Craftvs.

Designmoving

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 ArtisanFrom Suggestions in DesignLuke Limner1853

craft

• Visceral, manual

• Materials-based

• Small-scale production

• Regressive, backward looking

• Moral, socialist

• Holistic, authored

• Communal, democratic

• Feminine, third world

• Vocational

design

•Conceptual, intellectual

•Form-based

•Mass production

•Progressive, forward-looking

•Amoral, capitalist

•Fragmented, disconnected

•Individual, autocratic

•Masculine, first world

•Academic

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

Plates from “The Seven Lamps of Architecture”John Ruskin, 1880

. . . 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 . . . . .

Antonio Stradivari in his WorkshopAlessandro 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

John Ruskin CaricatureVanity Fair, 1897

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 RuskinThe Stones of Venice, 1853

. . . 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 Today1889

William Morris and Walter CraneTitle page for The Story of the Glittering PlainUK, 1894

Sussex ChairWilliam Morris and Co.UK, 1875

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

“Koti” chairEliel SaarinenFinland, c. 1896

the preindustrial “tusk tenon”

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 cane-

wicker handle, designed by Peter Behrens for AEG (Allgemeine

Elektricitäts Gesellschaft), Berlin, c. 1909.

Von der werkbund austellungKarl Arnold Erben in SimplicissimusGermany, 1914

… 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

The Werkbund Debate 1915

MoMA’s Machine Art exhibition, 1934

Raymond Loewy makes

cover of Time Magazine,

1949

genius?

visionary?

Dale ChihulyChandelier, 2003Victoria and Albert MuseumLondon

Cinderella Table Jeroen VerhoevenThe Netherlands,2004

Postdigitalism

Craft 2.0 ?

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

Datamancer, 2007

Bottom-up designDIY repurposedOriginal, one-offPreindustrial nostalgiaCritical and postdigital

Barb HuntAnitpersonnel2003

“craftivism” and “critical craft”

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