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THE HIDDEN HAND AND THE FLUID OBJECT: CRAFT IN THREE

SITES OF REPRESENTATION

Donald William Ellis, Dip.T. (Art), B.Ed., M.Ed.

A thesis submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Education, Division of Education, Arts and Social Science

University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia

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Table of Contents………...i List of Figures………....iv List of Plates………..iv List of Tables………..v Abstract………..vi Candidates Declaration………...viii Acknowledgements………ix INTRODUCTION………..1 WHAT TO EXPECT……….4 SECTION 1: Self, motivations and others………9

CHAPTER 1: Self, the meandering pathway - the researcher’s journey……….10

CHAPTER 2: Motivations - why this thesis………..20

CHAPTER 3: Other(s) hands and other(s) objects- craftspeople, critics, theorists, commentators, educationists, writers, and industrialists et al have their say...24

CHAPTER 4: The jewellers hand/the jewellery object……….55

SECTION 2: Theories, methodologies, maps and guides………60

CHAPTER 5: Theories, methodologies, methods – the experts with their data working tool boxes………61

CHAPTER 6: Maps and guides – an assemblage of sites, problems, arguments, questions, resources and methods………73

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operating on three sites of craft representation……….82

CHAPTER 7: Craft sites of representation, a craft

organisation, an academic jewellery workshop

and an exhibition……….83

Project 1: Craftsouth – a case study of a craft organisation……….86

Part1: The evolving organisation, an analysis of a selection

of Craftsouth’s President’s and Executive Director’s Reports

1980 – 2000………..89

Part 2: What’s in a name? Positioning Craftsouth: an analysis

of craft organisation titles and introductory statements………105

Part 3: The Public texts: an analysis of Craftsouth’s

publicly disseminated texts………115

Part 4: The accreditation document: Craftsouth’s selection criteria…..125 Part 5: The masterpiece: the medieval guilds, Craftsouth

and objects of management………126

The evolving thesis: reflections so far………136 Project 2: The academic jewellery workshop………....138

The Workshop Makes Objects: a socio/technical narrative

set in an academic jewellery workshop………154

The Workshop Research: the overall approach……….193

Application 1: Institutional paperwork and workshop objects………...197 Part 1: Before the course: institutional paperwork

and student objects………198

Part 2: About the course: student response

to the institutional paperwork questionnaire………..201

Part 3: During the course: student journals………205 Part 4: After the course: the 250 word essay………..207 Application 2: Workshop assessment: assessment

paperwork, workshop objects and the examination………..209

Part 1: Analysis of institutional assessment paperwork………..210

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The rewritten texts: institutional assessment

paperwork and student reviews………...221

Project 3: Triptych: the jewellery exhibition………..225

Introduction: Craft and the exhibition Triptych………..225

Methodology: ANT as a translator of interests……….227

Problematisation: The exhibition: what? where? whom?...230

Interressment: The exhibition: in whose interest………234

Enrolment: The exhibition: making a team……….236

Mobilisation: Putting differences aside: the exhibition as a network….245 SECTION 4: Reflections: with professionalism, institutionalisation and marketing in mind……….251

CHAPTER 8: Revisiting the sites of representation, the Hidden Hand and the Fluid Object and the Masterpiece………252

Revisiting the sites of representation……….………..252

The Hidden Hand and the Fluid Object: targets of research/tools for research………...263

The Masterpiece: a fluid tool of management……….265

Appraising ANT: the pros and cons………266

Adding to the literature pool………...267

Summary……….269

Postscript……….269

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Figure 1 Evolutionary diagram……….104

Figure 2 Die diagram………144

Figure 3 Saw blade/die thickness diagram………...145

Figure 4 Socio/technical relations diagram………..175

List of Plates Plate 1 Labelling……….240

Plate 2 Jewellery in boxes………...242

Plate 3 Jewellery sample 1………..244

Plate 4 Jewellery sample 2………..244

Plate 5 Jewellery sample 3………..244

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Table 1 Title Analysis……….109

Table 2 Introductory statement analysis……….111

Table 3 Craftsouth title analysis………..112

Table 4 Craftsouth introductory statement analysis………113

Table 5 Craftsouth title and introductory statement analysis……..113

Table 6 Humans of Craftsouth………118

Table 7 Objects of Craftsouth……….119

Table 8 Actions of Craftsouth……….122

Table 9 Teacher's word use……….166

Table 10 Interaction of, and relations between, the four institutional texts………200

Table 11 Student response and institutional texts……….203

Table 12 Student comments on continuous paper work and researcher observations of journal entries…………...206

Table 13 The relationship between institutional texts and student essays………...208

Table 14 Humans, non-humans and actions in institutional assessment texts………..211

Table 15 Student main concerns………214

Table 16 Student concerns and teacher comment………..215

Table 17 Shared key words, teacher + student………...217

Table 18 Student only key words………...217

Table 19 Teacher only key words………..217

Table 20 Shared key words + student key words………..218

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Craft's role in its traditional sites is changing. Its management in the form of professionalism, intellectualism and marketing is now in the hands of authorities whose interests challenge grass roots craft leading to its apparent invisibility in these sites. Nevertheless, without the overt representation of the skilled hand and material object, craft sites lose contact with their core operations, practices and ancestry. This loss of semiotic and material connection allows interests that should be subservient to craft to obscure the primary roles hands and objects play in the visual arts and material culture. With this in mind texts and practices from three sites - a professional craft association, an academic workshop and an exhibition are explored for their representations of craft.

Actor-network theory (ANT), the tool employed to excavate craft in these sites, seeks all the seemingly unconnected actors and their relations when things are made. By disputing the distinction between humans and non-humans, ANT permits insights easily overlooked when human action is considered in isolation. Networks of humans, non-humans and their actions are sought in the three sites of study.

In the craft organisation, the hand and the object, although submerged, are found to underscore its current operations and practices. The hand and the object remain as assumed entities to link the organisation’s past and present operations and practices. In the teaching institution, the hand and the object are appropriated to fulfil other interests such as the academic requirements of a university and the "creative" mandate of an art school. In the exhibition, the hand and the object are appropriated to market the arts institutions sponsoring the exhibition as attractive to students, funding bodies and the public.

Although craft remained in the operations and practices in the sites of representation, it was separated from its traditions and reconfigured as a malleable device to generate, but not necessarily appear in, the construction and display of concerns such as professionalism, cultural capital and the market. It is argued that the status of craft as represented in these sites is exemplified by the appropriation of the hand and the object for purposes that simultaneously depend on and subvert their presence in these sites.

