Page 153 - Constructing Craft

It is important for their own self-esteem that the craftsperson is
not treated as a charity or as a poor relation either by the
community at large or by those who are craft administrators. …
I find difficulty in recognising the benefit of so-called assistance
to the whole crafts movement, for example the “no strings
attached” grants to individuals. … Let’s dispel the idea which is
about, that some of us are surviving on handouts of the
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taxpayer’s money.

In the first half of the 1980s two reports, one on full-time weavers and one that

included potters, were released by the Department of Internal Affairs. They showed

that attitudes to income and professional status remained problematic. The 1984
report on weavers attempted to circumvent the amateur versus professional

distinction by stating that: ‘While there are many “professional” weavers in terms of
attitudes to their craft and standard of workmanship there are few weavers who can

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sustain themselves economically as professional full-time weavers.’ Given that the
title of the report included the words ‘full-time weavers’ the comment was revealing.
If most full-time weavers could not earn a livelihood from their craft then was the

term ‘professional’ being subverted? An earlier report included potters and divided
them between those who generated less than 50% of their income from pottery and

those who earned more than 50%, suggesting that above this mark was the domain
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of professionals regardless of whether it represented a viable living income. By
the time the certificate and diploma craft courses were operating in 1986 the model

employed leaned more towards the academic learning environment suggesting that
the middle-class priorities in education – recognised qualifications – had become

the way to define professionalism.

Professionalism in the Marketplace

Economic viability was important to craftspeople but, over time, the crafts being

produced and the market they were selling in changed. Many craftspeople who
earned part or all of their income from the work they sold through craft shops and

fairs were unconcerned about how they were perceived within the art world, but

some, particularly those graduating from the new craft courses, were anxious about
their cultural position as well as their future economic viability ‒ as we will see below

Constructing Craft