- Home
- A-Z Publications
- Craft Research
- Previous Issues
- Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013
Craft Research - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013
Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013
-
-
‘Making’ our way through: DIY and crafting communities in Toronto
Authors: Arden Hagedorn and Stephanie SpringgayDrawing on an interview-based research project on Do-It-Yourself and crafting culture in Toronto, this essay explores three themes of “why craft”?: the need for personal gratification and identity-building; the desire to build a community with shared values; and the need to connect with a sense of humanity through labour in an increasingly technological and urban world. Though emerging craft communities may appear niche-like and closed off from mainstream forms of knowledge creation, discussion on these particularities provides us with examples of how crafting may benefit learning processes not originally connected to crafters. Examining what it means to craft in Toronto, and in larger independent DIY contexts may also make recognizable new models of learning that are based on communities of practice not typically associated with standards-based education.
-
-
-
‘Plumb line scribe’: Using multimedia to preserve traditional craft skills
Authors: Ulrik Hjort Lassen and Nicola WoodThe skills required in craft practice involve a high degree of tacit knowledge which is frequently difficult for the craft expert to articulate. Nicola Wood, a multimedia designer, has undertaken extensive research over the last ten years seeking to understand the knowledge of skilled craftsmen and find methods of capturing and passing it on. She has developed an elicitation strategy that employs an expert learner to uncover the skilled knowledge of master craftsmen, and a transmission strategy based on the concept of bridges to assist the design of learning resources for novices. Ulrik H. Lassen has used the techniques developed by Wood to record and transmit the skilled knowledge needed to make timber-framed buildings, knowledge that today is in danger of being lost. The focus of the study has been the procedure for scribing timbers, which is a central part of the building process. The aim of the research was to investigate the possibility of combining the two roles defined in Wood’s research as an expert learner and designer. Being a skilled carpenter, Lassen has acted as an expert learner, learning the skills of scribing through a combination of researching existing documentation, working with master craftsmen and his own experimentation. At the same time, he developed and tested a multimedia learning resource to provide ‘bridges’ for new learners to this knowledge. The outcome of the application of Wood’s elicitation and transmission strategy to plumb line scribing is a demonstration of the transferability of Wood’s methods within this new context. This is important because it reveals the potential for other craft practitioners to apply Wood’s methods to their own learning and teaching, and produce learning resources to provide bridges to their craft knowledge and preserve their unique skills.
-
-
-
The dematerializing and rematerializing of design
Authors: Gyungju Chyon and John Stanislav SadarThe article begins by considering design in relation to the rising environmental awareness in the decades since its beginnings in the 1960s and 1970s. Increasing environmental awareness has accompanied what several thinkers have noted to be a paradigm shift in values, as they come to embrace process, variability and experience in lieu of progress and material goods. Given the beginnings of such a shift, and given the goal of shifting the world away from one based on material consumption, there is a need to shift values. The article suggests designers need to change their thinking away from offering total, complete solutions isolated from the natural world towards designing with the forces and energy flow of nature. At the same time, artefacts can play a role in shaping values, taking into account immateriality – forces and energy – and experience. Liquid Sky is presented as an example of how designing with the vagaries of the natural world might instil appreciation and change values. Liquid Sky is a window installation that amplifies the changing light and airflow conditions, using them to paint the domestic interior in an animate display of light. The artefact itself is an incomplete armature, which is completed by the interrelationship of material (textile) and immaterial (sunlight and air movement). Liquid Sky offers an example of how artefacts can instil the unpredictability and endless variations characteristic of the natural world, and how – through materializing the immaterial – artefacts can co-shape our values and thinking regarding an ecological future.
-
-
-
Nothing says love like a skull and crossbones tea cozy: Crafting contemporary subversive handcrafts
Authors: Therèsa M. Winge and Marybeth C. StalpSubversive crafters portray feminist messaging within stereotypically non-feminist (e.g. domestic) items. They express irreverence, politics and a culture of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) practices embodying irony, sarcasm, parody and humour. Drawing on 44 North American interviews and participant observations, we explore how subversive crafts and crafters exist outside of the traditional gendered domestic context. We discuss how socio-political and sociocultural visual imagery in subversive crafts plays a role in defining contemporary handcraft culture.
