Page 200 - Constructing Craft

Lewis Mumford (1895 – 1990). Mumford believed that
craftspeople could lead the way in the harnessing of
technology to human needs. Photo: Eugene Halton.

Harry Davis

12
Harry Davis, an avid reader of philosophy, was an admirer of Mumford. Like
Mumford he believed that technology needed to be controlled. In the words of his

wife, May Davis, he ‘believed that in the interests of economics, if nothing else,

mechanical aids should be used anywhere they did not affect the aesthetics of the
13
end product, or degrade the life of the worker.’ He also believed that craftspeople
did not understand technology or how it could contribute to craft production and he
suggested that craftspeople should not take a purist approach. He proposed putting

aside the anti-machinery position inherited from the Arts and Crafts Movement and
the more recent reluctance to accept contemporary business systems. Davis used

the example of ‘vertical integration’ in large industrial enterprises as a way that

craftspeople could learn from technology. He understood vertical integration to be
‘the quest for the greatest possible control, within an organisation, of all the relevant

activities from the extraction of raw materials to the production and even the
14
retailing of the ultimate products.’

Constructing Craft