Nowadays, people engage in a diverse range of craft practices in their everyday lives, which take place in physical and digital realms, such as creating decorations for their homes, modifying IKEA furniture, making digital photo collages, or creating their own personal websites. Within this increasingly hybrid age, in which people engage with physical and digital artefacts alongside each other and simultaneously, the research presented in this thesis poses that there are opportunities for new forms of making and creativity at the intersection of physical and digital realms. In other words, it introduces hybrid craft as a new everyday craft practice. Using an interaction design research methodology that consists of research for design (interviewing physical and digital crafters about their current practices) and research through design (designing, prototyping, and evaluating a novel toolkit for hybrid craft, called Materialise), this thesis explores what forms hybrid craft practice may take in everyday life, and what new systems or tools could be designed that facilitate this practice. Employing a comparison of physical and digital craft practices, and findings from design work, design guidelines are formulated for effective combination of physical and digital materials, tools, and techniques, and the realisation of interactive hybrid craft results in interaction design, for example by implementing surprising material behaviour within physical-digital combinations, and by realising techniques to work with physical and digital materials in the same materiality realm. Through empirical and theoretical grounding and reflection, this thesis establishes hybrid craft as a novel concept within design research and craft communities that has a wide range of possibilities in everyday life, both in offering ways to do more with digital media, and in encouraging new forms of making and creativity.

This study investigates the role that design and product development plays in crafts enterprises at a grass roots level in development contexts with a particular focus on South India. It argues that design training has a significant role to play in the development of crafts livelihoods by introducing modes of operation in new product development that lead to greater sustainability. A number of research and practical projects in recent decades have indicated the value of design to crafts people in development contexts. A critical review of publications since 1945 and recent practice relating to this area of study, resulted in a range of expectations relating to helpful training techniques and content, the way workshops could be organised and beneficial strategies to facilitate engagement with crafts people. These were tested in a series of field experiments, with the reflections and findings from each experiment informing the design of the next. Throughout the project, an approach which draws on some of the principles of grounded theory was used to analyse and understand the information gathered. During the field experiments immersion was used as a research approach coupled with participant observation and techniques taken from action research to facilitate the gathering of information. An extended practical exploration of strategies for design training in a particular development context has shown that design training can play a significant role in enabling crafts people to develop new products, which meet the needs of users, respond to the market and through this contribute to more sustainable livelihoods. Conclusions based on experience and learning derived from extended practical exploration showed that approaches to people and environments are of equal importance to the content and focus of any training and therefore care needs to be taken in engaging with such groups to facilitate the acceptance and success of any proposed training. These conclusions are encapsulated in key principles of engagement for design practitioners.

This research investigates the way in which Professional Craft Artists (Pro-C Artists) operating in the rural sub-regions of Wales achieve a balance between co-existing, paradoxical motives. Previous studies have identified the existence of both intrinsic and extrinsic motives within the visual arts (Hirschman, 1983; RIPPLE, 1998; Fillis & McAuley, 2005) in, for example, the need to both earn an income and gain self-fulfilment from creative work. Such circumstances are investigated in this study, where the settlement of a satisfactory outcome both in terms of the level of satisfaction and income received can be seen in the production of visual art and craft. Intrinsic and extrinsic motives are considered, alongside external socio-environmental factors including location, materials and networks, in order to investigate paradoxical motives in creative work. Quantitative questionnaires have been used to identify Pro-C Artists operating within Pembrokeshire, Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire and Powys and select seventeen participants who took part in the research. Qualitative interviews are used to identify motives and satisficing approaches used in the visual arts sector. The findings from this research highlight the three main satisficing approaches that are used to manage conflicting tensions. These are presented in the concluding section to explain the significance of managing such tensions within the workplace, and also in relation to current rural strategies and creative support organisations, to consider how investment in the visual arts sector may contribute to rural localities.

