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.