieved 11 February, 2010, from http://www.zizamele.co.za/index.html

Steven Smith is a Lecturer in Advertising Design at the Institute of Communication Design, Massey University, New Zealand.  Steven has been a practicing studio potter in South Africa for over twenty years and has a keen interest in Zulu culture and craft, especially pottery.

Lestina Malatjie and Calvin Machlawaule, (Kaross Collective), Community, 1999. Embroidery on black cloth, 60 x 115 cm. Collection: Johannesburg Art Gallery

Lestina Malatjie and Calvin Machlawaule, (Kaross Collective), Community, 1999. Embroidery on black cloth, 60 x 115 cm. Collection: Johannesburg Art Gallery

Shortly after the newly democratic ANC-led government of South Africa was installed in 1994, it issued a White Paper that announced a policy of using the arts for the purpose of social transformation and reconciliation. The paper asserted that “experiencing the creative expression of different communities of South Africa provides insights into the aspirations and values of our nation. This experience develops tolerance and provides a foundation for national reconciliation.” One outcome of this policy should have been to bridge the gap between art and craft in South African cultural property. Unfortunately, because government support for ‘craft’ was predicated on its ability to alleviate poverty– “to contribute significantly to the economy of the country by…creating employment,” its effect has been to maintain the hierarchical distinction between art and craft by reinforcing the divide between the aesthetic and the practical and between the rural and urban. The Department of Arts and Culture’s motto: “Design Feeds the Poor,” could hardly be expected to resonate with an international art market now free, after the lifting of sanctions, to scour the county for the next hot art star. Both the government and the museum/gallery system are driven by monetary concerns, but with radically different goals. In the end, one could argue that the gap between art and craft in the new South Africa is a reflection of the bottomless chasm between rich and poor.

When I first went to South Africa in 2000, I was exhilarated by the art world’s rethinking of the traditional categories of what constituted art. Universities were hurriedly revamping art history courses to include ‘traditional’ arts, and museums were not only purchasing the work of black painters, sculptors and printmakers, they were displaying both traditional and contemporary crafts along with the ‘high’ arts of painting and sculpture. The legacy of 19^th century concepts of what constituted art and art history was quietly being buried, or so it seemed. For over a century, the avant-garde had advocated the destruction of the very idea of ‘high’ art, whereas the history of art was narrowly confined to the study of traditional media. In South Africa in 2000, it appeared as if the internal contradiction within modernism was going to be resolved in favor of the avant-garde. From the perspective of this newcomer, the history of art was being reconceived as the history of cultural production, and the former hierarchies among media were being leveled.

In 2003, in the exhibition, “Coexistence: Contemporary Cultural Production in South Africa,” that I co-curated with the former Director of the South African National Gallery, Marilyn Martin, we included the work of rural needlework collectives along with that of university-trained artists working in cities in South Africa or abroad. Our aim was to bridge not only the rural/urban//craft/art divide but also the gender divide. The needlework collectives had been established for the most part by white women artists who had identified traditional craft skills as a means of income generation. Among the most successful was and remains the Kaross collective in Limpopo Province. Founded by Irma van Rooyen in 1988, it employs over 600 people today, the vast majority of whom are women. (B. Schmahmann in the exhibition catalog). Even if the role of these white founders might be considered a form of colonialism, it anticipated government policy and moreover has given disadvantaged women new status in their communities, answering the call of the ANC Women’s League “for the right to fashion feminism to suit their own worlds.” I will use the example of a stunning embroidered cloth to illustrate the complexities of the art/craft divide in the South African context post-1994.

Community (1999) is a subtle interweaving of voices—a textile in the truest sense of the word. The cloth was commissioned by the National Paper Prayers Campaign for AIDS Awareness (1998-2000), initiated by artist Kim Berman and administered through Artist Proof Studio. In collaboration with AIDS educators, the Studio members went to community centers in all of South Africa’s nine provinces to help address trauma and loss through the process of making a print as a prayer for healing. During its second year, the program expanded to three needlework collectives, each of which produced large-scale hangings—a sort of surrogate painting– that could serve either to inform the local populace if hung in a community center or as a collectible art work to raise funds for treatment programs. Like a storybook, Community visually narrates the story of the impact of AIDS on a rural village. As drawn by Calvin Machlawaule, who is HIV positive, and then embroidered by Lestina Malatjie, it emphasizes the tragic consequences of denial and stigma in the era of AIDS.

Clearly the cloth is a hybrid in more ways than one. At the Kaross collective, the women’s needlework skills had been transferred from creating clothing for personal use to making place mats and tablecloths for the tourist trade. Once the government-funded Paper Prayers program provided a tool for AIDS awareness, the resulting narrative cloths had a powerful content that transcended both its educational purpose and its ‘craft’ designation. Signed by the embroiderer, Malatjie, in order to satisfy the predominantly white collectors’ expectations of authorship, it was exhibited at the Vita Craft Awards, where it won a top prize and was purchased by the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Neither the format of the wall hanging nor its content was the result of Malatjie’s individual inspiration, however. The work, as its title indicates, was the collaborative effort of several of the participants in the training, as overseen by the artists and educators. And despite the exceptional quality of the work, Malatjie has not emerged as a recognized craft-artist. As for Community itself, it remains in storage at JAG, its status as ‘art’ in limbo.

