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Black Mountain College – A School Like No Other | TateShots

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Black Mountain College – A School Like No Other | TateShots

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ManNYunSYkQ

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Brighton University professor Jonathan Chapman is driven to design things that people want to cherish and keep, rather than throw away.

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this is a London based social enterprise project designed to encourage  & empower people to use their electronic products for longer and thus reduce wastage. They repair them!

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The Restart Project is a people-powered platform for change, helping demand emerge for more sustainable, better electronics.

By working with communities, schools, and companies to value and use electronics longer - and documenting the barriers to doing so - we're driving a global movement to move beyond the throw-away economy.

We take local action to prevent electronic waste through hands-on, learning events where we help people fix their own electronics - and help others to do the same globally.

We also look at the big picture, generating valuable insights into how to improve electronics for people, from design and manufacture, through use and end of life.

When we act together, people everywhere have the skills and vision to guarantee that technology serves people and planet. Our insights and actions will enable designers, companies and policymakers to fix what we simply cannot on our own.

We're fixing our relationship with electronics - putting people and planet at the centre

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By working with communities, schools, and companies to value and use electronics longer - and documenting the barriers to doing so - we're driving a global movement to move beyond the throw-away economy. We take local action to prevent electronic waste through hands-on, learning events where we help people fix their own electronics - and help others to do the same globally.

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This about the design of products that people are less likely to throw away.

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In this episode, podcaster Dave Pickering talks to Professor Jonathan Chapman (University of Brighton), a designer who has helped many other designers change the way they conceive of quality and good design.

Chapman's idea of " emotionally durable design " goes beyond actual physical durability and asks what keeps us attached to things, or alternatively, feel perfectly justified in throwing them away. Designers looking for clues about how to embed "sustainability" into their products need not only focus on technical aspects related to longevity, but they can explore ways to help objects improve with age, or adapt with age.

In this episode, Chapman suggests that things - and more importantly acquiring new things - fills a gaping whole in our primal human psyche. The only danger is, this feeling of satisfaction or relief is only temporary.

Dave complements the Chapman interview with chats to Restart Party goers about what makes certain items more appealing, either to use forever, or even to adopt and give a second life.

[feature image by Bethan Laura Wood used on a Creative Commons license]

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Restart Podcast Ep 9: "Emotionally durable design" - The Restart Project

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In this episode, podcaster Dave Pickering talks to Professor Jonathan Chapman (University of Brighton), a designer who has helped many other designers change the way they conceive of quality and good design. Chapman's idea of " emotionally durable design " goes beyond actual physical durability and asks what keeps us attached to things, or alternatively, feel perfectly justified in throwing them away.

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Contemporary Ceramic Design for Meaningful Interaction and Emotional Durability

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Contemporary Ceramic Design for Meaningful Interaction and Emotional Durability

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She is exploring the emotional durability of tea cups and why we tend to have  favourites that we choose to use over others. She is interested in putting this into the context of mass production because we all use cups everyday.  The interviews are an indicator of how we develop personal, meaningful relationships with objects and how and why we attach value to the simple and everyday.

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Contemporary Ceramic Design for Meaningful Interaction and Emotional Durability: A Case Study - ProQuest

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This is a short preview of the document. Your library or institution may give you access to the complete full text for this document in ProQuest.

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Stained Tea Cups
These are designed in such a way that the tannin gradually stains unglazed areas of the cup so that the visual appearance of the cup changes as it is used. The consumer is involved in the customisation of the object which may create a deeper connection with it (or may create disgust).

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The Japanese value marks on an object left by aging and use. Repairing an object is designed to increase its beauty and make something new. This also works as a means of sustainability in an increasingly throwaway world.

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Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education

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Emotionally durable design, Dr Jonathan Chapman

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Transforming Research: Emotionally durable design Dr Jonathan Chapman The crisis of unsustainability is a crisis of behaviour, not one simply of energy and materials alone. During the past 60 years, humans have stripped the world of a quarter of its topsoil and a third of its forest cover.

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Stephen Bertmann: Hyperculture: the human cost of speed. 

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Stephen Bertmann: Hyperculture: the human cost of speed. 

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Birth to death in 53 terrifying seconds. X-Box contemplates the meaning of life.

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Response to Can craft be used to help change the world article. (love the mini banner and don't blow it hanky)

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Pick a craftivism project and join the gentle protest movement

When it comes to campaigning, it's not always easy to know where to start. That's why we've spend years developing a range of projects to help craftivists engage with a variety of issues in a meaningful and strategic way.

Each project can be done individually or as a group, and is designed not only to help you create a finished item but to reflect on the issues involved as you stitch.

We'd love to see how your project is progressing, so keep in touch with us @craftivists on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook

Host your own event

Fancy getting your craft on with others? Get our top tips on how to host a successful 'stitch-in' here.
See more

Hire a Craftivist

If you'd like to get a Craftivist involved in your next event, find out how here.
See more

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When it comes to campaigning, it's not always easy to know where to start. That's why we've spend years developing a range of projects to help craftivists engage with a variety of issues in a meaningful and strategic way.

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Mary Caroline Richards went here. Emphasised on the students rather than the subject matter. So they learnt by doing.

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Book Review. Alexander Langlands, Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts. New York: W.W. Norton, 2018.

People working in craft often have philosophic inclinations. We work outside of mainstream society. We make objects that are not strictly necessary anymore. Combine this with long hours working alone, extremely repetitive hand work which affects the rhythm of our thoughts, getting lost in archaic techniques, and it only seems natural existential questions arise. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? (and the annoying corollary, why am I doing this for so little money) Does it matter? Is craft in the 21st century anything more than a marketing term for a new cider? As partial compensation, I habitually buy most new books on the philosophy of craft, which means I must be looking for some new insight or different perspective.

With a few significant exceptions, the history of craft is recorded by writers and artists who described the actions of a craftsmen, but were not experts in the fields they described. Alexander Langland continues in this tradition. "I'm no craftsman" he announces near the end of his book. (297) He does consider himself a "jack-of-all trades, master of none", though. There is an almost universal prohibition against attempting to learn too many trades in most languages and cultures on earth. But why? Most people I know who are good with their hands are adept at a number of crafts. Is mastering a craft a different category altogether?

Langlands writes with a poetic sensitivity detailing the activity of handwork which renders the fact he is not a professional craftsman irrelevant. I became completely absorbed in his descriptions of hand work. David Esterly's Lost Carvings (my review here) may have been the model for this style of craft writing: you feel you are inside a craftsman's head, thinking what he is thinking while he moves his hands and tools. Esterly is a master craftsman writing about his own long years of carving. Langlands admits he is good at talking about it. (297)

Over a dozen crafts are described in Langlands book. Descriptions of performing a craft can sometimes go on for pages, and could have easily become inconsequential and dull. With Langlands firm narrative, however, they are engaging and even exciting. For example, the chapter on making a thatch roof is almost pornographic in detail; from sharpening the scythe, selecting the stubble thatch, twisting the thatch, augering the rafter peg holes, pegging it with a square greenwood trenail, driving the spars, and more. After reading, I felt exhausted and relieved to get off the roof and have the day's work finished.

Each chapter has a similar recipe. He starts by placing a particular craft in a historical context, mixes in a bit of etymology, describes the importance of the materials, then narrates his own experimental recreation. His background as an archaeologist and British television personality ( The Victorian Farm, The Edwardian Farm, Wartime Farm) serve him well in presenting the information in an engaging and readable manor. The chapter on weaving and hurtle fence making, for example, is exemplary: he unites these two disparate appearing crafts through a fundamental commonality of warp and weft. All the while he emphasizes the respect he has for the abilities of earlier craftsmen.

Though the book is filled with interesting factoids - who knew that the tines of traditional wooden French pitchforks are made out of trained branches! - the real value is in Langlands' underlying conception of craft, "... a vehicle through which we can think, through when we can contemplate, and through which we can be." (343) He continues a philosophy of craft born in the arts and crafts movement, then overlaid with a bit of Richard Sennett ( The Craftsman, my review here), David Pye ( Nature and Art of Workmanship), and Howard Risatti ( Theory of Craft). Another great strength of this book is the explication what he feels is the "craeft" way of knowing: evaluating and sourcing raw materials, working within constraints of cost and time, using your hands, and working towards a specific means. Craft, to Langlands, is not just a final product, but the sum total of the involvement in the process by the craftsman with the environment. Is this just a slight variation of farm-to-table cooking applied to objects?

For all of practical and engaging description, and his extensive experimentation, he has a romanticized view of craft, likely because he is an amateur. "Perhaps harshly, I would not consider a topiarist who uses electric hedge trimmers a true craftsman on the simple grounds that the tool mutes their level of engagement with the material properties of the entity they are working." (36) Attitudes toward work - even for a real craftsman - change quite a bit when doing something day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Pecuniary pressures can also negatively impact a craftsman's enjoyment of work. David Pye would also take issue with this statement, though on the grounds that an electric hedge trimmer takes a great deal of hand skill to operate, and the source of the power is irrelevant.

Langlands pays little attention paid to how craft skills are passed on or inherited. For all of his emphasis on craft as a integrated system and way of thinking, this is a significant omission. When discussing a Viking longship, he theorizes "It's a craft that relies on building something relative to the materials employed... allowing the materials to speak for themselves, to answer back, to tell you what the natural shape must be..." (333) This sounds more something you would hear from an exercise guru or in a Monty Python skit, not the way a craftsman would think about constructing a ship in the ninth century. "Thor, let the keel timber be what it wants to be!"

There are several chapters where he describes the actions of a skilled craftsman, but he does not investigate the transmission of knowledge. Re-enactment, etymological history, and the study of extant artifacts are his primary methods of inquiry. But this was is not how craft was taught and transmitted for most of human history.

At the risk of coming across as a mystic, but I do believe Craft (with a capital "C") resides outside of objects. Craft objects are the result of Craft. Learning or experiencing this way of thinking is traditionally taught through close contact with skilled practitioners. But I also think you can get there on your own, it just takes a lot more time. Before the nineteenth century this took place in apprenticeships; now it is more commonly acquired during internships. The transmission of craft knowledge is an important part of the entire craft ecosystem.

