behaving

the new to me lace carriage with all its natural quirkinesess is behaving ok. lace needs lots of weights and that is an understatement.the carriage needs to be moved at a fast pace or else needles get stuck while doing the transfers. it also needs to be pressed down slightly. all of this counting that the sponge bar is pristine.
it takes patience and skill.but then again sennet says it takes 100hrs to become aquainted with a skill.





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learning new movements

"we have trained our hands in repetition;we are alert rather than bored because we have developed the skill of anticipation.but equally ,the person able to perform a duty again and again has acquired a technical skill,the rhythmic skill of a craftsman, whatever the god or gods to which he or she subscribes."

The Craftsman

Richard Sennet

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of hand skills

when in need of clarification i turn to sennet and his book the craftsman :

"Concentration consummates a certain line of technical development in the hand. The hands have had  before to experiment through touch, but according to an objective standard; they have learned to coordinate inequality; they have learned the application of minimum force and release. The hands thus establish a repertoire of gestures. The gestures can be further refined or revised within the rhythmic  process that occurs in, and sustains, practicing. Prehension presides over each technical step, and each step is full of ethical implication."

training my hands in a different routine, that of knitting with 2 different yarns; in this case 2 colors.

there are lots of movements involved and it needs more concentration than  weaving with 2 shuttles, but it's not much different. yarns also cross and the crossing determines whether they keep on knitting orderly or turn into a twisted mess. first baby steps.
more samples! .... to train, to do one's best, to honor the craft.

another related observation: the japanese are such good designers because the country suffers from a chronic lack of space. therefore each thing in its most efficient place and nothing is superfluous; that nook under the rail serves to secure the out of work yarn!

                    

" We have trained our hands in repetition; we are alert rather than bored because we have developed the skill of anticipation.But equally,the person able to perform a duty again and again has acquired a technical skill, the rhythmic skill of a craftsman, whatever the god or gods to which he or she subscribes"

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the hand

interesting reflections by richard sennet in the craftsman's chapter on the hand.

" with greater brain capacity our human ancestors learned how to  hold things in their hands,

to think about what they held, and eventually to shape the things they held;

man apes could make tools, humans make culture"

 he furthers on examining the hand movements of gripping touching and prehension and their roles in developing technique.the chapter is full of fascinating insights.


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on machines

" the enlightened way to use a machine is to judge its powers, fashion its uses, in light of our own limits rather than the machine's potential.we should not compete against the machine. a machine like any model,ought to propose rather than command, and humankind should certainly walk away from command to imitate perfection. against the claim of perfection we can assert our own individuality, which gives distinctive character to the work we do."

        

  richard sennet

the craftsman

we are talking about soul here.




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my bad

for not contextualizing hannah arendt's remark.

she was a german thinker and also a jew during world war two.

it is not difficult to imagine the intellectual and emotional  turmoil she lived through in those years and afterwards  with the findings and the trials. 

to form a better opinion  i reccomend   eichmann in jerusalem a report on the banality of evil.

more of sennet:

"Craftsmanship names an enduring basic human principle the desire to do a job well done for its own sake....
the craftsman often faces conflicting objective standards of excellence; the desire to do something well for its own sake can be impaired by competitive pressure, by frustration or by obsession.....
every good craftsman conducts a dialog between concrete practices and thinking; this dialogue evolves into sustaining habits, and these habits establish a rhythm between problem solving and problem finding.."

 words to be thought and re thought. and what's fascinating is that  he  goes beyond manual labor and includes  the code writer, the cook, the good parent, the doctor.....

and humbly sampling on the knitting machine. learning to hang, twist and move stitches.



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thinking about doing

people who make things don't understand what they're doing.

this was hannah arendt, not me. but is it always like that or just sometimes? (this is me not she.)

for her, the mind engages once labor is done.

for richard sennet there's another view in which thinking and feeling are contained within the process of making and that the process of making reveals to us things about ourselves.

i'm reading richard sennet's the craftsman, still on the prologue where he talks about his teacher, hannah arendt, and her unrest about the los alamos/manhattan project. it's that kind of read where you need a set of colored pencils to underline what strikes you in color coded fashion. it is one of the most exciting reads i've read in a long time, and i'm just on page 8 underlining like a fiend and stopping to think about what i read.

 i started the scarf in the image some years ago, during the failed ai vat era. folded and dyed it three times with blahh results. on monday i looked for it and decided to give it a dunk in the vat i was running as a prize for having finished the weaving. then re folded and re dunked it twice on tuesday. what i saw when i unfolded it this morning  pleased me.

so according to sennet what  can the shibori scarf above teach me about myself? and the image of it which  i created?

i'll be discussing sennet here for a long time i'm warning you.

