VG&P

Design Junction 2011

The Meaning of Modern Craft
by
Aidan Walker

"The Meaning of Modem Craft'' is a subject close to my heart. I have dedicated a seminar session at design junction to this subject matter and I'm interested in seeing whether the eminent practitioners who have agreed to take part are eloquent on the subject of craft - and craftsmanship - in the digital age. Let's stick to furniture making in this specific context. We can open it out as the idea develops but, here and now, it's clear that more than a few generations of furniture making have passed since mechanisation, and even digitally controlled mechanisation, began to reliably deliver the accuracy that craftspeople toiled so hard to achieve. What's more, it is
accuracy with consistency. Set your saw up for 101.37mm, and that's what it will cut, time after time. My own making days were coming to an end just as thi,s generation of automation was kicking in, so I don't have much first hand experience, but I do know that the machinery now takes a great deal of the headache out of producing first class furniture. But it doesn't take away all of it. Arguably, it has freed the best bit- the flow of ideas, of creative intelligence - from the necessity to think and act mechanically. You just do the arty part and the machines will take care of the rest. It isn't as simple as that, of course, but it's a position to take for the sake of this argument. It's also the case that digital technology in furniture making as in architecture, music or a thousand other arenas of human creativity, is allowing ideas to take shape that were simply impossible before. Norman Foster's much publicised roof of the British Museum's Great Court, for example - thousands of irregular shaped piece of glass, none of them the
same as any other - would be unthinkable, never mind undesignable and unmakeable, without computers.

The digital capability, it seems to me, has r actually concentrated our understanding of craft. Now there is no possibility that the mechanical making process gets in the way of the idea - and, perhaps more important for this debate - the attitude. For that is the heart of true craft, and indeed craftsmanship; the commitment, the determination to get it absolutely right whoever will or won't see it, the mentality that makes the maker his or her most important, most demanding and hardest to please client. Who cares about secret dovetails? They're secret aren't they? No one will see them, right? I care, because I'm making this chest of drawers, and it's going to be the finest chest of drawers the world has ever seen, even if only one person knows how exquisitely crafted those secret dovetails are.

It's a difficult attitude to communicate to those who don't 'get it' at first hand. If the drawer works just as well without secret dovetails over the life of the furniture as it does with, then why bother in the first place? Because that is craftsmanship - it's bothering, it's caring. Truth to tell, and don't flinch, because I'm not being hippy dippy here - it's a love thing. If you love your work and perform it with love, you are automatically a craftsperson. You won't be satisfied with a product that you know you could have done better. If you just pull levers and push buttons all day you're a production operative who leaves at the end of the day with no worries; none of the headaches suffered by the people who see themselves in their work. It's lamentable but true that a significant amount of the manual skills needed to make a piece of furniture out of a piece of tree are pretty much gone. To continue on the dovetail theme, I could turn a tidy hand-cut one, but I never learnt the secret of secret dovetails. A couple of generations before me it was standard. Now even well-crafted furniture has machine made dovetail joints. It may or may not mean that that piece is less well crafted; ultimately, the key is in the mind, not the hands, of the maker. That's why the digital age and premium craftsmanship can live happily together. Or that's my humble opinion, anyway. I look forward to seeing what my distinguished panel thinks.

The Meaning of Modern Craft' seminar takes place at 1:30pm
on 24 September at designjunction. See pages 24 and 25 for
the complete seminar programme.
12 I 13