This entry was posted in book conservation, craft, hand tools, tools and tagged alexander langlands craft, Craeft book review, craft, craftsmanship, describing craft, philosophy of craft on by .

"Intellectual labor tears a man out of human society. A craft, on the other hand, leads him towards men."

-Franz Kafka

I want to believe this appealing quote. I want to believe that the thousands of hours spent learning, practicing, preparing and performing craft - usually alone - lead back to humanity at some point. I want to believe that the products of craft will also somehow connect with other people. If thinking separates us from society, do reading rooms in libraries and gathering together in coffee shops somehow compensate by letting us be physically together? But Kafka's conception of intellectual labor in opposition to craft is troubling. Isn't he separating the hand from the head? Most craftsmen I respect have a tremendously wide curiosity and intellect, encompassing history, technique, tools, materials and many other seemingly unrelated things. Craft is not about just having made something, or even being able to make something. It is consciously participating in the tradition of making something. Is this how it might lead us to others?

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Gustav Janouch, Conservations with Kafka, trans. Goronwy Rees. 2nd rev. and enlarged ed. (London: Andre Deutsch, 1971) p. 15 in Paul Virilio, Ground Zero ( London and New York:Verso, 2002.) p. 7.

This entry was posted in book conservation, bookbinding, craft and tagged bookbinding, conservation, craft, philosophy of craft on by .

"Craftsmanship... the desire to do a job well for its own sake." -Richard Sennett Beginning with this disarmingly simple premise, Richard Sennett proceeds to explore the largely undeveloped, complex world of craft. This is the first of three planned volumes, the next dealing with the crafting of rituals that manage aggression and zeal, to be followed by an examination of the skills used in designing and developing sustainable environments. He intends technique to be the theme that unifies these volumes. Although there have been numerous attempts over the years to examine craft, often from the viewpoint of anthropology, sociology, personal experience, labor history, technology or phenomenology (see note A), craft is somewhat resistant to scholarly explication. Sennett, with one foot in praxis as a trained musician and the other in theory as a professor of sociology at New York University, seems well poised for the task.
This book is divided into three sections-Craftsmen, Craft and Craftsmanship. In the course of 296 engagingly and coherently written pages, the book references a myriad of philosophers and writers. (see note B) Perhaps it is the holistic nature of craft that demands a multidisciplinary approach? Or is it over-reliance on research assistants? The first section compares craftsmen and artisans, examines the workshop as the locus of learning and communication, then reviews how craftsmen have dealt with industrialization. The second looks at craft as a learned and transmitted skill, with emphasis on the hand, hand skills and tools. The third places craftmanship in the Pragmatic philosophic tradition (the authors orientation as well) and considers the three basic aspects of ability.."to localize, to question and to open up" (277).

This book was written for a general audience, and it is the best single volume that I know of that begins to explain and define what craft is. It investigates the types of knowledge and working methods that craftsmen engage in and presents craft as "a dialogue between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding." (9) It encourages non-craftsmen (eg. architect, lab technician, doctor) to adopt some craft methodologies to their fields. And for the student of craft, there are more than enough nuggets of insightful observations and lucid overviews to commend this book.

Two sections were of particular interest, and could each become complete books. The first, "The Enlightened Craftsman: Diderot's Encyclopedia," reviews some of the philosophy behind presenting manual and mental labor on equal footing then explores the difficulty craftsmen often have in talking about their work. "Among a thousand one will be lucky to find a dozen who are capable of explaining the tools or machinery they use" Diderot writes. (94) Sennett then examines some of the difficulties in linguistically explaining craft procedures, "...it taxes the powers of the most professional writer to describe precisely how to tie a slipknot." (95) then points to the limits of language as the cause of this, rather than blame the inarticulate craftsman, as is often the case. This is the reason for the large number of plates in the Encyclopedia. "The images, in other words, illuminate by clarifying and simplifying movement into a series of clear pictures of the sort the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called 'decisive moments.'" (95)

Chapter six, titled "Expressive Instructions" is very provocative. By comparing four styles of written recipes on how to bone a chicken (Richard Olney's precise how-to, Julia Child's comforting guide approach combined with close-ups, Elizabeth David's narrative approach and Madame Benshaw's instruction through metaphors) Sennett queries how language can be used to transmit hand skills and craft information. Interpreting and comparing how instructional manuals function is an useful and highly informative approach in determining how craft knowledge is preserved, transmitted and learned.

The book ends by discussing the subject of pride in one's work, which Sennett feels is the reward for the skill and commitment necessary to gain craft knowledge, and happens when the work transcends the maker. Whatever flaws this book possesses may well be inherent limitations of language, and thankfully this book avoids a common pitfall in writing on craft- the wheel spinning reiteration about "being in the moment" while crafting. The major problem with this book is it's lack of distinction between craft and technology, which may be crucial to an accurate conceptualization of craft. And should the subsequent volumes be realized, this might prove a fatal error, since they are currently organized around the theme of technique. However, this book is a major step forward towards developing a coherent philosophy of craft, and how Homo faber interacts with his hands, tools, objects and the world. I look forward to volumes two and three in this series.
Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008. Pb. $18.00 B. Aristotle, Arendt, Heidegger, Marx, Cellini, Diderot, Kant, Hegel, Ruskin, Plato, Darwin, Merleau-Ponty, Burke, Mumford, Dewey, Bacon, Weber, Wittgenstein, Greetz, Csikszentmihalyi, Simmel, Homer and many, many more.
NOTES:

A. Kenneth Oakley, Man the Tool-Maker; David Kingery, Learning from Things; Edward Luci-Smith, The Story of Craft; Soetsu Yanage, The Unknown Craftsman; Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays; David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship; Don Idhe, Technology and the Lifeworld, from Garden to Earth; Carla Needleman, The Work of Craft; Bruce Laurie, Artisans into Workers; Annie Wilcox, A Degree of Mastery; John Staudenmaier, Technology's Storytellers; Frank R. Wilson, The Hand; How Its Use Shapes Brain, Language, and Human Culture; Carl Bridenbaugh, The Colonial Craftsman; Reinhard Bendis, Work and Authority in Industry; Steven Mithen, The Prehistory of the Mind; Edward Mattil, Meaning in Crafts; W. J. Rorabaugh, The Craft Apprentice; James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker's Notebook; Mary Helms, Craft and the Kingly Ideal; Thorstein Veble n, The Instinct of Workmanship, ...

This entry was posted in craft, food, hand tools, philosophy of technology, technology, tools and tagged craft, philosophy of craft, philosophy of technology, philosophy of tools, richard sennett, the craftsman on by .

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Book Review. Alexander Langlands, Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts. New York: W.W. Norton, 2018. People working in craft often have philosophic inclinations. We work outside of mainstream society. We make objects that are not strictly necessary anymore.

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Philosophy of Craft - Creative, craft and artisan courses and workshops

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MacIntyre and the practices. Aristotle, craft and virtue. Kevin McCloud making things intrinsic value. Philosophy of craft as a good thing. Craft is healthy for us, therapeutic. Philosophers and craftsmanship go hand in hand.

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Indra's Net

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Needing to lighten up a bit!

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Paddy Steer in full flight at The Unorthodox Paradox Festival, The Bridges, Shropshire, UK 11/9/2015

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"We value every pair of our glasses in its unique design and exquisite craftsmanship rather than in dollars" Focuses on the purpose of glassesand the craftmenship of the process than on the brands and monetary value.

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RETROCRAFT is a result of unique design and sophisticated craftsman, it is high end and contemporary art piece that you can wear and carry on a daily basics. We are unlike luxury accessories as we are made for those who seek for stylish, functional and enduring eyewear.

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What is the role and value of crafts today - The British Museum

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What is the role and value of crafts today - The British Museum

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Value isn't solely monetary but politically and socially. Not only crafts people have a skill, surgeons have a needle and thread skills the same as a textile person but they have very different situations that they perform this skill. Both have a skill that is valuable

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Bringing things to life: Creative Entanglements in a world of Materials

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Bringing things to life: Creative Entanglements in a world of Materials

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Reading this article by Tim Ingold I had to read some parts a few times to understand it. However I enjoyed reading about the object and a thing. Object is something that doesn’t have movement whereas a thing has movement or a role, ie. a chair, glasses, cup, plate etc you would think is an object but they are all things as they have a function. Chair allows you to sit, glasses allows you to see better, a cup to hold liquid that you can drink, plate to hold food that you eat. Therefore is a value to these things not in a money sense but to allow us to inhabit with furnishings to make it liveable.

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About half way down he talks about an artist group called Superflex creating an installation of 80 chairs that have been cut into iconic Arne Jakobsen chairs. However the cuts have been roughly done so instead of a chair you are wanting to sit on you may dis-guard it as the edges may rip or ruin your clothes. Does this make it an object as you can't sit on it? Would this be devalued as it has lost it's purpose.

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Feature
Rikke Hansen on the public life of things
Terms such as 'participation' and 'dialogue' have come to dominate the discussion that surrounds the so-called socially engaged art practices of the late 1990s and the 2000s. According to such rhetorics, the artist is an engineer of situations, setting up contexts in which passive spectators become active participants and co-creators of the work in question. It is a debate that has, so far, had little to say about the props that make up the stage set for these acts. Instead, objects are seen, at best, as necessary middle-men that work as catalysts for conversation or, at worst, as the last obstacles obstructing otherwise unmediated interactions. I want to focus on the life of 'things' in the social world and, more specifically, what happens to things when they get transported into the context of socially engaged art practices.

The problem with an approach that reduces everything to a question of the power of subjects (artists, participants, and so on) is that very little sets one artwork apart from the next. Dissatisfied with the mere appropriation of the existing art terminology, Grant Kester has, in his book Conversation Pieces, attempted to develop a framework for what he calls 'dialogical aesthetics', an aesthetic model of communicative interaction, and an axis on which we may place individual artworks according to how successful they are at establishing dialogue. There are, of course, criteria of judgment; he likes the community-oriented work by Jay Koh more than the convivial food-sharing situations set up by Rirkrit Tiravanija because the former is seen to engage more directly with his immediate social surroundings. Miwon Kwon has expressed concern with Kester's theories that, in her view, seek to essentialise cultural and social identity; it is too easy, she claims, if not directly unavoidable, for the artist to tap into preconceived, hegemonic and apparently coherent ideas of what constitutes the social.

