Page 199 - Constructing Craft

In his book, Art and Technics, written after the Second World War, Mumford
examined the dilemma that many artists and craftspeople struggled with – the

contradiction between advanced technology that promised to enhance modern life
and the horrors of conflict and poverty recently experienced ‒ which had also been

magnified by technology. Mumford suggested that the great works of art of the past,
such as symphonic music, were not only acts of protest but also superb examples

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of engineering. Since that time, Mumford claimed, technology had increasingly
become the master rather than the servant. He maintained that ‘modern man
patterned himself upon the machine’ and ‘Western man [had] sought to live in a

nonhistoric and impersonal world of matter and motion, a world with no values
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except the value of quantities’. Mumford was suggesting that the protest about
machines was really a protest about the loss of order, value, and purpose in

people’s lives.

Rather than advocating a withdrawal from a corrupt world however, Mumford
suggested readapting machines to the human personality. Mumford prophesised

that if professional craftspeople and designers did not adapt machinery to human

needs then the future of craft lay with amateurs. He did not mean this in a
disparaging way; rather he was suggesting that ‘the professionals’ ‒ those who

designed the factory-made products ‒ needed to retain the individuality and
humanism of ‘amateurs’ in their designs. Mumford was suggesting a second level of

production ‒ a level that craftspeople could occupy ‒ that would provide an example
to industry. In Britain the training of craftspeople would take this into account but in

New Zealand, where industries that needed such assistance were rare, Mumford’s

ideas were largely unknown amongst craftspeople and even those who may have
heard of him probably saw no connection to studio craft. There was one exception –

Harry Davis.

Constructing Craft