Page 276 - Constructing Craft

Chapter Fifteen: United We Stand

New Zealand’s Craft World

Craftspeople were reliant on networks to achieve their goals and to gain recognition.
However, the conundrum, as the President of the World Craft Council, Maria

Garrard, observed was that: ‘Craftsmen ... [were] all very much individuals and I think
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they felt they might lose their autonomy if they became joiners.’

In New Zealand, as the interest in craft expanded, hobbyists, craft professionals and
craft supporters formed groups that served different functions according to the needs

or ambitions of their members. Aspects of the characteristics discussed in Chapter

Five (integrated professionals, mavericks, naïve artists and folk artists) could be
found within the studio craft movement. The groups that formed in New Zealand

might consist of informal clusters of hobbyists (naïve craftspeople) who met as much
for companionship as the advancement of knowledge of their craft. Māori carvers

and weavers worked cooperatively and could be likened to folk crafters ‒ but they
also exhibited characteristics of the integrated professional. National organisations

provided technical and professional services or promoted the work of integrated, and

sometimes maverick, craftspeople. When tensions developed in New Zealand it was
between two opposing philosophies, each supported to a greater or lesser degree by

different types of craftspeople. The divisions were between, on the one hand a
professional craft/artist group, and on the other a wider, mainly amateur, group,

which represented the traditional and popular side of modern craft practice.

A Warning from Peter Cape

The formation of organisations by craftspeople created problems within the studio

craft movement. The craft writer Peter Cape warned that organisations formed to
support members could evolve to subvert the original reasons for their existence: ‘I

believe that any society concerned with human activity becomes a danger to its

members when it ceases to exist for their common support and assistance and
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becomes concerned principally with the maintenance of “standards”.’ He identified a

Constructing Craft