Reading Material

I have just started reading The Gift by Lewis Hyde. I am only a quarter of the way through but all ready it is really hitting home! I just wanted to recommend it and get your thoughts on it too... 

For me it relates to so many things but in particular this topic of domestic crafts. I think we should see  our domestic craft traditions as a gift. A gift to be grateful for. I believe learning these skills, appreciating them, passing them on and teaching others is showing our gratitude to our traditional skills and the rich heritage they reflect. If we ignore this gift,  the gift will die. If we hold on to these gifts without passing them on they will no longer be a gift. So many things can be drawn from this book and I hope to write more about it when I have finished reading it but in the meantime here one of my favourite quotes so far,

"What is given away feeds us again and again, while what is kept feeds only once and leaves us hungry." Lewis Hyde.

The book is filled with interesting folk tales and proverbs as well as and examples of tribal societies that function in a 'Gift Economy' rather than a market economy. For a better description of what it's about go to Lewis Hyde's website,  they word it far better than I can.

Pieces by Jenni Caldwell and Erik Tidang at Lod 

Hello at last,

It has been some time since the last blog! I have been busy with the practical side of my work and have been focussing on that while I have been inspired to do so. I would like to have a better balance so will endeavor to do so from now on. 

I am currently in Stockholm, Sweden on a work placement at design studio/ workshop called Lod. The placement is for 4 weeks, I have two more weeks to go. So far it has been fantastic! Everyone has been very friendly and welcoming. I am mainly doing work for Erik Tidang. Erik is inspired by how natural forms and complex technical components consist of small parts - assembling designed elements to form a whole. It is really interesting and inspiring to work with someone who is so skilled.

I really like the way the way Lod is set up, the workbenches are clearly visable from the gallery area. customers love to see the pieces being made and being able to talk with the designers.

I think in Sweden craft itself is valued higher by the population and there is perhaps more respect for hand made objects. When I travel to work on the underground I've noticed that so many people are wearing hand made jewellery and wedding rings. 

Not only are contemporary makers and designers well regarded but the traditional designs and techniques are as well.  An obvious example of this is that rather than there just being tourist shops selling your usual trinkets there are large shops selling good quality traditional Swedish crafts. I think people here are very proud of their traditions and heritage and rightly so. These crafts whether they be textile designs, carved wooden butter spoons, decorations and candle holders all have a very strong Swedish aesthetic,  Designs that have been passed down and re interpreted by new gererations. 

There is so much to say about Swedish craft and many things I think would be good for us in Britain to learn from. 

 

Lina Peterson

Lina Peterson graduated from the Royal Collage of Art in 2006. She has had many international group exhibitions and has won awards such as the New Designer Association of Contemporary Jewellery award at New Designers in London, 2004.

 I had the pleasure of hearing her speak about her work at a jewellery seminar at Edinburgh Collage of Art. Like her work she was humorous and fun, immediately likeable. I felt really inspired after her engaging talk because she was so excited about jewellery and experimenting with materials. She draws inspiration from the construction of textiles and garments,  playing with materials working unusual combinations of textures and colours  creating beautiful compositions. The ceramic work in the the previous blog entry was using the textile qualities differently, transforming the texture in to something hard but that would be associated with a sort of nostalgic memory of knitting perhaps. Lina has used crotchet in the above pieces and has developed a way to bring the metal and the crotchet together by imitating the crotchet with little loops of metal. I think Lina has done something that the Arts and Crafts movement led by William Morris would be very proud of, she has stayed true to her materials. I personally like both approaches to incorporating textiles. I like the idea of transforming one thing in to another, confusing the viewer, challenging the materials. When you turn one thing in to another like knitting patterns in to ceramic vessels it's almost like alchemy. Some of Lena's other work, such as her plastic dipped pieces have that alchemy feel, covering beads and metal and creating new unusual forms. 

Love these!

These fantastic tea light holders are the work ceramicist  Annette Bugansky. I am really interested in casting textiles/ covering them with other materials and I think these ceramic pieces are so beautiful!  I came across her work after reading an article on the lovelytextiles blog about the founder of the shop Loop.  I must go to London and visit this wonderful shop!

Lace Making In Kintyre

Well I have just got back from four days learning how to make Lace in Kintyre. It was really great and I have learnt so much! I have learnt the basics of Torchon and Needle lace. Linda Bryce runs various craft courses at her home, Crubasdale Lodge.
This is my sample of Torchon lace practising corners and using magic threads.
I think that for my own work using needle lace (above) will be most useful as you can draw your own designs and fill them in with various stitches. 
It was so nice to get away and really focus on learning a new skill. The countryside around was breathtaking, and full of flowers. I really loved seeing wild Iris's growing on the beach (first picture). I will definitely return again and go across to the islands of Jura and Islay. 

