Craft vs. Design moving beyond a tired dichotomy
Liberal vs. Mechanical Arts (another tired dichotomy) Liberal Arts • Intellectual • Pleasure • Virtuous • University taught • Aristocratic • Elite • Expensive • Originals
Mechanical Arts • Manual • Utility • Essential • Guild taught • Working class • Vulgar • Cheap • Multiples
Artist and Artisan From Suggestions in Design Luke Limner 1853
design
craft
•Conceptual, intellectual •Form-based •Mass production •Progressive, forward-looking •Amoral, capitalist •Fragmented, disconnected •Individual, autocratic •Masculine, first world •Academic
• • • • • • • • •
Visceral, manual Materials-based Small-scale production Regressive, backward looking Moral, socialist Holistic, authored Communal, democratic Feminine, third world Vocational
Precepts of the Arts and Crafts Movement • • • • • • •
the simple life joy in labor truth to materials unity of the arts honesty in construction democracy of design fidelity to place
. . . Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral front where you have smiled so often at the fantastic ignorance of the old sculptors: examine once more those ugly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statues, anatomiless and rigid; but do not mock them, for they are signs of life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone . . . . . Plates from “The Seven Lamps of Architecture� John Ruskin, 1880
Antonio Stradivari in his Workshop Alessandro Rinaldi, Cremona 1886
It is not , truly speaking, the labor that is divided but the men –divided into mere segments of men –broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little pieces of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail. John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1853
It would be well if all of us were good handicraftsmen in some kind . . .the painter should grind his own colors; the architect work in the mason’s yard with his men . . .
John Ruskin The Stones of Venice, 1853
John Ruskin Caricature Vanity Fair, 1897
. . . the purpose of applying art to articles of utility is two-fold; first, to add beauty to the results of the work of man, which would otherwise be ugly; and secondly, to add pleasure to the work itself, which would otherwise be painful and disgusting. William Morris, The Arts and Crafts of Today 1889
William Morris and Walter Crane Title page for The Story of the Glittering Plain UK, 1894
I am not sure that all the heaped-up knowledge of modern science, all the energy of modern commerce, all the depth and spirituality of modern thought, cannot reproduce so much as the handicraft of an ignorant, superstitious Berkshire peasant of the fourteenth century, or a wandering Kurdish shepherd or of a skin-and-bone oppressed Indian ryot.
William Morris, Hints on Pattern Designing, 1881
Sussex Chair William Morris and Co. UK, 1875
the preindustrial “tusk tenon”
“Koti” chair Eliel Saarinen Finland, c. 1896
The boundless evil, caused by shoddy mass-produced goods and by the uncritical imitation of earlier styles, is like a tidal wave sweeping across the world. We have been cut adrift from the culture of our forefathers and are cast hither and thither by a thousand desires and considerations. The machine has largely replaced the hand and the business-man has supplanted the craftsman. . . We wish to create an inner relationship liking public, designers, and worker and we want to produce good and simple articles for everyday use.
Josef Hoffman and Koloman Moser The Work-Program of the Wiener Werkstatte 1905
Octagonal electric teakettle of hammered silver, with canewicker handle, designed by Peter Behrens for AEG (Allgemeine Elektricit채ts Gesellschaft), Berlin, c. 1909.
Von der werkbund austellung Karl Arnold Erben in Simplicissimus Germany, 1914
The Werkbund Debate 1915
‌ only through standardization can (the Werkbund) recover that universal significance which is characteristic of it in times of harmonious culture. . . Standardization, to be understood as the result of a beneficial concentration, will alone make possible the development of a universally valid, unfailing good taste. Hermann Muthesius, 1915 So long as there still remains artists in the Werkbund and so long as they exercise some influence on its destiny, they will protest against every suggestion for the establishment of a canon and for standardization. By his innermost essence the artist is a burning idealist, a free and spontaneous creator. Of his own free will he will never subordinate himself to a discipline that imposes upon him a type, a canon. Instinctively he distrusts everything that might sterilize his actions. . .
Henry van de Velde, 1915
MoMA’s Machine Art exhibition, 1934
Raymond Loewy makes cover of Time Magazine, 1949
genius?
visionary?
Dale Chihuly Chandelier, 2003 Victoria and Albert Museum London
Postdigitalism Craft 2.0 ?
Cinderella Table Jeroen Verhoeven The Netherlands, 2004
Slow design manifesto • designing for space to think, react, dream, and muse • designing for people first, commercialisation second • designing for local first, global second • designing for socio-cultural benefits and well-being • designing for environmental benefits and well-being • democratising design by encouraging self-initiated design • catalysing behavioural change and cultural transformation • creating new economic and business opportunities
From: slowdesign.org
Ulysse Nardin Chairman Mechanical Smartphone
Bottom-up design DIY repurposed Original, one-off Preindustrial nostalgia Critical and postdigital
Datamancer, 2007
“craftivism” and “critical craft”
Barb Hunt Anitpersonnel 2003
Marianne Jorgenson, Pink, 2006
Why is craft is being reassessed? • • • • • •
Dissolution with homogeneity of mass market goods Dissolution with conceptual art and design Reemphasis on the physical world Pre-digital and pre-electrical nostalgia –the simple life Reconnection with embedded cultural meaning and “aura” Emerging postdisciplinary era