CCI-newsletter-1981-30-January-February

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1981

NEWSLETTER

Published by the Crafts Council of Ireland, Thomas Prior House, Merrion Road, Dublin 4. Telephone 680764

Fifth National Crafts Trade Fair Touches the Magic Million Now firmly recognised as a major trade fair, the Crafts Council of Ireland's Fifth National Crafts Trade Fair went close to breaking the million pound barrier this year.

TRADE FAIR

A target of £800,000 sales was necessary to show a respectable increase on the 1980 figure, allowing both for inflation and an increase in business.

As it turned out, the final total of direct orders placed at the fair amounted to £905,000; if orders to be confirmed immediately following the fair materialise as is confidently expected, the total could well touch a million pounds.

The final figure in any case represents a 45% increase on the previous year's orders despite an only marginal increase in the number of exhibitors.

Mr Desmond O'Mailey, TD, Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, opening the Fifth National Crafts Trade Fair. Also in the picture, the Chairman, Miss Blanaid Reddin and Vice-Chairman, Mr Tom Maher.

There is no doubt that the presence of overseas buyers, organised by CTT in collaboration with the Council, was a major factor in contributing to the record breaking total. Export orders placed are estimated to be close to £300,000 and on this basis the orders from the home market reflected a cautious approach to the tourist season, the result of two successive poor experiences.

Most exhibitors were rejoicing at the orders taken. One at least with experience of trade fairs on an international basis commented that the second day of the fair had been the best trading day experienced at any fair the company had ever attended.

The Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, talking with Mary and Michael (Stoneware) Jackson at the Trade Fair.

20 Year Old Report Still Valid Mr John Vedel-Rieper, architect, furniture and exhibition designer, and head of the Furniture Design Laboratory in the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, was guest speaker at the Crafts Council of Ireland's annual conference in November.

The theme of the conference, "Why Design?" was approached by Mr VedelRieper by referring back almost twenty years to the report Design in Ireland issued by Coras Trachtala in 1962—the famous Scandinavian design report.

This report, by five visiting design advisors from Scandinavia—the five professors, all eminent in their various fields—was felt by the speaker to be still relevant and, indeed, in parts unfulfilled in relation to its recommendations.

Over twenty years it might have been expected that the relevance of such a report would have been by-passed by the development of new ideas and by the rapid change in the world of design, but this is not the case. The recommendations made were, in the opinion of Mr VedelRieper, so fundamentally sound in relation to Ireland's needs that he felt able to answer the conference theme question by referring to the twenty year old document.

The climate which the report generated at the time and subsequently was an important aspect and it led to a number of initiatives which would otherwise not have happened. Among these were the establishment of the Kilkenny Design Workshops, and other bodies such as the Society of Designers in Ireland, and the Crafts Council of Ireland, with the craft organisations it has encouraged.

The question "Why Design?" was not, in the speaker's mind, simply answered; but in the context of the original report, it became even more interesting. While the report at the time might have been considered controversial, research in the meantime had led to a number of consequences in the design world generally which would be helpful in answering the question.

A particularly relevant element of the report, as fresh today as twenty years ago, was that of the use of indigenous raw materials. To illustrate this point, Mr Vedel-Rieper showed a number of slides of contemporary Danish and other furniture and furnishings which he saw as relating the man-made environment to man. These were objects which had the

Design from Environment

quality of utility, of function, of economy of materials; in which the useful also became the beautiful, and in which the raw material was closely related to the construction.

Mr John Verling spoke of the importance of using the environment in which we live and work to inspire and influence the designs, patterns and ideas that we use to shape our art or craft.

In partciular, he chose objects which would illustrate the use of natural materials, but used with respect to economy and to aesthetics. These included cane, rope, linen and hemp, laminated wood, and bentwood, and suggested the possibilities of transposing equivalent Irish materials such as rush and willow, wool, linen, hair, woods and so forth into similar situations.

"Man is a product of nature. He is created according to the laws of nature.

Aware of this, he will achieve a sense of harmony which will enable him to draw conclusions which are not so much directed by media and words, which have become weak, but make up another system which is man's human creation.