The point here, however, is not whether Kester or Kwon, or most others who have contributed to these debates, are right but that such arguments tend to cut out half of the equation by sidelining the material things that are either part of the stage set to begin with or produced from the encounter itself. The locus of democracy may well, as Claude Lefort argues, be an empty space, but the actors who come to claim a public life are of both human and non-human kinds; it is a space thick with things; we might call it an assemblage. If the theoretical framework that seeks to capture this set of very diverse practices ends up resorting to false coherency, then maybe this is because it relies on an outdated idea of what constitutes an actor or an actant in a social setting.

In her recent book On the Style Site, Ina Blom goes in search of the non-human 'missing masses' in recent art practice. It is a welcome contribution to the discussions surrounding contemporary art's alleged social turn. Style, for Blom, is a site within the social, or rather, it is an access point to the social and, as such, what unites human subjects and inanimate objects. The self, no longer securely anchored deep within the subject, propels itself forward through continuous, reflexive self-forming. Similarly, it is through design, through appearance, that the inanimate object comes to have a public life. Advertising increasingly makes use of terminologies that describe products as if they were living beings. We are told to expect high levels of performance from our cars, our computers, and so on, and we tend to swear at them when they fail to meet these expectations. Performance, as a stylised mode of appearing in the world, is no longer reserved for human subjects.

In some ways there is little which is novel here. Speaking at the anniversary of The People's Paper in 1856, Karl Marx stated that 'all our inventions and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life and in stultifying human life into material force'. However, Blom is less concerned with questions of alienation and deskilled workforces (issues that are very much at the heart of the dialogical practices described by Kester) and more interested in uncovering the affective life of things in the public realm. This leads her to include artworks in her argument which may not usually be seen to fall under the headings of 'socially engaged', 'relational' or 'conversational' art practices. It is an approach that, nonetheless, makes sense; if the problem with current debates is that they take their cue from a highly anthropocentric set of beliefs, then any argument that sets out to counter this cannot simply demarcate its field using the same rules of selection. There are a few teething problems here, though, but I will get to those later.

So far I have described things and objects as if the terms were interchangeable. There are, however, important differences: while a thing suggests a series of relations to the world, the term 'object' implies the performative amputation of such relationality. In his seminal article 'Thing Theory', Bill Brown describes how things get in the way; they either have too much presence or too little. The move from object to thing and back again is never an innocent affair. Things continually get reduced to objects in those powerhouses we call parliaments and courtrooms. To present an object as a matter of fact is to ignore the (at times political) interests, speculations and calculations that have gone into severing its connections to a life-world. By contrast, the etymological root of the word 'thing' implies a gathering or an assemblage in the form of a council, and in most Scandinavian languages the word for thing, ting, still has this double meaning.

Bruno Latour has made much of the power of things, not least in Making Things Public, a book and an exhibition that, in 2005, came out of his collaborations with the conceptual artist Peter Weibel. Latour's actor-network theory seeks not to discriminate between humans and nonhumans, animate and inanimate actors, but centres on the way things do things, on the effects that produce them and the affects they themselves produce, the way in which they become matters of concern rather than matters of fact. His ideas have mainly caught the attention of sociologists and political philosophers but in recent years they have been taken up by the arts. The concern with 'things' is, nonetheless, hardly new to art. In 1925 the Soviet constructivist Boris Arvatov famously described the thing as being 'connected like a co-worker with human practice'. The art-historical legacy of the readymade at first seems to run in the same vein. It is, however, a very different concern, one that has more to do with institutional critique than with 'thingpower'. At the same time, Claes Oldenburg's oversized, anthropomorphised objects are visual reminders of the affect of things. Their theatricality inverts a child's fantasy; in Oldenburg's world objects do not come to life after everyone else has gone to bed; instead, giant soft light switches finally relax, letting it all 'hang out', after a long day's performance.

A recent turn to 'things' in art, one that I think has a bearing on the way we perceive and critique the social, can be seen in works that engage directly with the form of sociality that is produced by things; artworks that, momentarily, make objects stand out against the backdrop of everyday life. In effect, while such works do not necessarily 'look like' the kind of works Kester and Kwon bring into their arguments, I would argue that they nonetheless address or embrace issues of sociality.

Copy Right is a work by the artist group Superflex from 2007. It consists of 80 mass-produced chairs, each of which the artists have cut into the shape of an iconic Arne Jakobsen chair. Upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the work is crudely done; chairs usually invite you to sit, but here the rough edges threaten to ruin your clothes. Scattered on the floor are all the cut-away pieces. While the assemblage resembles the spatial set-up of a seminar room, the work is clearly marked by a white square beneath the chairs, dividing what is art from what is not. You may sit, but just not right here. Where the legacy of the readymade borrowed from the aesthetics of the legal system through the artist's use of the signature - as a gesture that at once authenticated the work and critiqued the power of such authentication - Copy Right works through a sort of de-patenting, the patent being one of the points where law concerns itself directly with the structure of the commodity. It must be assumed that Jakobsen's original design is patented to protect it from any rip-offs; yet, patenting a design or an object, freezing it in its objecthood so to speak, inevitably opens up the possibility of producing something which is almost the same but not quite, since a patent in order to work has to be specific, that is, it must be distinguishable from that which it does not include. The chairs in Copy Right may not invite you to sit but they do invite you to 'make one yourself'. Something, or rather some thing, escapes the process of patenting.

The stylistics of the piece, however, at first make it look slightly atypical of the group's practice, which has often been described as operating within an actual lifeworld through a direct engagement with the social, a practice concerned more with actual doings than with representation and appearance. But as Blom points out, the activities of Superflex were never devoid of aesthetic environment and attention to style; and in other, ongoing projects, such as Supergas, Supercopy and Supersauna, the artists not only appropriate the aestheticised profiling tactics of large corporations, but intentionally exaggerate such strategies.

The ubiquity of chairs in public life is also the premise for Hans Schabus's recent installation at The Curve, Barbican Art Gallery, London. In Next Time I'm Here, I'll Be There, 2008, the artist gathered chairs from different spaces within the Barbican, from theatre seats to office chairs, and strapped them to the wall in a layout corresponding to the interior design of an aeroplane, a context in which under normal circumstances one would have very little choice but to sit down. In the booklet accompanying the exhibition Margit Emesz notes that 'chairs position us in a fixed frame, circumscribe distances and generate patterns of encounter, bringing people together, creating intimacy within groups, and influencing our actions, sensations and behaviour'. Chairs can work as disciplining instruments as well as props of hospitality. What Copy Right and Next Time I'm Here, I'll Be There have in common is that both works, even though in the case of the latter only temporarily, bring out the 'thingness' of objects by arresting the flow that characterises the distribution-consumption circuit. It could be argued that this kind of stoppage is very far from the processual, performative approaches described by Kester and Kwon; yet, I would claim that what we see in many of these socially engaged practices is a similar kind of slowing down of things, a temporary appearance of things on the stage of dialogical art practices, in which stylistics and comportments are shown to be central rather than derivative. And so, it could be said that the chairs in WochenKlausur's Intervention to Improve the Conduct of Public Debate, 2000, the image of which adorns Kester's Conversation Pieces, have for a short term been called upon to 'act' within this particular framework.

It is tempting, here, to dig out all the different artworks in which chairs appear, and there are quite a few, but this would be to miss the point. Blom herself plays a dangerous game when she appears to return thing-power to technological determinism. A considerable part of her book is devoted to what the author calls 'a memorial tour of lamps' in contemporary art, from Simon Starling's remakes of Poul Henningsen pendent lamps from discarded metal bowls and wok covers in his Work, Made-Ready, 2001, to Martin Creed's Turner Prize-winning lights going on and off in Work No. 127, 2001, to Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project, 2003, with its artificial sunset. But if style is what dictates substance and not the other way around, then power is not inherent in either subjects or objects; instead, power is and must always be seen as a relational matter. The attention to lamps comes across like a peculiar preoccupation with the taxonomy of a particular type of object and therefore does not sit well within the overall argument. There may well be many lamps in the work of Cerith Wyn Evans, another artist whom Blom mentions, but they seem to function more like mirrors or traps that take hold of viewers. Wyn Evans's work is characterised by contradictory systems of messaging, often transmitting invisible text via visible Morse code. Untitled (Takashimaya Rose), 2008, refers simultaneously to the logo of the Takashimaya department store in Japan and to numerous roses within art and literature. Here, it is the multilateral powers of things that hold the possibility for multiple coexisting socialities. As such, each layer of meaning is an invitation to enter into a particular form of sociality within the work, to claim an identity for oneself by becoming the addressee.

It would be easy to assert mastery over things by submitting them to a system of signification. But this accounts for little when it comes down to the actual engagement with the work. In much of the work that gets included in the woolly category of relational aesthetics things are often brought in as props to create what Gernot Böhme calls an 'aesthetic of atmospheres'. An atmosphere arises from a stage design without being locatable within any single object; it needs the presence of a subject but is also never determined by that subject alone and, as such, it combines production and reception aesthetics. Take, for example, Jim Lambie's sound-wavy, stripy floors that seem to grow from the object to include the viewer. Much of his work has musical references; they are 'acoustic atmospheres' which allow the sonic object to come forth by, paradoxically, silencing sound. What we encounter here is a space of moods. To be moved by a certain atmosphere, to attune one's mood to it, is to some extent to be beside oneself. There is recalcitrance in things; we lose ourselves in them.

A politics of sociality that centres on processuality is always full of things coexisting in complex, affective networks, making both the formation and destabilisation of subjectivity inseparable from our relations to things. The power of things is that they refuse to conform completely to our intentions and interpretations, to become the means to an end - even when we have designed them ourselves.

Rikke Hansen is a researcher based at Tate Britain.

