Towards design hybridity: Negotiating traditions through contemporary craft making in Finland

This article discusses how contemporary craft and design practitioners negotiate and apply ‘tradition’ in the materiality of creative making. By doing so, it aims to demonstrate how hybridization is crucial to an innovative renewal of traditional craft practice. With the data derived from two design competitions, the article proposes a new conceptual framework that unpacks the mobilization of ‘tradition’ in terms of three design strategies: the preservation strategy that concentrates on maintaining traditions, the application strategy that modifies and hybridizes traditions and the transformative strategy that subverts and changes tradition. The study argues that traditions can offer a point of reflection through the materiality of creative practice. Finally, it is concluded that artisanship today regenerates the new vernacular that redraws its own dependability and authenticity from the negotiations between the contemporary maker and the very materials that are being used in these negotiations.