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I recently came across an article by the artist-ceramicist Grayson Perry - A Refuge for Artists who Play it Safe. I enjoyed reading the thoughts of someone who is an artist but works through, and is skilled at, a craft medium.  He has many good points to make, and in particular it is refreshing to come across a contemporary artist who doesn't downgrade technical skill, and who advocates work in which this is balanced with meaning and beauty.  I found myself less in agreement when he talks of the nature and value of character and spirit in handmade work - what I would call 'soul'.

Perhaps our modern western emphasis on the individual has distorted our idea of the crafts. People want a direct contact with the maker, want something that hasn't got the impersonal perfection of the manufactured. Often what we call character or spirit in an object, especially a functional one, are basically mistakes. I've recently had a Saville Row suit made, and what sets it apart are the things you might call mistakes. It is softer round the edges.

There is some truth in this but it's not quite that simple.  His statement begs the question of why some peoples’ mistakes are so much more appealing and characterful than others.  Many mistakes just make objects less appealing, functional and long-lasting without adding anything positive at all.  People experience this when learning a craft or when doing a task they are not skilled at.  They don’t end up with something with spirit and character - they end up with a mess.  

It’s true that there is a relationship between the innate inaccuracy of the hand and the character of an object, but it’s not a totally straightforward one of 'mistakes equals character'.  As a skilled craft person works, mistakes and inaccuracy are seen and acknowledged, and the work is adjusted to them as it goes forward.  When fitting planks to a boat you might see that the plank you have just put on is not quite aligned with those on the other side; one is now faced with the problem of how to balance that error out as you continue working from one plank to another so that the end result is harmonious.  Skilled making by hand often involves a more or less continuous process of adapting to the unexpected with sensitivity and refinement, and it is that process which puts character and spirit into the work: the work has a sense of life to it because the process of making has given it complexity, and we sense reflected in it the care, thought and skill of the person who made it. Like ourselves the work is imperfect, but interesting.

Grayson goes on to argue that “there's no need for humble tableware or woven hand-made rugs: there's always a manufactured design alternative”.  On a practical level this may be true, but I would argue that the humble tableware and woven hand-made rug, if they are made with thought and care, will often have qualities that are simply not found in the ‘manufactured design alternative’, and that these qualities have never been more needed.

The diversity, sensual depth and complexity of handmade things affect us at the perceptual, visceral level quite differently to industrial products.  They can help to nudge us out of the repetitive, thought-centred, internet-stimulated state which many of us are lulled into by modern work practices and unsympathetic, soulless surroundings;  they encourage us to be present.  Handmade things and places tend to quieten us, and encourage deep psychological processes in exactly the same way that a walk by the ocean or through a woodland does.  Many people still seek out and value handmade things and places for the same reason they seek out nature – because they have qualities which we need.  Seen from this perspective the handmade becomes less ‘an expensive indulgence’ and more a necessary and healthy counterbalance to a tactilely impoverished, over-stimulating, computer-obsessed world; the world in which, as Robert Bly writes, “the neo-cortex is finally eating itself”.

Later in the article Grayson points out that, “there aren't any superstar crafts people [...] and there aren't the high-profile collectors in the world of crafts”, and I wonder why this matters particularly, and why it should devalue craftspeoples' work.  There are very few areas of life where good and useful work is rewarded by superstar status.  Do high profile collectors really matter more than low profile ones?  Craft thrives on qualities like calmness, meticulousness, presence, subtlety, and respect for the past - which are in many ways the antithesis of 'star' culture.  It is a depth process, not a surface process.  

Similarly when he writes that the craft world has become a refuge for less challenging artists I wonder at the apparent assumption that ‘challenging’ is necessarily the most worthwhile focus for creative work.  Is 'challenging' all that the world needs from creative people?  Of course it's important to challenge and look freshly at accepted beliefs and values, but can there be too much challenging going on in a culture, and not enough nurturing, listening and reflecting? Is it actually helpful to be continually deconstructing the values and norms of a culture to the extent that the contemporary Art industry does? Does it make for a stronger, richer and kinder culture and a better world?  Frankly I don’t know – the answers to these questions are far from clear, and certainly not to be taken for granted.

This post is a bit of a cheat in that it is simply a quote I have been wanting to share for a while.  It's from 'The Seven Lamps of Architecture' by John Ruskin, and is the best, most concise defence of handwork I have read. 

Bowls by Robin WoodRuskin writes, "I said early in this essay that handwork might always be known from machine work; observing, however, at the same time, that it was possible for men to turn into machines, and to reduce their labour to the machine level; but so long as men work as men, putting their heart into what they do, and doing their best, it matters not how bad workmen they may be, there will be that in the handling which is above all price: it will be plainly seen that some places have been delighted in more than others - that there have been a pause and a care about them; and then there will come careless bits and fast bits; and here the chisel will have struck hard and there lightly, and anon timidly; if the man’s mind as well as his heart went with his work, all this will be in the right places, and each part will set off the other; and the effect of the whole, as compared to the same design cut by a machine or lifeless hand will be like that of poetry well read and deeply felt to that of the same verses jangled by rote.  There are many to whom the difference is imperceptible; but to those who love poetry it is everything - they had rather not hear it at all than hear it ill read; and to those who love architecture the life and accent of the hand are everything."

I can't really add anything to that - except to note that women make things too....