I want to share a little gem of a book and you can be one of the first to own it as it is hot off the eco press. Most craft books start by selecting the best, the last, the most famous craftspeople in each trade, this produces a particular type of book that has it’s place but it has…
fan birds are a wonderful traditional craft of eastern Europe. I first became aware of them when my friend Del Stubbs in the US wrote to me about them in the mid 1990’s he carves very fine ones. I saw lots of them when I visited Russia in 1998 including some huge ones in the Ethnographic museum in St Petersburg,…
This is the final post on this 2 day conference which will sum up the overall feel and meaning for me as well as mentioning a couple of speakers that didn’t fit elsewhere. Dartington felt an odd place geographically to run a conference on sustainability meaning many folk had very long journeys including quite a few flying. As a physical…
Connecting Craft and Communities is a networking project “to enable participants to examine the changing cultures, politics, practices and skills of Craft in the 21st century.”As part of that I attended a 2 day meeting at Dartington Hall focusing on crafting sustainability. It was a wonderful informal gathering and whilst folks were presenting short papers as a focus for disscusion…
Was William Morris a Craftivist? and do the writings of Morris and the ideals of Craftivism have something to contribute to the personal philosophy of craftspeople today? That subject forms the basis of a forthcoming PhD for Mila Burcikova, a bit much to cram into one blog post but quite exciting and kept me engaged in conversation all evening in…
Kevin Murray gave one of the keynote papers at the Making Futures conference last week. a very entertaining speaker he encouraged us to question the way we relate to physical objects. In the great hall at Dartington with the oak lectern he looks rather like a preacher but the sermon was anything but dry. We started by looking at tram…
Today David Cameron launched a £500,000 ad campaign promoting British Culture with 10 posters highlighting British Heritage, Music, Countryside, Sport, Innovation etc but they forgot the crafts one again so we helped them out. Please share these with your friends, post it on your blogs and facebook and let’s get it out there as widely as we can. We have…
Making futures brought together delegates from the UK and around the world to question how we can live sustainable lives, and whether craft has a role to play in getting from here to there. The full conference program and summaries of the papers are available online here in due course the full text of the papers will also be published…
Just back from 6 days in Devon discussing what role crafts have in helping create a sustainable future. The setting was the magnificent Dartington Hall. I came away inspired and am now wondering if I can manage to pass on some of that inspiration just through blog posts, I’ll try my best though as a medium it can’t compare to…
Clogmaking, spooncarving and chairmaking all with consumate skill and simple tools. I have known of this great film on Swedish TV channel for a long time and posted links before but I just discovered how to embed it here. Hope you enjoy. I could watch it a hundred times. The spooncarver is superb, the clogmakers bench was the inspiration behind…
