Craft Research - Current Issue

This issue features the work of individual practitioners who explore making through established decorative arts such as fine jewellery in Paris, mosaic glass making in Myanmar and a ceramic installation in the Cathedral of Palma de Majorca, alongside socially engaged groups employing co-production methodologies for designing everyday objects and experiences. Within each article, materials and the immediate and wider environment are considered as partners in the co-crafting process, albeit to varying degrees. The notion of serendipity and the influence of eastern philosophy on embracing imperfection in craft practice underpins some accounts and is questioned in others. As a collection, the articles evidence a palpable shift towards, and need for a more equal relationship and level of agency between the maker and the material, as argued in the Position Paper. This includes consideration of gender equality in particular crafts, where roles are traditionally linked to the properties of the materials and skills involved, as highlighted in the Craft and Industry Report. Social engagement through craft is echoed in the Portrait where stitch and embroidery are practised as forms of participatory expression, supporting human connectivity between cross-cultural and trans-national communities to influence issues of social justice. The affective role and emotive sensations evoked by textiles are also explored in the exhibition review of A Thread, Levitated and Hovering, staged in Hangzhou in 2022 and the first of three book reviews; Feminist Subjectivities in Fiber Art and Craft (2021), the other two discussing The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work (2021) and Industrial Craft in Australia (2021).

The Haute Ecole de Joaillerie (HEJ) is the oldest jewellery school in France and lies at the heart of the institution of Parisian fine jewellery. This article examines the use of training models at the HEJ for transmitting technical and spatial expertise, resulting in fine jewellery knowledge that is standardized, evaluated and differentiated on a national and local scale. It reveals how these models connect students with the historic roots of the jewellery industry in Paris, namely the pre-modern craft guilds of goldsmiths, and also with the jewellery houses of the Place Vendôme, which emerged in the nineteenth century and are today the defining feature of Parisian fine jewellery. It is argued that the training models act as a lynchpin, linking Parisian fine jewellery across and within generations. This article contributes to literature on the growth and evolution of Parisian craft and design industries that remain recognizably identifiable with the city and their history in the face of the incursion of global markets.

This position paper establishes a way towards a post-anthropocentric understanding of serendipity, or the happy accident, in making processes across art, craft and design. Throwing into question hylomorphic attempts to understand the application of the maker’s know-how, which devalues the enabling capabilities of the ‘happy accident’, this position paper sets a course towards a post-anthropocentric model of making. Exploring the ineffability of materials and other events or circumstances that lie outside of purposeful affordances diffracts the focus from purposeful human agency. Instead, re-understanding the maker’s process and knowledge as a transcendent intra-action between flows of material and cognition opens up space for a more subtle and comprehensive investigation into the complexity of human and non-human intra-action, which shapes the maker and the made in a reciprocal process.

Throughout history, certain stereotypes associated with the idea of feminine and masculine have been consolidated and maintained, framed within a binary sex/gender system. With the passage of time and the inclusion of women in the workplace, such stereotypes have been extrapolated to the latter, resulting in inequalities in access to certain positions and professional development. Although significant progress has been made in workplace equality, some professions continue to be characterized by a particular polarization, and within the artisan sector, this is reflected in specific trades. In this sense, this research aims to determine whether there are gender stereotypes in the Spanish artisan sector, the degree of presence of men and women in the various craft trades, and what elements facilitate this polarization. A survey of 547 craftspeople, and a review of the statistical data on the working population in Spain for the year 2020, reveals a perpetuation of gender segregation depending on the craft trade, along with an ageing sector, and continued stereotyping in the generational replacement in the Spanish craft sector.

Alice Kettle’s stitched works can be viewed in the canon of English figurative embroidery. She uses stitch and thread as a narrative device and as a connecting line, which ties together individual and collective stories as multiple strands across time. The article gives an overview of Kettle’s works which integrate autobiography with mythology and contemporary event, tracing the lineage practices of women and offering a feminine viewpoint to chronicle experience. The works document the recent histories of sociopolitical disruption in Europe, which heralded the fragmentation of unity and Brexit. The recent project Thread Bearing Witness concerns people displacement, migration and global conflict. Stitch is used as a means to represent the marginalized and multiple voices of refugees and those seeking asylum. Stitch is viewed as an expressive and empowering means to change perceptions, promote change and as a common language of making.

Review of: A Thread, Levitated and Hovering: The 4th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Curated by Liu Tian

Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China, 18 October–4 December 2022 (main exhibition)

Hangzhou Museum, Hangzhou, China, 20 September–4 December 2022 (special programme Pure Reason)

Review of: The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work: Craftwork in Twenty-First Century England, Trevor H. J. Marchand (2021)

New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 482 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-80073-274-2, h/bk, £132.00