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Fluid Object, suggest strategies for the reformation of practices and education in craft organisations, university workshops and exhibitions by highlighting and reminding them that craft is the basis for both their present and future existence. However the findings are not confined to the three sites in the study, other sites in education, industry, the arts and academia will benefit from the research.

The thesis also tests, and expands the applications of Actor-network theory as a conceptual tool in sites not necessarily related to its roots in science.

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Thesis/Project Title: The Hidden Hand and the Fluid Object: craft in three sites of

representation

Candidates name: Donald William Ellis

I declare that this thesis is the result of my own research, that it does not incorporate without acknowledgment any material submitted for a degree or diploma in any University and that it does not contain any materials previously published, written or produced by another person except where due reference is made in the text.

Signed ___Don Ellis_____________________________ Date ___17/11/04______________________________

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I would like to thank my supervisors: Pat Thomson whose knowledge of the discipline of thesis writing and firm hand eventually got me started, Vicki Crowley, for her insights into the management of a seemingly unwieldily beast and her unfailing encouragement, and Marie Brennan, who found time in an overwhelming workload of organising and running a huge department in the midst of change to show how a thesis should be finished and prepared for examination.

I am grateful for the unfettered freedom offered by Andrew, Rik and the students of Jewellery Production Techniques during my stay in the jewellery workshop.

I would also like to thank the staff and fellow post graduates in Education C building for the enjoyable social and intellectual environment they proffered, the good memories will linger for a long time.

Finally special thanks to my dear friend Margie for riding the highs and lows of thesis writing with me over the last four years, I hope it was not quite as bad as we thought it might be.

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INTRODUCTION

This thesis is inspired and maintained by three things, reflections on a lifetime as a maker, the perceived loss of primary human contact with everyday objects and, significantly, the dilemma of the art/craft debate.

Craft's alliance with the visual arts is problematic and strained. Although craft is considered a strand of the visual arts its role is ascribed merely as a dispensable vehicle for making ideas visible while its objects are categorised as utilitarian and thus disqualified as mediators of aesthetic or intellectual interest. These contentions ignore two matters which warrant a research project. The first is the notion that the making process in all visual art, the craft, is far from just a means to an end: craft inevitably adds intellectual, sensory and utilitarian ingredients to the process which remain embodied in the finished artwork (Higby, 1999). The second is that the material object does not evaporate when the making is over - it too lingers as both testimony to the making and as an object for contemplation independent of the artist's intention and her/his claim for its dissolution. Art objects cannot be made without craft and craft cannot be deleted from the finished artwork.

Hence it is argued that if craft adds to and remains in visual art objects, it must also be available for contemplation independent of the artist’s intention. If craft and the material object is available for contemplation independent of the artist’s intention, why not works which communicate predominantly from the craft process and the craftsperson's intention.

To explore these contentions Actor-network theory (ANT) as a theory/methodology/method is employed because it refutes the notion that craft processes can be eliminated or rendered insignificant when things are made. In fact ANT seeks out and validates all the seemingly unconnected actors and their relations and connects them as a network. A network is a chain of indispensable actors who transform an idea into an object to become the network - the network is an entity, the network is craft.

The word network indicates that resources are concentrated in a few places - the knots and the nodes - which are connected with one another

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- the links and the mesh: these connections transform the scattered resources into a net that may seem to extend everywhere (Latour, 1999,

p. 180).

By disputing the distinction between humans and non-humans when networks are

constructed or analysed, ANT allows insights which are overlooked when human input is disconnected from other actors in the network. According to ANT, craft is a symmetrical network of humans and non-humans in environments of work and consumption. Thus the socio/technical symmetry of ANT is ideal to explore craft in the visual arts, or anywhere else for that matter, because craft is a socio/technical pursuit, it employs technique to manifest human passions and desires. It is not easy to keep secrets from ANT, it pursues all actors in a network, including those in what Latour (1999, p.2) calls a black box. ANT opens black boxes and reveals the taken for granted, seemingly indisputable facts beyond reach, but indispensable to the network.

ANT is activated in this context by critical and interpretative discourse analysis, historical references, "thick description" (Geertz, 1973, p.3) and the sociology of translation.

If, as argued, craft both remains in visual art and functions as a discrete entity, it should also remain and function in organisations, institutions and events which claim to represent it in spite of "new" social, technological and economic forces colliding with its traditional roles and leading to its apparent invisibility. The sites must maintain a connection with craft and contact with their ancestry even when the overt representation of the hand and object has disappeared from view. A loss of semiotic connection such as this allows interests which should be subservient to craft to obscure the primary roles hands and objects play in craft sites. This unease lurks behind a thesis which seeks craft in sites that claim to represent it. The tactic is not to look directly at practitioners, users or teachers but rather in sites which influence and interact with their practices. In order to consider these questions, texts and practices from three sites - a professional craft organisation, an academic workshop and a craft exhibition - are explored for their representation of craft. Latour referred to such sites as "centres of calculation".

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Any site where inscriptions are combined and make possible a type of calculation. It can be a laboratory, a statistical institution, the files of a geographer, a data bank, and so forth. This expression locates in specific sites an ability to calculate that is too often placed in the mind

(Latour, 2000, p.304).

Although the standing of craft in the visual arts triggered the research, it is apparent that the importance of craft in other spheres can be affected by the changing interests of "centres of calculation". The “centres of calculation” selected for research, although connected with the visual arts, can be generalised as examples of where, and how, craft can be explored in other sites of material culture. Thus the research encompasses social, cultural, industrial and economic realms beyond the esotery of craft in the visual arts.

Simmering under the surface of this seemingly dispassionate approach to research is a political disquiet fuelled by the disparity between the working class tradesperson and the art/craft craftsperson. Paradoxically when craft was essential to industry and the home it was assigned a lowly socio/cultural status but when apparently irrelevant in these spheres it is taught in universities, linked with “high” culture, supported by the state and corporations and makes some craft workers media stars. Nevertheless the essential craft of the past and its contemporary counterpart share a common feature, in both contexts they exist because they are made by networks of actors relevant at the time of construction. If the networks are valid for the time and place craft lives on.

