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Volume 16, Issue 1

Volume 16, Issue 1, 2025

  • Editorial

      • Matters of concern: Mapping past and future craft identities

        https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00154_2

        Volume 16.1 features a variety of contributions that explore the transformative power of craft, highlighting its cultural, material and personal significance in shaping identities, connecting the past and present and offering possibilities for sustainable futures. Chaterjee et al. reflect on the struggle to sustain the heritage craft of linen making in Portugal. Shaw’s Portrait showcases the work of the last remaining lapidaire in France. Writing on batik, Ciptandi and Utami Bastaman similarly discuss the challenges of maintaining traditional practices amidst an ever-changing craft landscape, suggesting that transformation is inevitable. Ferraro illustrates a mindful way to navigate the unknown, by reflecting on her personal experiences and stitching practice, whilst Setyawan explores the transformative experiences of working with clay. Themes of self-exploration and identity are also present in a book review of (2023) and the conference review. The review of the exhibition and the Remarkable Image further explore craft’s transformative potential in relation to sustainability.

  • Articles

      • Interpreting innovation and change in traditional Portuguese linen making: A design-led approach

        https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00145_1

        This article examines a design research intervention aimed at revitalizing the critically endangered craft of traditional linen making in Castelões, Portugal, through a design-led mediation approach. The study critically reflects on the notion of innovation within traditional industries and explores how collaborative efforts can ensure cultural continuity while adapting to change. The methodology includes identifying cultural and territorial values, engaging local practitioners and co-developing resources to preserve and communicate the heritage of this centuries-old craft. The article discusses how ethnographic research methods have helped foster trust and facilitate dialogue with the community, enabling a participatory framework that aligns design actions with the practice’s cultural identity. Findings indicate that innovation, in this context, is best construed as an adaptive and reflective process, balancing issues of tradition and contemporaneity without imposing design or technological norms. The article further details significant outcomes of the mediation process, including the reactivation of the practice base, the establishment of new community facilities, and the initiation of networks and immersive learning programmes. The intervention highlights the potential of design as a catalyst for positive narrative transformation in declining craft cultures, enabling their integration into contemporary cultural and economic contexts.

    • Cartography of the unknown: Walking, stitching and transformation

      https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00146_1

      In the tradition of creative practices’ embodied knowledge and research, this article narrates my experience of trauma due to becoming suddenly disabled. The article relates how engaging with stitching helped me deal with the sudden loss of a leg, cope with my new condition as a disabled person, repair my wounded self, find my feet in a new world and open pathways of new knowledge and consciousness. The article makes a strong case for the transformative potential of craft and craft-making by way of three complementary arguments that contribute to expanding and deepening research into the nature of craft widely, and of stitching specifically. Firstly, it argues that stitching – and more widely craft – is a language in its own terms that allows expressing oneself before and beyond verbal language. Secondly, in offering the possibility to make sense ‘through the hands’, to reconfigure and, thus, repair one wounded self, stitching transformative power goes well beyond its therapeutic nature as it is conventionally defined. Thirdly, it shows that stitching can open the doors onto a different type of knowledge that comes from a source other than the intellect or the rational mind, thus becoming a way of knowing in its own terms and a mode of learning ‘other ways’.

    • Clay to shards: The role of making in Albert Yonathan Setyawan’s artistic practices

      https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00147_1

      The use of clay and ceramic mediums in contemporary art has received considerable attention in relation to their materiality. Materiality is generally understood within a given cultural perspective, referring to the perception of the physical qualities of an object that are related to its purpose, meaning and value in society. This representational possibility has attracted the interest of many artists to the mediums of clay and ceramic. However, material culture cannot fully explain material phenomena or their relationship to humans. The only way to understand a material is to be directly involved in making with it, as physical interaction with the material provides a deeper understanding and connection that cannot be achieved through cultural interpretation alone. Albert Yonathan Setyawan, an Indonesian artist based in Japan, is renowned for his predominantly clay and ceramic works. He creates palm-sized objects that are replicated innumerable times and installed in symmetrical patterns. Setyawan’s works exhibit spiritual dimensions through the use of repetition, order, meditation and transformational qualities. This article applies a phenomenological approach to understanding Setyawan’s practice through an examination of these objects and his experience with his materials. This article likewise discusses how making activity intercedes in the relationship between human artists and their materials. It also explores the way that making has contributed to Setyawan’s artist–maker sensitivity and knowledge of both material properties and the logics of specific forms and methods, as well as the metaphorical possibilities that shape the aesthetic qualities and concept of a given work. Interestingly, Setyawan’s practice is linked to various aspects of past human activity. The article concludes that an artist’s making influences attitudes, ways of thinking and the understanding of practices and the environment. In Setyawan’s practice, materials and making become active ways of engaging with the world and with the self.

  • Craft and Industry

      • Development of Gedog batik crafts using pyramid guide innovation of traditional artefacts

        https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00143_1

        Gedog batik products not only have high artistic and craftsmanship value but are also a representation of the traditions of Tuban itself. The current condition of these traditional artefacts is unavoidably experiencing intervention from modernization in the form of trends, technology and market tastes, which demand innovation to maintain their existence. However, this is challenging because modernization is considered to have the potential to threaten the uprooting of the virtues of tradition itself. In 2018, the concept of a traditional artefact innovation pyramid was produced as a guide to bridge the ‘gap’ between tradition and modernity so that we can collaborate to create innovation. This research was carried out by applying the phases in the pyramid guide innovation of traditional artefact concept: (1) conducting a preliminary study to determine the fundamental ground of tradition forming the identity of the tradition and validating using triangulation of data sources; (2) qualitative hybridity analysis by comparing the traditional values of Gedog batik cloth with the factual conditions which have undergone several interventions to produce recommendations for innovation strategies and (3) the strategy is realized into a prototype through the process of exploring the design of the work. It should be possible to produce tradition-based craft products that meet trend needs and are in demand by the market.

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