This research is a focused investigation of the use of digital production technologies by UK designer-makers. The Critical and Contextual Review begins by examining what is known about the UK designer-maker sector. It considers how making practices relate to history and theories of craft, exploring meanings of key concepts such as ‘skill’ and ‘productive autonomy’. It reviews contemporary digital craft practice, identifying it as a genre and examines both digital economy and digital tool-use trends, relating to craft. The methodology Chapter 3 explains how the pragmatic philosophical approach taken justifies the focus on investigations of experiential practice and the specific mixed methods adopted. A series of experiential case studies looking at emergent practice is analysed using grounded theory techniques and concludes that in using digital tools the maker’s vision is the animating force in an inherently collective endeavour. This chapter is followed by an in-depth practicebased investigation looking specifically at the collaborative potential facilitated by digital possibilities. Chapter 6 presents an analysis of professional views based on interviews that probe the range and extent of technical and creative collaborations. At each stage of the research a reflective enquiry points towards the next step and provides successive iterations of evidence. The thesis that emerges from evidence is the contribution to knowledge of this research. It is that a cross-fertilisation between craft and digital technologies produces a hybrid networked practice that can amount to a new type of technology-enabled and networked craft – Technepractice – in which ‘negotiated collective engagement’ is the driving characteristic. This presents a fundamental challenge to the constructed authenticity of productive autonomy in 20th century studio craft practice. The animation of collective resources, from exteriorised skill embedded in technology to the expertise of technicians and machine operators and the use of digital data sources, requires a re-evaluation of the location and meaning of skill in digital craft practice. A full account of the digital ‘proposition’ for craft, both the opportunities and threats, places digital craft in the context of other digital creative industries and explores possibilities for extending practice from collaborations to digital business models.

This thesis delineates a problem with researching and theorizing about craft. It argues that traditional epistemologies and academic conventions have not given sufficient recognition or value to the epistemologies and lived experiences of craft practitioners, and that they have served to obscure the centrality of practice to meaning. Consequently, there is a need to make craft practice and practitioners accounts more accessible to researchers. It proposes and tests a method using video recordings of practitioners working and interviews with practitioners in the loci of their practice as a tool, which, it is contended, provides a rich source of data about practice so that theory can be generated in a grounded way from practice. It is argued that the idea of 'the crafts' is a late twentieth-century construct, but it has its roots in an ideological and intellectual tradition, expressed in the writing of the nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement. That writing was primarily concerned with the organisation and ownership of labour, with the moral and social purpose of art, and with creativity, given expression through the making process. Since the 1970s, we have seen the emergence of a legitimizing infrastructure for 'the crafts' as a category, separate from but relating to art and design. The institutional craft world attempted to distance itself from Arts and Crafts ideology and from associations with the rural and the traditional. A key feature of the institutional discourse has been attempts to establish a definition of 'craft' as a singular thing within the sphere of its influence. The thesis argues that the problematic relationship between theory and practice stems partly from this disjunction between the institutional craft world and the ideological and intellectual heritage of William Morris and his followers. It demonstrates that data gathered using the method proposed could make a positive contribution to emergent discourses on craft as experience. Within the complexity of the data gathered using the proposed method, concepts and patterns are consistently observed. The subjects are seen to be engaged in self-determined activities which are nevertheless socially situated. They are using knowledge that is embodied and enacted, and which evolves through the practice. The data shifts the focus of critical attention from the objects that are being produced and onto the practice itself. This research method makes craft practices available to the researcher and opens up a critical focus on crafting as intrinsically rewarding activities that are facilitated by learned, embodied competence, based in shared values and standards.