The impetus, concerns, interests and knowledge behind the thesis and the search for strategies to satisfy them are predicated on the passions, joys, tensions, disruptions, barriers and meetings experienced as a craft practitioner and teacher. Experiences and contacts during an engineering apprenticeship, working as physics laboratory technician, practising as a jeweller and teaching in a workshop are particularly important to both the provocation and survival of the thesis.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

But how can the impetus, concerns, interests and knowledge be organised into a homogenous and coherent study. First a team of thesis makers needs to be assembled, humans and non-humans, with the right experience, knowledge and skills to make a thesis about craft. The team is made up of a researcher with a craft back ground and the desire to write about it, others with diverse knowledge(s) and interest(s) in the field, their partner technologies and experts with the tools to divulge craft’s secrets. Later sites have to be found and motivations and guides acted upon in the search for craft in sites of representation.

The thesis is set out in four sections and eight chapters.

SECTION 1, personifies the researcher with a craft back ground and the desire to

write a thesis, and introduces others with interests and connections in the craft field.

Chapter1 traces a meandering pathway as a metaphor, to sort out the craft history

of the researcher as subject, maker and teacher in search of opportunities to practice, teach and avoid a career. This experiential knowledge of craft inspired the thesis, maintained its momentum and added to its research toolbox. But the journey was not taken alone; each stopover on the pathway, saturated in its own cultural, social, technical and economic particulars, contributed conceptually to the journey and added to the motivation to write a thesis on a nebulous entity called craft.

Chapter 2 outlines the concerns which stimulated the researcher’s desire to write a

thesis on such a touchy subject as craft. In this chapter questions are posed and arguments presented to defend craft’s indispensability in the visual arts, as a basis for understanding craft everywhere and as the impetus for writing a thesis. The thesis is grounded in a recurring encounter in the meandering journey, the status of craft in the visual arts, the art/craft debate. Although the art/craft debate keeps the fires burning and is an opportunity to acknowledge the presence and importance of craft it is a touchstone rather than a blueprint.

Chapter 3 is a literature review organised around four concepts: the making and

using body, academic craft education in/and the visual arts, craft’s public performance and craft writing.

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Chapter 4, uses the embodied jewellers hand and jewellery object to write an

experiential rendition of the body makes and the body uses, academic craft in/and the visual arts and craft’s public performance.

SECTION 2, considers the theories, methodologies, methods, maps and guides used

as analytical tools and thesis directives. Theories, methodologies and methods are the experts and the maps and guides are the sites, problems, arguments, questions, resources and methods used to scrutinise craft in sites of representation.

Chapter 5 describes and validates actor-network theory (ANT), the main

theory/methodology/method used in the thesis. It discusses ANT’s ancestry in the philosophy of science, its link with the researcher’s experience in a university physics laboratory and its applicability to a study of craft. Other theories/methodologies/methods which resonate with ANT are also discussed in this chapter. Experts such as these are needed to peg out common ground for the diverse interests and concerns the thesis brings together.

In Chapter 6, the assemblage of sites, problems, arguments, questions, resources and methods used to map and guide this thesis are outlined and discussed for the way they organise and direct the thesis. The maps and guides are in the form of site selections, problems, arguments, questions, resources and methods.

SECTION 3, assembles, discusses and analyses the research subjects, the craft sites

of representation. The three sites are a craft organisation, (Craftsouth) an academic workshop, (jewellery studio in a university), and, Triptych, (a craft exhibition).

In Chapter 7, three projects contextualise, describe and analyse the practices and operations at each of the craft sites of representation. Each project is tailored to suit the nature of the site and the mode of data collection.

Project 1, a craft organisation, Craftsouth, explored using publicly disseminated

texts is broken into five parts. Together they construct a multi-faceted depiction of Craftsouth including its development over time, its international context, its relations with its members and the community, its member selection criteria and its

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fit with organisations of the past. Its development is explored with an analysis of a selection of President’s and Executive Director’s reports, its international context by comparing its title and statement of intent with craft organisations in other countries, its relations with its members and the community by analysing its publicly disseminated texts, its member selection criteria through an analysis of its accreditation document and its relations with its antecedents by a comparative study of Medieval guilds.

Craftsouth is selected because it represents craftspeople members on several levels of accreditation and craft in the wider community.

The Evolving Thesis is a bridging statement which reflects on the outcomes of the

Craftsouth research and its possible effect on the research to follow. Two outcomes found during the organisation research were 1) the hand and the object are useful but oft obscured tools to seek and explore craft sites of representation and 2) the function of objects is not limited to their shape and form as material entities.

Project 2 is set in a university jewellery workshop. The notion that institutional

texts are rewritten when students make workshop objects is explored in two applications. Application one, in four parts, analyses student responses to institutional texts and application two, in three parts, analyses institutional assessment criteria and student response during assessment. To ground the formal research applications in the world of the workshop an ongoing socio/technical narrative on workshop life is written around them by casting the workshop as a living organism. The results of the analyses are considered by the degree the assessment criteria is “rewritten” when students make objects for themselves and institutional assessment.

Project 3, is a one part analysis of the researcher’s personal experience of team

exhibition making. Memories and a collection of meeting agendas, minutes and newspaper and magazine cuttings were used to recount a jewellery exhibition, Triptych, as a formal research project.

The exhibition was a joint production between three separate institutional jewellery courses and their sponsor, the Helpmann Academy, an umbrella organisation set up

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to bring them together for this event. The development of the exhibition is followed as the institutions, the organisation and their human representatives juggle self interest and the common goal of promoting state institutional jewellery education. To help understand how both separate and shared concerns are brought together, ANT’s translating interests is mobilised as a mediating tool.

SECTION 4, reflects on the research projects, their outcomes and the new

knowledge about craft and its sites of representation they generate. The section also reflects on both the suitability of Actor-network theory as a theory/methodology/method in the context of the research and contemplates on the broader applications of the study.

Chapter 8 Revisits the sites of representation, explores the notion of The Hidden

Hand and the Fluid Object and the Masterpiece, appraises ANT as a research tool and speculates on its addition to craft literature.

First, the now opened sites of craft representation, Craftsouth, the academic jewellery workshop and the exhibition Triptych, are revisited and reflected on for their contribution to organisation and craft knowledge.

The first, Craftsouth, found craft and its affiliates, the hand and the object, to remain as submerged entities which led to the notion of the “Masterpiece” as the basis for a comparative study of Craftsouth and medieval guilds.

In the second site of craft representation, the academic jewellery workshop, it was found that workshops have ambivalent relations with institutional texts; workshops and their human inhabitants have interests and desires which do not always adhere to institutional requirements.

At the third site of representation, the exhibition Triptych, it was found that exhibitions are more than venues for the display of objects; they have inbuilt and imposed trajectories which both defy and manifest the varied interests and concerns of their makers. The material identity of craft objects is usurped both by the exhibition itself and the objectives of the exhibition makers.