First published in Art Monthly 318: Jul-Aug 2008.

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Rikke Hansen on the public life of things Terms such as 'participation' and 'dialogue' have come to dominate the discussion that surrounds the so-called socially engaged art practices of the late 1990s and the 2000s. According to such rhetorics, the artist is an engineer of situations, setting up contexts in which passive spectators become active participants and co-creators of the work in question.

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Thinking about the industrial revolution, and how the global economy changed, with introduction of mass production. For the rich, a horror, for the poor a chance to achieve some of the delights that had only been for the rich. Tea had been rich man pursuit,  and the trappings became affordable. This reminds of of the Myth created about tea drinking being a traditional English pastime, With Tea from China and India, sweetened with sugar from the Caribeen.

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Early Victorian tea set, Mass Production, Mass Persuasion (1780 - 1914 AD), A History of the World in 100 Objects - BBC Radio 4

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Neil MacGregor tells the story of the global trade in tea - with a Victorian tea set.

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Five years ago I found a paper disc on a bench, it had a eye sewn on it, and it said, 'Eye just want to tell you that I appreciate your soul'  I have carried in my wallet ever since, a simple gesture that has made me smile a thousand times.

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In 2015, I started writing affirmations. They pushed me to see I was beautiful, capable, worthy, enough, smart, and other permutations. And in homage to the work of the late Susan O'Malley, I envisioned a project where I stitched the affirmations so many of us need to hear... and then left them for people to find for themselves, to hear what they maybe needed to hear. I wanted to be an outpouring of kindness as I healed my own heart, because I knew that just as much as I needed to heal, others did too.

Because craftivism is as much about fighting the bad things of this world as it is about fighting the bad things we tell ourselves. We live in a world where the media constantly tries to tell us what is in, out, cool, passé. Every day we have to fight to remember that we are enough just as we are, we are beautiful just as we are. Some days, though, we forget. And those days can drag on into weeks and months. Leaving our souls sucked and dry, leaving us husks of what we were as children, back when we knew we were amazing.

It's time to remind both ourselves and others of just how wonderful we all inherently are.

It's time to let our acts of stitching go by leaving them in places for someone to find, someone who needs to hear those words just as you do, if not more. As craftivism is about healing ourselves as we make, and then healing the world with our products, let's get to it.
For details on how you can get involved, click over here.
Got questions?
Shoot me an email!

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In 2015, I started writing affirmations. They pushed me to see I was beautiful, capable, worthy, enough, smart, and other permutations. And in homage to the work of the late Susan O'Malley, I envisioned a project where I stitched the affirmations so many of us need to hear...

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"All the arts we practice are apprenticeship. The big art is our life. "

What I got from this reading, is that she's using the potter on their potter's wheel as a metaphor for life, of centuring and drawing in the opposites in our lives - because when you use a potter's wheel, you're moving the clay both up and down. To draw in and accept the positive aspects of life just as well and as with as much enthusiasm as the negative aspects.

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Zen koan referred to by MC Richards. In Buddhist philosophy craft in this sense would be 'Right Livelihood'.

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BACKGROUND:
Original Face/Original Self - The term appears most famously in Case 23 of the koan collection Mumonkan, or "Gateless Gate," in which the monk Myō, jealous that the Sixth Patriarch Enō has received the robe and bowl of their master, chases him through the mountains and tries to take them by force. Enō places the robe and bowl on the ground and invites Myō to take them. However, Myō finds that they are too heavy to lift. Overwhelmed with shame, he asks to be given the teaching instead, and Enō responds, "Without thinking good or evil, in this very moment, what is your Original Face?"

COMMENTARY:
What face did you have before your parents were born? The question isn't hard. It's like asking a sunflower what it was before it was a sunflower, or the wind before it was wind? A true Zen master never asks to see something that isn't already there.

That's one way of saying it. Another is this.

Millions of years ago, a snub-nosed fish roamed the watery shelf below the continents wearing a face that had been passed down to it by countless species through deep time. That fish passed its face to amphibians, and amphibians passed it to reptiles. Reptiles passed it to mammals, and mammals passed it down in exact accordance with the dharma-from the great apes to Australopithecus, and from Australopithecus to Homo habilis, and from Homo habilis to Homo erectus, and from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, and from Homo sapiens to Homo sapiens sapiens, who became so sapient (or "wise") that they discarded it-or tried to. Because really, how can you throw away your face?
VERSE: Green Koans Case 1: Shakyamuni Touches the Earth
Green Koans Case 2: Shantideva's Sword
Green Koans Case 3: The Great Compassionate One's True Eye
Green Koans Case 4: One-Page Dharma
Green Koans Case 5: The Person of the Way
Green Koans Case 6: The Green Yogi
Green Koans Case 7: Rain of the Law
Green Koans Case 8: Bashō's Last Words
Green Koans Case 9: General Stone Tiger
Green Koans Case 10: Joshu's Oak Tree
Green Koans Case 11: A Brahman Takes a Bath
Green Koans Case 12: The Original Face
Green Koans Case 13: Seki's Amida
Three little kittens,
They lost their mittens, and they
Began to cry. What!
Lost your mittens, you naughty kittens!
Then you shall have no pie!

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A Zen master asks, "Show me your Original Face, the face you had before your parents were born." BACKGROUND: Original Face/Original Self - The term appears most famously in Case 23 of the koan collection Mumonkan, or "Gateless Gate," in which the monk Myō, jealous that the Sixth Patriarch Enō has received the robe and ...

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Value of tactile interaction and sensory exploration of handling the clay in this teaching session.

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She epitomises the importance of creativity, community and living life in the present and to the full. Inspiring.

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M.C.Richards: The Fire Within  www.mcrichardsfilms.com

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The college was formed after the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazis. It was based on democratic principles and based on the essential contribution of arts to education. So demonstrates the historical contribution of arts and crafts politically and in community building.

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Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

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The story of Black Mountain College begins in 1933 and comprises a fascinating chapter in the history of education and the arts. Conceived by John A. Rice, a brilliant and mercurial scholar who left Rollins College in a storm of controversy, Black Mountain College was born out of a desire to create a new type of college based on John Dewey's principles of progressive education. The events that precipitated the college's founding occurred simultaneously with the rise of Adolf Hitler, the closing of the Bauhaus school in Germany, and escalating persecution of artists and intellectuals in Europe. Some of these refugees found their way to Black Mountain, either as students or faculty. Meanwhile, the United States was mired in the Great Depression.

The founders of the college believed that the study and practice of art were indispensable aspects of a student's general liberal arts education, and they hired Josef Albers to be the first art teacher. Speaking not a word of English, he and his wife Anni left the turmoil in Hitler's Germany and crossed the Atlantic Ocean by boat to teach art at this small, rebellious college in the mountains of North Carolina.

Black Mountain College was fundamentally different from other colleges and universities of the time. It was owned and operated by the faculty and was committed to democratic governance and to the idea that the arts are central to the experience of learning. All members of the college community participated in its operation, including farm work, construction projects, and kitchen duty. Twenty minutes east of Asheville, the secluded environment fostered a strong sense of individuality and creative intensity.

Legendary even in its own time, Black Mountain College attracted and created maverick spirits, some of whom went on to become well-known and extremely influential individuals in the latter half of the 20th century. A partial list includes Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Josef and Anni Albers, Jacob Lawrence, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Cy Twombly, Kenneth Noland, Susan Weil, Vera B. Williams, Ben Shahn, Ruth Asawa, Franz Kline, Arthur Penn, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Dorothea Rockburne and many others who have made an impact on the world in a significant way. Even now, decades after its closing in 1957, the powerful influence of Black Mountain College continues to reverberate. For more information view our resources.

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Black Mountain College: A Brief Introduction - Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center

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The story of Black Mountain College begins in 1933 and comprises a fascinating chapter in the history of education and the arts...

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What is the role and value of craft in society? 

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What is the role and value of craft in society? 

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Keep this question in mind when you approach the readings so that you have something to focus on. How does each text help you to answer this question?

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Ladies. I am seriously impressed with your work here. 

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Ladies. I am seriously impressed with your work here. 

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You have made a brilliant start to the brief. When you are doing your research, finding objects, articles, books, crafts people etc think about how they relate to any of the ideas in the texts I have set for you. You should aim to create a dialogue between all these voices.
Can you set up a working bibliography and add all the links to texts / articles. You might want to categorise them according to subject area.

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Oksana Todorova. Ceramic. Celebrating the everyday? Making us look at things in a new way. Challenging craft tradition?

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Material value and how it has changed not necessary precious materials that are a high value

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Min-Ji Cho explores the meaning of material value and preciousness

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Min-Ji Cho from Seoul, Korea is an Upcyclista favorite Upcycler. This is from her mind-boggling 'The Gloves Dream' and 'Gloves Dream 2' collections where she pairs fresh water pearls and silver with rubber gloves.

Min-Ji Cho aims to explore the meaning of real material value in the aesthetics of today. She investigates contemporary notions of preciousness, by exploring and combining materials that represent the extremes of precious and non-precious.

More Min-Ji Cho

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Min-Ji Cho combines materials that represents the extremes of precious and non-precious - Upcyclista

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0098Min-Ji Cho from Seoul, Korea is an Upcyclista favorite Upcycler. This is from her mind-boggling 'The Gloves Dream' and 'Gloves Dream 2' collections where she pairs fresh water pearls and silver with rubber gloves. Min-Ji Cho aims to explore the ... Read more

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Synopsis of this book
Material doesn't mean precious metals or stones to be of a high value

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We're sorry; the page you requested could not be found. AbeBooks offers millions of new, used, rare and out-of-print books, as well as cheap textbooks from thousands of booksellers around the world. Shopping on AbeBooks is easy, safe and 100% secure - search for your book, purchase a copy via our secure checkout and the bookseller ships it straight to you.

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Karl Fritsch wants to create "disgusting jewellery" to draw more attention than other jewellery. But would it be more valued?