La présente thèse, relative aux matériaux locaux et innovation dans les métiers d’"art-isanat" en Tunisie, vise, dans un premier temps, l'étude des ambiguïtés définitionnelles liées au métiers d’art avec toutes leurs déclinaisons dans le contexte socio-économique et culturel tunisien. Ces métiers seront comparés avec ceux de la France, pays partenaire de la Tunisie,pour en tirer les points de similitudes et de différences pour faire ressortir les principaux moteurs d'expansion. Dans un second temps, notre recherche se tourne vers l’établissement d’un bilan des connaissances des matériaux locaux répartis par régions tunisiennes. La poterie/céramique artisanale et la bijouterie ont constitué les deux créneaux majeurs de notre ensemble d’études. Des argiles locales et des pigments de la Tunisie utilisés ou pas par les artisans (es) dans les métiers liés à la poterie artisanale ont fait l’objet d'une caractérisation scientifique (minéralogique, chimique et géotechnique), réalisée dans des laboratoires spécialisés. Cela a permis d’améliorer les compositions des pâtes d'argiles et de découvrir des couleurs naturelles authentiques pouvant constituer un vecteur d'innovation. D’autres matériaux locaux, comme le quartz fumé bi-pyramidé pour la bijouterie, peuvent constituer un créneau valide et important pour la promotion des métiers d’artisanat en Tunisie. Cette recherche est basée essentiellement sur des analyses scientifiques et des réflexions épistémologiques et s’intègre principalement dans le cadre de la recherche en Design. / The present thesis, relating to local materials and innovation in the craft trades of “art-isanat”in Tunisia, aims, initially, at studying the definitional ambiguities related to craft trades with all their variations in the Tunisian socio-economic and cultural context. These trades will becompared with those of France, Tunisia's partner country, to draw points of similarities and differences to highlight the main drivers of expansion. In a second stage, our research isaimed at drawing up an assessment of the knowledge of local materials distributed byTunisian regions. Artisanal pottery/ceramics and jewellery were the two major niches of ourset of studies. Local clays and pigments from Tunisia used or not by craftsmen in tradesrelated to artisanal pottery have been scientific characterization (mineralogical, chemical and geotechnical), carried out in specialized laboratories. This has allowed us to improve the composition of the clay pastes and discover authentic natural colors that could be a vector ofinnovation. Other local materials, such as bi-pyramid smoked quartz for jewelers, can constitute a valid and important niche for the promotion of crafts in Tunisia. This research isessentially based on scientific analyses and epistemological reflections and is mainly part of the design research.

Au Proche-Orient, l'os, l'ivoire, la corne et l'écaille de tortue ont été exploités pour fabriquer des objets très divers durant les époques hellénistique à byzantine. Or, alors que des objets dans ces matières sont mis au jour sur de nombreux sites, les façons dont les artisans transformaient la matière première en objet fini, de même que leur insertion dans la société à laquelle ils appartenaient, sont encore méconnus. Pour combler ces lacunes, l'étude d'assemblages provenant de contextes dits artisanaux a été réalisée suivant une approche technologique. Adaptée des travaux en Préhistoire et fondée sur le concept de technique en tant qu'action élémentaire sur la matière, cette approche, multidisciplinaire, a pour but de remettre l'artisan et son savoir-faire dans son contexte économique et social. À travers le croisement des données historiques, archéozoologiques et technologiques, nous avons ici tenté de reconstituer les rapports que l'artisan entretient non seulement avec la matière qu'il transforme, mais également avec les autres acteurs de l'exploitation des matières animales (boucher, tanneur), ainsi que sa place dans la société dans laquelle il évolue. / For a period covering Hellenistic to Protobyzantine times - and beyond -, bone, horn, ivory and turtle shell were used to produce a wide variety of items in the Near East. While these items are regularly uncovered on excavation sites, the production processes, as well as the craftsman's place in Hellenistic to Protobyzantine societies, are still poorly understood. To better assess them, collections from so-called artisanal contexts were studied using a technological approach. Set up from a Prehistorian-developed method and based on the concept of the technique as an elementary action on the material, this multidisciplinary approach aims to put the craftsman and his ways of working back into the economic and social context of the society he lives in. Through the study of written, archaeozoological, and technological sources, we searched to understand the relationships not only between the craftsman and the materials he works with, but also between him and the other actors involved with animal materials, as well as to determine his place in the society he is part of.