Page 289 - Constructing Craft

demonstration (presumably covering her weavings in wood shavings); ceasing

communication with offending exhibitors; harassing other craft show organisers and
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exhibitors or pre-empting opposition shows.

The Dunkleys through a letter to the CCNZ from their solicitors denied all the

accusations and threatened defamation action unless an apology was printed in the
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next issue. The apology they prepared was not published but after negotiations a
letter from Toby Dunkley explaining the NZCS’s position was published. The matter

was also taken up with Greig but the CCNZ’s solicitors believed the absence of a
settlement by late-1989 was not a matter for concern, although there was a slight risk

that the publication of the letter from NZCS would be followed by a complaint or

threatened action by Beverley Greig. The actions of the CCNZ to ensure it did not get
dragged into litigation had shown, in certain circumstances, craftspeople would need

to look to their own resources as Cape had predicted.

The Fight for Survival

In the late-1980s and early-1990s the CCNZ, like the BCC, was about to be placed

under the financial spotlight. In many respects the causes were similar – an attempt

by neo-liberal governments in both countries to reduce public spending. Furthermore,
although both the CCNZ and the BCC had become the national organisations

supposedly representing professional artist craftspeople, both faced criticism for not

representing the majority of craftspeople. The BCC, in one form or another, had been
in existence for over forty years. It had been managed by salaried staff from the

beginning and although it did not have paying members as such, it had built up
sufficient support within the craft community and within sections of the political

establishment, to survive. The CCNZ on the other hand, now managed by a salaried
staff rather than volunteers, was barely a decade old. With a membership of slightly

more than one thousand and declining, almost no political patronage and with debts

mounting, it collapsed.

Constructing Craft