Page 198 - Constructing Craft

Art ... is primarily the domain of the person; and the purpose of
art … is to widen the province of personality, so that feelings,
emotions, attitudes, and values, in the special individualized
form in which they happen in one particular person, in one
particular culture, can be transmitted with all their force and
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meaning to other persons or to other cultures.

Mumford believed that people turned to technics for order and power whilst the
need for playful activity, self-directed creation, and significant self-expression

demanded the use of art and symbols.

Mumford’s emphasis on art as playful and creative and technics as ordered nature

bring to mind Collingwood’s distinction between art and craft. Mumford showed

more interest in the struggle between humans and machines than Collingwood, and
he was silent when it came to the differences between art and craft, but he

recognised that art and craft were no longer one and the same. Art and technology
for Mumford were different aspects of technics as originally conceived by the

Greeks and expressed in the word tekne ‒ a derivation of tέχνη ‒ the word that
Collingwood used to describe the original Greek integration of art and craft.

Mumford argued that machines, in conjunction with handcrafts, could have a
civilising and healing influence. He believed that some machines had the ability to

help people establish security in their lives. He used weaving to illustrate his point.
Citing research by psychiatrists, he claimed crafts such as weaving demonstrated

the healing power of mechanical order. He concluded that ‘once the warp is set and
the threads chosen, only the smallest play of freedom is left in the casting of the

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weft.’ The limitations imposed, according to Mumford, gave humans a respect for
the nature of the materials and processes and forced them to ‘recognize that there
are certain conditions of nature that can be mastered only if [approached] with

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humility, indeed with self-effacement.’ Mumford’s notions may have been
influenced by the way crafts such as weaving were used to rehabilitate soldiers after
the First World War. Helen Hitchings, who established one of the first craft galleries

in New Zealand in 1949, learned a number of crafts, including weaving, during the
four years she spent in Wellington Hospital after contracting tuberculosis during the

Second World War, and she credited this therapy with sparking her interest in
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crafts.
Constructing Craft