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A significant research finding summarised in the thesis title as The Hidden Hand and the Fluid Object was found beneath layers of contextual interests, meanings and socio/political/economic concerns. This important finding, a consequence of the research, is also a useful approach to other projects where ideas are mediated into objects. Importantly it acts as a hedge against a universal definition of a nebulous and contentious entity such as craft.

Another significant outcome, the Masterpiece, was found as a fluid tool of management rather than a discrete material object. This notion of the Masterpiece was an ideal tool to study assessment, testing and accreditation procedures. The Masterpiece is not merely a material entity but a fluid construct used for the manifestation of local interests.

ANT is reflected on for its applicability for the task of exploring craft in sites of representation and its ability to expose the making process when ideas are mediated into objects.

Finally the research is considered as a contributor to craft and the ANT literature pool and summarised as making a link between the contemporary issues in craft sites of representation and the traditions of making and using objects. The thesis was encapsulated as a challenge, to the researcher, to craft, to the sites of representation and to Actor-network theory.

The next phase is the researcher’s journey traced as a meandering pathway and negotiated through the researcher’s experiences as a craftsperson, student and teacher and his confrontations with the diverse worlds of craft.

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SECTION 1: Self, motivations and others

The researcher’s identity as a maker and teacher, portrayed as a meandering pathway, his motivations to write a thesis argued within the art/craft debate and interactions with influential fellow travellers such as other makers, theorists, critics, writers and philosophers provide the background for the thesis. Together they set its boundaries and contribute to its atmosphere.

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CHAPTER 1: Self, the meandering pathway – the researcher’s journey

Summary

The chapter examines experiences which both instigated and directed the thesis. These experiences asserted the inevitability of a study of craft to a degree that any other topic was out of the question.

This meandering pathway which led to a thesis imbued craft with a moral and class dimension in a working class home and during trade training, marginalised it in the science laboratory workshop, and swamped it with aesthetics and “meaning” in the visual arts. However these experiences led to satisfying experiences as craftsperson, teacher and student.

The meandering pathway is neither straight nor stable, not made by deliberate decisions but directed by opportunities and diverted by obstacles as they arise. The course is set by early experiences in the home and continues as one opportunity to "hand make" leads to another, sign-posting all other pathways as dead ends.

At Home with the Makers: The Growing Craftsman

Summary

Growing up in a working class home is examined for the way it shaped attitudes to hand making and as an initiation into working class culture.

I was raised in a family of makers. My mother, a tailor by trade, incessantly made clothes for her family and friends and my father, a plumber, was a passionate sheet metal worker. During my childhood I did a bit of both. Later the memories of working these materials were recalled in jewellery objects which I made.

There were always things to be made, kites when there was wind, model aeroplanes when the thermals appeared and vehicles, weapons, and machines the year round. These were all crafted with care but used with abandon; the notion of in the making was set at an early age. A "natural" consequence of a childhood of making was an apprenticeship in a mechanical trade.

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Learning the Trade: The Apprentice

Summary

Trade training is explored in terms of the social, political, class and gender positions it engendered. Acquiring hand skills and mastering tools and machinery during trade training is enmeshed in concepts of work, notions of masculinity, class stratification and workplace culture. Learning a trade was bilateral, it made a skilled tradesperson and a working class male.

The country town in which I lived absorbed school leavers into the workforce according to their educational level and social contacts. In my case three years of high school and a neighbour with a supervisory position in a power station were the right mix for an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner - a felicitous outcome, as fitting and turning in the 1950s was a craft based activity; objects were still made with, and fitted by, the skilled hand.

I transferred to the city to finish the apprenticeship in the company's workshop school. It was an intense learning environment where skill and precision were combined with speed. Significantly this furnished a skill base I later drew upon as a metal craftsman and jeweller.

The apprentice school was a simulated workplace where hand and machine skills and tool making connected the skills of the tradesperson with the notion of work. It was a workshop programme that integrated trade skills and workshop behaviour and discipline prior to working with the men on the shop floor. Many of the skills no longer used in industry were taught as valuable exercises to hone hand-eye coordination, to connect the apprentice with the roots of the trade but more importantly, to cultivate attitudes to work. The idea that work can be tedious, arduous and mindless but had to be done was an important part of trade training. “To file pieces of metal day in and day out as engineering apprentices had to

do……” (Dormer, 1994 pp. 40-41).

Craft in the apprentice school assimilated the skills of the trade and attitudes appropriate for the work place. But trade training was more than this; it was preparation for working class life.

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In the 1950s learning a trade for young males was a rite of passage. Intending apprentices left high school early, usually between years eight and ten, to continue their education in the workplace and mature as men in the care of a benevolent employer.

The responsibility for the care of the apprentice was bound in a formal contract between employer, apprentice and parents. Ostensibly the employer's mandate was to teach the trade but their obligation went beyond the development of skills and knowledge; it was assumed that males between the age of fifteen and twenty needed supervision, discipline and a moral dimension in their lives. In fact there is provision in the indenture document to dismiss the apprentice on moral and behavioural grounds but not on his inability to learn the trade. Point four of The Indenture of Apprenticeship states:

In case the apprentice be at any time during the said term wilfully disobedient to the commands of the employer or be habitually slothful or negligent or otherwise grossly misbehave himself the employer may discharge the apprentice from his service. (Apprentices Act, 1950)

Similarly the apprentice in medieval times swore on oath “to be industrious and

obedient, and to work for no other master” (Renard, 1918 p. 11).

The moral dimension was environmentally constructed; that is, workshop etiquette and the divinity of trade skills were means as well as ends, in a sense, mediators for concepts of work and notions of masculinity in a working class culture. They were enforced and reinforced by initiation rites, violence, cajolery, exclusion and arbitrary disciplines such as never being allowed to sit, lean or chat during working hours and long, mindless repetitive tasks such as filing and sawing. Dormer's description of the rigour of the traditional British apprenticeship also applied to apprentice training in Australia in the 1950s:

Many people would like to acquire skills, but the long and arduous years of apprenticeship are a deterrent. To file pieces of metal day in and day out as engineering apprentices had to do, or to devote several hours a day to practising the movements of classical dance, may be compared to equestrian dressage. Both self-control and, to some extent, physical and intellectual subjection are needed (Dormer, 1994: pp. 40-41).

