Paper short abstract:

In my paper, I will share some findings from my fieldwork conducted in Alaska, where I was working with Alaska Native mask-makers. I shall speculate on several crucial concepts that emerge when talking about contemporary mask making: authenticity, replication, cultural identity, and self-expression.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on my on-going research on the dynamics in the traditions of mask making amongst the Yup'ik people of southwest Alaska: starting from the pre-contact period, continuing through the contact time, and concluding with the modern era.

In my presentation, I will share some findings from my fieldwork conducted in 2016 in Alaska, where I was working with Alaska Native mask-makers and artists from both rural and urban areas. While talking and carving with them, I was learning about modern tools and materials being used in mask making nowadays, but also witnessing how mask making was becoming a space for material encounters between past and present, tradition and innovation, community and self.

In the communities where mask masking has been banished for several generations, what does it mean today to be a mask carver? Brining examples from the field, I shall speculate on several crucial concepts that repeatedly emerge when talking about contemporary mask making, such as: authenticity, replication, cultural identity, and self-expression. I will conclude looking at mask making as a search for lost roots, as a healing and identity mending practice.

Paper short abstract:

My paper will focus on the effects of displacement in crafts of the Wounaan, an indigenous community in Colombia. In this paper, I will explore the way in which their bodies and minds are adapting to new languages, new ways of making crafts in an attempt to fit into a new/foreign urban environment.

Paper long abstract:

The story of the Wounaan is not a unique story in the world and certainly not in Colombia (a country with one of the highest rates of internally displaced people in the world) but it is nonetheless a story full of narrations of struggle and resistance. This paper will look closely at the Wounaan and their traditional basket production from very early material evidence (found in Museums and private collections) to the contemporary objects. I will use this evidence to explore the shifts and changes that are connected to their displacement.

In this paper I will discuss the concepts of diaspora/displacement and material culture; understanding 'diasporic objects' as elements that unfold across territories, religions and cultures. The paper will explore the following questions: what happens when communities and their objects are displaced from their original territories? How do these diasporic objects affect the displaced communities? What happens when primary materials have to be transported thousands of miles to reach the skilled artisans in their 'new' territories?, how are the displaced objects re-signified and how do they mediate between a new territory and context and old traditions and contexts?

Paper short abstract:

Dhokra is age old metal craft form belongs to India possessed by a group of nomadic tribes, now settled in the mineral rich east and central region of India, craft has changed a lot through vicissitude of times and tribal dwelling transformed the craft and artisans, proposed paper focuses on these aspects.

Paper long abstract:

Dhokra (lost wax casting) craft items were made by the artisans of Ghadwa, Malar, and Jhara communities' member for the communities of the Bastar region (Chhattisgarh), according to their mundane and religious need inspired by their folklore. In due course of time the consumers of the craft have changed, craft has reached from village market to online forum, from tribal house to international museums. Impact of technology and commercialisation of cultural items, made the craft maker to transformed tribal utility items to urban material culture, but artisans have kept their ethnic touch in the craft, which has soul in their dwelling.

During the field work I have observed the following changes, first in the usage of raw material with lack of forest goods, second in usage of new equipment with inception of technology, third in the process due to change of raw materials and equipment, fourth in design of craft items for urban consumers and finally transmission of craft work, from a nomadic craft maker group to occupational craft makers group. The purpose of this empirical study is to see the reasons of above mentioned changes and continuity of the craft. Research will look how this change of dwelling affects the life and aesthetic of crafting communities.

Apart from historical aspects of the Dhokra craft, research will throw light upon social and economic status, lifestyle and livelihood of the tribal artisans.

Paper short abstract:

The main accent in the presentation is focused on two types of social visions about crafts and their places in people’s lives and homes.

Paper long abstract:

The main accent in the presentation is focused on two types of social visions about crafts and their places in people's lives and homes. The first is concentrated on Ideology of preserving the heritage during the communist regime in Bulgaria, the second one points out new market-oriented strategies after the fall of the regime. Both are put into the broader context of economic tendencies and analyzed as a part of common processes closely connected to people identities in different social environments. Shifting between communist internationalism and local dimensions of nationalism in 60-ties - 80-ies (XXth century) is one of the main factors, defining state policy towards national craft's thesaurus. Crafts became a way of life for big groups of people (suffering from different diseases) after a long period of prohibitions, oriented toward private enterprises. The models and aesthetic of craft production is in the hands of special committees, responsible for preserving national style in craft works. This is the base of next changes, after the fall of a political regime, when craft production became a part of new ideology but in new economic conditions. To study all these processes the craft production is put into a whole picture of aesthetic, ideological and social transformations, concerning people lives.

Paper short abstract:

By presenting results from interviews with five company owners this paper starts mapping meanings of the concepts craft and handmade, expressed in the small scale textile- and fashion sector in Sweden today: How do the entrepreneurs comprehend the concepts in relation to their businesses?

Paper long abstract:

The intention of this paper is to start mapping meanings of the concepts craft and handmade expressed in the textile- and fashion making-sector in Sweden today. Making here is used to bridge between handmade and made with digital tools and/or small machines (compare Charny 2011). To promote the economic growth of this kind of production - both craft production and small-scale industrial production - The Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, The National Swedish Handicraft Council and interest groups, together have published a "National agenda for business development of the area sloyd, craft and small scale design production" (2015). Marketing is not discussed much in the agenda. Instead structural changes in financial support for business development, and further education in business for persons working in the sector, are proposed. However one conclusion from a survey presented in the agenda, is that producers suggest marketing as one factor for success. They also suggest that the creativity of business models adapted to micro-scale have to be enlightened, to be better understood.