In the words of Le Corbusier:'Let us . read the lessons of the past and let us consider the future. A flower brings real happiness, the horizon and sky comfort our hearts continually.'

Some slides showed the potential of using inspiration from natural forms which could as easily be those indigenous to Ireland, but in all cases the positive key was that of design, of the transmission of inspiration from nature not in an imitative way but as an element in the development of the design.

The conscious purpose of designers in Ireland today, Mr Vedel-Rieper postulated, should be to express, develop and bring out an identity based on manmade Ireland. This should include traditions and qualities in techniques and materials aiming at new expressions and contemporary products which are able to serve functions and purposes and also enrich the human environment.

It was important, he suggested, that consideration should be given in designing to seeing the potential of local materials and to using design skills and to keeping traditional crafts alive and professional skills and standards intact.

Not merely this, but also to develop new techniques, new disciplines, and new material uses.

Design should be aimed at creating a better environment for man to enjoy; to underline the identity of the country and the society and express the best in contemporary idiom. Design should both influence and serve by producing the best products for the best society.

Essential to all this, however, Mr VedelRieper concluded, is to remember to develop the bases and the understanding through study and education; to set standards; to cultivate the best of one's cultural background and to build on this fundamental by using fantasy, imagination and talent to the benefit of those not only concerned with design but with the survival of the arts and of crafts.

"The average craftsman today does not have the standards of fitness and beauty derived from tradition which allowed the peasant craftsman, journeyman or humble artisan to take their place in the making of everyday objects which had a truly human spirit and had their high point in such things as the building of the great Gothic cathedrals. To try to return some of this feeling to our work we must try to keep our art, life and environment as close together as possible and try to recapture the uncon­ scious, inherent, personal drive which motivated the designs of the past.

"When we look for a traditional base, we tend to look back too far to our great treasures of Celtic art: the Book of Kells, Ardagh Chalice, etc., and of course the High Crosses. The slavish copying of letters, motifs and bits from these works does nothing for the present design and, more importantly, demeans the majesty and uniqueness of the original. I feel that the true base lies in the sea, the land, the trees, waterfalls, flowers, patterns of colour in sunrise and sunset, the emptiness and majesty, the Kerry valleys or the Twelve Bens in Connemara and the feeling of it all. Most of all, the people, their customs, sorrows, joys, work etc.

"To achieve anything positive and power­ ful from all this, one has to know it inside the skin, to have continually the sense of wonder that a child has, so that when one wants to call on mind to produce a design or work, the mind can produce a facet of the jewel which has true feeling and which allows the piece, whatever it is, to live in its own right, without maker's name, pedigree, etc. stamped all over it and a book of instructions to tell the so-called ignorant layman why it is brilliant."

Repetition of the Past can Proclaim Design Bankruptcy Professor 0 Murchu, speaking at the Crafts Council's conference in Galway, said that he worked quite a lot of his life with craftsmen, craftsmen in stone chiefly, men who didn't verbalise, men who give very little instruction to any apprentice, other than that which is given through the tools, and directly.

"I have thought often of the gap that seems to exist between what is known as the artist, and the craftsman, and the work of art and the work of craftsman­ ship. I doubt if this division exists at all.

"Many of the great workers are distinguished as great artists so to speak, committed to their knowledge and their understanding of design, to everything, with the result that I feel there is no division other than scale, perhaps.

"I have great hope's for design insofar as I touch it in my own work, because I believe we have a vast reservoir of principles of design in our heritage.

Unfortunately, that is obscured and there seems to be some indifference in dealing with this richness of our past, where we have continuous and meaning­ less repetition of antiquated shapes, of designs that belong to another period and that grew out of another background that was evolving into new forms as each age succeeded each. The repetition of works from our past proclaims a certain bankruptcy on our part if we meaninglessly repeat works from another time.

"These works have, in themselves, manifold possibilities of further develop­ ment of new designs, because it was from the work of the past in each century in the development of European design, that the new forms grew. They grew from an understanding of the basic principles that were in the art of the past by a committed, careful and thoughtful study of the works of the past. This is true—we need only glance at history to find that as each new style appeared, it had taken something, some vitality from the past.