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Although attitudes to skills and workshop practices were important - such as pride in the quality of the finished work, speed, the care of tools and deference to those more highly skilled, it was the umbrella notion of work itself that constructed a moral perspective. Although working hard was a highly valued attribute, and working with the body (especially with the hands) the epitome of the measurement of work, outworking others and being over worked by the boss was not condoned. The presumption was that there must always be work because without work life is without discipline. Australian apprenticeships, based on British models with their roots in Victorian times acceded to the intrinsic value of work. A quote attributed to the Victorian Christian Socialist Charles Kingsley summed this up succinctly:

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do that day which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know (Kingsley, 1991,

p. 86)

Peter Dormer (1994, p.41), commenting on the working life of knife and cutlery makers in the 1960s, also expressed this relation between work and trade skills in industrial England when he wrote:

They knew how to do their work but it remained a discipline that they forced out of themselves every day.The men 'policed' themselves constantly. This is far from machine-like, it is not 'merely mechanical.

Influenced by both its roots in British work place culture and transported by a wave of post-war migrant tradesmen, the relations between work and skills in Australian industry had a decidedly British flavour.

The culture of apprentice training in the 1950s mirrored working class life in general: craft was the basis for industrial production, the main source of household income and the means of enhancing the material resources in the home. Hand skills and hand made objects were more than cultural, sensory and marketing signifiers. These experiences and conditions not only seeded a lifelong desire to craft but they also kept the idiosyncratic world of contemporary art/craft in check by not letting it forget its roots in past industrial and domestic spheres.

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In the evening and at weekends to complement the rigor of the workshop, I started to read and draw; pursuits which led to part time art studies in drawing and painting at an art school hence establishing a life time pattern of part time study. Art school was a sanctuary and an alternative to a future in industry; although at the time I did not realise that my industrial and working class background could never be jettisoned, I would always protect and defend them. Art school opened up an alternative but discordant social world: managing discordant social worlds also remained as a lifetime pattern.

Nevertheless I still needed a day job so I applied for and was accepted for a position in the physics department workshop in a university as an engineering technician. An engineering tradesperson could choose from a range of work options at a time when hand and machine skills were the basis for employment. However there was little variation in the type of work offered as the lowly status of the tradesperson limited involvement in anything but the sale of skills and knowledge of the trade. When tradespeople changed jobs it was often to relieve boredom by changing work environments, pursuing better work conditions and meeting new co-workers. Dormer (1994, pp. 14-15) tagged this as the “dumb artisan”, the worker who obligingly applied his/her skills and experience to tasks set by others.

The Physics Workshop: The physics laboratory technician

Summary

First hand experiences as an engineering tradesperson in a science laboratory are explored as a basis for the argument that the indispensability of laboratory craft to science can validate craft’s indispensability to art.

The job as an engineering technician in a university physics department was ideal for a craftsperson. Working in a pristine workshop, not tethered to particular machines or tasks, the complete production of the object was entirely in the craftsperson’s hands. Each object was unique and required precise calibration. Often kinetic, some sat within the ambit of the modernist notion of machine sculpture. This workplace was an organic site, driven by the fluctuating fortunes of research staff and students.

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Prior to computer modeling, hypotheses were tested with objects: objects were made to prove or reject a hypothesis. Research was dependent on the construction of objects in order to "advance"; a hypothesis was tested by exposing it to objects it, in a sense, designed and the role of the craftsperson was to develop objects which gradually closed in on a hypothesis.

There is a downside for a manual worker in a university workshop: complete engagement with the object is frustrated by the division between academics and craftspeople, in spite of their tacit agreement that craft makes research possible. Although the researcher and the craftsperson worked together to make science, an invisible line drawn between the intellectual and manual worker kept them apart: the first taste of social/educational/cultural divisions marked out on shared ground by unequal power bases and incommensurate objectives.

However scientists knew how important craft was to research. They not only carefully selected technicians from the trades to craft their experiments they could not resist the desire to be involved themselves. Although their clumsy attempts were often misguided and disastrous, their conception of craft as fundamental to science was, at least, reassuring for the technicians. Latour (1999, p.156) observed that they “are like helpless nestlings while the adults are busy building the nests

and feeding them”.

The craftspeople, although marginalised were acknowledged by the scientists as important: science and scientists demanded first hand contact with the craft they knew to be indispensable. Latour (2000, p.191) wrote:

“Technical skill” and “technical personnel” apply to those with a unique ability, a knack, a gift, and also the ability to make themselves indispensable, to occupy privileged though inferior positions which might be called, borrowing a military term, obligatory passage points. So technical people, objects, or skills are at once inferior (since the main task will eventually be resumed), indispensable (since the goal is unreachable without them), and, in a way capricious, mysterious, uncertain (since they depend on some highly specialised and sketchily circumscribed knack).

If laboratory research is a craft based practice and advanced through the production of objects can this be the basis for a dismantling the art/craft dichotomy?

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Laboratory experiences positioned craft as an indispensable mediator in the production of science, a position which could be applied the art/craft debate. Craft, as an indispensable element which remains embodied in the outcomes of science research must also remain as an indispensable element embodied in the art object rather than craft and art occupying separate territories. The two positions, that of the artist who abandons the craft which makes art and the craftsperson who claims the craft that makes the object, share common ground because both are dependent on craft for function, meaning and aesthetics. The problem is not the differences but rather the socio/cultural forces which initiate and maintain the differences.

Reflections on laboratory workshop experiences in the early 1960s made possible a challenge to the accepted status of the craftsperson. Rather than an insignificant underling in the research process, their role in the laboratory was that of an indispensable mediator without which research could not be carried out. Thus a significant shift in the understanding of the status of craft is proposed. The

indispensable role of the craftsperson in the laboratory questions the inferior positions they were said to hold.

Teaching and Studying: The Teacher and Student

Summary

Experiences as a high school art teacher are explored for the impact they had on later opportunities to study, practice and teach.

