Page 186 - Constructing Craft

status quo combine[d] with a positive embrace of older but still viable systems of

production’. Therefore, even though craft was a tiny part of all Western economies,
craftspeople served as an important symbol for radicals who operated in the
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pastoral terrain.

Craft could be a reason for New Zealanders to interact with craftspeople and
perhaps observe their lifestyle. Douglas Lloyd-Jenkins noted connections in New

Zealand between the lifestyle of craftspeople and the wider community, pointing out

that some New Zealanders lived vicariously through craftspeople: ‘Buying pottery
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allowed many toadstool dwellers to feel like occupants of the mushroom patch’.
Another feature of the counter-culture that intrigued and scandalised New

Zealanders was communal living. In the late 1960s and early 1970s communes
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were established throughout the country – by 1975 there were about two hundred.
The motivation for establishing a commune might be to share a commitment to an
ideal such as the rejection of private property or anti-consumerism but most

exhibited an element of rebellion – the rejection of conventional ways of living. A
very few built craft studios and operated them in a commercial fashion. And for the

public this presented an opportunity to observe this aspect of the counter-culture in

action.

Centrepoint

A New Zealand example of the link between cooperative communities, members of

the bourgeois elite, and craft, was the Centrepoint Community, which, from 1978,
was based on rural land on the outskirts of Auckland. The community was founded

largely to provide psychological ‘healing’ and ‘personal growth’ for members through
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the techniques its leader, Bert Potter, had learned in communities in America.
Members of Centrepoint, in keeping with the communal and anti-material

philosophy of the community, were required to surrender their assets to the
community, which was run as a trust.

One of the first major projects on the property was the construction of a pottery

studio and kilns. In 1979 it was reported that eight potters, three silversmiths and

Constructing Craft