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- Volume 8, Issue 2, 2017
Craft Research - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 8, Issue 2, 2017
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Towards design hybridity: Negotiating traditions through contemporary craft making in Finland
Authors: Anna Kouhia and Pirita Seitamaa-HakkarainenAbstractThis 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.
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Craft as cultural ecologically located practice: Comparative case studies of textile crafts in Cyprus, Estonia and Peru
Authors: Patrick Dillon and Sirpa KokkoAbstractThis article reports comparative case studies in three countries: Estonia, Cyprus and Peru. Through these, the cultural ecologies of six textile craft practitioners, two in each country, were investigated using an interview-based situational analysis. Cultural ecology is concerned with transactional relationships between people and the environments that they inhabit. It provides a lens on the processes of continuity and change that shape cultural patterns and cultural traditions. Interviews were conducted in open format around questions about biographical and professional practice. Relationships between practitioners’ personal histories and their craft practices were explored. Outcomes suggest that the cultural ecologies are profoundly shaped by the transmission of customs, beliefs and values from generation to generation, which, in turn, are located within a place of social interaction conferring a sense of belonging and an environment for the formation of social identities. These attachments powerfully influence continuity in the craft traditions. The interrelated processes of globalization and technological development are the dominant agents of change. Responses to these pressures vary with the practitioners in the three countries and are linked to factors associated with cultural resilience.
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Adopting a craft approach in the context of social innovation
More LessAbstractThis article explores the value of adopting a craft-based approach in design for social innovation in the wider context of design for sustainability. The main position is that services are products of a craft process. By looking at the results of the processes of social innovation (services) and craft (craft artefacts), the shared characteristics of these two very different processes and results point towards a plethora of shared characteristics that could be leveraged. At the same time the common discourse between service design and social innovation provides a fertile ground for the ongoing debate about eco-modernism and radical approaches to sustainability. Synthesizing parts of craft into social innovation cross-pollinates both fields and opens up a robust theoretical background for service design while providing a platform for craft as redirective practice to further move towards sustainment. Craft in this context is understood as a future-oriented, post-industrial way of designing. These two fields of application of designerly ways of thinking complement each other on many different levels and from a theoretical point of view provide a path towards a sustainable future. Finding new ways of synthesizing the two and communicating the underlying, alternative system of values formed between them is part of the transition necessary to avoid the environmental and social catastrophes that we are marching towards.
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Exploring the concept of ceramics mixed media in Ghana
Authors: Kofi Adjei, Eric Appau Asante and Rexford Assasie OppongAbstractThe introduction of Modern ceramics in Ghana is credited to Michael Cardew between 1942 and 1945, when he taught and worked at Achimota College in Accra and Vume in the Volta region, respectively. Traditionally, the modernist ceramic tradition in Ghana concentrated on form and function, with an emphasis on glazed finishes. It heavily depended on clay and glazes, despite the considerable range of materials that are available for complementing some of the structural, aesthetic and practical limitations that affect the usage of clay for artistic expression. The aim of this study was to move on from the prevailing modernist ceramic tradition by experimenting and reporting on the use of mixed media with clay for the production of forms to create meaning through effects and textures that are difficult to achieve with clay alone. The study used a studio-based experimental research approach involving the manipulation of clay and mixed media. The results obtained from the experimentations with the clay and the mixed media created new aesthetic qualities and emotional experiences that were not possible to achieve with clay alone. The results affirmed that traditional materials, such as rope, fan blades and wood, assume new meanings and effects when added to clay, leading to new opportunities for artistic expression and emotional experience in ceramic art.
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Sustainable craft in practice: From practice to theory
Authors: Niina Väänänen, Sinikka Pöllänen, Minna Kaipainen and Leena VartiainenAbstractConcerns regarding the presence and future of craft in a sustainability context increase the need to define the concept of ‘sustainable craft’. Based on interviews with sixteen craft practitioners in Finland, this qualitative study describes and analyses craft practitioners’ conceptions of their craft practices and products through the lens of sustainability as implemented in their actions. Using Grounded Theory, the analysis of interview data reveals a holistic system of sustainable craft, comprising three elements: sustainable practice, product and immaterial craft. Through their interaction, these intertwined elements were found to motivate and affect the practitioners and their products. The findings offer a novel perspective on the concept of sustainable craft and a systemic model of sustainability for use by practitioners.
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Makers Review
By David JonesAbstractGwen Heeney, who died in December 2016, was an internationally renowned ceramic artist who worked with clay brick not merely as the foundation material of our built world but also as a conceptual device for penetrating the apparent solidity of our perceptions of our material culture. She was instrumental in establishing the field of brick sculpture both through her work and through helping to found the World Artists in Brick (WABA).
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Exhibition Review
Authors: Sarah Walker and Ania SadkowskaAbstractDisobedient Bodies: J.W. Anderson Curates The Hepworth Wakefield, Wakefield, Yorkshire, UK, 18 March–18 June 2017
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Book Reviews
Authors: Fiona Hackney and Timo RissanenAbstractFor Folk’s Sake: Art and Economy in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia, Erin Morton (2016) Montréal, Quebec: McGill/Queen’s University Press, 424 pp., illus. 76 col., ISBN: 9780773548114, h/bk, $108.00; ISBN: 9780773548121, p/bk, $40.46
Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes, Amy Twigger Holroyd (2017) London: I.B. Tauris, 256 pp., ISBN: 9781784536497, p/bk, £14.99
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Conference Review
More LessAbstractEverything and Everybody as Material: Beyond Fashion Design Methods, The Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Borås, Sweden, 7–9 June 2017
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