-
-
-
Mini mills: Grass-roots service providers for europe’s smallhold wool breeders
More LessThis report addresses four principle questions: What are mini mills? How large is the potential market mini mills are catering to? Why is it interesting for smallholder wool breeders to have their clip processed by mini mills? and How are mini mills equipped? The first and second questions are addressed by reviewing available agriculture census data from Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, and the third question by providing a cost-benefit estimate based on retail prices of hand-knitting wool and the specific processing rates of two British mini mills. Finally, the same two mini mills are presented in more depth in case studies that illustrate the type of equipment they use for processing, and the services they offer to their smallholder clients. According to the agricultural census data for Britain, Germany and France, mini mills cater to a potential market of between 100,000 and 200,000 smallholds per country, of which between 0.5 per cent and 5 per cent produce an estimated average total wool clip of less than 20 kg. Such quantities lie substantially below the minimums required by industrial wool mills. The mini mills not only offer a wool fleece processing service (specifically, spinning), but also guarantee a highly coveted ‘sheep to cone’ traceability. Rather than catering to the hobby craft end-consumer market, the mini mills offer their services to smallholders with small flocks, and hence small quantities of fleece, and who intend to take charge of the fate of their sheep’s wool. In this way, mini mills play an important waste management and sustainability role, as they add value to an otherwise discarded resource, and thus contribute to keeping wool from being burnt or landfilled. Cost-benefit estimates show that by having their wool processed in mini mills and selling the hand-knitting yarn directly, smallholders could reduce the financial losses incurred through shearing and processing because sales outweigh these costs by some margin.
-
-
-
Automata: Serious craft genre or frivolous amusement
By John GraysonI am engaged in an ongoing investigation of traditional industrial metalworking processes and their application within a contemporary crafts context. I am engaged in using craft to play the role of industrial archaeologist. My investigations have resulted in two strands of work. First, ‘Vintage Tin’ is a range of printed tin automata inspired by Victorian 1940s, 1950s and 1960s tin toys. For this range I utilize a hybrid print and pressing process that I have developed through research into industrial tin toy and box manufacturing. The second body of work, ‘Faux Georgian’, is a set of interactive enamel boxes inspired by the aesthetic, making process and historic context of Georgian enamel objects. Both sets of work are made in response to contemporary happenings and events. They are concerned with exploring and developing process relevant to the craft arena, as well as documenting and celebrating dying and defunct manufacturing processes.
-
-
-
EXHIBITION REVIEW
More LessLet actions speak louder than words A review of the ‘Power of Making: The importance of being skilled’ Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 6 September 2011–2 January 2012
-
-
-
PUBLICATION REVIEWS
Authors: Danica Maier and Simon OldingAnne Wilson: Wind/Rewind/Weave, Anne Wilson (2011) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 159 pp, ISBN: 978-0-945-32322-8, p/bk, $30.00/£19.50
Stephen De Staebler: Matter and Spirit, Timothy Anglin Burgard (2012) San Francisco: The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco in association with University of California Press, 240 pp, ISBN: 978-0-520-27230-9, p/bk, $34.95
-
-
-
CONFERENCE REVIEW
More LessCraft and the New Economy Symposium, Ontario College of Art and Design University (OCADU), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Saturday 10 March 2012
-
-
-
REMARKABLE IMAGE
Bio-implantable Device for Reconstructive Shoulder Surgery, 2004. Designed by Peter Butcher, Prof. Simon Frostick, Dr. Alan McLeod, Ellis Developments Ltd. Photographer: Matt Flynn.
The implant, which takes the form of a snowflake, is machine embroidered in white and blue polyester with the base cloth dissolved providing a lace-like effect. The device was custom designed for a patient who required reconstructive shoulder surgery. The implant was required to help anchor the artificial shoulder by stitching or fixing it to existing tissue or bone. The device was exhibited at the ‘Extreme Textiles’ exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Museum. The record is available from the Smithsonian Institution, New York: http://collections.si.edu/search/record/chndm_2004-15-1.
-