Page 103 - Constructing Craft

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degenerated into the arty-crafty.’ The move by some craftspeople to attempt to
break out of their traditional realm was not to be encouraged.

In an ironic twist thirty-eight years later, Joanna Paul, Janet Paul’s daughter, and
also a painter and critic, hinted that the attempt by craftspeople to move into the

world of art was still not to be wholly endorsed. The exhibition she chose to make
her statement about the relationship between craft and art was the 1987 New

Zealand Society of Potters annual exhibition. The location was the Sarjeant Gallery

in Wanganui and demonstrated that pottery had already moved into art’s natural
territory – prestigious public art galleries. In an article entitled, ‘Don’t Lift by the

Handles’, Paul commented:

An elegant Egyptian jar dominated a vista at the Sarjeant …
Peering inside I saw a card “Don’t lift by the handles”.* But how
is a ‘handle’ better than a handle, on a vessel that is catalogued
as ‘vessel’? I don’t question the integrity of the maker, but the
euphoric idea that art is somehow better or other than use. In
traditional art, function and meaning are inseparable. … How
can a ‘handle’ go beyond a handle? The language of
transcendence peppers the talk of ceramic artists. As a
practitioner of one of the useless arts – painting – I envy the
thingness of the pot and lament the impoverishment of daily life
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by the flight of the potter.

Joanna Paul, presumably viewing the exhibition before the opening and perhaps

hoping to encourage debate, could not resist the opportunity to comment on the
conundrum the studio crafts faced. She believed that the crafts were moving away

from what she considered their natural territory and she regretted the move.
Certainly, by trying to distance themselves from the tradition and ‘usefulness’ of

craft, craftspeople were entering a world where the rules were set by the art world

and for many it was unexplored territory. In this new world craftspeople were
exposing themselves to “art-guilt” if they reverted to ‘merely [making] a pot, a chair,

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a knife, a coat, or an engagement ring’.

Nevertheless, Paul’s use of the terms ‘ceramic (clay) artist’ and ‘potter’ in the same

paragraph suggested that those working with clay were straddling two different
zones and, to some extent, also acknowledged the changes that had taken place in

this medium during the thirty-eight years since Janet Paul’s review. Clearly, if the

Constructing Craft