Now, we have this in our metalwork, these principles in our stonework, in our manuscripts, if we search for them, and that is my hope: that we can produce new works, many new works from these.

"When the Derrynaflan hoard was discovered, or when it was made public, we found people marvelling at the ability of the craftsman to make delicate filigree work. Nobody marvelled, to my mind, at the combination of shapes that were the scaffolding, the architecture, and expressed the philosophy of the creator of the Derrynaflan chalice; or the other

works that have been on exhibition in America belonging to our Museum. Very few wondered at that.

"To try to summarise what exactly I am thinking of in relation to the richness of our past and the study we could really make of it, always creating new works, I am thinking of something said way back in the Bauhaus in 1925 that each succeeding style (speaking, as many of them were, again we must avoid a division, from a painter's point of view), the new isms, impressionism, neoimpressionism, pointalism, and so forth: these all were in turn seeking an order, seeking an order that should satisfy.

"This is the aspect of art or design that is the only thing, if you like, that I hope to say a few words about.

"The aspect of design is the aspect of order, the ordering of opposites, be they shapes, volumes, colour combinations, total arrangements, linear, whatever one likes to have, in whatever particular craft one is working. It's an effort at order, an order that we find in the old philosophies, from Platonic times and indeed from Chinese work, in the East; we find this sense of order, of what is right if you like, dare one say functionbut that is part of it too—the combination of things of different items forming units. This unity is important.

"Many of the designers from the Bauhaus also had this concept, and so had all the great designers of history, even what has come down to us verbally in the richness of our heritage of music and song in this country. Measure is the important aspect of things. It has always been there, at least in European design and thinking.

From Platonic times we know the contribution of the Pythagorian development and the legacy of Greek thought that is in a lot of our thinking.

designs of the past (and he always maintained incidentally that he was a painter) bridging the gap of architecture and all the other areas in which his activity could be involved. He maintained that one should develop a rational system of looking and feeling and developing a sense of order through grids, and so he went back to the concept of measures.

Vertical and horizontal dimensions in any objects are forces. They have to be equated and they have to find a balance between them. We may make an easy suggestion of getting them equated by simple arrangement—an equal arrange­ ment, so to speak, and so we get a whole concept of sub-divisions of space by the right angle, a thing that a French designer or artist could write a poem about.

"Mondrian did it in his massive horizontals and verticals with a big flat colour. He did this because he inherited in the true way that one would like to see our Irish heritage being inherited, too, understanding of the geometry of Vermeer; the seventeenth century.

"Mondrian has put aside realism and said we are thinking of pure divisions of space. This may appear to be a flat surface but it is true also of the solids.

We have to unite the solids if we have to think rationally, if we are making shapes.

I am not excluding the feeling and the actual handling of surfaces which is, in fact, the feeling of the part span, and of course the feeling for material: the objects that may be constructed out of combinations of simple solids. How much for instance do we use of one if we have to combine two? And how do we use it?

We can use it on grids if we are unfor­ tunate enough not to be able to use it instinctively.

"What exactly do we mean by measure?

Measure that ultimately makes a unity that at least is a microcosm of the great macrocosm of the cosmos; this was ever before the great designers of Europe, this concept of some unity to which they strove but possibly could not be attained.

At least all their efforts were directed to that, be they great painters, sculptors, architects, or making some humble and simple objects.

"Then again we see so many designs we marvel at: Matisse or somebody throws a few bits of paper or appears to throw a few bits of coloured paper on to a great wall decoration—abstract shapes, birdlike shapes and so forth. Each of these impress upon us that it just happened.

We forget that behind all that-all this wonder that artists and craftsmen have produced for us—behind these seemingly effortless productions, there is in fact a whole wealth of thinking, of feeling, of burning the midnight oil, of researching. Research I think, at least from the theory of craft that I come in touch with, is a very important word in our development.