I can see why not many people these days make lace, its very fiddly and time consuming. However I think it is very beautiful and rewarding to make. It also shows a certain commitment to get a piece finished. It is a nice thing to work away at over time. 

I think Needle lace is something I will be practising all summer. My sewing leaves a lot to be desired so repeating buttonhole stitch and getting the right tension etc was really tricky, I think I have improved, just got to keep at it. 

I am very keen to join a Lace group, if any one knows of any lace makers in Perthshire, let me know!

If you have taken any craft courses or evening classes tell me what you thought of them! Would also like some pictures of things you have made to put up on the blog!

Ebba 

Handmade Pledge

I have just been reading a fantastic article from the New York times, Handmade 2.0 by Rob Walker. It is all about the "do it yourself" movement. The article is focused on the American craft revival but talks a lot about the global online shop Etsy. For those who don't know about Etsy, it's an online shop for all things handmade. A bit like ebay but just for craft and you don't have to bid. Etsy has revolutionised selling craft work and has made it a lot easier for people to make a living from selling what they make. There is a huge amount of stuff on Etsy, some of it wonderful and made beautifully and other things that are not so nice. 

The article mentions how the revival started in America and how it has snowballed in to a huge phenomena. 

Walker starts by talking about consumers taking the Handmade Pledge, The Handmade Consortium materialized on a Web site called buyhandmade.org . The pledge stated,  “I pledge to buy handmade this holiday season, and request that others do the same for me,”  Within a few weeks, more than 6,500 people had signed the pledge. “Buying handmade is better for people,” a statement on the site read in part, and “better for the environment,” because mass production is a “major cause” of global warming, among other things. There were links to an anti-sweatshop site and a Wal-Mart watchdog site.

With mass production being so unfashionable there is a need for a way of shopping that feels good. Like when we buy organic produce and free range chicken, we feel we are doing the right thing. Etsy and sites like it fit the bill. Rob Walker writes in his article,

"It is worth noting another element of the Handmade Pledge: “The ascendancy of chain-store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing and decorating alike.” It’s a shrewd pitch, because the consumer craving for novelty, for the unique, the special, seems unquenchable. It has spawned, for instance, a number of blogs dedicated specifically to ferreting out the exciting new thing, usually with a helpful link to a potential transaction. (One of the most popular such sites, Design*Sponge, is another backer of the Handmade Consortium.) Buying something from an indie craft artist can result in a buyer-seller connection, but it can also make consumption itself feel like a creative act. This is the crucial element fueling the craft boom: People show up at the fairs, the shops and the Web sites. And they spend money."

Is this proof that the current craft revival is market led? A way for the consumer to shop without a guilty conscience.

Lacy Trees

Hello,

Back to the blog after a holiday in Munich...

I have been sent a really interesting link from Tamara Marwood. The link is to Janet Morton's work through another interesting blog called Lovely Textiles. I really like this lace tree and her other knitted work is great fun too! There seems to be a lot of wrapping things in Knitting going on :-)

I would like to say thank you to Tamara who has sent me lots of interesting links and also her own blog is well worth a look! Tamara quotes Germaine Greer's thoughts on stitching and such things,

 

"...why any woman would set about to make a portable artwork, a picture, out of bits of old fabric? What could be the point of such an exercise in futility? The work of art

is supposed to defy time but fabric is bound to fade and rot, even when it is kept in between layers of tissue paper and shut away from sight. There's nothing new in this kind of heroic pointlessness; women have frittered their lives away stitching things for which there is no demand."

I am particularly interested in the last part of this statement.. there being no demand? Was there ever a demand or were items made for decoration? does anyone every really really need a doily? Or is this referring to times such as post war Britain when women often made clothes themselves because that was their only option with little money and rationing?

In today's revival I think it has very little to do with demand in terms of necessity and is a lot more about there being a high demand to be original, environmentally friendly, individual and expressive. 

I admire Germaine's honesty about this subject and if you want to read more of her comments then go to Tamara's blog and you can access more links.

I have heard from a lot of people who are passionate crafts people who are all for the domestic craft revival but what about the other side of the coin? Who thinks its a waste of time? better off buying a jumper in Primark than knitting one yourself? Or people who simply don't like doing these things.. Would love to hear from you!