I left the physics workshop to become a high school art teacher thanks to the 1960s teacher shortage. My teaching methodology was based on the dissatisfaction I felt with my own short high school experience which, incidentally, did not include art in the curriculum. In retrospect this may have been a good thing. I at least thought I knew how not to treat teenagers and art was a passion unspoiled by past learning experiences. In a short five-year career as a high school teacher I think I was successful. A mentor at that time said that "direct entrants" made the best and the worst teachers. I think I was the former; I seemed to instinctively know how to teach. I was fortunate enough to be posted to a boy’s technical high school in a large team of art teachers, in effect, a mini art school.Although I had completed a substantial part of an art school diploma and exhibited a little, I had no teaching experience or qualifications.But teaching qualifications were necessary if I was to

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stay in the job and qualifications meant a teachers college course and my first taste of academic work since my truncated high school years. A lifetime love of learning and teaching had their roots in my teachers college days. I continued at art school in the evening and attended teachers college in non-teaching periods and at late afternoon lectures. My first taste of academic work since high school was totally invigorating; I loved it and did well in spite of an extremely heavy workload. I continued to paint and exhibit and had my first one-person show during this time. The reviews were positive and I now had a social world where issues of art and culture could be discussed. Becoming a teacher also meant shifting my art school study programme from visual art to art teaching which included a course called Craft. One of the craft options was jewellery making using simple tools, found materials and base metals to make objects for the body. Past skills and pleasures of working with metal and mechanics were revived by this turn of events. Initially I used found objects and later adapted my engineering hand skills to traditional jewellery making techniques.

The Jeweller: Making jewellery/teaching jewellery making

Summary

Experiences as a jeweller and teacher are explored as a direct influence on the instigation, and shape of, the thesis.

Why Jewellery

My jewellery education was enhanced by access to a state funded craft collective consisting of an administrative centre, gallery and training workshops set up in a disused factory in the city, with overseas master craftspeople as workshop heads. I was offered and accepted a place in the jewellery workshop as a trainee under the tutelage of a master jeweller. This was to be a seminal experience in my career as a jeweller and craftsperson. I now had access to good jewellery tools and equipment and a master jeweller who brought the traditions, standards and theories of European jewellery making to the city.

Nevertheless jewellery making was not a conscious career choice. Rather it was a "natural" outcome of training and working in a metal trade, experience as a laboratory technician and education and practice in the visual arts. It brought with it both benefits and misgivings. The benefits include the role jewellery plays in

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human communication, its use as a mediator in social ritual, the pleasure of mastering its intricate techniques and processes, its potency as a personal signifier and its value as an educational tool. The misgivings include its use as an insidious marker of social and economic stratification, as packaging for "valuable" investment commodities, and the ecological and human outcomes of extracting many of its raw materials from the earth.

A jeweller has two options for professional practice, the commercial trade or the visual arts. Choosing the visual arts brought two sets of values into conflict, the socio/cultural elitism of the visual arts and the working class values of trade training. The disparity between these ideals isolated the craftsperson in a ghetto where they have to pander to the trade with their skills and convince the art world of their disinterest in them.

Practising, Lecturing and Studying: The Craft Professional

Summary

The accumulation of lifelong experiences finally makes the craft professional. It is now possible to alternate between, and combine the roles of practitioner, lecturer and student.

Other than secondary art teaching, craft camp and summer school tutoring, “serious" teaching began with a position as a visual art lecturer in an art/craft programme. This launched a career as a teacher of adults; the pleasure experienced during this period remained throughout a long career as teacher. Teaching became a part of private practice and scholarship, a classic trilogy for a craft jeweller.

During this period I discovered how to teach jewellery making in a workshop. I assimilated theory and practice by bringing to the teaching workshop ideas which theorised the act of making and used it as a basis for curriculum construction. This was in part stimulated by an interest in trade/craft while working with a colleague from the manufacturing industry. By combining his knowledge and approach with the spirit and risk of “art/craft” we constructed a curriculum based on the nature of workshop life. Together we built a workshop and a programme from the ground up, shaping a learning environment which produced graduates who were successful in both fields.

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My interest in the interface between education and craft theory from a workshop perspective rekindled a desire to return to study. As a result I formally pursued my interest in craft theory and education which grew into full time work on a doctoral thesis.

Although lifelong attitudes toward object making were formed in a domestic environment and as an engineering apprentice, the research is predicated on experiences as a physics laboratory technician, art/craft jeweller and workshop teacher. Particularly influential was a career as a jeweller and workshop teacher which began in the earthy soil of the 1960s and blossomed during the relatively benign developments in technology, theory and education into the late 1980s. Cracks opened up and shook the foundations of the romantic world of the craftsperson during the 1990s with the advent of computer technology, the commodification of education and the reconceptualisation of the visual arts.

Prior to these experiences the primacy of craft, internalised during a childhood where hand making objects not only constituted a living and added significantly to the character and aesthetics of domestic life but also evoked memories of past times and events. Importantly the socio/economic status implicit in this lifeworld fostered a political position that to this day remains as a nagging tension between working class ideologies, the elitism of the art/craft world and the isolation of academia. However a return to the days of an idyllic childhood and the primacy of the hand made object in domestic, industrial, and cultural realms is not imminent: those times have long passed.

The messages evoked by tracing the meandering pathway are encapsulated in the art/craft debate, the motivations behind the thesis. The art/craft impasse came to view with the growth of the researcher as a craft professional which exposed disjunctions and barriers between what is considered art and what is not. Art defined itself as a platform for meaning and aesthetics, relegating the notion of human skill and innate material qualities to the margins and excluding craft from the category of art. Craft wanted to be in there as an equal, arguing that human skill and material qualities can also produce and disseminate meaning and aesthetics. This, it is argued, is the core of art/craft debate, the status of craft in the art object. The following chapter explores this argument as the motivation for the thesis.

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Summary

This chapter expands on the impetus for the thesis, the status of craft in the visual arts. The art/craft debate presents an opportunity to encapsulate the motivation for the research and recognise the importance of craft generally. Four questions are posed to assist in understanding craft in art and from these an argument which “logically” forms craft both as a discrete entity and indispensable mediator in art.

This image is included in the print thesis available from the University of

South Australia Library.

“Signs to ignore”

Cartoon in a university newspaper (UniSANews April 2003)

The search for a place for craft and art to share as equals is the stimulus for the research and the driving force which keeps it going. The following semantic argument pitched prior to the empirical study supports the researcher's belief in the efficacy of craft as both an indispensable macro mediator and a discrete entity. Support or refutation of the belief will, of course, finally depend on the reading of the research conclusions.

The binary, art/craft, is usually expressed hierarchically with art on the left and craft on the right. In this chapter it is capitalised and the order reversed to Craft/Art. Capitals are used to denote Craft (or Art) as a discrete entity and non-capitals when it is used as a macro mediator.

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Although craft is generalisable across a wide range of human activities, a discussion about its relationship with Craft/Art is useful if the perception of its status and role in the visual arts is to be explored. An exploration of craft in Craft/Art is premised on three assumptions - it locates craft in the visual arts, it asserts the importance of craft in cultural, social, industrial, economic and domestic fields and it is an exploration which supports the rationale of the thesis.