"In our own century, somebody like Le Corbusier, the French architect who died in 1967 and whose influence was right across the world, developed from his analysis of the great work, the great

"Repetition of ancient forms is some­ thing that we must not tolerate because we realise that these ancient forms have in other lands produced new work. (continued in page 4)

Minister opens National Crafts Trade Fair Mr Desmond O'Malley, T.D., Minister for Industry, Commerce and Tourism, opened the Crafts Council's Fifth National Crafts Trade Fair at the RDS Industries Hall on 2 February.

The Minister described the formation of the Council in 1970, which was a joining of forces by craftsmen and others as a "bold step and imaginative deed which has repaid itself in results many times over."

Speaking of the crafts industry, the Minister said that though it was small, smallness of itself carried many advantages, and went on to say that in the impressive progress which has been made in recent years in the development of a healthy and vigorous small indigenous industry sector. "I did not want the crafts industry to be left behind. After all we do not want to discard the skills and practices of excellence that have been fostered with care over many centuries. . . . Building on what is best in our crafts industry entails far more than just the slide-rule approach. It also requires a helping hand, an encouraging word and a carefully tailored advisory service.

"It is in the giving of expert advice and in directing the craftsman to the right State door that the Crafts Council of Ireland must play its role."

The Minister, who spent nearly an hour and a half visiting many of the exhibitors on their stands, commented in his speech that the fine exhibition of products at

the fair "is the most convincing testimony of what our craftworkers can produce. This fair is now the premier event in the craft industry's calendar. . . providing an unique and valuable opportunity to concentrate your major selling efforts into a very short period."

In complimenting the Visitor Purchase section of Bord Failte for its efforts to promote the sale of crafts on the home market, the Minister, while suggesting that dependence on tourists for sales of crafts will continue in the medium term to be the bread and butter of the industry, pointed out that if the sector is to continue to grow there must be a push to gain a foothold on lucrative export markets. "The products of the craft sector," he said, "because of the hand-skills which they embody and the degree of training involved, should be among the best which this country can offer窶馬ot just to tourists but to the Irish public at large. With the right encouragement, they could be the proud standard bearers of the excellence of Irish products on the overseas markets."

The Minister welcomed the presence of seventy overseas buyers organised by CTT in collaboration with the Crafts Council as "a testimony to overseas buyer interest in Irish craft merchandise.'

The concluding words of the Minister were encouraging: "I am, at present, reviewing the requirements of the craft industry sector to ensure that it is given the right environment and assistance to enable it to realise its full potential."

Sligo Pottery wins Crafts Council Award

IDATrophywonby Dublin Craftsman

The jury awarded the Crafts Council of Ireland's annual prize for the best stand to Sligo Pottery. The award, which entitled Sligo Pottery to a free stand of their choice at the 1982 Trade Fair, is given to the stand which is judged not only best in overall design, but also takes into consideration all the other factors which should be considered in a trade fair context, such as pricelists, information, graphics and display.

Michael Kennedy made the clever use of kiln bricks the basis of his successful design.

The IDA Trophy for the product of outstanding merit in the context of the Trade Fair was won by jeweller Pat Flood of P & F Designs, Fade Street, Dublin. The silver trophy, commissioned from Peter Donovan of Kilkenny, was presented to Pat Flood by IDA Chairman Michael Killeen at a ceremony at IDA Headquarters on 9 February.

Stoneware Jackson, also a potter, won the award in 1979 and 1980 and was not eligible to compete this year after two successive wins.

Pat Flood has been a regular exhibitor at the National Crafts Trade Fair, this being his fourth successive fair. He is a member of the North County Dublin Craftworkers Association.

Michael Kennedy, Sligo PotteryCrafts Council award winner

(continued from page 3) "We may again look at nature, because nature as we are helped out now by scientific analysis, shows us how wonderful is the construction, how the spiralling, how the disposition of parts of simple flowers seems to belong to an order. Not necessarily a mathematical hyphen, because as you know it extends to infinity.

"We have that richness and we have a heritage, not alone in the colour of our fields, in our skies, in all the richness and wealth of colour and shape that is in our nature in our country. We also have a heritage that we must explore in connection with visual expression and the heritage of a language and of all the combinations of sound of it.