By presenting results from five interviews with entrepreneurs, owning small-scale textile businesses, this paper takes these suggestions as point of departure. Aspects of the companies' business models are discussed, and from the point of view that there is a need for discussing meaning-making about craft in relation to creating customer value, questions that get special attention are: How do the entrepreneurs comprehend the concepts craft and handmade in relation to their businesses? What meanings of the concepts do they convey in marketing?

Paper short abstract:

Several stages of industrial production of a porcelain item require what can be easily called “craft”. The paper, based on my on-going research project in a fine porcelain plant in Ćmielów, will scrutinize different types of factory work, focusing on skills and embodied knowledge of workers.

Paper long abstract:

Ceramics can be art, craft and industrial production. The porcelain factory in Ćmielów, Poland is more than 150 years old and located in a region with long pottery tradition. Nowadays it is one of the few fine porcelain factories operating in Europe. Apart from the industrial production line it has a design studio, which also works a small ceramic manufacture. Several stages of industrial prodcution process resulting in a porcelain item we get in a shop require what can be easily called "craft". In the paper, based on my on-going research project in Ćmielów, I would like to scrutinize different types of factory work in a porcelain plant, focusing on skills and embodied knowledge of workers. The main focus, however, will be on the extremely sophisticated craft of translating a design, usually provided in form of a drawing, into an industrially producible item by making a model and a form for casting. I would like to ponder over the observation that the model-makers I met in Ćmielów factory were the most frustrated group of its workers.

In de-industrializing West industrial buildings, emptied of installations, have been heritagized or rehabilitated and re-used for other purposes, often related to cultural production sphere. Factory work has never been conceptualized as heritagizable, though. Yet sometimes it requires skills as sophisticated as the skills of an artisan. In the factory world of humans and non-humans working together craft is a distinctively human feature.

Paper short abstract:

Knitting is today related with dwelling in positive spaces as it creates mental wellbeing. Historically it has created different kind of wellbeing as compulsory skill in household. Knitting has been associated with feminine, and has therefore for male knitters meant dwelling in contradictory spaces.

Paper long abstract:

Knitting is a craft which is today related with dwelling in a positive space, as it creates wellbeing by joy of making, creativity and calming rhythm with benefits of meditation. Instead of a voluntary hobby with creative self-expressions, knitting has in historical context been a required task mainly for girls and women. Knitting was considered as an important skill, since it provided necessary pieces of clothing for household economy, as well as a possibility for making additional income. Knitting has also been a compulsory part of craft education at schools. Not only was the craft skill itself considered important, but also the educational means of instilling obedience and discipline.

Knitting has been associated with feminine and domestic settings, although it has not solely been a craft for women. This arises the questions: What were the attitudes towards the knitters who did not fit into this scenery? How did the community and individuals react with male knitters? Who were the male knitters and what were the reasons for their knitting?

This presentation deals with the wellbeing and gendered aspects of knitting in Finland in the late 19th and the first half of 20th century. It is based on the questionnaire-material collected in 1962-1974 and preserved in the Archives of the National Board of Antiquity in Finland. The presentation highlights the twofold meanings and attitudes towards knitting. Firstly knitting as a necessary skill passed on as heritage at homes likewise through institutional education, and secondly knitting as a skill of difference.

Paper short abstract:

Handspinning in the United States today has lost many of its symbolic associations with morality and self-sufficiency while increasing in vitality as a modern craft practice, providing a case study on the relationship between traditionalization and folklore revivals.

Paper long abstract:

Spinning fibers by hand to produce thread is one of the most ancient and widespread arts and has often been associated with images of rural industry and domestic femininity. Various groups over time have consciously invoked tradition in relation to handspinning for social, religious, and political purposes, attaching the living practice to idealized versions of past morality, self-sufficiency, and traditional ways of dwelling. This paper traces one of these trajectories of discourse and meaning through the American colonies and the Back to the Land movements of the mid-1800s and the 1960s and 1970s to the current state of handspinning in the United States. Handspinning today is at the center of a thriving fiber arts community that has largely divorced it from its earlier symbolic and traditional significance, showing that a reduced focus on traditionalization may have benefits for the vitality of traditional practices. Using Lauri Honko's model of the "folklore process", I explore the relevance of modern handspinning to folklore revival attempts, asking how it achieved and maintains its current popularity and overall longevity.

Paper short abstract:

What does it mean to craft and to transform materials? This is the main question asked in this paper dealing with theoretical aspects of crafting and sloyding. The aim is to explore new ways to understand these processes by analyzing the actual making and the affective elements within the process.

Paper long abstract:

What does it mean to craft and to transform materials into artifacts? This is the main question asked in this paper that is dealing with theoretical aspects of crafting and sloyding. The aim is to explore new ways to understand these processes by analyzing the actual making. The theoretical framework as yet have been used, is most often rooted in philosophical ideas on practical knowledge. Suggestions have been made to look upon processes of making from a gender perspective, arguing that they are embedded in understandings and presumptions on gender that are expressed throw the bodies that are in motion. Crafting and sloyding has also been studied from a cultural heritage perspective, where processes of safeguarding (what is in need of protection) and of musealisation (what is worth preserving and not) have been focused.

Another way of understanding crafting and sloyding that will be addressed in this paper, is rooted in a classical ethnological approach, starting with analyzing the processes themselves and what they mean from a maker perspective. Questions asked are: What happens when we make things? How do we create forms, design, patterns, decorations and ornaments? Which limitations and possibilities lie in different craft techniques, and how does the character of the craft affect the actual making? Which are the affective elements within the making processes? This approach highlights the character of craft and sloyd techniques and examples from the textile field will be used to explore the theme of the paper.