Paper short abstract:

As an artist-anthropologist who studies “making,” through apprenticeship I have discovered that craft production in the Mexican copper-smithing community Santa Clara del Cobre is a practice of care and a kind of love.

Paper long abstract:

As an artist-anthropologist who studies “making,” I have researched how craft production in the Mexican copper-smithing community Santa Clara del Cobre, is a practice of care. This inversion of careful and caring labor required to create the well-made copper piece also encompasses qualities and skills that queer societal stereotypes of binaric gender-lines. Artisanal bodies of knowledge generate both reproductive and productive labor anchored in the forge through care, perspicacity and attention. Like all nurturing activities given freely, artisanal reproductivity cannot be adequately measured as wage labor. This is not to say that this generous work should be unpaid. But rather to suggest, that what is desired of craft is precisely this non-enumerative quotient of care. My research was based in apprenticeship to Maestro Jesus Pérez Ornelas, an independent coppersmith artisan, successful enough to be free to follow his vision and imagination, to create things with care. Maestro Jesús would say: “If I counted all the blows of my hammer I would go crazy! And besides, no client would be able to afford to buy my work!” It is this boundless giftedness that makes up the imaginary of craft, its tropes, and aura: its generosity. Like women’s “reproductive” work of family, the work of the artisan is also “reproductive.” Both demand a “maternal” nurturance, unquantifiable attention and care. This quotient of care is pure gift without reciprocity. This non-enumerative labor

a kind of love.