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- Title of Abstract:
Historic Craft Collections, Research and Cultural Diversity - their relevance today (Ref #178)
- Date:
- 18-10-2006 07:59:50
- Status:
-
Accepted with revisions
- Rating:
- 5
-
Details:
- An understanding of how historic crafts collections have informed contemporary crafts practice today is fragmented and often not articulated in crafts history. Yet visually and in the realm of ideas, evidence exists in objects produced in the 20th century and today of the power that the old has exercised on the new. Alongside the shifting political boundaries between East and West in the 20th and 21st centuries for example, there exists an astonishing continuity of ideas and techniques in the production of the crafts which transcends these divisions.
This paper focuses on the Crafts Study Centre collections, and that of other holdings were relevant. It will demonstrate how a dialogue of crafts practice can be opened through archival and object-based research techniques. Given the balance of archive and object-based material in the Centre, the context of this type of research is predominantly led by the medium of textiles and ceramics.
Examples will include an examination of the links between the historic textile collections of 20th century women crafts practitioners, writers and collectors such as Ethel Mairet, Barron and Larcher and Muriel Rose and the objects and archives that relate to these. The relationship between Bernard Leach and the East has been widely written about. The Centre?s Bernard Leach Archive, together with his source collections and pots provides an example of how such resources can broaden craft dialogues.
The history of collecting crafts is also an under-researched area. By drawing on 20th writers and the political, social and economic history of the time, this paper will attempt to set the collections held in the Crafts Study Centre and others within a wider context. For instance, the band of middle class women who travelled Europe and the East in the first half of the 20th century collecting traditional handmade textiles of quality en route was not confined solely to crafts practitioners. It included an interesting array of characters most of whom were reacting against the growing culture of poor quality machine-made items. Some of these women made their voices known through the literature of the times.
At least one contemporary craft practitioner will be included in the paper to demonstrate the on-going relevance, continuity and importance of historic crafts collections today.
This paper will be supported by a Powerpoint presentation containing illustrations of the Centre?s collections and the work of other crafts practitioners
Reviewer Comments: