Page 201 - Constructing Craft

Davis maintained his support for Mumford for the rest of his life. In 1986, for

instance, he chastised those in the nineteenth century who had condemned
machines. He suggested that the ideas about the evils of machinery that were

evident in the craft movement developed when:
eminent men pointed the finger on this theme, but … mostly in
the wrong direction. Ruskin, William Blake and J. J. Rousseau
all had their mistaken rant about machines. … The real foe, as
Mumford makes historically so clear, is that great invisible
organisational machine called variously the system, the
establishment, which he terms the megamachine. … It is
essentially a product of civilisation and also the prolonged event
that led to the widespread view that work is a curse which
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should be avoided if possible.

Mumford and Davis attempted to rationalise the place of technology in the modern
world by extending the definition of the machine to include all aspects of the

structure of modern industrial society. Exchanges between craftspeople however,
indicated that many limited their opposition to machinery per se. As we have seen in

the debate over a pug mill, in New Zealand there was often a confused
understanding at the grass roots level of the movement about what was being

resisted and why. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, many ‘craft artists’ and visual

arts (craft) graduates became deeply immersed in the capitalist system. Some
undertook commission work for corporate organisations, others were designing for

industry, and some won prizes in competitions sponsored by large corporations.
Resistance to technology appeared to be more of a restricting ideology than a

liberating one. In the next chapter we will see how some craftspeople managed this
new relationship with industry.

Work

Many craftspeople held the conviction that their working life was an ideal that

offered a model for the wider community or was a form of resistance to the

managed society. In New Zealand in 1985 a research project involving a group of
‘full-time’ studio potters was undertaken to study the ‘craft ideal’. The ‘craft ideal’
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was defined as an idealised model of work gratification. It consisted of six major
features: there is no ulterior motives other than the product being made and the

process of creation; the details of daily work were meaningful because they were

Constructing Craft