Also in Simple Living & Spirituality

The Beauty of Craft

A Resurgence Anthology

by Sandy Brown, Maya Kumar Mitchell

Excerpt 2

Introduction

MAKER AND MATTER

Our Relationship with Things

By Maya Kumar Mitchell

OUR ENVIRONMENTAL crisis could be described as a crisis in our relationship with matter. We condemn our society for being materialist, for being passionate about things, and we see that the desire for material fulfilment has led to a destructive relationship with our physical world. Rather than delighting in the enchantment of the bodily, ‘western’ society treats abominably the material world with which it is so fixated. We are obsessed with stuff, with having things, yet we do not respect and honour those things, nor the natural world from which they are created. We seem to be living a strange contradiction: in the face of our utter, unquestionable dependence on the Earth, we have allowed a dangerous greed to overtake and dominate what could be a healthy appreciation. Appreciating things, we are motivated to value, to respect, to enjoy, and to care for all that is matter.

In contrast, the replacement of well made, durable and loved objects by industrial ‘products’, clumsily put together and quick to fall apart, made of deadened materials with neither voice nor wholeness, has been disastrous for both the natural world, which becomes merely a resource for these products, and for our homes where we, the so-called wealthiest, live with an excess of impoverished material things. This process has also impoverished the working lives of many people across the earth.

Craftspeople and artists are working in this context to maintain their relationship with their materials. And by so doing they offer us all an opportunity to regain a relationship with things. By listening to the ‘raw’ material, a craftsperson shapes and works it in such a way that in the end the character of the stuff itself, whether red Devon clay, the heart of an oak, or the gleaming depth of silver, shines through and speaks to us of itself.

Every aspect of our daily lives involves objects which could be either mass produced or hand-made. But some of these are much more apparent than others. Many people, for example, may have a strong contact with pottery, and delight in using ceramic plates and dishes. But how often mass produced cutlery and glassware are laid alongside! Of course price, and therefore sheer availability, has much to do with this. But it is important to observe where crafted items are less and more present in our daily lives. Woodwork and pottery are probably the most widely used crafts, while hand-made clothes and shoes are a luxury reserved for the very rich.

So in part these essays draw attention to the less remembered objects which we use daily, but from whose origins and makers we are often distanced and can even forget they exist. Crafts remind us of maker and material, they bring to our mind both the natural origins and the cultural traditions from which a thing has been created. Much more than merely fulfilling a function, they enrich our lives.

WHAT IS CRAFT?

The word craft has long resisted definition, being creatively unpredictable, something this anthology revels in. From their different starting points these essays explore and elucidate what makes up the worlds of craft, of art, and the closeness and difference between them. This has enabled us to include creative work not always associated with craft, such as cooking, writing and gardening. We do not want craft to be a closed concept; it can be opened up so that the interface between ‘art’ and ‘craft’ is a fluid and indeterminate one – perhaps the river of creativity flows between these two banks.

Craft often gets described in negative comparison with art, craft being ‘a bit like art only useful and not so amazing’, which immediately reveals that to be useful is of lower status, that we want to be amazed, and increasingly by sensationalism rather than skill. But no one defines art in relation to craft. Art stands alone. For centuries now, art – often with a capital A – has come first. Yet ‘fine art’ was once part of the broader world of craft.

The Greek techne, speaking above all of skill and technique, offers another way of understanding what art means, and embraces the presence of skill in any sphere of life. Thus we speak of the art of cooking, teaching, loving, even living. From here, working with specific materials is obviously a way to develop and hone one’s skilfulness, with those materials but also beyond them. The practice of an art or to a spiritual practice, and yields other fruit besides that of beautiful work.

The people who speak here about the ‘art of crafting’ are not concerned with the glamour, originality or brilliance often associated with being an artist, but with the daily relationship, both harmonious and confrontational, with materials, intentions, necessities and possibilities. There is a discipline involved in this kind of creativity which its practitioners find demanding and rewarding.

This is very much in contrast with the latest trend in which craft has become ‘the new art’ whose success is rated, like that of much fine art, by how many thousands of pounds it can be sold for. Here the object, and thereby its maker, are part of a social structure which exists to demonstrate the status and wealth of the patron, rather than being part of a cultural tradition, a part of the society in which such creation takes place. Such a role removes craft from being part of ordinary life, where it is so necessary and so precious.

Craft is a practice, and art or fine art was once one form of this practice. In societies where the gods are fully present and the spiritual life vivid, the role of images and sculptures as an inspiration for worship, or as the very expression of the divine, is as practical as any more ‘tangible’ aspect of life. In such a context art indeed has a ‘function’ and does not exist as an ‘added extra’. How did beauty become an economic luxury?

Craft is a work of transformation, through which a natural material takes on form and meaning in the human world, but without losing its essence as wool, wood, clay, silver or stone. . . . It continues to speak in the voice of nature and the elements. Mass produced objects, on the other hand, tend to have their original nature destroyed so that a form can be superimposed without any of that original, natural character speaking up, interfering, interrupting. Plastic is ideal for this, because it has no real character, it is malleable and dead. But other materials can also be sufficiently processed to lose their character, and become only the form which is asked of them: they become objects of utility, designed rather than created, and without heart.

To speak of something being well-loved is not merely a turn of phrase, it is a description of the way matter responds to loving hands – hands which feel and hold and take care. How well can you love a plastic container? How well can it age?

These reflections perhaps make it inevitable that a book about crafts will have something of a nostalgic quality. None of the craftspeople featured here, however, concern themselves with that, although some of the commentators do. In our times to work as a craftsperson, or to live with crafted things, is to live outside of society’s conventions, but this only makes the importance of such a calling more stark.

CRAFTWORK IS NOBLE WORK

The involvement, at once natural and deeply committed, with which craftspeople work, is impressive and attractive. It enables us to realize that work can be seen as an experience, an expanding, a channel of engagement between oneself and the world, not a chore or a constraint in an otherwise comfortable life.

In this way yielding to work enables the self to become part of the active world, as the hands are part of the body. In the same way that art and craft cease to be divided, so working and living lose their antipathy and one’s way of working is part of one’s way of living, just as eating, washing, or talking are part of one’s life. The possibility of being reconciled and united with what we depend upon – our work – is truly inspiring in a culture where work is resented as a constraint upon freedom, and the ideal life is an idle life.

CRAFT AT THE CENTRE

The essays gathered together here are stimulating and surprising. Craft shows itself to be at the nexus of many elements of human life. The use of tools has an important role in human history, and the development of tools, techniques and skills continues to be an expression of human nature and of specific cultures. Through these essays and their different voices we can see the role of craft in relationship to community, to work, and to economics. Craft brings us into contact with nature and with environmental issues. Craft is a way of developing creativity, consciousness and spirituality. The work of all these craftspeople touches these many different areas. The essays have been put into sections only in order to highlight the themes which are treated more explicitly, and to show both the importance of these themes and the different ways they are approached by different craftspeople.

The connections between the crafts and these many aspects of human life shows in how many ways the world of crafts can offer something of enduring value to our lives, including and beyond the craftwork we may welcome into our homes. ‘Craft’ refers to both the work of creating and the finished piece. The word unites both the action and the results of the action, both process and product. Craft is for doing and for having, for using and for enjoying. The act of making remains present in the final form, just as the final form is itself present in the making and leads it forward. The word ‘craft’ reveals the intimacy of these, of maker with thing, and of maker with making. The relationships between us, our creativity, and our material things need to be nurtured and made healthy. The craftspeople for whom making these connections is their primary work are guiding lights and secret treasures.