Page 12 - Constructing Craft

and Crafts Movement, as it became known, played an important role in the

formation of the later studio craft movement in New Zealand. In the lives of some
of New Zealand’s first craftspeople we see how they continued to produce their

craft whilst contending with increasing industrialisation, and how they
established themselves in the new physical and cultural environment.

Craftspeople in New Zealand looked to British and European craft traditions but

they were also influenced by New Zealand’s trade and domestic-based craft

practices. Often craftspeople in New Zealand would not have called themselves
craftsmen or craftswomen, rather considering themselves to be tradesmen, or in

the case of women, housewives who made items needed in the home or for sale

at fund-raising events. The later craftspeople needed to learn skills that had
become increasingly rare. They sourced this knowledge by observing the few

remaining specialists in their field of interest: the potters still making pottery on a
wheel; the weavers who spun their own wool and used a hand operated loom;

the furniture makers who made each component instead of assembling factory-
made parts; and the leatherworkers who kept the wheels of agriculture turning.

Europeans were not the only craftspeople in New Zealand. But for many settlers,
and later craftspeople, the arts and crafts of New Zealand’s first inhabitants, the

Māori, were irrelevant in their daily lives and therefore only of marginal interest –
unless the designs used by Māori could contribute a sense of ‘New

Zealandness’ to the objects created by European craftspeople. It was quite late
in the evolution of the studio craft movement that the true value of Māori arts and

crafts was recognised and those looking back for guidance and inspiration

struggled with the cultural divisions created by decades of neglect.

Craftspeople experienced rejection and condescension when they claimed a

place in the world of art or attempted to produce work that could be defined as
both art and craft. As the number of exhibitions where craftspeople could show

their work multiplied and as prizes in competitions increased in value, deciding if
an object was craft or art became increasingly difficult. To many craftspeople the

work that was made every day for craft shops around New Zealand was not
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‘unique’ enough for these ‘special’ occasions. For others the seeking of
Constructing Craft