Of course, ‘community’ is the problem. In South Africa, ‘high’ art is still thought of as the product of an individual sensibility, despite every effort to rethink categories to be more reflective of the values of a democratic nation. The fact that the needlework collectives consist predominantly of women has only contributed further to locking the art/craft hierarchy more firmly into place. Until very recently, ‘high’ art, as defined in western terms, was considered a male-only realm within the majority black culture. Although this is rapidly changing, the continuing rural/urban divide—men in the city, women in the countryside– also contributes to maintaining the status quo.

The situation results in an impoverished picture of South African art, as exemplified by the recent publication, South African Art Now, authored by artist Sue Williamson and produced by HarperCollins in the U.S. In this broad survey, the craft traditions are acknowledged only in terms of individual practitioners employing handwork skills to make ‘art.’ The important work of the embroidery or pottery collectives receives no mention at all. Of course, in the United States, one rarely finds publications on community-based art or artists’ collectives; monographic studies of individual artists still predominate. Although it is hardly surprising that HarperCollins, owned by the conservative propagandist Rupert Murdoch, followed this established hierarchy, the book does distort the South African picture, in my opinion.

The arts will never be able to adequately contribute to social transformation and reconciliation in South Africa until the art/craft divide is finally and firmly bridged. The country has faced and surmounted far greater challenges, so the cause is far from lost.

Pamela Allara is Associate Professor emerita, Contemporary Art and Visual Culture, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA

Hlengiwe Dube outside the Geelong Art Gallery fixing a wire basket

In the past, she has completed a number of commission for beaded public art in South Africa. This year she is producing a South African flag, embroidered entirely of beads, which will fly at the Madiba Stadium for the FIFA World Cup.

The African Art Centre where Hlengiwe works has a small gallery which hosts exhibitions of crafters. It is one of the relatively few places in South Africa were craft can be seen in a gallery setting. It seems a natural progression for a crafter like Hlengiwe to have a solo exhibition including unique works from her artistic imagination. But to claim status as an individual art is more difficult than in Western contemporary craft. Traditional culture seems to have a much stronger pull. In the following brief interview, she starts the ball rolling on the question of African craft in galleries.

What prompted you to write a book on Zulu beadwork?

Zulu Beadwork cover by Hlengiwe Dube

When I was reading the books about the Zulu beadwork, they were all saying different things and I was so confused. I decided to go direct and communicate with the people whom wear the beadwork, as well as those who make beadwork. I sought to find out from them all the meaning of beadwork and colours that they used. It was very interesting because much of what I heard was different to what the available books were saying. I decided to collect all the information that I could and share it with the other Zulu beadwork lovers, as it was direct from the Zulu people.

Do you think Zulu craft like beadwork is the expression of an individual artist or a collective culture?

I think it is both. In some instances, craft items are intended for the sole use of a crafter or the person who wears or uses the craft object. You also find crafts which are representative of stylistic expressions of a particular culture with particular colours and designs of metaphoric significance to the concerned culture.

Would you like to see more of this craft in art galleries? If so, what do you think has prevented opportunities for their display?

I would definitely like to see more craft in art galleries. I think craft has always been relegated to a level lower that Fine Art, and not as a creative form of expression. I think display in craft in art galleries will narrow the divide between art and craft.

How do you see South African craft developing in the future?

I think South African craft is developing, embracing modern trends, usages and also attracts interest from other cultures.

*’Crafter’ is the preferred term for craftsperson in South Africa.

Journal of Modern Craft 2-3

Editorial Introduction

Articles

A Ghost in the Machine Age: The Westerwald Stoneware Industry and German Design Reform, 1900–1914 by Freyja Hartzell

A Catalan Werkstätte? Arts and Crafts Schools between Modernisme and Noucentisme by Jordi Falgàs

Early Expressions of Anthroposophical Design in America: The Infuence of Rudolf Steiner and Fritz Westhoff on Wharton Esherick by Roberta A. Mayer and Mark Sfrri

Primary Text Commentary

Design in Ireland: Report of the Scandinavian Design Group in Ireland, April 1861, by Paul Caffrey

Statement of Practice

Handspring Puppet Company by Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones and Tommy Luther (pdf)

Exhibition Reviews

Craft in its Gaseous State: Wouldn’t It Be Nice … Wishful Thinking in Art and Design by Mònica Gaspar

Quiet Persuasion: Political Craft by Geraldine Craig

Book Reviews

A Theory of Craft: Function and Aesthetic Expression reviewed by Sandra Alfoldy

Designing Modern Britain reviewed by Peter Hughes