What is craft? How is it different from fine art or design? In A Theory of Craft, Howard Risatti examines these issues by comparing handmade ceramics, glass, metalwork, weaving, and furniture to ...painting, sculpture, photography, and machine-made design from Bauhaus to the Memphis Group. He describes craft's unique qualities as functionality combined with an ability to express human values that transcend temporal, spatial, and social boundaries.Modern design today has taken over from craft the making of functional objects of daily use by employing machines to do work once done by hand. Understanding the aesthetic and social implications of this transformation forces us to see craft as well as design and fine art in a new perspective, Risatti argues. Without a way of understanding and valuing craft on its own terms, the field languishes aesthetically, being judged by fine art criteria that automatically deny art status to craft objects. Craft must articulate a role for itself in contemporary society, says Risatti; otherwise it will be absorbed by fine art or design and its singular approach to understanding the world will be lost. A Theory of Craft is a signal contribution to establishing a craft theory that recognizes, defines, and celebrates the unique blend of function and human aesthetic values embodied in the craft object.
Throughout the 21st century, various craft practices have drawn the attention of academics and the general public in the West. In Craft is Political, D Wood has gathered a collection of essays to ...argue that this attention is a direct response to and critique of the particular economic, social and technological contexts in which we live. Just as Ruskin and Morris viewed craft and its ethos in the 1800s as a kind of political opposition to the Industrial Revolution, Wood and her authors contend that current craft activities are politically saturated when perspectives from the Global South, Indigenous ideology and even Western government policy are examined. Craft is Political argues that a holistic perspective on craft, in light of colonialism, post-colonialism, critical race theory and globalisation, is overdue. A great diversity of case studies is included, from craft and design in Turkey and craft markets in New Zealand to Indigenous practitioners in Taiwan and Finnish craft education. Craft is Political brings together authors from a variety of disciplines and nations to consider politicised craft.
The German Werkbund Campbell, Joan
2015, 2015., 20150308, 1978, Letnik:
1710
eBook
For years one of Germany's foremost cultural organizations, the Werkbund included in its membership such pioneers of the modern movement as Henry van de Velde, Hermann Muthesius, Walter Gropius, and ...Mies van der Rohe. Joan Campbell traces its history from its founding in 1907 to 1934, when it was absorbed into the bureaucracy of the National Socialist State.
The Werkbund set out to prove that organized effort could revitalize the applied arts and architecture. In addition to acting as an agent of reform, it provided a forum for the debate of such broad concerns as the need to restore joy and dignity to work in modem industry.
Originally published in 1978.
ThePrinceton Legacy Libraryuses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Building on historical and contemporary literature in anthropology and art theory, Lines That Connect treats pattern as a material form of thought that provokes connections between disparate things ...through processes of resemblance, memory, and transformation. Pattern is constantly in a state of motion as it traverses spatial and temporal divides and acts as an endless source for innovation through its inherent transformability. Graeme Were argues that it is the ideas carried by pattern's relational capacity that allows Pacific islanders to express their links to land, genealogy, and resources in the most economic ways. In doing so, his book is a timely and unique contribution to the analysis of pattern and decorative art in the Pacific amid growing debates in anthropology and art history.
This striking and original study brings together objects and photographs, historical literature and contemporary ethnographic case studies to explore pattern in its logical workings. It presents the first-ever analysis of the well-known patterned shell valuable called kapkap as revealed in New Ireland mortuary feasts. Innovative research in the study of Christianity and the Baha'i faithful in the region shows how pattern has been appropriated in new religious communities. Were argues that pattern is used in various guises in performances, church architecture, and funerary images to contrasting effect. He explores the conditions under which pattern facilitates a connecting of old and new ideas and how missionary processes are implicated in this flow. He then considers the mechanisms under which pattern is internalized, paying particular attention to its embeddedness in spatial and numerical thinking. Finally, he examines how pattern carries new materials and technologies, which in turn provide new resources for sustaining old beliefs.
Drawing on a multitude of fields (anthropology; art history; Pacific, museum, and religious studies; education; ethnomathematics), Lines That Connect raises key questions about the capacity of pattern across the Pacific to bind and sustain ideas about place, body, and genealogy in the most logical of ways.
This issue proposes a double move to readers. First, it foregrounds the fact that slavery, colonialism, and empire were integral historical components in the production, consumption, and reception of ...the British decorative arts. Second, it suggests that readers unhinge the “heritage” aspect that has long been associated with the British decorative arts, proposing instead a move of defamiliarization and making strange the routines of domesticity that seem self-evident and simply “the way things always have been”.
The commodification of Islamic antiques intensified in the late Ottoman Empire, an age of domestic reform and increased European interference following the Tanzimat (reorganisation) of 1839. Mercedes ...Volait examines the social life of typical objects moving from Cairo and Damascus to Paris, London, and beyond, uncovers the range of agencies and subjectivities involved in the trade of architectural salvage and historic handicraft, and traces impacts on private interiors, through creative reuse and Revival design, in Egypt, Europe and America. By devoting attention to both local and global engagements with Middle Eastern tangible heritage, the present volume invites to look anew at Orientalism in art and interior design, the canon of Islamic architecture and the translocation of historic works of art. Readership: All interested in tangible heritage in Cairo and Damascus, visual Orientalism (including photography), Islamic art collecting, and anyone concerned with commodification and intercultural contact zones.
William Moorcroft (1872-1945) was one of the most celebrated potters of the early twentieth century. His career extended from the Arts and Crafts movement of the late Victorian age to the Austerity ...aesthetics of the Second World War. Rejecting mass production and patronised by Royalty, Moorcroft’s work was a synthesis of studio and factory, art and industry. He considered it his vocation to create an everyday art, both functional and decorative, affordable by more than a privileged few: ‘If only the people in the world would concentrate upon making all things beautiful, and if all people concentrated on developing the arts of Peace, what a world it might be,’ he wrote in a letter to his daughter in 1930. 'William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design' is a pioneering study by Jonathan Mallinson, Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. It follows the career of William Moorcroft through a wealth of private papers, letters and diaries, business correspondence and published reviews in newspapers, trade magazines and art journals. Richly illustrated with examples of his pottery, it explores what lay behind the unique impact of work sought by museums and treasured in homes the world over. The book examines an artist’s very individual response to the turbulent half century in which he worked. It will appeal to both specialists and general readers with an interest in pottery, the decorative arts, and the cultural history of the times.
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