Page 278 - Constructing Craft

with a New Zealand branch, indicated that some craftspeople were considering

aspects of craft that went beyond the purely technical and social.

By 1978 the NZWCC was positioning itself as the principal national craft
organisation. It became an incorporated society and was renamed the CCNZ. Initially

the CCNZ’s primary function was to act for the WCC, but it soon became clear that it
needed to establish a position in New Zealand that would distinguish it from the

major craft-specific organisations. In attempting to do this it created friction within the

studio craft movement. This friction largely centred on the issues of standards and
management which would trouble the movement for the next fifteen years. An

example of this early disharmony is evident in the letter Dorothea Turner, the

founding President of the New Zealand Spinning, Weaving and Woolcrafts Society
(NZSWWS) and a foundation member of the NZWCC executive committee, wrote to

the CCNZ in 1978 resigning her individual membership. Her action appears to have
been sparked by a decision the CCNZ made to assist the artist Guy Ngan coordinate

an exhibition of mixed craft planned for the Christchurch Arts Festival in November
1978. In her letter Turner suggests that the standards set by the NZSWWS were

being questioned by the CCNZ – perhaps as a result of the decisions Ngan had
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made about what would be included in the exhibition. Turner, representing the
traditional approach to her craft, was questioning the incursion of the art world into

the world of craft. It was an example of the types of arguments and disagreements
that would threaten the unity of the CCNZ in the late 1980 and early 1990s.

Membership Difficulties

The CCNZ needed paying members to partly fund its operation, but more

importantly, it needed members to give validity to its claim to be the representative
body of craftspeople in New Zealand and the ultimate authority on quality. This

resulted in a series of compromises that created an executive structure that was

unwieldy. During its formative period, in the late-1970s, the bulk of the CCNZ’s
funding came from Lottery Board grants, therefore the need to establish an

authoritative ‘voice’ held a higher priority than recruiting paying members.

Constructing Craft