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An article that Karl Fritsch wrote in 2006:

"I noticed a few years ago that in my jewellery work I´m constantly reworking my own history. I did a traditional jewellery apprenticeship in Pforzheim and learnt all the classical jewellery making techniques. The real learning however, comes afterwards. Now I constantly have to work on how I can make the knowledge I learnt in my apprenticeship my own - how I can create my own statement with this. This involves alot of things - my physical abilities for example (like how I use my fingers to model the rings in wax). The basic physical conditions directly influence how a piece will look (the thickness of my finger or the power of my arm).

I keep finding out that my formal aesthetic resources come from way back, not only in objects but also in actions. For example how my family cooks - the way they chuck the dishes around or chop the carrots. or how they handle daily life things like organizing their compost, this has all been an influence on my jewellery.

During my studies at the Munich Acadamy I wanted to make disgusting looking jewellery. I wanted it to draw more attention than a pretty piece of jewellery would - this is afterall one of jewellery´s issues - attention and attraction. Now when I look at these pieces after 10 years I find them extremely subtle and beautiful. They are very well made and do not work within the ordinary formula of shape and colour you would expect to find in jewellery. I now am surprised that I had such a big fight with Hermann Jünger about this. I think it must have been more the idea attached to the piece that put him off, rather than the piece itself.

How does the ring wish to look? The gold and silver must be sick to be shaped in these variations of barocky and geometric shapes.

The ring can be a weapon.

My aunties fridge is also dangerous and I describe this in my jewellery. My rings are made from the same neccessity that prevents my aunties from buying a new fridge. They think it is still good enough even though it is completely busted - there´s hardly any shelves left inside, the freezer door is gone and any food stored too close to the freezer starts to freeze. It is out of control and only with alot of practice can you spread your butter just right. It is still a fridge but it´s also miles away from a fridge, and has turned into a thing with a whole new character.

It´s not really a weapon now, but close to it.

I like my jewellery to be like this - having an individual life with the people that wear it. Wearing and using things changes them."

Karl Fritsch

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An article that Karl Fritsch wrote in 2006: "I noticed a few years ago that in my jewellery work I´m constantly reworking my own history. I did a traditional jewellery apprenticeship in Pforzheim and learnt all the classical jewellery making techniques. The real learning however, comes afterwards.

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"Why do real people value their most sentimental objects so highly?" - Bruce Metcalf

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Inhaling coffee and planning this week's blog, my mind kept returning to the stomach-turning moment I arrived home from the school run and noticed our front door was ajar. "Did you leave the door open?" I asked the middle daughter, but she had already jumped out of the car and, plucky little soul that she is, was into the house before my brain had processed what she already knew we would find: our home, our safe but isolated farmhouse, had been burgled.

Thankfully, the only damage was to the back door, which still bore the imprint of a large boot. There was a gap where the television used to be and various other missing items, including my daughters' money boxes, a sheet (to cart off the loot) and, inexplicably, an old secondhand vacuum cleaner. Much, much harder to deal with was the loss of my jewellery box, not because what I had was particularly valuable (it wasn't), but because most of what was in there carried so much emotional weight - my mother's pearls, my grandmother's amethyst brooch, a heart-shaped rose quartz I'd bought in Baba B in Leicester when my mother died, and bits of twisted wire, beads, sequins and paper that my little girls had shaped into rings, bracelets and necklaces, with love, for me. It was heart-wrenching.

Jewellery is weighted with meaning. It doesn't matter what it is, there is likely to be some sentimental or emotional reason you wear a particular thing - in my case, I wear my mother's wedding ring on my right hand, and a battered, misshapen silver thumb ring, bought for me by my youngest daughter with her 50p pocket money. I've also lost other pieces over the years - a gold chain and dragonfly pendant that belonged to my great-grandmother (a mugging), and my grandmother's gold watch, which fell off my wrist, disappeared into the vacuum cleaner and emerged in bits. I've sold other pieces - my wedding and engagement rings and a gold brooch, when we needed a new roof over our heads post-divorce - but I remember them all. And that's the other thing. While there is some jewellery somewhere, there is a sense, however small, that things will probably, somehow, be all right. I wince when I see people parting with jewellery to raise cash because I know how that feels. It hurts.

Fortunately, the burglary coincided with a time when I was properly insured and I managed to replace in some way what I'd lost. I planned to do it slowly, with things that carried similar meaning. I found a new piece of heart-shaped rose quartz at Gabriella Sellors in Greenwich market - it hangs on a heavy silver watchchain made up of spiral curled links. I found some replacement pearls in the same place, but this time in beautiful drops. I bought a linked moonstone necklace on a Greek island (my first holiday for 12 years), a lapis brooch in Hay-on-Wye at the Hay festival, a silver star ring for a fiver at an Edinburgh street stall during the Edinburgh festival. I own no jewellery given to me by a man (make of that what you will), but only things that remind me of a significant event or achievement, such as the Monica Vinader moonstone ring I bought when I got my job at the Guardian in 2006 - it's been repaired twice (because I'm seldom without it) but it is always admired for the depth of blue in the stone. That moonstone ring has even been kissed by Hollywood royalty (and there's a filthy joke in there somewhere, if you're that way inclined).

And speaking of Hollywood, one of the things I enjoy about the red carpet is admiring the loaned bling - Cartier, Asprey, Bulgari, Moussaieff - but only because I love, and always have, a beautiful thing with a bit of sparkle. I would be terrified to wear such stuff myself, but it doesn't stop me crossing the street to lick the steam off the window at Tiffany, or lust gently after Stephen Webster designs in Hamilton & Inches. A diversion through Burlington Arcade never fails to brighten a dreary day of meetings - pure fantasy, of course.

One thing I'd like, but have never owned, is a diamond. I've promised that to myself as a special reward for something really major and the thought that one day, possibly maybe, I might be able to afford a small one is a thought that helps me to believe that, at 58, I'm not done yet, not by a long chalk. Although, to quote the incomparable Eartha Kitt: "Jewellery, to me, is a pain in the derrière because you have to be watching it all the time." And you do, but that's also part of the pleasure.
Follow The Invisible Woman on Twitter @TheVintageYear Topics

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Jewellery's value lies in its emotional or sentimental worth

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Inhaling coffee and planning this week's blog, my mind kept returning to the stomach-turning moment I arrived home from the school run and noticed our front door was ajar. "Did you leave the door open?"

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This article looks at the growing pressure on schools and colleges funding for creative artforms

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Why is art, craft and design education so vital to our culture, our society, our economy and ourselves? The reasons are myriad, meaningful, complex and fiscal says Lesley Butterworth of the National Society for Education in Art and Design.
Art and design as a subject on the curriculum, (with craft tacit rather than explicit within its content) is generally taken for granted as an entitlement for children and young people in formal education. Images of small children cheerfully elbow deep in primary colours and young people meaningfully engaged in front of a well-known painting or actively behind a camera lens spring to mind.

These assumed images are now under considerable threat, and in many schools and settings the paints, kilns and cameras are now actively abandoned. What is happening to our subject, our teachers, our children and young people and ultimately to our creativity, culture, well-being and economic success is the issue this article will explain.

Opening doors of opportunity
Within the context of formal education the subject supports personal, social, moral, spiritual, cultural and creative development, and enables participants to engage with and explore visual, tactile and other sensory experiences and how to recognise and communicate ideas and meanings. These opportunities enable them to work with traditional and new media, so that they develop confidence, competence, imagination and creativity.

Through these opportunities they learn to appreciate and value images and artefacts across times and cultures, and to understand the contexts in which they were made. Experiences in art, craft and design enable them to learn how to reflect critically on their own and others' work. They learn to think and act as artists, makers and designers, working creatively and intelligently. They develop an appreciation of and engagement in art, craft and design as critical consumers and audiences and an understanding of its role in the creative and cultural industries that shape and enrich their lives.

In life 'knowing how' is just as important as 'knowing that'. Art, craft and design introduces participants to a range of intellectual and practical skills. It enables learners to use and understand the properties of a wide range of tools, machines, materials and systems. It provides children, young people and lifelong learners with regular opportunities to think imaginatively and creatively and develop confidence in other subjects and life skills.

It has a crucial role at the centre of science, technology, engineering and mathematics; moving STEM into STEAM fosters creativity, innovation, and economic growth. Art, craft and design supports and services other subjects, industries and sectors. It provides an introduction to potential careers in the visual arts and creative, heritage, cultural and digital and design media industries, sectors that are contributing significantly to the UK's economy and reputation on a competitive international world-class platform. Many young people come to the UK to study art craft and design.

It is concerned with making critical judgements based on a sound knowledge of a variety of contexts; judgements about cultural values, cultural history, aesthetics, quality, craftsmanship and fitness for purpose, and provides an opportunity for and engagement in leisure pursuits that can yield lifelong benefits in health, well‑being and life satisfaction. It enriches children and young people's experience of school and college life.

Most children and young people find it enjoyable and motivating, helping to develop positive attitudes to school and life beyond formal education.

Moving beyond school
It's the career pathways emerging from art craft and design through further and higher education and links to the outside world of the creative, cultural, and digital and heritage industries that are seriously misunderstood, and the barriers to those aspirations are increasingly challenging for young people to surmount.

The industries that our subject so vigorously points towards and provides a skilled workforce for need some consideration.
Looking at the latest figures from the DCMS, published on 26 January 2016, we find positive reporting, the creative industries now contributing £84.1 billion a year to the UK economy. The UK's creative industries grew by 8.9 per cent in 2014, almost double the UK economy as a whole, and generate nearly £9.6million per hour. 2016 is set to be another blockbuster year for UK's music, film, video games, TV and publishing sectors, and British films, video games, crafts and publishing are taking a lead role in driving the UK's economic recovery, according to the latest government statistics.

In 2013 the Heritage Lottery Fund announced new research showing that heritage based tourism is now worth £26.4 billion to the UK economy and rising. Film makers and games designers, textile conservators and set designers, animators and curators, illustrators and jewellers, marketeers and graphic designers, the list of potential and valuable careers goes on and perhaps needs to make more explicit, beyond the product comes the creative and flexible 'out of the box' thinking that makes an arts graduate so employable.