But can, in fact, the Craft/Art debate be used in this way, or is it based on a set of socio/cultural beliefs beyond the realm of "rational" argument? In an attempt to extract the argument from the socio/cultural mire four questions are posed, analysed and used to argue a case for Craft and craft.

Questions can perform a language game; alter a single significant word and meanings change direction. For instance the meanings of the following four questions are altered in ANT terms by a change of mediator represented by four words “enlisted, enrolled, significant and indispensable”. The questions are:

1. Is craft enlisted in the process of making Craft/Art? If so, where and how is it enlisted in the process of making Craft/Art? How can an analysis of craft in sites of representation be used to affirm a role for Craft in Craft/Art?

2. Is craft enrolled in the process of making Craft/Art? If so, where and how is it enrolled in the process of making Craft/Art? How can an analysis of craft in sites of representation be used to affirm a role for Craft in Craft/Art?

3. Is craft significant in the process of making Craft/Art? If so, where and how is it significant in the process of making Craft/Art? How can an analysis of craft in sites of representation be used to affirm a role for Craft in Craft/Art?

4. Is craft indispensable in the process of making Craft/Art? If so, where and how is it indispensable in the process of making

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Craft/Art? How can an analysis of craft in sites of representation be used to affirm a role for Craft in Craft/Art?

The four questions are posed as possible starting points for the search for craft in art, the original motivation for the research. Each word, enlisted, enrolled, significant and indispensable, alters the question and the nexus between craft and art. Although each word connects craft to art only indispensable forms an immutable bond.

The word enlisted suggests that craft can be brought in if necessary; craft would be useful but optional and voluntary in the process of making Craft/Art. Enrolled suggests craft can be an advantage to Craft/Art, optional although under some coercion. The word significant suggests craft has a place in the process of making Craft/Art but not essential or compulsory whilst indispensable suggests that craft is essential and neither optional nor voluntary. While the words enlisted, enrolled and significant connect craft to Craft/Art the tenuousness of the relationships preclude them from the following argument. Thus it is the question “Is craft indispensable

to the process of making Craft/Art?” which deserves a more detailed discussion in

a story titled “Finding the Craft in Art”.

Finding the Craft in Art

The simple title Finding the Craft in Art highlights one of those enigmas that beset much contemporary nomenclature for both craft and art. Before craft can be found in art a workable definition for craft and art must be agreed upon. Something can only be found if it can be recognised and recognition can only be legitimated if the definition is agreed upon by a critical mass. If a “universal” definition for craft or art is contested territory how can the quest Finding the Craft in Art be warranted?

The only recourse is to admit is that it cannot. A watertight definition that would satisfy all stakeholders is highly improbable. Nevertheless others must have or imply a definition because the use and manifestation of the names in both informal and formal settings is widespread and, to an extent, is the basis for dispensing resources, power, privilege and status. Art schools and Craft organisations are examples where the terms are used. Art schools and Craft organisations are active producers of objects and practices that go out into the world to represent a notion of

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Craft and Art. Before the research begins the notion of the indispensable craft in art is explored in words as a quasi-algebraic story titled The Story of big “C” and little “c”.

Craft could be seen to occupy two positions represented by big “C” and little “c”: big “C” represents craft as Craft, as a discrete form of Art, and thus a discrete entity and little “c” craft represents craft as an indispensable mediator in all practices and events where ideas are made into objects.

If big “C” craft as a discrete form is represented by the indispensable little “c” craft, and little “c” craft represents craft as an indispensable mediator (in a theatre, laboratory, workshop, studio etc.) in all practices and events that are produced by little “c” craft big “C” Craft is validated by the role little “c” craft plays in all these practices and events.

If it is established that little “c” craft is indispensable in all practices and events its

indispensability must also apply to Art.

If its indispensability applies to Art, indispensability is a justification for proposing big “C” craft, like Art, as a discrete entity for contemplation.

Thus the evidence for big "C" craft as a discrete form is sought in two realms, within the claims of the autonomy of big "C' and outside big "C" where little "c", as an indispensable mediator, influences the form of all (including Art) objects.

The contribution little "c" makes to the form of big "C" is sufficient to create a discrete entity and a field of study, practice and education in its own right. Nevertheless the search is unsubstantiated empirically and must continue, but with help from outside the esoteric world and apriori assumptions of the researcher.

The meandering pathway was not taken alone nor were the motivations self constructed: others met along the way invite relationships, form pacts and cause disruptions although their differing views do not prevent them from sharing a concern for craft. Said called this a "filial relationship" (Rowley, 1992, p.167).

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CHAPTER 3: Other(s’) hands and other(s’) objects – craftspeople, critics,

theorists, commentators, educationalists, writers and industrialists, et al have their say.

Summary

The literature review frames the research interests of the study. It explores a number of sites inhabited by craft and listens to practitioners, critics, theorists, commentators, educationalists, writers, industrialists, et al as they have their say. The hand and the object although nested in these texts relies on written language as a representing agent inevitably separating them from the material world in which they belong and supplanting them as resources for theories, ideologies and opinions.

Where now for craft: Johnson (1997, p.292) introduces the discussion with questions which both highlight the craft dilemma and underpin the argument for this review.

At the close of the twentieth century, the crafts are surviving when, apparently, they ought not to be. What does it mean, at this time, to have the desire to make? What is implied by the desire to acquire or to view the handmade object? Where do we locate the handmade within what Baudrillard calls the hyper-reality of mass electronic culture?

For the crafts to survive “when, apparently, they ought not to be” new partners had to be found to keep them going in a continually moving socio/technical environment. The review argues that the four partners are 1) the making and using body 2) academic craft education in/and the visual arts 3) craft's public performance and 4) craft writing.

The first partner is craft organisation which supports the making and using body by presenting the traditions of craft in a post industrial environment for a contemporary audience. The second is academia and the visual arts where craft education in/and the visual arts is repackaged as an intellectual and aesthetic entity. The third partner is an amalgam of the various ways craft performs in the public domain. Finally in a communication saturated environment (and in this thesis) craft is often produced, constituted and critiqued as written text.

