SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This volume brings together a cross-disciplinary group of anthropologists, researchers of craft, and designer-makers to enumerate and explore the diversity and complexity of problem-solving tactics and strategies employed by craftspeople, together with the key social, cultural, and environmental factors that give rise to particular ways of problem solving. Presenting rich, textured ethnographic studies of craftspeople at work around the world, Craftwork as Problem Solving examines the intelligent practices involved in solving a variety of problems and the ways in which these are perceived and evaluated both by makers and creators themselves, and by the societies in which they work. With attention to local factors such as training regimes and formal education, access to tools, socialisation and cultural understanding, budgetary constraints and market demands, changing technologies and materials, and political and economic regimes, this book sheds fresh light on the multifarious forms of intelligence involved in design and making, inventing and manufacturing, and cultivating and producing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, and cultural geography, as well as to craftspeople with interests in creativity, skilful practice, perception and ethnography. Contents: Foreword, Rosy Greenlees; Introduction: craftwork as problem solving, Trevor H.J. Marchand. Part One Practical Problem Solving in Craft: The prototype: problem work in the relationship between designer, artist, and gaffer in glassblowing, Erin O’Connor and Suzanne Peck; Producing Suffolk punch horses: craftsmanship with sentient media, Kim Crowder; Making ‘sense’ in the bike mechanic’s workshop, Tom Martin; Garbage-in, better garbage-out: crafting solutions on the cutting edge of digital videography, Peter Durgerian; Mastering mimicry: strategies of transference in print-based art, Jenn Law; From ‘in our houses’ to ‘the tool at hand’: breaching normal procedural conditions in studio furniture making, David Gates; Weaving solutions to woven problems, Stephanie Bunn. Part Two Social, Economic, and Philosophical Dimensions in the Problems of Craftwork: Problem solving and strategizing problems: social strategies and material fixes in Agotime weaving, Niamh Clifford-Collard; Feeling a way through: affective problem solving in dressmaking, Rebecca Prentice; Thinking through materials: embodied problem solving and the values of work in Taiwanese ceramics, Geoffrey Gowlland; The problem of the unknown craftsman, Malcolm Martin; The place of craft in building conservation: the craftsperson as problem solver and builder, Giovanni Diodati; ‘Textile thinking’: a flexible, connective strategy for concept generation and problem solving in interdisciplinary contexts, Rachel Philpott and Faith Kane; Afterword, Malcolm Ferris. Index.