craftsmanship, consumerism, virtue, privilege, and quality

also relevant to my thinking about this is the fiber art of diane itter

http://www.imamuseum.org/sites/default/files/mars/82/8202ce20-b56d-49a9-bd0d-5c51d9fac4d1.jpg

these are entirely composed of linen thread, using only double half-hitch knots -- it feels, for me, like there is such a deep intimacy with the materials, it's really quite remarkable. the works are really quite small, but they are dense flat surfaces that clearly express these conceptual flights of color and pattern and movement -- clearly design! -- but the cascade of fringe reveals the elemental components of its crafting

I feel like "craft project" is an indicator of the "arts and crafts" hobby-horse junk that accompanies "crafting" magazines and indicates an amateur effort. Honestly, it makes me think of scrapbooking, which I tend to associate with suburban housewives.

If you speak to someone's craft, however, it's usually an expression of a skill in creating things, although not necessarily with a polished sense of design. There's a lot of hand-made, functional furniture or clothing that is extremely well-made, but not necessarily with a particular aesthetic. The design seems either cobbled together or inherited.

The combination of craft & design should be highly prized, imo. I love furniture and clothing that is very well-designed, but it's a lot more likely to be factory-made by non-artisans, even if the quality control is very high. I think bespoke suits are probably an example of excellent craft but little design, as many of them are tailored to a traditional template.

Then again, there are plenty of designs that aren't very good or are aesthetically unappealing.

http://macramecollective.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Diane-Itter-Peruvian-Split-detail-1983-knotting-linen-9x17.jpg

i'm just posting this detail of another itter piece because it just blows my mind.

tiny tiny knots! so so tiny

i don't necessarily think craft is incompatible with industrial process

or is it? it's a good question

I don't think it is! Many very skilled individuals work in industrialized industry, and it's a popular stereotype to think that the reason things are sewn/assembled in countries with much lower wages is due to a cheap, barely-skilled labor force and that americans may not want to do the work. In reality, it's often a highly-skilled labor force, especially for fashion labels with quality control.

I think you're right! and it's interesting how the same labor is privileged based on who the laborer is

i was thinking of Harris Tweed, the manufacture of which is largely automated, iirc, but a certain amount has to be performed by hand in a certain place (the outer Hebrides!) to receive the prestige of the Harris Tweed label

In furniture manufacturing, there's currently an interesting case where Herman Miller, who holds the official Eames stamp of approval and sells the branded products switched materials to manufacture the chair out of plastic, which they market as "true to the original, but with eco-friendly materials." Modernica bought some of the original fiberglass molds and sells a formed fiberglass chair that is virtually identical to the original product, but has to market it under a different name.

So, which is the "real" Eames shell chair?

I really need to drink more coffee and think as I type. The copy-editing on my posts is horrendous this week.

I feel like "craft project" is an indicator of the "arts and crafts" hobby-horse junk that accompanies "crafting" magazines and indicates an amateur effort.

see, i find myself totally charmed by some amateur works -- i have a a collection of crewel embroidery art, mostly thrifted, and my favorites aren't necessarily the ones that show the greatest technical skill. there's something about the care and intention that goes into it, even stuff that's obviously made from a pre-assembled kit.

also stuff like wonky student ceramics and paintings. not as a rule, really, but in some cases the lack of polish adds to its appeal, for me. i'm not going so far as to say any of this is 'folk art' -- because it's not, really -- but there something that feels (forgive me) sincere and honest about that sort of amateur work, in a way that highly skilled artworks don't always capture.

http://images.familyhomeplans.com/plans/91885/91885-B600.jpg

The scorn for crafting magazines and "scrapbooking" is totes gendered btw.

I could see that. I think I picked up the distaste from a graphic designer friend, but her feelings were probably more borne of professional disgust than the content therein.

I think there are man-targeted craft magazines, as well. As a kid I lived across the street from an editor of Wood magazine (small project magazine from same publisher as Better Homes & Gardens) and my dad definitely did a couple small projects. That stuff just doesn't do much for me, although it does involve honing particular skills.

Same publisher put out Readymade (now sadly defunct) which I did appreciate, but maybe because many projects were more of a functional bent? Less about making /things/ and more about making things your own.