So with our subject signposting and preparing young people for success, what stands in its way? Several barriers are firmly in position, with the overarching fault line of the 'unintended consequences' of government policy and a toxic mix of time, money and prejudice.

The English Baccalaureate (EBacc) is a school performance measure that allows people to see how many pupils get a grade C or above in the core academic subjects at Key Stage 4 in any government funded school. In essence it includes English, maths, a language, the sciences, history or geography.

The word 'Baccalaureate' was quickly misleading, many making the incorrect assumption that it was like the International Baccalaureate (IB). The IB is a highly respected programme, (not a performance measure), and provides a broad and balanced curriculum that includes the arts. The EBacc does not include art and design, nor music, dance, drama or design technology and thus immediately created a two tier curriculum because of lack of parity of esteem across subjects.

The Coalition government introduced the EBacc measure in 2010. In June 2015, the Conservative government announced its intention that all pupils who start Year 7 in September 2015 will take the EBacc subjects when they reach their GCSEs in 2020. The EBacc is taking its insidious place at Key Stage 4, bookended by two further challenges, the National Curriculum at Key Stage 2 and the so called 'facilitating subjects' at Key Stage 5.

Reporting on the statistics
The effects of this disastrous triumvirate on the education pipeline is made apparent in the NSEAD Survey Report 2015‑16, that asked how, over the last five years, has government policy impacted on art craft and design education, looking at curriculum provision in art and design, the value given to art and design in schools and colleges, professional development opportunities and the well‑being and workload of art and design teachers.

Headlines from the Survey Report tell us that learning opportunities in art craft and design have reduced significantly with at least 44 per cent of teacher responses over all key stages indicating the time allocated for the subject had decreased with a mere seven per cent identifying an increase. National curriculum tests at Key Stage 2 have negatively impacted on the time allocated for art and design in primary schools with 89 per cent of primary teachers in state schools reporting that during the two terms before Key Stage 2 tests the time allocated for art and design decreased. This was unsurprisingly reiterated by 53 per cent of secondary art and design teachers reporting a fall in standards achieved when pupils joined their school in Year 7.

The effects of Key Stage 2 testing have been noticeably worse in state schools, only 54 per cent of independent schools reporting a decrease.

At Key Stage 3, 44 per cent of art and design teachers across all school sectors reported a decrease in time for the subject over the last five years (four per cent reporting an increase). Of that 44 per cent, 93 per cent cited the EBacc as reducing opportunities for pupils to select the subject. Provision for art and design is increasingly influenced by school type, and most worryingly academy sponsors have been the biggest reduction in time for the subject. Because of the EBacc higher ability young people are being turned away from the subject.

The Survey Report also states that post 16 course closures have reduced the range of art and design courses offered for young people, 34 per cent of teachers and lecturers saying that in the last five years these courses have closed in their institutions. And it is at post 16 that the hapless future creative practitioner is faced with the influence of the 'facilitating subjects' as defined by the Russell Group Universities as those subjects most commonly required or preferred by universities to get on to a range of degree courses.

Art craft and design does not feature on this list.

The NSEAD Survey Report and its findings are essential reading for all who understand the value of art craft and design education. It acts as a health warning as we look at reduced choice and provision for a subject that has a direct business case inherent in its offer to young people and to the national economy. We deprive our children and young people of this subject at our economic peril.

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The importance and value of art, craft and design

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Why is art, craft and design education so vital to our culture, our society, our economy and ourselves? The reasons are myriad, meaningful, complex and fiscal says Lesley Butterworth of the National Society for Education in Art and Design.

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Teaching the Value of Art to society and culture -Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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Teaching the Value of Art to society and culture -Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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an interesting articloe from the Guardian which talks about the value of public art, to inspire, drive and invest in our people.

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Last week I witnessed the unveiling of an extraordinary sculpture at Heathrow's new Terminal 2. Slipstream is inspired by the aerodynamic path of a stunt plane and it's an apparently fluid, 78-metre, 77-ton "whale" of riveted aluminium that's emerged from the imagination of its creator, Richard Wilson. It will certainly impress tourists and add lustre to Britain's creative image abroad.

But its economic benefit is not really why many of us loved it. We found it exciting, elevating and romantically redolent of our flying and manufacturing past. So Slipstream reminded us that the primary reason we make both public and private investments in the arts is for the inherent value of culture: life-enhancing, entertaining, defining of our personal and national identities.

When I bang the drum for this investment, with national and local government, with philanthropists, charities and companies, a consensus is emerging as to why this is so important. It starts with the inherent value of culture, continues through all the social and educational benefits and only ends with the economic. Otherwise we fall into Oscar Wilde's celebrated definition of a cynic: knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.

We instinctively know this. Imagine society without the civilising influence of the arts and you'll have to strip out what is most pleasurable in life - and much that is educationally vital. Take the collective memory from our museums; remove the bands from our schools and choirs from our communities; lose the empathetic plays and dance from our theatres or the books from our libraries; expunge our festivals, literature and painting, and you're left with a society bereft of a national conversation ... about its identity or anything else.

Then there's society - and I think we're all now agreed that there is such a thing. Although the arts do not pretend to be a frontline health service, we're coming to understand how they can function very effectively in a complementary role. Look at the work of orchestras such as the Royal Philharmonic, which runs workshops for people with dementia, or the collaboration between the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and NHS Mersey Trust, which puts musicians in residence to work with adults with a complex range of mental health issues. There's the Sick! Festival (confronting, as they put it, the physical, mental and social challenges of life and death). There's the popularity of the Books on Prescription scheme in GPs' surgeries or the work done by Colchester and Ipswich museums for homeless people.

All these projects are supported by Arts Council England. That is, by you and me, via our taxes or our purchase of lottery tickets. In 18 years, the national lottery has transformed arts provision across so many of our communities and has been particularly valuable while government funding has been under pressure. Great art and culture really can be, as it should be, for everyone.

There's a strong relationship between arts and cultural engagement and educational attainment. We see an improvement in literacy when young people take part in drama and library activities, and better performance in maths and languages when they take part in structured music activities.

That's partly why the Department for Education is including arts subjects with the core subjects in maths, science, languages and the humanities in the first round of reformed GCSEs in two years' time. And our universities are supporting art galleries (Northumbria/East Anglia/Teesside), theatres (Derby), craft centres (Sunderland), museums (Oxford/Cambridge) because they recognise the value of culture to their students and to their locality.

The inherent value of culture, its contribution to society, its symbiotic relationship with education and, yes, its economic power (but in that order) ... this is what we call the holistic case for public support of arts and culture. The Arts Council's annual survey of public attitudes to this investment shows support rising significantly this year. Let's keep the debate going. I predict that in the runup to the next election, where economic issues will dominate, the arts will have more to say for themselves than ever before, particularly in relation to two intriguing elements: the creative industries and the thinking about our cities of the future.

The creative industries have been growing three times as fast as the national economy. Last summer, in an infamous list of priority sectors for growth, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills left them out but included offshore wind turbines, for God's sake. They won't do that again. As the creative sector grows in importance, the role of arts and culture as an incubator of talent will be better understood. Think Steve McQueen going from Turner prizewinner, or Danny Boyle from apprentice directing at the Royal Court theatre, to delivering Oscar-winning movies.

It's increasingly accepted that cities are going to deliver our economy's growth in the future. Greg Clark from the Conservatives and Andrew Adonis from Labour are both doing some good thinking about how to turbocharge urban centres. They'll be aware of how the Turner Contemporary has led the regeneration of Margate, how the Nottingham Contemporary is at the heart of a creative quarter, how festivals drive tourism in Liverpool. The new city quarters where young people want to live, work and create companies need a soul as well as a sewer.

In his budget this year, George Osborne introduced a tax credit for the performing arts. This essentially recognised that the arts are part of the creative industries - film, television drama and computer games already receive the same concession. And why are these sectors helped in this way? Because they don't only matter to the economy, they critically represent an investment in our quality of life. I call that a virtuous circle - something which is, by definition, holistic.
Sir Peter Bazalgette is chair of Arts Council England Topics

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We have to recognise the huge value of arts and culture to society

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Last week I witnessed the unveiling of an extraordinary sculpture at Heathrow's new Terminal 2. Slipstream is inspired by the aerodynamic path of a stunt plane and it's an apparently fluid, 78-metre, 77-ton "whale" of riveted aluminium that's emerged from the imagination of its creator, Richard Wilson.

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Here is a rather splendid info graphic by the arts council talking about the emotional value connected to art..

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Fine Cell Work is a charity which makes beautiful handmade products in British prisons. Explore our prison work and browse our unique hand-stitched cushions, homewares and gifts.

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If we want our world to be more beautiful, kind and fair, can we make our activism be more beautiful, kind and fair?

If there's time for the loud, there's also time for the quiet. If there's time for the fast, there's also a need for the slow. In everyone's heart is a desire to change things for the better - it is essential that there is an activists toolkit that is as diverse as humanity.

Our gentle craftivism is for everyone wherever you are in the world: from skilled crafters to burnt out activists, introverts, highly sensitive people, people struggling with anxiety and those people who want to challenge injustice in the world but don't know what to do, where to start or how to prioritise their energies and time.

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We have been invited to exhibit a completed Malala 'Stitchable Changemaker' letterpress printed craftivism card alongside the ethical kit we ...

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I sometimes think Craftivism is like the word Punk. Under that umbrella term you have The Clash, Sex Pistols, Ramones, ...

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We believe craft can be a tool for gentle activism. Join us, together we can change our world, one stitch at a time...

