Paper short abstract:

How do different crafts make us think through craftwork and the act of working patterns and designs? How do we read and make sense of pattern and design work? This presentation explores these questions in relation to pandanus plaiting in Vanuatu.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between processes of making and ways of thinking and seeing. Notably, how workers of pandanus on Futuna Island in Vanuatu think about the patterns and designs they plait into their baskets.

From my experience of preparing and plaiting pandanus with many skilled women during fieldwork for my PhD in 2014-5, it became clear that oblique plaiting requires a particular form of literacy for optimum understanding and an increased plaiting speed. This is only apparent when pandanus workers create patterns and designs within the very fabric of the plait.

This presentation explores how crafts make us think through craftwork and the process of making patterns and designs. It asks how craft workers read and make sense of pattern and design work and highlights the importance of first-hand experience of manipulating materials to our understanding of artefacts.