There's a summer art festival here where a lot of artists from abroad come and show their sculpture/painting/photography and they have to have submitted portfolios, etc. it includes an area with up-and-coming local artists. The same weekend, the fairgrounds host an arts & crafts show where this is some reasonable stuff, some with as much effort expended but not as aesthetically "art show," in a sea of work. You can get some pretty amazing NASCAR-themed stained glass wall hangings and some intriguing wind chimes and dreamcatchers.

kept guiltily thinking of arts & crafts homes, glad tracer made that connection

heh heh

wood

in orbit reminds me I breezed over the original point which was yes, it's way gendered and comes down to "craft projects" are supposed to be the realm of hobby, and more specifically, the pastimes of women. Kind of an assumed ephemeral quality, as if neither art nor useful goods would come about, feeding back to an artificial limitation on what's actually made.

I think in 2012 there's still a crafting ghetto, but most homemade goods can fit into the market as equals, given the right marketing.

also, elmo re: your comment about stuff made from a kit or design at home, I know of a few vintage-styled stores who tread the legal line carefully on that issue when it comes to clothing. There's a pretty broad market for vintage clothing designs, and I believe if you know one's out of copyright you can create derivative works for sale, but buying a design, sewing it, and selling it outright is illegal. I knew someone who had to explain this regularly because she'd sew a dress, be complimented on it, and be asked why she didn't sell stuff.

it's way gendered and comes down to "craft projects" are supposed to be the realm of hobby, and more specifically, the pastimes of women

this is absolutely what i was getting at. there's definitely a gendered categorization to materials, i think. wood and leather and metal, then, are more masculine, while on the other hand, fibers and fabric and paper are seen as feminine -- but i think this also comes back around to the issue of durability and how it relates to perceived quality.

i mean yeah that's just your basic home economics vs wood shop gender binary stuff but

re: "craftsmen", i was reading a book on bargello needlepoint, the forward of which referred to someone as "one of the world's foremost needlewomen" and the term just struck me, NEEDLEWOMEN, i think it's an awesome word

Oh cool this thread is back! Good, seriously - this is always an interesting read

needlewomen is fantastic

Hasn't the "-woman" type word become obsolete? I thought we were moving to a genderless convention wrt profession. Needler, maybe.

do you think needlewomen have special sheaths for holding their needles in, when they're not needling with them i mean

Maybe a really tiny quiver?

in a holster

:D

craftswomanship

enjoying this revive

craftswoman ship

would sail on

I'm interested in how this relates to the uneasy relationship between book arts and scrap-booking. There is definitely a relationship between the two, but many book artists loathe the hobby of scrap-booking, or at least they resent the conflation of the hobby with the art, which is not a popularly recognized art form. Both are overwhelmingly practiced by women.

Interestingly enough, letterpress printing is currently practiced mostly by women, but was dominated by men when it was the height of technology, not that long ago. This is true of most of the book arts, including paper-making and binding.

I'm interested in how these skills have moved from being considered masculine to feminine. Also interested in how the marginalization of the art form affects the uncomfortable relationship between art and craft.

those are really great questions! i do wonder how work vs leisure plays into the shift in gender. i don't know much at all about book arts at all, though.

this weekend i went thrifting as usual and i found a crewel embroidered picture of a weeping cherry tree bonsai (made by a woman) and also a book about how to make and sharpen knives (authored by a man) so take that for what it's worth

Don't think letterpress printing is mostly practiced by women in the UK, fwiw, though it's surely less male-dominated than it was when it was practiced on an industrial scale.

That's an interesting cultural difference. It seems to be a pretty common conceit amongst book artists and letterpress printers over here that the field is dominated by women, with a smaller plurality of gay men and very few straight men. My experience corroborates this. Interestingly, the one letterpress printer from the UK that I've met is one of the few straight men I know working in letterpress and book arts.