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David Howes, Concordia University

This essay is concerned with theorizing the relationship between craft and the senses. Not an easy task, it turns out, for the topics of craft and craftsmanship are not highly regarded in academic circles. Indeed, they are often targets of disparagement. For example, "Basketweaving 101" is a derogatory label typically applied to introductory level college or university courses like "Anthropology 101" (which I happen to teach). Where does basketweaving's reputation as a Mickey Mouse sort of subject, best suited to the academically challenged, come from? ¹ Part of the answer has to do with the conventional western hierarchy of the senses, which opposes sight to touch as mind is opposed to body, and which heaps honours on vision as "the noblest sense" while relegating touch to the lowest, most "primitive" rung of the sensorium. This privileging of vision in turn informs the ranking of painting - given its association with the eye - as the "finest" of the arts and basketry along with all the other so-called handicrafts, as belonging to the opposite, "manual" (read: crude) end of the value spectrum. A moment's reflection reveals the spuriousness of this classification: a painter needs more than a "good eye" to paint, just as a weaver needs more than dexterous fingers to produce a fine basket. The former needs a good hand too, while the latter will want to develop a discerning eye, but this fact concerning what could be called the intersensoriality of both art and craft is overridden by the opposition between sight and touch in the hierarchy of sensing, which in turn underpins the distinction between art, on the one hand, and craft on the other in the art/craft value system.

It might seem that the hierarchy of the senses is given in nature. Sight is the most important or "highest" of the senses because it is the most informative. But the idea of there being a natural order of the senses is deeply problematic from a cross-cultural and/or historical perspective. Research in the history and anthropology of the senses has shown that the hierarchy of the senses varies from one society to another, and is normally linked to a hierarchy of social values (Classen 1997). For example, the top-ranked sense of sight in the West has traditionally been associated with the highly-valued faculty of reason. This association was particularly strong in the Age of Reason (also known as the Enlightenment, significantly) and remains so to this day. The lowly sense of touch, by contrast, has been associated with mere physical sensation, the "mindless" pleasures and pains of the body. But there is nothing necessary about this ordering. For example, in many peasant societies, which tend to be oral societies, it is hearing and not sight that is the most highly valued faculty. Sight is associated with the "evil eye," and therefore held to be dangerous, not civilized, and to be censored, not exalted.

The cultural construction of the senses affects how people perceive the physical world by shaping which senses people trust (e.g. eyewitness versus hearsay evidence) and which senses they exercise most (e.g. using eyes to read, not fingers, although it is possible to use touch to read - as in the case of Braille). It also affects how people relate to each other. Research in the history and anthropology of the senses has shown that high-status social groups will be associated with the higher senses and lower status social groups with the lower senses. One instance of this can be found in a classificatory scheme proposed by Lorenz Oken, a prominent nineteenth century natural historian. Oken postulated a sensory hierarchy of human races, with the European "eye-man" at the top, followed by the Asian "ear-man," the Native American "nose-man," the Australian "tongue-man," and the African "skin-man" (Howes 2009: 10-11). The hierarchy of senses, and of races, presented in Oken's classificatory scheme is not based on any intrinsic characteristics of the peoples concerned but on their social ranking within the Western imagination.

Sensory ideologies of gender have paralleled those of race in the West (Classen 1997). As a general rule, men have tended to be associated with the "higher," "spiritual" senses of hearing and especially sight while women were associated with the "lower," "animal" senses of smell, taste and touch. This gender division of the senses was linked to a gender division of social spheres. As Constance Classen's work has shown, the supposed masculine mastery of sight and hearing was deemed to fit men for such activities as travelling, studying and ruling (overseeing), while the female association with the proximity senses made women the guardians of the home, mistresses of the kitchen, the bedroom, and the nursery

Such gendered divisions of sensory life had enormous social force. To transgress them was seen as a crime against nature (Classen 2004). For example, female writers and artists traditionally found themselves having to continually justify why they practised the visual, masculine activities of writing and painting instead of engaging in more feminine sensory pursuits such as cooking and sewing (Classen 1998, ch. 4). They were seen as betraying their sex when they used their senses in a masculine fashion. The social force of the distinction between the sensory-social spheres of men and women is reflected in the fact that there are many Old Masters in the history of Western art (Titian, Rembrandt, etc.) but next to no Old Mistresses.

Interestingly, the sexes are more equally represented in the domain of craft. The same could be said of the senses. The latter point is nicely brought out by studio jeweler and craft historian Bruce Metcalf in "Replacing the Myth of Modernism." In this essay, Metcalf launches a spirited critique of the Modernist theory of art and goes on to propose that craft must be valued on its own terms rather than (continue to) be approached through the (distorting) lens of Modernism. The two most basic tenets of Modernism are the autonomy of the art object ("art for art's sake"), and the doctrine of formalism. Craft objects are discounted from being regarded as art because of their usefulness (which undermines the "disinterested" attitude proper to aesthetic judgment), and because they are contentful due to their materiality rather than reducible to the purely formal, abstract elements of colour, line, plane, and so on. They are also, as Metcalfe notes, "substantially made by hand" rather than springing from the mind's eye, like painting. What all this means is that craft objects do not fit the visual mold of Modernism, and that is why they tend not to be considered art. But this apparent failure, Metcalfe argues, is actually the key to their production and also integral to how we enjoy them.

Some of the most pervasive and least examined aspects of craft are its sensuous qualities, especially its appeal to touch. Reductive Modernism [as exemplified above all in the work of New York art critic Clement Greenberg - see Jones 2006] restricted aesthetic experience in the visual arts to sight alone, as if no other pleasures were possible. But craft objects, because they are used in so many ways, engage all the senses but taste. When a pot is held it conveys weight, balance and density. Lifting a heavy, thick-walled pot is very different from holding a thin, light one. The surface texture of clay and glaze is experienced at the same time, and offers a distinct pleasure. Weavers and garment makers are conscious of the feel of different fabrics, from silk to denim. The material controls how the garment feels, how appealing it is, how well it will insulate, and how it will drape and weigh on the body. None of these experiences rely on sight, but all of them have an aesthetic component (Metcalf 2007: 28)

Metcalf goes on to adumbrate other uses of the non-visual senses in the production and reception of crafts, such as the way a potter will ring the rim of a pot (as one would a bell) with her finger in order to test the fit of the glaze and clay body, or the practice of clinking glasses when making a toast. Metcalf concludes by noting that

So far ... most people seem content to remark that such phenomena occur, and do not consider how sight, touch and hearing can be organized in a unified composition. Craftspeople intuitively make judgments of how sound or touch intersects with the visual but never think much about it (28, emphasis added)

Following Metcalf, we should think more about how craft emerges from the intersection of the senses - that is, we should question the reductive visualism of Modernism and replace it with an expansive sensualism, as it were, particularly if we are to properly theorize craft. I would add that we should think more about the social conditions of craft production, since sensory conditions and social conditions are intimately intertwined.

One scholar who has thought deeply about the intersection of social and sensory conditions in craft production is Constance Classen. In "Feminine Tactics: Crafting an Alternative Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," Classen brings out how the decorative pursuits which were fashionable for upper class women of the period (e.g. needlework, shellwork, papercraft) involved making a virtue of necessity - or, rather, social pressure. All of these forms of "ladies' work," as they were known, are "intrinsically tactile, intimate and homely" and hence fitted to women's social and sensory sphere, as discussed above. Classen gives the example of the eighteenth century gentlewoman Mary Delany, who was known for her botanical illustrations (though nowhere near as well known then as she is today thanks to Hayden 1980 and a slew of other publications, for Delany did not seek the limelight ). As Classen avers, Delany could have painted the flowers but instead she chose to work with scissors - the flowers are built up from hundreds of carefully cut pieces of coloured paper glued on a black background. This is because scissorwork was a particularly feminine practice whereas painting was not. Hence, Delany "excelled within the bounds of the socially permissible," as Classen puts it, being the very feminine creature she was, just as the richly textured, layered effect of the flowers she cut out "would be readily accessible to the fingertips but is less immediately apparent to the eye " (Classen 2005: 231).

Another fine example of the connection between tactility and alternative feminine aesthetics is A La Ronde in Exmouth, a sixteen-sided, two storey thatched cottage created by Jane Parminter and her cousin Mary. The house appears to have been modelled after the basilica of San Vitale at Ravenna, which the Parminters visited during the continental tour they went on shortly after coming into an inheritance. Just as striking as the design of A La Ronde is its decoration. For example, there is a gallery on the second floor the walls of which are festooned with mosaics made out of shells, rocks, and porcelain fragments, interspersed with sixteen representations of birds executed in feathers, twigs and lichens, and as many gallery windows. The windows offer a commanding view of the countryside in all directions. But there is more to these windows and the walls in which they are set than meets the eye. In effect, the countryside is ... brought within the house, through the use of natural materials such as feathers, twigs, lichens, rocks shells, sand and seaweed. This makes it possible not only to look out into the landscape but to enter into an intimate, haptic relationship with it through its aesthetic reconstruction within the house. The visual is given a tactile presence. The fracturing of unified visual perspective into a sensuous multiplicity is further enhanced by the fact that eight of A La Ronde's windows are placed on the angles of the house, creating two-sided vistas rather than flat "pictures" of the exterior (Classen 2005: 234)

In the conclusion to "Feminine Tactics," Classen emphasizes that, while ladies' work was influenced by the visual arts, it was "not simply a feminized version of art: it had its own repertoire of techniques, media and products and its own set of values" (Classen 2005: 235). Cardinal among those values was that a work possess tactile presence, not just visual presence, as we have seen (e.g. the fineness of the scissorwork in the case of Delany's paper cut-outs, the intricate textures of the walls of the second floor gallery at A La Ronde). Another key value that distinguished ladies' work is that it was private and noncommercial, unlike most masculine craftwork. It rarely left the home, and when it did it was in the form of gifts to female relatives and friends. In other words, such work was priceless. It transcended market value, unlike masculine craftwork, and unlike the fine art of painting.

