As craftspeople we put our heart and soul into our work. Most of us make work that only a minority of folk truly understand and appreciate. The most heartwarming thing of all is when we see people enjoying using what we have made in their daily lives, sitting on a chair, drinking from a favourite mug, wearing a scarf we…
The Journal of Modern Craft contains some of the most thought provoking writing on current craft practice worldwide. I was delighted to be asked by the editors to submit a piece which appears in the current issue. Technology and hand skill in craft and industry. As a craftsman I am interested in how stuff is made and the effect that…
As the London riots were kicking off last week most commentators were going on about lack of respect, broken Britain and the breakdown of moral values, the proposed solution is normally increased discipline by home and state. I was blogging about my take on it, that being that these folk were just doing what we had trained them to do.…
Let’s breed a generation and convince them that success is a new pair of trainers and a 50″ plasma tv, bring them up from age 2 to covet material goods and if you can achieve it without having to work hard so much the better, pop stardom, soccer stars, lottery winners this is what we train them to admire. Then…
We are approaching a very important centenary in the art world, the creation of Marcel Duchamp’s “fountain”, arguably the most important work of art of the 20th century. Was he taking the piss? and why should craftspeople have any interest in it? The point of fountain was that Duchamp was arguing that aesthetics and skill were not what made art,…
Should we the craft community be celebrating the bicentenary of the 1811 Luddite rebelions? In modern usage in the UK to call someone a Luddite can be a slightly derogatory term used to imply someone is against all change and blindly rejects any complex modern technology in favour of older simpler technology. Some people on the other hand are proud…
How often do folk who choose to use hand tools hear this? The implication of course is that there is now a newer, better, faster way and that I am doing it “the old way” just to show how it was done. There is a common misconception about technologies in the Western world, we think that new technologies replace older…
William Morris’ lecture given to the Trades’ Guild of Learning, December 4, 1877It’s a bit slow starting as was the way with Victorian writing but is worth reading beyond the the first few paragraphs. Hereafter I hope in another lecture to have the pleasure of laying before you an historical survey of the lesser, or as they are called the…
The Wolf report on vocational education this week set out the way vocational education will change in the UK over the coming years and highlights significant problems in current provision. http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/DFE-00031-2011. It also shows how as a nation we have Michael Gove, education secretary, when commisioning the report said“For many years our education system has failed properly to value practical…
All of a sudden I have heard lots of folk talking about “sloyd”. Like “utsushi” in my last post this is a foreign word which has many subtle meanings which are lost in the normal translation simply as “handcraft”. This word I know a little more about though having spent some time in Sweden and teaching at the national handcraft…
