The false conflict between craftsmanship and design.
Furniture: territory, tradition and New Craftsmanship.
Associació per a l’Estudi del Moble y Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, 2023, Martín Azúa, p. 19-26, Barcelona. 2024.
Abstract
This brief text has been written from the most absolute subjectivity, given the fact that I have been involved in several collaborative projects between craftsmanship and design over the last 20 years. I would therefore like to focus on two issues: the unacknowledged role of craftsmanship as an innovation partner in the field of design and the absurd limitations of “handmade”. My goal is to shatter certain clichés that I believe lessen the possibilities of collaboration between the two disciplines in different ways.
Keywords: craftsmanship, design, collaboration, innovation, materials, technology
Craftsmanship and design as allies for innovation
Usually, when we talk about craftsmanship and design, we tend to understand that the collaboration between both disciplines is something modern and new, but it is not usually mentioned that craftsmanship has historically been an ally for innovation in the field of design. Between designers and craftsmen there is a barrier of mistrust built on prejudice and ignorance of a history full of examples of collaboration between the two disciplines. If we want to look for the origin of this false controversy, perhaps we have to go back to the origins of design. Design arose from the separation between idea and execution. Execution began to be industrial and handcrafted production ceased to be relevant in mass consumer products. It was considered that industrial production prevailed over craftsmanship for reasons of production capacity and price. There is a tendency to think that industry relegated craftsmanship to a very secondary role, but it did not eliminate it. In fact, the first designers already saw in craftsmanship an opportunity to reflect on ethical and quality issues. Since then, craftsmanship has had the unrecognized role of being an instrument for innovation and reflection within the field of design. If we were to list the infinite number of designers who have worked with craft resources throughout the history of the discipline, the list would be as long as it is relevant. Design has made use of industrial resources for consumer products, but has continued to use artisan resources in the field of creation. I would like to see these contributions recognized in key pieces of the history of design, which have been little documented, because, in my opinion, ideas and concept have been considered of a higher rank than the technical resolution of a piece.
This controversy occurs in our country especially when the designer is presented as a kind of magician who modernizes craftsmanship. This does not happen in other countries such as Sweden, Finland, France or Italy, where craftsmanship has equal or greater recognition than design.
Handmade?
According to most accepted history, industrial production and design took over from handmade production, but this was not a sudden process, nor did it affect all areas of production equally. In times prior to the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship had undergone changes to adapt to the ever-increasing demand for objects. Contrary to the idea that craftsmanship did not use machines, the reality tells us that craftsmen have used tools and technical resources to improve production in terms of quality and time. This process is very well explained in Siegfried Giedion’s Mechanization takes over. Many craftsmen became factory workers and, in some cases, were skilled laborers, since they had previous experience in a trade related to the material or manufacturing technique. These artisan technicians became specialized in certain aspects of production and lost control over the entire process, but retained the material culture of their former craft. Craft know-how remained alive and integrated into the companies, especially in terms of knowledge of traditional materials. Today, the prestige of certain companies in the furniture sector is based on the handcrafted finishes of their pieces, even though most of their manufacturing process is industrial. The leading Italian upholstered furniture companies make their products with injected foam, but the upholstery phase is supervised by master upholsterers.
Craftsmanship continued to live on also in rural environments of industrialized countries and, of course, in countries and places where industrialization did not end up arriving. It is curious, for example, the balance that some critics made in the comparison between industrial products and craft objects in the successive universal exhibitions after the Industrial Revolution. It was evident the counterpoint of handcrafted objects, especially Asian, with criteria of material and aesthetic quality in favor of the artisan. Decoration with industrial means is cheap, since it is multiplied through molds and dies, so that the perceived value of the product is higher. Handcrafted decoration involves effort, talent and time. This generated a crisis in the value system. The world was eager to inaugurate a new era and overcome the previous period, but the truth is that the first designers found in craftsmanship a reference in the search for quality against the cheap products of the machines, and also an ethical positioning in relation to work.
