Page 251 - Constructing Craft

Partnerships

Many craftswomen also worked closely with male partners. Whereas the early

craftspeople often worked in isolation, later craft enterprises, particularly potteries,
were established as partnerships or husband and wife businesses. These

partnerships operated in a variety of ways. Where the craftspeople pursued different
crafts they often worked in separate studios ‒ for instance, the weaver, Philippa

Vine and potter, Christopher Vine. Others, such as the potters May and Harry

Davis, pursued the same craft but refused to identify who made which pots – simply
identifying all their work as ‘Crewenna’ pottery. Other female/male potters, such as

Kathleen and John Ing, worked in the same studio producing individual work. Some

operations, such as Waimea Potteries, divided roles between making and
administration. Partnerships also extended to the places where craft was sold. For

instance, husband and wife, Tina and Kees Hos established New Vision Craft
Centre (later New Vision Gallery) in Auckland in 1965 and it operated until 1986. In

a sense, craft businesses, studios or galleries, functioned in the same way that
many other small businesses operated in New Zealand.

Elevating ‘Women’s’ Craft

By the 1970s craftswomen, along with craftsmen, wished to have the profile of all

craft raised, but were even more determined to have ‘women’s’ craft acknowledged

as an important and vital section of the studio craft movement. Furthermore, they
wanted to have their crucial contribution to craft organisation recognised and

rewarded. In 1975 women’s role in craft’s infrastructure was examined by the Crafts
Council of Australia as a part of the celebration of International Womens’ Year. In

the introduction to the report on their findings April Hersey linked the two issues:

The success of the craft movement in Australia has come
primarily from the exertions of women – not so much in turning
clay and weaving cloth, ... but in political lobbying, in
persistence and in fierce determination not to have craft
denigrated as inferior in some way to the other arts, but
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accepted as a vital living force in the community.

Hersey, again suggesting that the role of women as organisers was of prime

importance in the rise of the movement, noted that by 1975 there were over three

Constructing Craft