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On the Ai Weiwei Study Day, By Abigail Kenyon

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ March 12, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

// Abigail Kenyon is a first-year Masters candidate on the Asian strand of the V&A / RCA History of Design Course. In this addition to the Post-Neo-De-Craft-ivism column, Kenyon reflects on the Ai Weiwei Study day held Friday 9^th March 2012 at the Victoria and Albert Museum alongside the exhibition: Ai Weiwei: Dropping the Urn (Ceramic Works, 5000 BC – AD 2010). The events of the day included: Glenn Adamson, Head of Research, and Anna Wu, Assistant Curator, leading a gallery talk, followed by a screening of the Ai Weiwei Sunflower Seeds film, and lectures by Stacey Pierson and Luisa Mengoni, specialists in Chinese ceramic history. This article summarises some of the conversations had in the gallery and attempts to bring comparison between Ai Weiwei’s work and the ceramic shards of Jingdezhen discussed by Mengoni. //

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Next Interiors: Artist-Craftsmen on the High Street

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ February 20, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

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. (more…)

‘What’s the alternative? (to the system)’ : OccupyDesign

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ January 30, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment

// ‘Beauty… invites a bureaucracy’ wrote architectural historian Arindam Dutta.1 Although Dutta’s words were crafted in reference to Britain’s Nineteenth Century Department of Science and Art, their implication reaches well beyond the DSA’s patronage of such events and institutions as the Great Exhibition, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Royal College of Art. Indeed, the political, educational, and social movements of today make Dutta’s statement seem tame. No, beauty demands a bureaucracy!

…Or such was the impression walking into the launch of Occupy Design UK this weekend.

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The Future of Nostalgia?

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ January 9, 2012 ⋅ One comment

// A recent article in The Economist observed a shift in opinion of the source of industrial, capital, and societal ills from the factory to service industries. The author explains:

‘[Although] a far smaller part of the economy, [manufacturing] is bathed in nostalgia: real men [and women] making real things. Once a job on a production line was a soul-destroying drudge; nowadays that label has fallen on service-sector jobs in call centres and fast-food restaurants.’ 1

The perceived shift is certainly not a new phenomena. Factory jobs have been leaving Britain since before the 1980s and factory sites have been turned into reenactment facilities to remember the glory days of the Industrial Revolution.

Indeed, cultural production as well as academia has mirrored the observed re-focusing of attention and nostalgia to industrialism. This column has continually focused on the different roles of the handmade in industry – through models in factory production, factory-based nostalgia in contemporary crafts, and management strategies in retail/service industries. Moreover, The Economist’s opinion is reinforced through recent historiographical shifts in academia towards production methods. A brief glance through the contents of The Journal of Modern Craft will demonstrate the trend for reexamining the factory as a location of skill (see ‘The Craft of Industrial Patternmaking’) and industrialism as a handcrafted aesthetic (see ‘Disavowing Craft at the Bauhaus’).

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The Dead Author and the Dying Industry

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ December 12, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

: Stories of Craft, Capitalism, and Occupation

// The annual Peter Dormer Lecture at the Royal College of Art is effectively one of the voices on the state of contemporary studio craft. Drawing an international audience, this past Monday marked the 14^th Anniversary of the series and saw the prominent critic and author, Dr. Jorunn Veiteberg, deliver a lecture entitled, ‘From Making to Manufracture: New Working Strategies in the Crafts’.

Veiteberg’s well-constructed presentation outlined the trend of current craft-artists to work in new media and use ready-made’s in order to re-examine the relationship of craft and industry. In Vieteberg’s words, contemporary studio craft is interested in ‘a type of craft that places itself at the center of mechanization.’ While the theme of the talk loosely addressed the relationship between craft and industry, the focus was primarily on working methods, particularly the use of the ready-made.

More could be said on the correlation between craft and industry, especially why there is a subsequent interest in the relationship today. (more…)

First Things First – on Craft and Ethics

By HK ⋅ November 28, 2011 ⋅ 2 comments

Ken Garland, CND poster, 1962 © Victoria and Albert Museum

: Graphic Design, Corporate Branding, and the Iconography of Protest

// In this article, fellow editor Helen Kearney steps out of her comfort zone to discuss some ethical implications of craft, using the graphic designer Ken Garland’s 1964 manifesto “First Things First” as a starting point.//

In 1964, Ken Garland published the manifesto “First Things First”1. Looking back, in 1982, he explained that the manifesto came out of a context in which graphic designers were embedded within commerce, designing house styles for large firms, or creating advertising for the huge number of products that were being sold2. In a world of massive consumerism, the skills of designers were being used to create, emphasise, or communicate, brand identity. (more…)

Crafting Hyperreality

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ November 14, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

//What is the relationship between Baudrillard’s idea of the ‘hyperreal’ and the notion of craft? If the hyperreal is concerned with media theory, consumption and semiology, while craft is discussed in terms of skill, speed, materiality, the hand and production, then is it even possible or productive to pose a conversation between these two entities? In the name of intellectual and theoretical exercise, this article resembles a point on the Unmaking Things spectrum of sketch on the one side to finished product on the other.//

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Conceptual Jewellery

By cheap viagra safe ⋅ October 31, 2011 ⋅ 5 comments

: Debates, Definitions, and the Origins of Theoretical Adornment

// ‘What the hell is conceptual jewellery?’ posed a member of the online craft community, Crafthaus, two years ago. The frustration apparent in the question remained latent in the thread of responses. ‘Why bother trying to figure out why people do what they do,’ wrote one affiliate complacently. ‘Just because a maker pursues an idea does not mean that their work is conceptual,’ offered another. ‘I usually correct people when they call my work “conceptual”,‘ quoth a third.1

While legitimate definitions were attempted, the overarching message was clear: a concise explanation remained elusive — and understandably so. Major decorative arts establishments such as the Victoria and Albert museum have not acknowledged such a movement exists/ed.

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By cheap viagra safe ⋅ October 13, 2011 ⋅ generic viagra memphis

Craft as a Display Solution in Post-war Britain

// Craft was increasingly used as a retail display and management design solution to the problem of maintaining a cohesive brand image in the face of corporate expansion in Britain between 1945 and 1975. Both in the sense of the handmade, as well as the idea of ‘craftiness’, craft can be found in bespoke props, the use of models for planning display layouts, and ultimately the development of display manuals.

Handicraft was an essential element for displaymen since the beginning of their professionalization during the inter-war years. Display managers competed in annual competitions put on by The British Display Society, and while at the beginning most hype revolved around Christmas displays, bespoke props were made throughout the year. Within the British Archives of Art and Design is the personal scrapbook of J.W. Herbert, viagra generic side