A few years ago, Toni Cumella, during a visit to his workshop, gave me a generous and positive definition of contemporary craftsmanship: craftsmanship is R+D+T (research, development and tradition), so simple and forceful. Toni is the son and grandson of ceramists, and among many projects he has collaborated with renowned architectural firms around the world, developing highly complex ceramic coverings and cladding. In his workshop there are sophisticated machines: robotic arms, numerical controls, but he can only develop such projects thanks to his knowledge of the ceramic material that comes from the family tradition. Craftsmanship must be seen as an uninterrupted relationship with tradition, as a link that accumulates material and technological knowledge, which has been evolving and will continue to develop in the future. Why associate craftsmanship with the hackneyed and simplistic “handmade”? Craftsmen have used and still use tools. Why self-limit themselves in relation to technology? It is the only sector where I see this positioning. Today’s ceramists no longer work with clay, they use ceramic pastes developed with technical specifications adapted to each need, they use programmed kilns that treat the temperature cycles in a precise way to achieve results that were unimaginable in other times.
In a meeting I attended with embroidery craftswomen on the island of São Miguel, in the Azores, they expressed their displeasure that some well-known clothing brands used them to develop prototypes that were then produced by machine. Given this, I ask myself a question: will the result obtained by the person operating an embroidery machine be the same as that obtained by a craftswoman who, after having made the prototype, takes responsibility for the mechanized production of her work? Or better still: by a craftswoman who puts all her experience in traditional embroidery at the service of mechanized production. By this I do not mean, of course, that embroidery work cannot be done with needle, thread and a hoop, something that makes perfect sense in the realization of prototypes, unique pieces or very short series, but not for large production. In short, what happens when traditional know-how is complemented with today’s technological possibilities?
Craftsmanship has to overcome the hackneyed “handmade” to open up a future that will be promising as long as it knows how to preserve tradition without renouncing evolution, something that, although it may seem a contradiction, it is not. A technical advance does not have to erase what came before, but simply broadens the range of production possibilities. In a world that is diverse and rich in material cultures, we must not allow ourselves to be impoverished by a globalizing technology that replaces everything else. Craftsmanship has a great role to play in the future, where the sensitive and intelligent use of materials and resources are the key to survival. The world will not be saved with romantic ideas from other eras, but with accumulated knowledge and the future development of new tools and technologies.
Craftsmanship and design collaboration
If we move to the present day, a previous step to the collaboration between craftsmanship and design is the identification of the agents that are going to collaborate, since there are many types of designers and craftsmen. What is craftsmanship? What is design? Definitions tend to delimit, but it is at the boundaries where the most interesting peculiarities occur. I have had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with different profiles of artisans, and each of them implies a different approach and context. If the relationship between companies and designers is governed by formal contracts, relationships between designers and artisans tend to be informal, which generates confusion in the sharing of responsibilities, benefits and recognition.
In many public programs for the promotion of crafts, designers are used as magicians who will modernize crafts by making them contemporary. Artisans are often treated as a homogeneous group whose specific needs are unknown, and expectations are created that are almost never met. Any collaboration should be “very well designed”, for which at least these basic principles should be taken into account: definition of the scope of the project, objectives, methodology, agreements and obligations, benefit sharing, authorship and project credits.
I believe that current circumstances are leading many designers towards a sensibility that is very close to the traditional values of craftsmanship: honesty and rigor in the use of materials, and an awareness of the value of work and the importance of local impact. As a designer, I have always been attracted to craftsmanship, which has been for me the perfect counterpoint to working with companies. These are small-format projects, almost always of personal initiative, with the aim of generating pieces for the exhibitions in which I have participated, or as a viable production alternative for commissions of different types. For me, to collaborate with artisans is to meet people with a high degree of specialization. Usually you come to them with a first commission, but soon curiosity leads you to know more about them and become interested in what they do, what motivates them. These meetings are very inspiring for me as a designer and are the trigger for new, more participatory collaborations on both sides. I usually explain to them what I would like to do and let them propose materials and solutions. And at that point I go back to redesign and put the project together with both sensibilities. Collaboration is dialogue, obviously we have different skills and responsibilities on the project. I take care of the conceptualization, the formalization, the narrative, they take care of the choice of materials, production processes and technical resolution of the piece. It is a process in a continuous dialogue that generates interactions and modifications on both sides, and so finally it is a joint project.
In the development of professional activity there are few opportunities for critical reflection on our own work. Projects follow one another, experience accumulates, but we rarely draw conclusions that can be shared. Collaboration between artisans and designers is an area with a long history and a lot of future possibilities. We have a long way to go in developing methodologies that help us interact without prejudice. Craftsmanship and design have many aspects in common, they have been allies for innovation in terms of quality, ethics and identity and will be in charge of preserving cultural, material and technological diversity in a future that tends towards globalization and uniformity.
