Craft Research - Volume 10, Issue 2, 2019

This article explores the relationship between design for sustainability and traditional making practices. It presents results from key informant interviews and observational research into traditional hand making of functional goods in Santa Fe in the United States, Jingdezhen, China, various locations in New South Wales, Australia and Cumbria, United Kingdom. We find that such goods fall into three main categories, primarily utilitarian, symbolic and aesthetic. These practices are discussed in terms of their contemporary relevance, potential futures and relationship to current understandings of sustainability. More specifically, they are considered against the four elements of the Quadruple Bottom Line of Design for Sustainability (Walker 2014), a rigorous interpretation extended from the philosophy of Hick (1989), which comprises: practical meaning including environmental impacts; social meaning; personal meaning; and economic means. The originality of this research lies in the development of new arguments and insights with regard to the complex issues of design for sustainability and traditional making practices. Significantly, we find that many of these practices are intellectually consistent with broad, contemporary understandings of design for sustainability. However, we also find that it is often not easy to reconcile these practices with modern consumer culture. Our research shows that pursuing these practices part-time for their own sake, rather than for primarily commercial reasons can often facilitate the pursuit of excellence and the continuation of cultural traditions.

This article examines the legislative basis and operational effectiveness of the national and prefectural systems for designating and promoting traditional crafts in Tokyo. Traditional artisans participate in these systems primarily through their involvement in kumiai ('artisan guilds'), whose historical background and organizational structure are briefly summarized. To evaluate the usefulness of government support for contemporary craft practitioners, four broad and interrelated categories of kumiai activities are examined: promoting craft business, maintaining and enhancing craft skills and product quality, securing the future of craft traditions, and procuring craft materials. These goals are reflected in the frameworks of national and prefectural legislation that aims to support the efforts of kumiai. However, these goals and the resulting legislation have created a sustained discourse of tension palpably felt by many crafters themselves: the clash between laws designed to protect or promote 'traditional' crafts and other laws that aim to safeguard ecology or animal welfare. Examination of this tension as it is understood and discussed by artisans themselves reveals that, although the positive impact of traditional craft designation systems is widely recognized, it is also perceived that incompatible environmental protection laws can negatively affect their business and threaten the long-term sustainability of craft traditions.

Temper is an additive incorporated into clay during the formation of a ceramic vessel, and may consist of various materials. In a number of previous experiments over the past several decades, archaeologists have experimentally demonstrated that tempers used by prehistoric craftspeople would have imparted important post-firing use-life properties to ceramic vessels. However, although widely touted, the notion that prehistoric temper types would have aided in pre-firing vessel formation has never been systematically tested. Here, we experimentally assess whether calcium carbonate-based tempers, like limestone and burnt shell, would have made clay bodies more workable relative to silicate-based grit temper, as has been previously proposed. In this study, participants were asked to build five simple and challenging three-dimensional forms using grit-, limestone- and shell-tempered clay bodies, and then rank these conditions in terms of workability. Our statistical and qualitative assessments of these data were unambiguous: contrary to claims in the scientific literature, the calcium carbonate tempers did not make clay bodies more workable, and were consistently, sometimes significantly, ranked lower than silicate grit-tempered clay bodies in terms of workability. Our results have several implications for temper selection and evolution in prehistory, specifically during the widespread silicate grit to calcium carbonate transition during the Late Woodland period (AD 500–1400) of the North American Midwest.

Although tattooing has been vaguely discussed in an academic literature for over a century, it has only received serious scholarly interest in recent decades. The literature that exists is primarily within the contexts of art history, economics and dominantly, social sciences. With few exceptions, the emphasis is placed on the modified body or the recipient of the tattoo as the focus of the study, and not the process of cultural production. Tattooing from the perspective of the practitioner, and thus the methods, processes and actions of the tattooist, is yet to have gained sufficient focus. As a result, understanding of a creative medium that is a dominant form of cultural consumption is limited, largely deductive and lacking in informed internal voices. This article aims to offer insight into the multifaceted and contingent nature of the role of the contemporary western tattooist, which may be understood as a tattooist working in a western context in the twenty-first century. Conducted by a researcher who is also a professional tattooist, the article is informed by a multimethod methodology combining a contextual review with practical research and autoethnography. Drawing upon professional practice to provide elucidation, a lens for partially understanding the contingent role of the tattooist in pragmatic multiplicity of a visual artist, a designer and a craftsperson is proposed. Specific attention is paid to the notion of craft in accordance to the criteria of the supplemental, material and skill proposed by Adamson to exemplify when the tattooist can be understood as performing the action of a craftsperson. The role of the contemporary western tattooist has been either assumed, ignored or studied without the necessary resources or methodologies within conventional disciplinary approaches. In introducing an insider practitioner perspective into the current dialogue, tattooing may be better understood and researched in the avenues in which it has previously been studied, while also being introduced into the broader craft, design and arts academic discourse.

Craft artists can be simultaneously mythical poets and SciFy specialists, whose craft skills from the past act as a tool-kit to overcome the borders between past and future, to predict and create imaginary new worlds and to point towards solutions for the future. The Nordic culture and its craft tradition is a wise model for future generations in tackling climate change, social problems and waste. While current design students are outstandingly talented and skilful users of digital tools of virtual reality, problems arise when perfect virtual images have to be transformed into real 3D models, prototypes and products. Designers who are trained to combine craft skills and experiential knowledge with digital reality and computer-assisted tools appear to have an advantage in innovation because they can predict and overcome the flaws that digital reality overlooks.