Craft is the unification of the work of the hand and the work of the mind through material to produce an object with meaning. A craftsman is he or she who engages in the process of making with conscious intent and engagement with material and a broader scope of people and nature. Today, advances in mechanization and industry have allowed us to embrace a passivity that leaves us disconnected from the world and other people. We can look to craft, particularly with wood, as an antidote for this loss of connection. Through material specificity, the way handwork can offer the maker meaning about the place of the self in the world, and the way in which it illuminates the greater network of people, objects, and nature in which the maker exists, craft is a vehicle by which to produce knowledge otherwise unavailable through today’s methods of production and consumption. Through a personal account of the process of making a rocking chair out of wood and an examination of past and current scholarship surrounding craft and ontological aspects of identity, perception, and experience, the following examination, in conjunction with the actual process of making, aims to create a place for dialogue in the space between aesthetic philosophy and craft, creating a new paradigm for the role and definition of hand work today. It is an inquiry into the relationship between making and the production of knowledge. / text

The dissertation studies sixteenth-century German artists' manuals (Kunstbüchlein), a new kind of book that addresses certain types of artistic practices. The Kunstbüchlein testify to and shape transformations of knowledge in early modern Europe. Disseminating practical knowledge in printed form, they endowed craft know-how with a form of authority until then reserved for the liberal arts. They aimed also to reconcile theoretical and practical knowledge, what Albrecht Dürer (the crucial forerunner to the authors of the Kunstbüchlein) termed respectively Kunst and Brauch. Authors Sebald Beham, Heinrich Voghterr, Heinrich Lautensack, and Erhard Schön sought to provide accessible, useful knowledge. Focused on a limited set of topics, they pretended to be closer to practice and to respond more effectively to the needs of their apprentices than Dürer and others in their publications. In fact, the Kunstbüchlein did not mediate Brauch, but show instead what their authors understood Brauch to be. Emphasizing the hands-on acquisition of knowledge through looking, reading, and doing, the Kunstbüchlein placed the printed image, whether as schematic diagram or finished illustration, at the core of the didactic process. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation is situated at the crossroads of sociology, anthropology, and marketing. Theories of the former two disciplines inform phenomena of the latter. The focal phenomenon is the role of aestheticized markets in contemporary formations of middle-class masculinity and femininity in the U.S. Aestheticized markets are those that incorporate refined notions of beauty, originality, and superiority. This process has been a core force in the expansion of consumer markets in early and late capitalism. In addition to opening up new markets, the aestheticization of markets opens up new subjectivities. It instills in individuals the desire to better themselves through the quest for novel, sensory-pleasing experiences, and it offers them renewed resources to define their social affiliations. My dissertation studies the formation of gendered and classed subjectivities using the empirical contexts of two middle-class, gendered markets that have been recently aestheticized in the U.S.: craft beer and knitting. Unlike three decades ago, craft beer drinkers can now indulge in a variety of flavors and premium styles, produced by more than 3,000 breweries. Likewise, knitters can now indulge in a variety of colors and premium fibers, as noted by a number of high-circulation magazines and scholarly papers. I studied these markets for about four years, conducting participant-observation, interviews, and document analysis. The results of this fieldwork are organized in two empirical chapters. The first focuses on the institutional and non-institutional processes that alter middle-class men's relationships with the aesthetic dimension of a particular market; the empirical context is craft beer. The second empirical chapter documents how middle-class women deploy the ideological and material resources provided by aestheticized markets in gender struggles; the empirical context is knitting. Together, these chapters explicate how gender positions shape the way middle-class individuals learn and display aesthetic expertise. The knowledge of these processes provides both theoretical contributions to the literature on taste, class, and gender, and managerial insight into how market institutions can develop programs that initiate a meaningful, long-term engagement with consumers based on classed and gendered approaches to aesthetic involvement.

The act of creating anything, from a novel to a simple meal to a building, requires the combination of many elements. Broadly speaking, these elements are technique, technology, and materiality, the three of which are bought into combination according to the intent of the maker. The effects of the combination of these elements can be very powerful. One need only call to mind the cool, damp weightiness of stepping inside a church whose walls are made of solid stone or to contrast this experience with that of picking up a lightweight rowing shell whose thin wood frame and taut fabric skin combine amazing strength with impossible slenderness. These experiences amaze and move us because the various elements that brought them into being are combined in a harmonious way and one that is aligned with a poetic ambition. This is not to say that all three elements need to be mixed in equal proportions or that there is a hierarchy of importance; it is the mixing that is essential, not the presence of any one element. A specific focus of this thesis is technology and the way that architects use it and are shaped by its use. Many architects have rushed to embrace recent advances in digital design and fabrication tools, forgetting that that the act of making requires the convergence of a number of forces. Focussing too much attention on one will often come at that detriment of another. Through a series of projects, this thesis explores a number of methods of designing and making. The projects undertaken range from a series of hand carved spoons, to sculptural, physical translations of flowing water, through to the full-scale realization of a suspended ceiling for the North House prototype. An effort has been made to work across a variety of scales, and to employ as wide a range of techniques and technologies as possible. These projects have afforded a kind of research through making, one that engages the entire body rather than merely the mind, and which has been supplemented with more traditional means of research. In addition to the role of technology in architectural practice, attention has been paid to the relationship between ways of making and time, and to the way in which certain artists, designers, and architects are able to slow, compress, or even transcend time. A series of brief case studies serves to illustrate how this is possible while also describing a set of values against which the work of this thesis can be calibrated. By its very nature this thesis takes the form of an ongoing project, one in search of a somewhat elusive goal. The path that a powerful and moving project must take is often full of uncertainty. If I am certain of anything however, it is that achieving the proper mixture of elements requires patience, persistence, and a willingness to let a project take on a life of its own.

