Page 89 - Constructing Craft

suggested that the index was ‘possibly the most damaging action on membership
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for many years.’

The ensuing storm of debate played out in the letters column of New Zealand
Crafts. When Scott became President in late 1987 he acknowledged the criticism

and suggested:

[T]hat in its current form, the index caters only for the “art” end
of the scale. There is an overemphasis on the artistic content of
the work. Where does the person who produces a hundred
fabulously made chairs or thousands of perfectly made mugs fit
into our craft index? Currently the suggestion is they haven’t got
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a place on it.

The problem that Scott had identified was never satisfactorily resolved and probably
contributed to the CCNZ’s demise in 1992.

Māori had been cautious from the beginning. Nga Puna Waihanga (the national

body of Māori Artists and Writers) was asked to assist with the selection of Māori
craft but they responded ‘that they would need more time to think about it and to

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see if inclusion is even appropriate to their own view of craft/art/culture.’

The CCNZ was established to represent ‘all’ craftspeople but clearly was sending

out messages that it intended to represent some craftspeople (most likely craft
artists) more than others. And those who would be best represented would almost

certainly be the craft artists who appeared in the Index.

In his research Bourdieu discovered that groups of professionals used rules to

maintain social hierarchies. The CCNZ’s support for professionals and the formation
of the Index suggest it was attempting to reward those who had similar social and

educational backgrounds – professionalism was being measured by the amount of

cultural and symbolic capital a craft artist possessed. A group of well-educated,
middle-class craft artists who believed that the future of craft lay within the art world

employed their cultural, social and symbolic capital to create different fields for craft
and craft art. But many craftspeople straddled both fields – wanting to amass

economic, cultural and symbolic capital. With the failure of the CCNZ to establish
authority over craft the social network that may have allowed them to increase all

Constructing Craft