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Craft and the body deals with two issues: craft practice (the body makes) and craft function (the body uses). The opportunities to craft objects in contemporary society are placed in the light of the theorised social body and how it appropriates craft. Academic craft education in/and the visual arts explores craft education and training and its shift from industry to university, its link with the visual arts and its demise in secondary schools. Craft’s public performance looks at ways craft is employed in contemporary society from three standpoints: in material culture as a social/cultural/economic signifier, at work as a design and research tool and at leisure for pleasure and to personalise living environments. Finally in a language mediated society it is argued that the craft of writing and writing on craft both informs others about the state of craft and influences those who “make” craft. These concerns and interests frame the thesis.

Exploring the world of craft inevitably snares more than the above concerns and interests; everything from the reproduction of archaic skills, the integration of new technologies and influential socio/cultural formations are picked up along the way. This is partly brought about by craft having its roots in the past and current practices in the present. But moving across time and place is inevitable; the desire to make now is enhanced by both traditional craft knowledge and new technological, socio/cultural and economic formations.

Although the need to simultaneously modify and adapt to new environments and satisfy lingering desires is manifested in, and confounded by, new states they eventually become the norm in turn to be confounded ad infinitum by following states leaving the question of what is craft open for revision in perpetuity, especially the nexus between the maker and the user. Fry (1992, pp.256-257) sees this mutable nexus as an outcome of a general process of dematerialisation

The specification of post industrial culture is immaterial" as "its aim is to accelerate the demise of the material relations of production and consumption.

He sees dematerialisation gradually weakening the connection between maker and

user as it "moves much nearer to taking on a far greater life and logic of its own". Although makers and users of craft objects are decreasing in number: only a few specialists are needed in both mass and niche manufacturing and craft "one offs"

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are too expensive and arcane for the mass market, the desire to make and use lingers.

The desire to make and use is further upset on a macro scale as new technologies, socio/cultural formations and economies oversee the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial era. Craft, stripped of its primary role in industry and the home is usurped by the state and in institutions, organisations and corporations where it is now merely a cultural novelty and marketing ploy. Human desire has been transplanted in the computerised minds of robots.

The diminishing opportunities for craft in industry, the home and community can also be traced through the history of industrialisation, the mutability of worker's organisations and the movement from industrialisation to post-industrialisation. In this context subsistence craft was superseded by the establishment of small factories and guilds, which led to large-scale industrialisation and formal trades and unions, later to be replaced by automation and multi-national corporations. Automation and multi-national corporations heralded the end of traditional trade training, a process which began, according to Williams (1981, p.113), with the industrial revolution.

Apprenticeship, as a form of professional initiation and training, began to diminish in the transition that occurred between the traditional and the newly rising industrial society. The industrial revolution altered attitudes toward training. Machines were creating a large need for unskilled workers, and there was a diminished interest in apprenticeship training.

Craft not only supported a working, domestic and community life but it also helped meet the desire to control, shape and individualise living environments. The aesthetic, sensual and corporeal satisfaction that individuals, families and communities found in the production and use of hand made objects was gradually taken over by professional designers and robotic production.

But the desire to make withers slowly. Direct human involvement in the designing and making process, frustrated by macro forces can, in fact, promote hand making by consumers. They attempt to reclaim and control the conditions of, and individualise their environments by modifying and personalising consumer objects

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allowing the consumer, in a sense, a space to "(re)make" left vacant by consumerism.

Although corporations and robotic production have neither eradicated the crafts or the desire to make, they are marooned, searching for a place in a society where commodification, consumerism and economics are now the benchmarks of value.

The above issues are covered in Johnson’s questions on craft survival and expanded on in the Making and Using Body. Her questions "what does it mean, at this time,

to have the desire to make?" and "what is implied by the desire to acquire or view the handmade object?” starts the ball rolling.

The Making and Using Body

The body and the hand are central to craft: without the body and the hand, imaginary or corporeal, craft would not exist. The body and hand are there for objects both in the "magical" process of making and the "spiritual" act of using. A study of craft is also a study of the body and the hand as they are configured and reconfigured by regular conscious or un-conscious acts and representations of making and using.Thus craft has two important allies, human desire and the human body. The current awareness and interest in them is stimulated by, among other things, feminism and the resurgence of the mind/body debate. The body is thus revealed as an available site for inscription and craft objects as available body inscribers. Unlike visual art objects they are not autonomous; they want to work with their human hosts as the body is inscribed for its everyday dramatic and relations with the world. Mood, occasion, surveillance, body image, etc. are dramatic relations in which the craft object has a place. The body's performance as Gaten's (1996, p.35) sees it, is an "imagery body as other":

This body image is a double of sorts which allows us to imagine and in our present situations - to be in a sense our own 'other' - but it is also involved in what allows us to project ourselves into future situations and back to past situations. We can be objects, for ourselves and to ourselves: recipients of our own sadism/masochism; esteem/disdain: punishment/reward; love/hate. Our body image is a body double that can be as 'other' to us as any genuine 'other' can be.

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Grosz (1994, p.142), located this contention in cultural terms when she wrote of body inscriptions as a means of fulfilling cultural requirements thus:

Not only does what the body takes into itself (diet in the first instance) effect a "surface inscription" of the body; the body is also incised by various forms of adornment. Through exercise and habitual patterns of movement, through negotiating its environment whether this be rural or urban, and through clothing and makeup, the body is more or less marked, constituted as an appropriate or, as the case may be, an inappropriate body, for its cultural requirements.

As the craft object shares the body and body space and as we all have a body with which to work the processes of inscription could be seen as both empowering and democratising. Gatens (1996, p.viii) expanded on this notion of the body as an imaginary construct:

I am not concerned with physiological, anatomical, or biological understandings of the human body but rather with what will be called imaginary bodies. An imaginary body is not simply a product of subjective imagination, fantasy or folklore. The term 'imaginary' will be used in a loose but nevertheless technical, sense to refer to those images, symbols, metaphors and representations that help construct various forms of subjectivity.

The unique craft object is a means available to the individual to make their body in a unique form. "Inscriptions on the subject’s body coagulate corporeal signifiers

into signs, producing all the effects of meaning, representation, depth, within or subtending our social order." (Grosz, 1994, p.141)

Furthermore if expanding the notion of making the body by inscription to include not only what is on or in the body but what the body interacts with, craft is everywhere. According to Hacking (1998, p.239), Foucault proclaimed that

"Couldn't everyone's life become a work of art"? However, couldn't everyone's life

also become a work of craft?

Nevertheless there is always a risk of inscribing the body and the space it occupies according to contexts, motives and interests of others. Sawchuk (1987, pp.62-63) warned of fashion (if we take fashion as a compliant behaviour) when she claimed that, "Fashionable behaviour is never simply a question of creativity or

References

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