Thinking Through Craft

Author: Glenn Adamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350092630
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Book Description
This book is an introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Workmanship is key to today's visual arts, when high 'production values' are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet craft's centrality to contemporary art has received little serious attention from critics and historians. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion. The interesting thing about craft, he argues, is that it is perceived to be 'inferior' to art. The book consists of an overview of various aspects of this second-class identity - supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. It also provides historical case studies analysing craft's role in a variety of disciplines, including architecture, design, contemporary art, and the crafts themselves.

Craft

Author: Glenn Adamson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574595
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Book Description
New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day. At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's “maker movement.” From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt. Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.

The Shape of Craft

Author: Ezra Shales
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780238843
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 324

Book Description
Today when we hear the word “craft,” a whole host of things come immediately to mind: microbreweries, artisanal cheeses, and an array of handmade objects. Craft has become so overused, that it can grate on our ears as pretentious and strain our credulity. But its overuse also reveals just how compelling craft has become in modern life. In The Shape of Craft, Ezra Shales explores some of the key questions of craft: who makes it, what do we mean when we think about a crafted object, where and when crafted objects are made, and what this all means to our understanding of craft. He argues that, beyond the clichés, craft still adds texture to sterile modern homes and it provides many people with a livelihood, not just a hobby. Along the way, Shales upends our definition of what is handcrafted or authentic, revealing the contradictions in our expectations of craft. Craft is—and isn’t—what we think.

Thinking Through Craft

Author: Glenn Adamson
Publisher: Berg 3pl
ISBN:
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Book Description
This book provides an introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion.

Collaboration Through Craft

Author: Amanda Ravetz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350007129
Category : Crafts & Hobbies
Languages : en
Pages : 285

Book Description
Offering a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, this ground-breaking volume analyses the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. The book is accessibly organised into four sections covering the cooperation and compromises required by the collaborative process; the potential of recent technological advances for the field of craft; the implications of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations for authority and ownership; and the impact of crafted collaborations on the institutions where we work, learn and teach. With cutting-edge essays by established makers and artists such as Allison Smith (US) and Brass Art (UK), curator Lesley Millar, textile designer Trish Belford and distinguished thinker Glenn Adamson, Collaborating Through Craft will be essential reading for students, artists, makers, curators and scholars across a number of fields.

The Thinking University

Author: Søren S.E. Bengtsen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319776673
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 207

Book Description
This book reinvigorates the philosophical treatment of the nature, purpose, and meaning of thought in today’s universities. The wider discussion about higher education has moved from a philosophical discourse to a discourse on social welfare and service, economics, and political agendas. This book reconnects philosophy with the central academic concepts of thought, reason, and critique and their associated academic practices of thinking and reasoning. Thought in this context should not be considered as a merely mental or cognitive construction, still less a cloistered college, but a fully developed individual and social engagement of critical reflection and discussion with the current pressing disciplinary, political, and philosophical issues. The editors hold that the element of thought, and the ability to think in a deep and groundbreaking way is, still, the essence of the university. But what does it mean to think in the university today? And in what ways is thought related not only to the epistemological and ontological issues of philosophical debate, but also to the social and political dimensions of our globalised age? In many countries, the state is imposing limitations on universities, dismissing or threatening academics who speak out critically. With this volume, the editors ask questions such as: What is the value of thought? What is the university’s proper relationship to thought? To give the notion of thought a thorough philosophical treatment, the book is divided into in three parts. The focus moves from an epistemological perspective in Part I, to a focus on existence and values in higher education in Part II, and then to a societal-oriented focus on the university in Part III. All three parts, in their own ways, debate the notion of thought in higher education and the university as a thinking form of being.

The Pursuit of Pleasurable Work

Author: Trevor H. J. Marchand
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1800732759
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 417

Book Description
Against the backdrop of an alienating, technologizing and ever-accelerating world of material production, this book tells an intimate story: one about a community of woodworkers training at an historic institution in London’s East End during the present ‘renaissance of craftsmanship’. The animated and scholarly accounts of learning, achievement and challenges reveal the deep human desire to create with our hands, the persistent longing to find meaningful work, and the struggle to realise dreams. In its penetrating explorations of the nature of embodied skill, the book champions greater appreciation for the dexterity, ingenuity and intelligence that lie at the heart of craftwork.

Sloppy Craft

Author: Elaine Cheasley Paterson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472533070
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 356

Book Description
Sloppy Craft: Postdisciplinarity and the Crafts brings together leading international artists and critics to explore the possibilities and limitations of the idea of 'sloppy craft' – craft that is messy or unfinished looking in its execution or appearance, or both. The contributors address 'sloppiness' in contemporary art and craft practices including painting, weaving, sewing and ceramics, consider the importance of traditional concepts of skill, and the implications of sloppiness for a new 21st century emphasis on inter- and postdisciplinarity, as well as for activist, performance, queer and Aboriginal practices. In addition to critical essays, the book includes a 'conversation' section in which contemporary artists and practitioners discuss challenges and opportunities of 'sloppy craft' in their practice and teaching, and an afterword by Glenn Adamson.

Fashioning Professionals

Author: Leah Armstrong
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350001864
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Book Description
From artist to curator, couturier to fashion blogger, 'creative' professional identities can be viewed as social practices, enacted, performed and negotiated through the media, the public, and industry. Fashioning Professionals addresses what it means to be a creative professional, historically and in the digital age, as new ways of working and doing business have given rise to new professional identities. Bringing together critical reflections from international researchers, the book spans fashion, design, art, architecture, and advertising. It examines both traditional and emergent roles in creative industries, from advertising executives and surrealist artists to mannequin designers, pop stylists, bloggers, makers and design curators. The book reveals how professional identities are continually in a state of fashioning, through style, taste, gender and cultural representation, highlighting moments of friction and flux in the creative labour of the global economy. Interweaving critical perspectives from fashion and design history with sociology and cultural theory, Fashioning Professionals addresses a burgeoning area of research as we enter new terrain in fashion and the creative industries.

Made in Italy

Author: Grace Lees-Maffei
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0857853902
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 562

Book Description
Goods made or designed in Italy enjoy a profile which far outstrips the country's modest manufacturing output. Italy's glorious design heritage and reputation for style and innovation has 'added value' to products made in Italy. Since 1945, Italian design has commanded an increasing amount of attention from design journalists, critics and consumers. But is Italian design a victim of its own celebrity? Made in Italy brings together leading design historians to explore this question, discussing both the history and significance of design from Italy and its international influence. Addressing a wide range of Italian design fields, including car design, graphic design, industrial and interior design and ceramics, well-known designers such as Alberto Rosselli and Ettore Sottsass, Jr. and iconic brands such as Olivetti, Vespa and Alessi, the book explores the historical, cultural and social influences that shaped Italian design, and how these iconic designs have contributed to the modern canon of Italian-inspired goods.