Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore the potentials of handicraft making as knowledge constructer. I use the method ethnography of skill to search different meanings related to materiality and ´mistake making´ in museum knitwear and contemporary knitting.

Paper long abstract:

Skills are learned culturally in interaction with the social and ecological environment. Craft skills are largely based on experiment and sensory based tacit knowledge which can be observed in the process of making, as well as in the end products. Museum artefacts act as silent witnesses of their maker’s craft skill and creativity. I argue, that the materiality of artefacts carry also information of the values and creativity of their production time. My aim is to search those values and creative material practices from knitted artefacts from late 19th and the early 20th century.

I am interested in how handicraft works as knowledge generator. I use the method ethnography of skill. It combines tacit, experimental, material and verbal knowledge of the research data, the researcher and interaction between them. The leading questions are: What does practice reveal from museum artefacts, their making and from contemporary knitting? and Were ´the mistakes’ we notice in handicraft today, seen as such during the time they were created?