I don't know why this is and I don't know why it's different here than in the UK.

i think the gender binary stuff is a good and useful way of thinking about this, but i was just thinking last night about "craftsmanship" vs "craft project" in terms of reproducibility (is that a word?). Being able to be produced multiple times. That is, craftsmanship implies a certain consistency of work, that something made once that can be duplicated with negligible difference through repetition of the same process that created the original. "Craft project" on the other hand, suggests a certain idiosyncrasy. It's made once, and while it may be duplicated, the product will be noticably different each time. Maybe it's more improvised, or not thoroughly planned before it's begun. Its process is more experimental or simply created ad hoc, in the moment, with materials at hand.

i think both "craft projects" and "art" share this uniqueness, which i think is part of the tension between them? maybe.

On a related note, an art professor I know told us her students were into re-discovering old crafts, and while she continued to encourage them to use these techniques and materials, she bemoaned their apparent lack of interest in developing skills. A student might be interested in incorporating crochet or leather-working into a piece or an installation, but would hit this wall early on and not develop a deeper understanding of the actual craft. The way she described it, there exists a genuine appreciation of craft amongst her students that doesn't often go beyond the conceptual.

The result, as she described it was sincere art that, yes, your child could do better.

There's an idea about maturity--being tested and honed--in the course of becoming master of a craft? Only through grinding repetition do you find the improvements and insights and get the thing into your bones, in the way that's being glorified. Cost of being one of these people: your lifetime. Much easier to admire from the outside.

"deeper understanding" = accepting that you will do the same thing every day for 10, 20, or 30 years and any gains after the initial skill-acquisition period will be minute and subtle and not adequately compensated.

I suspect that pleasure factors in there somewhere.

Also, I couldn't draw a diagram of the learning curve, but there's something to be said for an artist who knows how to draw, understands color, can paint, understands the materials, is familiar with the process, knows how to operate a camera, had a depth of knowledge about the software; etc. If you can't sustain an interest in materials and process, why incorporate the plastic arts into whatever it is that you do? I can't tell you how many hours are enough, but achieving some level of skill factors in there somewhere, right?

Pleasure and/or earning a living. Maybe someday there will an argument to be made that surviving office life requires a kind of craft too?

make a little pig out of a pink eraser and some pushpins

Which is fun and has some value, but I won't fund your kickstarter.

software developers can sure attest to a range of craftsmanship, skill, and polish

Reproducibility seems like it might be part of the distinction between art and craft, but printmaking, photography, film and the digital arts are all examples of things that involve reproduction and exist on both sides of that boundary.

The mechanics of the craft might be a part of that distinction, but I suspect it would be hard to find any existing craft, the mechanics of which couldn't be used to create art.

I suspect that at this point in time, intention and social/institutional convention are the only things that drive that distinction.

This is basically the ongoing discussion of art vs fine art.

AP in re your story about the professor and "craft" I think since Warhol there's been a pretty powerful strain of thought in art that goes against craft, skill, the artists' hand, etc., although I personally think there's a difference between learning to paint and then ultimately using a studio or machines or computers to do your painting for you versus never even learning how to paint. Which is not to say that I think you should have to learn how to paint specifically -- maybe your "technique" relates more to design, or color theory, or sewing, or woodwork, or the manipulation of certain materials, or CAD, or whatever. But I think there's been some confusion between the idea that it doesn't matter if you do it yourself and the idea that it doesn't matter if you know what you're doing. That was my second-hand impression from people I knew at my school's art program and in some (but not all) other art programs.

Yeah, I think you're right, Hurting 2. My story is also second-hand, and through the professor's filter, so I won't carry this too far, but I think her emphasis was that she noticed a trend among her students of genuine interest in exploring craft for craft's sake (not surprising, considering that the diy scene has been around for decades), and incorporating the process of doing something manual and not conceptual into their work, but not quite committing to that process. The result was not actually executing a craft so much as it was engaging the concept of craft and writing up an artist's statement about moving away from the conceptual to engage process.

Thought this was interesting:
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/being-human/julian-baggini-coffee-artisans/

Summary: It seems like one of the main arguments in favor of handmade/artisanal products is QUALITY, but if a machine-made product (like Nespresso coffee) can provide sensory pleasure at a consistently superior level, are there still valid reasons to prefer the more "human" effort?

NB: I've barely read this thread, so maybe this has all been discussed to death.