Craft Research - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2013

This article critically reviews the concept of ‘revival’ in relation to making in contemporary culture. The 1970s are a period, which craft historians and theorists generally acknowledge as one of revival and reinvention of craft practice across Britain. Today, we find ourselves in the midst of what has also been described as a ‘craft renaissance’. This article will explore some of the causal factors that led to the craft revival of the 1970s to examine whether parallels can be drawn with today’s developments. The purpose of the article is to determine whether craft revivals share any common identifying characteristics, or whether each is unique to its particular period in time. Three key factors which contributed to the revival of the craft in the 1970s will be examined: the role of the state, the ideological relationship of craft to contemporary fine art, and the socio-economic climate of the time. The comparison demonstrates that although today’s craft revival shares many points of commonality with the 1970s, revivals are not simply a repetition of the past. Because craft is in a constant process of reinvention and reinvigoration, so-called ‘revivals’ are instead uniquely complex and historically changing, reflecting more about the present and the future than the past.

Professor Keith Cummings and Dr Max Stewart discuss their collaboration in an A.H.R.C.-funded project into the techniques of a glass casting process known as pâte(s)-de-verre within the works of the French pioneer of the process, Amalric Walter (1870–1959). The results of this project (completed in 2006) provided the starting point for the extension of this process, its description and publication in the form of repeatable recipes and clear scientific principles, the generation of new glass colours and their use within a personal body of glass sculpture. The article describes the journey from the original empirical investigation, through the experimental reproduction of Walter’s process, the codification of that process for publication, the extension of the process through the production of new colours and additions to the casting process itself, and their use as expressive vocabulary.

Community arts can provide older people with opportunities to enhance their quality of life, provide a sense of fulfillment and create a space for teaching, learning and sharing. Our research question asks how and why do older Australian people who are active in society engage with craft? This article discusses one particular case study from a larger ongoing joint research project, ‘Well-being and ageing: Community, diversity and the arts in Victoria’. The project, which began in 2008, has been undertaken by academic researchers from two metropolitan Australian universities in Melbourne, Victoria (Deakin University and Monash University). This research has entailed a number of case studies of individual visual and performing arts community organizations that cater for older people, active in the community. This phenomenological qualitative case study sought in-depth understandings of the group of découpers (all members of the Découpage Guild Australia). Phenomenological research entails an exploration of participants’ lifeworlds, experiences, understandings and perceptions. The data are reported under three overarching themes: Learning and Teaching; Being Creative; and Well-being. The study demonstrates that craft engagement can provide participants with new learning experiences, teaching opportunities in a collaborative community, an outlet for their creativity, which fosters an enhanced sense of self and well-being.

This article presents research regarding the instruction and production of pottery in Uganda during the twentieth century. It investigates how local low-tech pottery and community attitudes, as well as norms and values in traditional Ugandan pottery, have been displaced by competing modern technologies and selected community actions, which they in turn can be seen to influence. The proposition is that this shift in pottery manufacture reflects patterns of contemporary technological, socio-economic, cultural and power relations in Uganda in general and Nkore in particular. The proposition is further that this shift retains previous technological knowledge dispositions, specific to economic, social and cultural history in Uganda and its position in the global market. In other words, past local technology has left its mark on both past and present activities and attitudes to pottery making.

This article reflects on a body of practice-based research that considers the recycling of images found in discarded waste sheets from commercial offset-lithography. Specifically, it considers how images derived from Indian print waste might be recycled to create new forms of ornament that reflect upon cross-cultural exchange and globalization. Initially working with large-format waste sheets derived from billboard advertising in the United Kingdom, the author utilized cropping and re-contextualization to create new works. Working with waste gathered from the floors of a thriving print hub in southern India provided an opportunity to extend this exploration to consider waste sheets as catalysts for new forms of ornament, with the content directly referencing themes of historical and contemporary cultural exchange and globalization. Largely facilitated by digital tools and connectivity, a new generation of Indian designers have overseen a significant shift in Indian graphic design over the past twenty years. This has been most evident in the packaging of fireworks and hand-rolled cigarettes, where traditional and religious motifs have increasingly been marginalized in favour of the integration of western, secular imagery. Working with waste sheets used in the packaging of Indian fireworks and cigarettes, the author considers the Bengali Kantha – a traditional form of embroidered blanket – as a suitable model with which to explore new forms of ornament, connecting the traditional crafts practices of India with contemporary graphic design, and in turn provide a platform for a body of new works that reflect on perceived narrowing of the gap between graphic and textile design through digital production and print technologies.

This portrait focuses on Andreea Mandrescu’s textile collection Inlaid Fantasies, partly drawing from an interview with the designer in December 2012. The textile collection is grounded in the designer’s research into marquetry and inlay crafts. Experimentation with unexpected materials and combining these is essential to Mandrescu’s research. Cutting as a mode of enquiry is key in Mandrescu’s work; mutilation and removal are tools to reveal new ideas, surfaces and forms. Mandrescu transforms marquetry and inlay by adopting the crafts from traditional hard surfaces to pliable textiles. The textiles are not only a collage of materials; they are also a collage of handwork and machine-made cuts. The collection is versatile in regards to end-use. The textiles stand alone for interiors and furnishing, while they also lend themselves to garment forms and accessories. With Inlaid Fantasies Mandrescu points to broader conversations about crossing disciplinary boundaries through a form of collage of research and practices.

‘Keypiece: Research at the Threshold’, Research Exhibition and Seminar, Sheffield Hallam University, UK, 19–20 November 2010

Digital Visions in Fashion + Textiles: Made in Code, Sarah E. Braddock Clarke and Jane Harris (2012) London, UK: Thames & Hudson, 240 pp., ISBN 9780500516447, h/bk, £29.95

The First International Symposium for Creative Pattern Cutting, University of Huddersfield, Huddersfield, UK, 6–7 February 2013

Exhibitions, conferences, publications