"Just imagine the constraint and imagine the order that a Gaelic poet imposed on the structure of his verse. It was conscious of design; often, perhaps, in the romantic period that we have passed through, it seems too structured, too choral as it were, but in each generation it could be enlivened. So those ancient forms that are our visual heritage, one feels that we will yet resuscitate them or grapple with the richness of our heritage, producing new designs, not treasurising the past, as it were."

Senator Points the Way

A Potter's Progression

Senator Justin Keating, who summed up the Crafts Council's two-day Conference in Galway in November, stressed in particular the fact that our educational system had not been conducive to development of the essentially sensual factors in our cultural lives.

Nicholas Mosse, illustrated his talk to the delegates at the Council's conference on the theme "Why Design?" with an autobiographical progression of slides illustrating the reasons why he decided on his present style.

Crafts, being tangible, were largely in thjs area and whereas the spoken word and our musical tradition had attained an importance in our lives, the works of the craftsmen were not given the same emphasis. He blamed, to a degree, the educational system and the division of schools into single sex establishments.

On a more urgent issue, however, the Senator analysed the problems of the crafts sector, particularly its dependence on tourism and the effect of economic pressures on small industry and the individual craftsman.

Stressing the value to the community of the craftsman, where there was an employment of some thousands when both full time and part time craftsmen are considered, and where there was an important cultural input, he pointed to the fact that the present recession had hit such small units particularly severely.

To ensure their survival, he felt, should be an immediate concern of Government.

In this regard, he highlighted the concessions and exemption given to artists over the years and suggested that the same sort of concessions should be considered for craftsmen.

Powerful interests such as the farming community could, with well prepared cases, negotiate special packages to carry them through recession periods when incomes were at risk and craftsmen, no less than farmers, were hit by the present recession and by two years in which the tourist industry was especially attacked.

Senator Keating suggested that the Council should not attempt with its small resources to make a case but should take a leaf out of the book of other interests and employ consultants to make the strongest possible case for alleviation of the problems craftsmen have to face, especially in a time of recession, and to press for a special package of aid which would include examination of the VAT and other tax burdens and the degree to which exemption could be made.

(Note: the full text of Senator Keating's talk will appear in the next issue).

"As a potter I paid very little attention to my market, and really I believed in making objects for use in the kitchen, and that one's training and underlying philosophy, along with the basic instincts, provide most of what is needed to kindle a happy working environment and good sales in the market place.

"Then I realised that more recently I have been learning to deal with the market in a rather less obvious way than a straight足 forward designer.

"I would firstly like to analyse the markets which I am faced with both at home and abroad, then I would like to describe the situation of my company, its aims and its restrictions, and then my training and background which obviously has a major effect on the way in which I evolve designs for production.

"The markets: Ireland as a manufacturing base in the pottery business is not ideal.

Except in a few cases, most raw materials come in from abroad. Being a fuel and labour intensive business, there are no great benefits to be gained from being in this country, except that we're nearer to our own home market. There is also no pool of skilled labour.

"Being a small country, there is very little chance to specialise and to ensure stability on the economic side of the business. I find that I have to provide a wide range of items to satisfy all tastes and pockets. I also like to spread my eggs evenly between the larger up-market accounts and department stores and restaurants, who do through the year business, as well as the more seasonal tourist shops.

"On the export side, there are considerable advantages to be had by the tax free facilities and the excellent Coras Trachtala help which is available, but I don't find myself that I'm in the supertax league, so that tax thing doesn't apply to me, and anyway pottery is very heavy and bulky and very uneconomical to ship, except in large quantities. In my experience, if one is making a wide product range, the export market is limited to American department store promotions and a few retail outlets who have the guts and the money to buy a year in advance.

"The pottery premises I work in are situated in a large converted agricultural building, so there is plenty of space for working. A total full-time work force of about six is most manageable, and in this space, and I insist that the business should exist on its own merit, employing local people trained entirely in the work足 shop. They are trained to a stage where they can expect similar salaries to any other trade in the area. I also expect that the business should provide me with a realistic living.

