- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Craft Research
- Previous Issues
- Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012
Craft Research - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012
Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012
-
-
Handcrafting revolution: Ukrainian avant-garde embroidery and the meanings of history
By Alla MyzelevThis article investigates the point when craft revival and avant-garde innovations merged to create objects that combined traditional peasant skills with innovative Suprematist compositions. The peasant craft revival in the Ukraine, which has been little studied thus far, aimed to raise the national consciousness of the local population and to preserve the disappearing handicrafts. Several avant-garde women artists, such as Natalia Davydova, Alexandra Exter and Evgenia Pribyl’skaia, headed the craft revival workshops. The Suprematist embroidery created in these workshops was a combination of many layers of historical meaning, from the reduction of formal artistic elements to the technical complexities of the embroidery, wherein one layer was topped by another to create a textured three-dimensional effect. Created during the period between the two revolutions and on the verge of World War I, when Russians and especially Ukrainians were attempting to negotiate and define their national identity, the question arises as to how these objects can illuminate the artists’ and the workers’ understanding of that period. How could participation in the workshops and the design work enrich and/or change the experience of the artists and the workers? This article analyses the processes and meanings of craft production and consumption to explain the complex relationship between artists and craftspeople, between handicraft revival and avant-garde practice.
-
-
-
The foundations of craft: A suggested protocol for introducing craft to other disciplines
More LessThe influence of craft on Product Design practices can be seen in the growth of young start ups citing craftsmanship as a core value of their business, in the increasing attention paid to ‘slow design’, and in the use of craft tropes to sell mass produced products. This article presents seven ‘foundations’ of craft, an outcome of a programme of research in which contemporary craft was reflexively employed as a methodology for designing digital jewellery. It challenges the many disciplines of Design to engage with craft in a critically informed manner, and to understand the potential this approach holds for meaningful design. The article is organized into sections according to each of the seven principles proposed.
-
-
-
Crafting innovation: The intersection of craft and technology in the production of contemporary textiles
More LessThis article has grown from a programme of practice-led research entitled ‘Structural Textiles: Adaptable Form and Surface in Three-Dimensions’. In this research traditional textile craft practices centred on hand making have provided an essential foundation from which to develop deployable textile structures that have customizable behavioural properties. The article investigates the importance of touch in acquiring understanding of textile artefacts and the significance of this tactile acquisition of knowledge in the process of textile production. In such practice, innovation is generated through the maker’s creative responses to unforeseen behaviours of both process and material. However, the research also has also drawn on CAD/CAM technologies that enable the creation of designs and products with increased accuracy and complexity but reduce or remove instances of handcrafting in the making process. The article considers how sensory information gained through touch and the embodied knowledge that this generates can be preserved as part of contemporary textile practice whilst exploiting the potential of CAD/CAM and other automated processes to create complex and innovative outcomes.
-
-
-
Man–machine–music: Resonances of craft and technology in a study of guitar building
More LessCraft is often discussed from the perspective of the maker or artisan, but seldom addresses the assemblage of other agents involved, like materials and tools, and how they affect the outcome. One way to examine this issue could be to use a Deleuzoguattarian perspective in order to draw attention to the role of the various vibrating parts of an assemblage on an individual as well as an abstract level. This article argues that a musical interpretation of the process of craft can help render visible several agents involved in the shaping of a guitar, an assemblage composed of intentions, craftsmanship, material and tools. Juxtaposing David Pye’s notions of ‘workmanship of risk’ and ‘workmanship of certainty’, the works of luthiers reveal several traits of what Deleuze and Guattari called the ‘nomadic sciences’, which, in turn, can point towards more polyphonic perspectives on research in the crafts. The text offers an associative application of the Deleuzoguattarian concepts to expose how several ‘kinetic melodies’ can help expose guitar building as a craft in resonance with contemporary technologies.
-
-
-
Digital practice in material hands: How craft and computing practices are advancing digital aesthetic and conceptual methods
By Jane HarrisCraft practitioners have deftly navigated a wide range of digital media tools as they have evolved, to enhance and originate forms of practice. Human centric and analogue methods are informing digital creation, which in some cases is softening a prevalent signature aesthetic evidenced in the use of computer fabrication processes. This article observes recent applications of computing media in making spheres consistent with this progression, and evidences new roles for makers as they drive technology use and related agendas, which is leading to craft skill influencing wider realms of practice and industry.
-
-
-
Vibeke Riisberg: The red thread from practice to research
Authors: Anne Louise Bang and Vibeke RiisbergThis portrait is based on an interview with Vibeke Riisberg, the first textile designer in Denmark to earn a Ph.D., in 2006. In 2007 Riisberg was appointed Associate Professor at Kolding School of Design. The text unfolds some of the various activities in her career from her education at the Art and Craft School in Copenhagen in the 1970s, through her collaboration with industry from a design studio in Paris, to exhibitions of textile art, design and teaching. Parts of the Ph.D. thesis ‘Printed textiles – from analogue to digital processes’ are presented, along with the research project ‘Adjusting daylight and solar heating in office buildings’, which she conducted in collaboration with textile engineer and Associate Professor Joy Boutrup.
-
-
-
EXHIBITION REVIEW
More LessA journey through the visible and invisible: A review of ‘Lost in Lace’ Gas Hall, Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham, 29 October 2011–19 February 2012
-
-
-
BOOK REVIEW
More LessOn Craftsmanship: Towards a New Bauhaus, Christopher Frayling (2011) London: Oberon Books, 144 pp., ISBN: 978-1-84943-072-2, h/bk, £9.99
-
-
-
CONFERENCE REVIEWS
Authors: Paul Harper and Emma ShercliffReview of Making Futures: The Crafts as Change Maker in Sustainably Aware Cultures Dartington Hall, Dartington Estate, Devon, UK, 15–16 September 2011
Textile Research in Process: An nternational symposium exploring the role and relevance of traditional hand skills in contemporary textiles, and the value and status of craft process. School of the Arts, Loughborough University, UK, 16–17 November 2011
-