Page 174 - Constructing Craft

Jack and Peggy Laird

Jack Laird, an art lecturer with experience in pottery, wrote a paper in 1960 that

outlined his thinking about the relationship between craftspeople and the
countryside. He believed that craft had a role in combating rural depopulation but

felt that this role had not been examined to any great extent in New Zealand. His
knowledge of the Rural Industries Bureau (RIB) in Britain informed his thinking. He

called for a more rational approach.

So much indifference for so long, and after it, over-enthusiastic,
but muddled thinking, allied with a degree of preciosity, has left
in the minds of many, a distorted image of the craftsman and
his relationship with our present society. This may range from
the romantic – the Hebridean crofter weaving on a rocky isle,
aimed at attracting tourism – to the artist-craftsman’s cult of the
back-to-the-land movement which produced highly
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sophisticated products for highly sophisticated townsfolk.

Laird was not dismissing the rustic image in its entirety but he believed that what

should be encouraged lay somewhere between the two extremes. He criticised the
limited use of the rural environment he observed. ‘It is a measure of the failure to

take account of an overall picture of the situation in New Zealand that has led to the
idea that the countryside is for farming and nothing else. And this is the prevailing

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attitude. It seems to be the limit of official interest.’ He suggested that rural labour
shortages and the declining rural population may have been due to the better

leisure and educational facilities in towns and cities, but he believed:

that there are sufficient potential workers who, by living in the
country, could bring diversity, and enrich it, and at the same
time gain for themselves a more satisfying life. Allied with this is
the contention that there are many small industries and craft
workshops which could function equally well, and perhaps with
lower rents, rates, and so on, even more efficiently in the
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country than the city.

The question was – how was this to be done? Laird outlined the RIB’s plan to

overcome the problem of rural population decline in Britain. He detailed its advisory

role, loan schemes and the numerous other ways it worked to slow the decline. He
was conscious of the differences between the British and New Zealand rural

Constructing Craft