Page 183 - Constructing Craft

becoming much more socially divergent and young people – many of whom had

voted for Labour – were interested in experimenting with different social structures.
One form of acknowledgement that Kirk made to hippies and others who challenged

conventional society – despite his personal distaste for the self-indulgent nature of
the counter-culture movement – was to offer blocks of government land for groups

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of young people to ‘fulfil their alternative dreams’. Craftspeople also thought about
community groups as a means of fulfilling their dreams of self-sufficiency and

therefore there seemed to be some synchronicity between the studio craft

movement and Labour’s social agenda.

Craftspeople in New Zealand, who saw craft as a means of freeing themselves from

traditional vocations, soon became linked to the movement that Leary had helped
begin. Although craft did offer a way to challenge conventional societal perceptions

the association with the hippies turned out to be a burden that most craftspeople
ultimately tried to distance themselves from. Nevertheless, the way of life that

became associated with ‘hippiedom’ – the long hair (on men), unconventional
clothes, headbands and sandals – became indelibly linked to the studio craft

movement that ascribed certain types of social structures, appearance and

behaviour with craft. In this chapter we will see that the public perception of
craftspeople was coloured by the rural utopian image discussed in Chapter Eight

and the public’s own wish to see craftspeople as ‘different’ and ‘exotic’.

Links with the Past

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Inspired in part by Leary’s mantra, the ‘counter-culture’ movement emerged from
the cities of America in the late 1960s. A feature of the movement was the
conviction that followers, if they were sincere in their belief in an alternative way of

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living, needed to establish their communities in rural areas. This prerequisite was a
part of the hippie preference for the ‘natural over the artificial, the organic over the
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plastic’. In addition, they believed that in the country they ‘could grow and consume
[their] own food free of contaminants, breathe clean air, be naked at will, be close to
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nature and to the cosmic forces.’

Constructing Craft