"The aims I have for the workshop are to work within these restrictions, and to produce by hand a basic range of kitchen ware that would be required by any household. Along with these, I would like to produce some more unusual esoteric kitchen wares, mainly because my wife and I are keenly interested in food and culinary processes.

"I cannot say that I designed my present range for the market, although the market in some way has influenced me over the last four years in deciding what I include in my basic catalogue. I have found that to make both my customers' and my own life tolerable, I have had to standardise my pot sizes, my glaze colour and the decoration, and this has evolved slowly, partially by trial and error. I try to complement my basic range with the more esoteric items which I make from time to time."

Crafts Council of Australia Fellowship Douglas Fuchs, an American Craftsman from New York, has been selected as the Crafts Council of Australia Fellow for 1981.

The programme that Douglas Fuchs will undertake whilst in Australia will centre around his work in Basketry and Fibre Sculpture. He will probably be situated in a College or Arts Centre to enable him to involve students and craftsmen in projects and workshops. Negotiations are presently taking place to find suitable placements for Douglas Fuchs in either South Australia, Victoria, Western Australia or the Northern Territory.

The Fellow will spend some time exploring and absorbing the influences of indigenous materials in Australia for basket-making. He will also hold a series of workshops and work to execute a large fibre sculpture with the assistance of students.

Supplies for the Small Weaver and Knitter Andrew Ogden, from an old-established wool textile family, has been working in spinning mills in Ireland for the last fifteen years. It has been apparent to him that the large modern spinning mill is not really organised to supply small amounts of yam to the craft workers and small textile businesses in Ireland.

Craftspun Yarns Limited is a new and independent company which has recently been started by Mr Ogden for the purpose

Premises Available ASHFORD, CO WICKLOW

of supplying the small knitter and weaver, and craft worker, with manageable amounts of the best yarns available on the market, at commercial prices. These are imported from various companies each specialising in the production of various yarns which means that now the home textile worker has a source of first quality raw materials as comperhen-. sive as any other country. These yarns include Pure New Wool, also cashmere, Silk, Alpaca, Mohair, Angora and Cotton in the complete range of counts and blends of these fibres, and fancy yarns.

The Newsletter understands that plans for the future of the company include the establishment of a small scale production plant, to make these yarns in Ireland.

In the meantime, some of the yarns which are unique to Craftspun Yarns are being spun specially for them in Yorkshire, and are then held in stock for quick delivery. In this way Craftspun Yarns claim to provide a complete service to craftworkers in the country.

The company also holds stocks of Ashford Spinning Wheels and accessories.

FIFTH

NATIONAL

Walpoles Shop at Ashford, County Wick low, has been closed and will re-open this coming season under new management. The Newsletter understands that the total amount of space which will be utilised will be less than the total available.

Any craftworker interested in renting part or all of the additional space as a workshop or possibly a combination of accommodation/workshop should contact Mrs Jay at Wicklow 0404 4205/ 0404 4255 for further information about this attractively located premises.

MARKET COMPLEX, DUBLIN There are plans to open a Market Complex in Thomas Street, Dublin, at Easter 1981. The site of this Market is the Old Blanchardstown Mills and the total floor area is 18,000 square feet.

It is expected that 150/200 stalls will be provided.

Left to right: Mr M J Wilson, L E. D. U., N. I., Mr BonsaiI, Wales Craft Council, Miss Blanaid Reddin, Mr Tom Maher, Crafts Council of Ireland, and Mr D Pirnie, Highland Craftpoint, Scotland

The owners of this Complex would like to see a craft presence and would be interested to know of any craftworkers willing to take stalls. They would consider the possibility of 10—12 craftworkers taking about six stalls as a joint venture. If necessary, personnel to do the selling might be provided.

The charge per square foot has not yet been decided but all the services—security cleaning etc.—would be covered in the cost of the stall area. Any craftworkers interested should contact the Crafts Council of Ireland.

Miss Blanaid Reddin, Chairman, Crafts Council, speaking at the presentation of the 1980 Muriel Gahan Scholarship at An Grianan