My thesis examines how identity was constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century amidst the growing possibilities of the cross-cultural transfer of ideas and products by analysing case studies of women-owned and -operated craft organisations: Limerick Lace and Clare Embroidery (Ireland) and the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework (United States). I contend that the increased accessibility of print culture, travel and tourism, and World’s Fairs enabled the women responsible for these craft organisations to integrate a pastiche of artistic influences – those recognised as international, national, and local – in order to create a specific and distinct style of craft. The Arts and Crafts movement, with its ideas about art, craft, design, and display, provided a supra-national language of social and artistic reform that sought to address the harshness of industrialisation and to elevate the status of craft and design. The national framework of revival movements – the Celtic Revival in Ireland and Colonial Revival in the United States – promoted the notion that Folk and peasant culture was fundamental to each country’s heritage, and its preservation and renewal was essential to fostering and legitimising a strong national identity. I critically access the way these case studies, which were geographically separate yet linked through chronology, gender, and craft, operated within these international and national movements, yet they negotiated these larger ideologies to construct identities that also reflected their local circumstances. My intention is to unite social history with material culture in order to investigate the ways in which the discussion and display of the crafts, and the artistic components of the textiles themselves operated as a vehicle for establishing identity. / Thesis (Master, Art History) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-05 23:54:49.895

This research seeks to elucidate the role of relatively large-scale ceramic productionindustries located at the Classic period center of Matacapan in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, SouthernVeracruz, Mexico. Arnold et al. (1993) have suggested that the specialized production atComoapan, the largest production locality at Matacapan, was oriented toward supplying theregion with ceramics. This production locality overwhelmingly specialized in manufacturingone standardized ware, Coarse Orange, into necked and neckless jars, which are found in manyparts of the region.The compositional techniques of instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) andpetrography were employed to investigate the distribution of this ware. Control groups weresampled from known production loci at Matacapan. The data does reveal strong evidence thatCoarse Orange was traded from Matacapan to other sites in the Tuxtlas. Comoapan was themost likely producer for this trade. Equally as important, this research yielded several differentcompositional groups, which indicates sites that either did not interact with Matacapan to procurethis ware, or who produced their own varieties of Coarse Orange. While Matacapan seems tohave had economic influence over parts of the Tuxtlas, the distribution of non-Matacapancompositional groups is useful to delineate areas of the Tuxtlas who display minimal economicinteraction with this regional center.

Grasping the wooden handle of a dozukime saw with both hands, I make a rip-cut into a block of eastern white pine, leaving behind a 1/64-inch wide kerf. I am cutting a dovetail: a wood joint developed over five-thousand years ago by the hands of our ancestors. Even now, a well-fitted dovetail joint remains one of the strongest, most elegant ways to join wood. I knew nothing about traditional woodworking when I first picked up a hand-plane, but I was soon inspired by the richness of the craft: the quality of a hand-planed finish, the spirit of craftsmanship, and the nature of material. I was amazed by the wealth of knowledge embodied in craftwork. The tools and materials I encountered spoke to me; I learned to care for them and for my work. How would the things I make endure through time? How would the things I make affect others? In an era where materialism has come to represent a spiritless relationship to the things around us, traditions of craft can teach us how to imbue the human spirit in our work. After making a harvest table, four chairs, ninety-four earthenware pots, and a lamp, I reflect on the act of making as a means of discovery. Making affects our thinking and our approach to material and environment. Making can help us develop a craftsman???s capacity to listen, a great respect for material, and a desire to make better objects for posterity. Making is learning.

Humans are surrounded by objects. The human-object interaction is more frequent than the human-human interaction. The history of objects is as old as the history of human beings. This fact establishes and defines their meanings in a social and cultural context. This essay aims to look at the established meanings of corpus objects and possibilities of developing new meanings of tableware and other objects related to table in contemporary craft. To investigate if the perception of the object changes with the change of material or its formal aesthetics. How can the meanings of the objects and their identities be altered  or substituted? Do we recognize the objects the same way if their form and function is altered? What role does material play in how one reads an object? This essay looks at the importance of objects and the role they play in our daily life. To explore what lies in an object beyond its function and the notion of materiality, what can be the boundaries and limitations of our perception, understanding and tradition of objects?

In this arts-based study, I will discuss using craft techniques such as crazy quilting in the creative process of making art. The paper describes the history of crazy quilts, a brief summary of artists who use quilts as a medium, and a description of how teaching craft-making skills in the classroom can encourage students to use them for art-making.

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