Next Interiors logo imprinted on bowl designed by Janice Tchalenko ; photo © 2012 Marilyn Zapf

The suppression and appropriation of the idea of craft in industry by the Crafts and Design Council during the 1980s is a legacy only recently being questioned. Investigating contemporary projects, like Next Interiors, which are representative of the craftsman and designer celebrated by the craft and design media at the time, shows the complexity, rather than simplicity, of such a network.

In 1984 David Dougan succeeded Victor Margrie as the Director of the Crafts Council and instigated a re-thinking of the meaning of the council’s namesake, ‘craft’. As part of his project, Dougan sought the expert opinion of David Pye, a well-known, traditional, and outspoken voice in the craft world, who explained his understanding of the spectrum of makers, which ran from “the fine arts, which make strictly useless things’ to ‘craftsmen on whom our civilization, via industry, wholly depends.  These are the tool makers, jigmakers, model makers, prototype makers, instrument makers and others” ’.1 Despite Dougan’s best attempt at reform, the effect of his efforts were arguably found wanting.

Carol McNicoll, Mug, 1988 ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

Critical voices like David Pye, Peter Dormer, Peter Fuller, and even Dougan himself, were either drowned out or, indeed, appropriated by the Council to promote the work and idea of the ‘artist-craftsman,’ mainly through the staging of exhibitions and the publication of Crafts magazine. On many accounts the idea of the ‘artist-craftsman’ exhibited ambitions towards characteristics of the ‘celebrity-designer’ – status, fame, and genius with a hint of post-modern maverick and subversion.

In 1985, the high-street chain store, Next, expanded to create Next Interiors. Tricia Guild, the founder, designer and buyer for Designers Guild, a successful and well-know interior decoration shop on Kings Road, was asked to create the image for Next Interiors. Guild approached Janice Tchalenko and Carol McNicoll, two emblematic ‘artist-craftsmen’ of the 1980s, to carry their ceramics in the new retail space.

Janice Tchalenko, bowl, 1983 ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

The Next Interiors story could be told as the failure of the ‘artist-craftsman’s’ work to translate into industrial production. In an oral history collected as part of the ‘Craft Lives’ project held in the British Library, in 2005 Janice Tchalenko reflected on her experience of producing her wares for Next: ‘we went up to Stoke-on-Trent, we went around about ten factories to try and get these handmade things reproduced. We got thrown out of every factory in Stoke-on-Trent.’ When prompted to expand on why, Tchalenko explained:’We went to Carleton where the production manager said ‘we don’t make this kind of rubbish’ and patted us on the head and, — you know, because we were women…. We finally ended up at this little factory called Fleshpots. The first order for Next Interiors was a quarter of a million pounds – it was a big order.’2

Tchalenko and McNicoll did not design their work for industrial production, with the processes and capabilities of factories in mind. Rather, Tricia Guild picked pre-made pieces she desired to sell and tried to get them reproduced. Next Interiors ‘big order’ was not enough to warrant the re-tooling of Carleton or the other nine potteries addressed. The team was foreign to a presumably calculated process of design, and as outsiders reveal important presuppositions, preconditions and principles of the ceramics manufacturing industry in the 1980s.

Perhaps perusing the production side of the equation sheds further light on our question. Tchalenko continues her recollection of how the Next Interiors project unfolded, thus: ‘[Fleshpots was] trying to imitate reduction stoneware in earthenware- so they are slip-casting it in earthenware, getting it slightly wrong so they got a dimple in the bottom, and then getting toothbrushes to flick the reduction spots on the ware. … And I said, you know, this is amazing. In Dartington we are doing handmade reduction stoneware, and it takes them a quarter of the time to make exactly the same thing… as you are doing … in an industrial process at Stoke-on Trent. I just thought: this is a real irony.’ 3

Dart Pottery, plate, 1988 ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

Dartington Pottery, run by Peter Cook and Steve Course in the mid-80s, resembled a ‘traditional’ training workshop for potters.  Half hired employees and half trainees, Dartington incorporated around 25 people at any one time in its facilities. Although the business produced high quantities of ceramic wares, each piece was handmade – usually wheel thrown and hand glazed and decorated.

Tchalenko’s comparison between Dartington and Fleshpots hinges on notions of speed. The irony she referred to is based on the assumption that industrial production, in Fleshpot’s case slip-casting multiples, manufactured goods at a faster rate than handmade production. However, this binary postulation is complicated by the fact that, as Tchalenko noted, a fair amount of error and subsequent handwork is involved in the ‘industrial’ processes – she refers to dimples on the bottoms of the pieces and workers using toothbrushes to fake the look of a particular firing process and clay body – resulting in a longer production process than a workshop-based one. The comparison reveals an example of handmade production as a faster process than industrial production, but not necessarily the cost-efficient one. Additionally, it raises questions about what constitutes a ‘handmade’ versus an ‘industrial’ production process.

By investigating the intersection of the handmade and the ceramics industry, questions about intention in the industrial design process, the role of the handmade in translating ideas to production, and speed were raised.

Carol McNicoll, bowl, 1985 ; photo © 2012 Victoria and Albert Museum

However, their story is only one part of an even larger intersection of the handmade with British Industry. While craft and design were busy professionalizing through the media, politics, and education, the careers mentioned by David Pye – the toolmakers, modelmakers, and patternmakers, were the subject of a completely different set of circumstances and conversations.

© 2012 Marilyn Zapf. All rights reserved.

Footnotes