Classen's analysis enables us to appreciate the value of women's craftwork in a radically fresh new and deeper way. Such work is not just for viewing, we come to realize: the trick is to develop a feel for it. (The fineness of Delany's scissorwork Classen's alternative feminine aesthetics could be extended to masculine craftwork. This would enhance our appreciation of what craftsmen do, though it would require some adjustments, presumably, since the calibration of the senses would not be the same for male craftworkers as for female. It could even be extended to art, especially art after Modernism, where there is much evidence of the "segmentation of the senses" under Modernism (as conceptualized by Clement Greenberg) giving way to "dramatic multisensory mixes and transpositions" (Jones 2007). In these turbulent times, Classen's finely tuned sensory analytics might help resolve questions of whether a given piece should be classified as art or not (such as the pieces in the notorious Saatchi and Saatchi Sensation exhibition, which so offended the sensibilities of Mayor Giuliani and other New Yorkers). But let us not worry about art. Let us remain focused on craft and the question of what it would take for craft to be valorized properly. Basically, it seems, it would take a complete revalorization of touch and the body relative to vision and the mind, and it would entail attending to the intersection of the senses rather than their isolation. Fortunately, this is no longer the unthinkable proposition it once was. Neurologist Frank Wilson's The Hand has precipitated a complete rethinking of the connection between the senses and intelligence, shifting the focus from the visual to the manual. Brain is hand and hand is brain, Wilson argues. At the same time, he makes clear that the hand works in concert with the shoulder, the other hand, and the eye. No part of the body can be isolated. The focus of analysis must be on the intersections.

Wilson's work is complemented by breaking research within anthropology centring on studies with craftspeople. One of the leading figures of this trend is the architect turned anthropologist, Trevor Marchand. Marchand has conducted fieldwork among the mud masons of Mali and minaret builders of Yemen, as well as fine woodwork trainees in Britain. His fieldwork has in each case taken the form of an apprenticeship to a master builder or craftsman, and involved "becom[ing] corporeally and sensually immersed in daily work activities with [his] colleague-subjects" in addition to withstanding "direct exposure to the trade hierarchy and the exercise of power within" (Marchand 2008: 249). Like Classen, Marchand is sensitive to the intertwining of sensory conditions and social conditions. Marchand was struck by the extent to which teaching and learning goes on independently of language, for the most part, on the building site as in the workshop, and depended instead on "an intercourse of visual, auditory, and somatic information." Demonstration-observation, imitation, and repeated exercise appeared to be the key to knowledge transfer, with the odd verbal cue or reprimand thrown in.

Marchand was particularly impressed by the way in which buildings in Yemen and Mali were constructed without the use of measured drawings or plans. In the absence of any template, "ideas took shape in the coordinated activities of eyes, ears, hands, and tools" (Marchand 2008: 248), and were also shaped by the social relations of production (the labourer's range of actions was different from that of the apprentice, whose sphere was in turn different [less capacious] than that of the master builder - and the latter's work was, significantly, the most visible). Marchand gives the example of how a minaret is constructed from the inside out, with nothing more than a string attached to a central pole used to determine the diameter; the bricks are lugged up the (ever ascending) spiral staircase by the labourers, stacked by the apprentice, and then laid by the masterbuilder. And the master builder just knows when the proportions of the spire are correct because, as he says, "it fills my eye." This phrase speaks volumes about the "intercourse" between the visual and the haptic, or what Marchand calls "skilled performance." ²

Based on his case studies of on-site learning and practice among masons and woodworkers, Marchand (2008: 245) concluded that there is need for an "expanded notion of knowledge that exceeds propositional thinking and language and centrally includes the body and skilled performance." This is an extremely promising line of inquiry and it is significant that Marchand published it in the British Journal of Educational Studies , for it means craft is finally beginning to acquire the academic attention it deserves. Studies with craftspeople could provide many key insights into what Marchand calls "understanding from the body." ³ Central to this venture should be a focus on the intersection of the senses in craft production, as advocated by Metcalf and Classen, or, to use Marchand's phrase, the "intercourse of visual, auditory and somatic information." In this way, the old art/craft, visual/manual distinction will be overcome, and we will be able to valorize both arts and crafts individually and comparatively - free of the prejudices (most notably the unthinking sensory biases) which have hampered their study to date.
Acknowledgments
This paper was first presented at Craft Forward, a conference put on by the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, on 2 April 2011. I wish to thank Deborah Valoma for the invitation to speak, and my fellow panelist, Frank Wilson, for his comments on my talk.
Notes

For a defense of basketweaving see Howes 2007.

Central to the notion of skilled performance is a reflexive understanding of the relatiom between visual observation and physical action.

In watching another individual in action [performing a craft], our obervation of the movement is not merely processed by our faculties of visual cognition and 'stored' as images that can be subsequently replayed in the 'mind's eye' to guide imitation. Everyone knows from experience that our ability to visually re-imagine someone else's expert performance carries no guarantee that we can re-enact the feat. Following neurologist Marc Jeannerod ... I suggest that watching another person's practice acts upon our motor-based understanding of that task. Imagery of bodily movement and activity processed by vision thereby serves as input to the motor domains of our cognition where it is parsed into its constituent postures, gestures and actions and each is assigned a motor-based interpretation (Marchand 2008: 263).

Another anthropologist to watch in this connection is Fran Mascia-Lees. She has been exploring the "aesthetic of attending" which is cultivated by those who belong to the latter day U.S. Arts and Crafts Movement (artisans and collectors alike) - a movement which was (re)born in the 1970s (it first flourished ca. 1895-1913) and has evolved into the focus of numerous conferences, art shows, museums, popular magazines and websites. U.S. Arts and Crafts adherents take a "genuine interest in details" (haptic and visual) of the objects with which they construct the interiors of their homes. One informant expressed the ideal as one of "soothing simplicity." Interestingly, while it is possible to see the movement as a consumer trend, Mascia-Lees makes a strong case for recognizing the spirit it embodies as opening a crack in the "technocracy of sensuality" and "aesthetics of distraction" characteristic of late capitalism because of the way the Arts and Crafts aesthetic "hones sensory receptivity to the specificity of things." Like Classen on the value of "ladies' work," Mascia-Lees invites us to contemplate how craft transcends conventional (market) value(s) even though it may become an object of commerce. Curiously, craft's tactility, its very palpability, seems to be the condition for its transcendentality.
References
Classen, Constance. 2005. "Feminine Tactics: Crafting an Alternative Aesthetics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," in Constance Classen, ed., The Book of Touch. Oxford: Berg.

--. 2004. "The Witch's Senses: Sensory Ideologies and Transgressive Femininities from the Renaissance to Modernity" in David Howes, ed., Empire of the Senses. Oxford: Berg.

--. 1997a. "Foundations for an Anthropology of the Senses." International Social Scence Journal 153: 402-423

--. 1997b. "Engendering Perception: Gender Ideologies and Sensory Hierarchies in Western History." Body & Society 3(2): 1-19.

--. 1998. The Color of Angels: Cosmology, Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination. London and New York: Routledge

Hayden, Ruth. 1980. Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers. London: British Museum.

Howes, David. 2009. "Introduction: The Revolving Sensorium," in David Howes, ed. The Sixth Sense Reader. Oxford: Berg

--. 2007. "Sensory Basketweaving 101," in Sandra Alfoldy, ed., Neocraft: Modernity and the Crafts. Halifax: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Jones, Caroline. 2006. Eyesight Alone: Clement Greenberg's Modernism and the Bureaucratization of the Senses. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

--. Ed. 2007. Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology and Contemporary Art. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Marchand, Trevor, ed. 2010. Making Knowledge: explorations of the indissoluble relation between mind, body and environment. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

--. 2008. "Muscles, Morals and Mind: Craft Apprenticeship and the Formation of Person," British Journal of Educational Studies 56(3): 245-71

Mascia-Lees, Fran. 2011. "Aesthetic Embodiment and Commodity Capitalism,"in Fran Mascia-Lees, ed. A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. Chichester: Wily-Blackwell.

Metcalf, Bruce. 2007. "Replacing the Myth of Modernism," in Sandra Alfoldy, ed., Neocraft: Modernity and the Crafts. Halifax: The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Van Campen, Cretien. 2007. The Hidden Senses: Synesthesia in Art and Science. Cambridge: The MIT Press.

Wilson, Frank. 1998. The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language and Human Culture. New York: Pantheon Books

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David Howes, Concordia University This essay is concerned with theorizing the relationship between craft and the senses. Not an easy task, it turns out, for the topics of craft and craftsmanship are not highly regarded in academic circles. Indeed, they are often targets of disparagement.

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Joe Hogan: A Way with Willow | American Craft Council

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From his workshop by Loch na Fooey, Irish maker Joe Hogan creates extraordinary baskets.

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Rubbish from my workshop floor, 2008 various materials. Can you be a successful craftsperson without being skilful? "I'm not really a technical expert in anything", claims jeweller Lisa Walker, and many of her pieces certainly look like it. This is jewellery that seems to leave all traditional notions of skill behind.

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The power of nature never fails to stun the creative mind and help them negotiate new dimensions of resourceful justice. Designers like Jeroen Verhoeven seems to use this creativity to create fantasies that play with practical elements and unfolds a visual treat allowing the viewer an insight into the untold green possibilities in the horizon. Verhoeven's new creation called the Virtue of Blue Chandelier has bridged the practical sustainability with natural co-existence. It is made of blue butterflies snuggled up close and is nothing more than an solar light fixture but the visual treat takes the entire concept of going green to a different level.

Jeroen Verhoeven, the celebrated Dutch artist and designer, is conducting his first solo exhibition in the London Gallery named Virtue of Blue, 2010. The exhibits include a mysterious blue chandelier assembled from 502 solar panel cells molded into shapes of four different varieties of butterfly. The chandelier piece combines highly skilled craftsmanship with complex processes making it self-sustaining in the sense that the wings of the butterflies absorbs the sun light during the day to power the hand blown glass bulb within its coterie. The beauty of the cluster of these blue butterflies surpasses its utility making it almost a part of nature.

This eco-chandelier measures 144 x 144 x 162 mm in size and is composed of cesium solar cells, a hand-blown glass bulb, and steel and aluminum structural elements.

Via: MocoLoco

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Blue Chandelier by Verhoeven makes a stylish green statement - Ecofriend

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The power of nature never fails to stun the creative mind and help them negotiate new dimensions of resourceful justice. Designers like Jeroen Verhoeven seems to use this creativity to create fantasies that play with practical elements and unfolds a...

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Can Craft be used to help change theworld

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https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/jan/20/canvassing-opinion-what-art-critics-make-of-the-hit-play-art
.https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/fashion-blog/2014/feb/12/jewellerys-value-emotional-sentimental-worth

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