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why handmade

social reasons:

because it distributes wealth equitably.

because it keeps cultural diversity.

because it records specific technologies.

because it articulates human relations.
because it relates to community activities and culture.

because  it empowers the makers.

because it does not produce large amounts of waste.

because it  is not  abusive of resources.

aesthetic reasons:

because items are unique.

because items show the maker's hand.

because items are meaningful for both makers and buyers.
because items are  more than end products.
because items go beyond  trends or fashion.


can you help add on to the list? i would love  to involve lots of people in making this list so ideas are most welcomed!

some weekend reading: this .and further reading: this
stay warm and have a good weekend !

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the excitement has worn out

Over a year and a half ago, well before the crisis, i was reading all i could about the indie movement. It was a vibrant, intellectually stimulating and challenging time.There were dissertations on the political and social implications of the movement. There were talks and symposiums on cultural studies. People were blogging about the cutting edge of crafts, what it meant to be indie and embracing slow crafting.They were creating well crafted, witty and aesthetically pleasing items.In plain words it was an exciting time.

What has happened?Where has the collective momentum gone?
Whereas before crafters were creating their items at the sound of their own individual drums now everyone seems to be following the market's dictum competing with it in a lose lose situation. If it's February it means hearts and red, and let's not talk about Halloween.
This situation has brought out the uglies; cut throat competition amongst crafters, knock offs, rip offs of other people's images ,undercutting fellow crafters. Need i continue to make the point clear?
Everyone seems to have turned into a self appointed marketing guru flashing directly from the oracle countless tips and tricks while looking down on those who do not posses the buzz word to the oracle.

There has also been a relevant diminution of ideas and worse, of quality in items.It seems that the same article gets produced over and over and you see the same things everywhere. Items get hashed and re-hashed until they become unbearably banal, as if mass produced, becoming the antithesis of handmade and the indie movement.The whole scene has become predictable and boring.
Crafting had a strong base on self satisfaction, on the pride of creating an original well crafted item.In other words an item with soul. (Read what Red Thread Studio has to say on this ).It was a community strongly rooted in in sharing ,educating and supporting. Very little of that is left.

The other day as Ruth and i were talking about this she pointed out the economy as the culprit.But i believe there's more than that. Can the economy be blamed for the sloppiness of items, the aggressive behavior of some crafters? Can it be blamed for the no questioning herd like behavior?
i believe that perhaps selling venues have their share in the outcome.i believe that many venues and crafters as well have succumbed to the siren songs of growth. I also believe that a general call to order needs to be issued.Or else...

Perhaps i just fell for the idealistic part and the intellectually stimulating component without noticing the rest. But then again were it about marketing i'd be in Wall Street, or perhaps The City which is more cosmopolitan.

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on craft and crafting

Now that everybody is an artist i have become interested in the c word and all that's behind the DIY movement. Agreed there are lots of uncool works, but there's a lot of uncool art too. In fact there's a lot of uncool stuff in life !
What interest me the most is the intellectual backbone behind it and periodically i check around blogs and read what's going on.

One of those trips took me to Ulla Maaria's blog and her manifesto which i found thought provoking. Her blog too is worth a more than superficial glance.
As you know you follow a link ,then one link led to another and yet another and i landed in the Burda page. Well, in a nutshell it is a sewing page with free downloadable patterns. There's also a sewpedia, sewing tips and lots of info.
It's comforting to note that although you have to register to be able to download patterns, there's no copyright uptightness and more of a creative commons scene.
For all of you who sew, enjoy!

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on crafts and craft making

i’ve always thought that some of the debate of art versus craft was in part due to the fact that while art had an intellectual body and a research and critical mass to phrase theories and explain intuitions, craft lacked all that.
In recent years many movements as diverse as the slow food movement or the digital craft movement have converged creating a discussion platform and within this platform crafts are being re defined, analysed and codified with a new perpective.

Most important as i see it, a language pertinent to craft and craft studies and criticism has been generated. This has the advantage of analysing crafts aesthetics in their own right without having to resort to art criticism language and codes which, putting it mildly, create dysfunctions in the evaluation and perception of crafts.
At their worst fine art codes distort and devalue crafts.

From the 90's on scholars and lecturers have been dealing not only with crafts per se but also with the interaction between crafts and other disciplines and the social and political implications of present crafts are also being researched. To add on to the intellectual ferment conferences and meetings are being held on a regular basis.


To exemplify the above here are a few links i found surfing the net:
The conference in Aberdeen in the summer. i suggest you check the paper proposals ( go to the side bar and click on view submissions) The topics are very diverse.
Here's also a very interesting blog, The Craft Research blog -real food for the thought.
The 2004 conference is also worth noting for the interesting papers that were presented. Do read the abstracts of the papers. I think they are rich in ideas and present many fascinating concepts.

I will end with a quote from Peter Dormer
theoretician and craft historian who unfortunately passed away eleven years ago.

tacit knowledge is the knowledge of a specific material learned by experience and driven by unconcious rules embeded in practice… it is a practice that demonstrates a specific set of values.

Exciting times to be living in and creating, indeed.

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