Page 294 - Constructing Craft

have been a way in which individuals with non-practising
interests in the crafts could contribute, keep in touch and be
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involved in supporting and promoting craft.

Ewing’s description of the CCNZ emphasised its limited appeal to most craftspeople.
The majority of craftspeople in New Zealand felt no affinity with the CCNZ and, with

its small membership base, it was vulnerable.

Failure and Success

Comparing the CCNZ with its British counterpart reveals why one organisation

collapsed while the other continued to prosper well into the future. Neither the BCC

nor the CCNZ catered for the full range of craftspeople that populated their craft
worlds because, as Danto noted, the community they existed in could not agree on

what craft was. In Britain the BCC recognised this and targeted its resources towards
education ‒ the craft artists of the future ‒ and promoting craft art while still

acknowledging where this new work had come from. The BCC portrayed itself as
both the guardian of Britain’s craft heritage and the leader of contemporary craft

artists even if, in practical terms, it gave more support to the latter. The BCC had

enhanced its status in the wider community by becoming involved in aspects of
education at all levels in Britain and it nurtured and funded a new generation of

tertiary-trained artist craftsmen and women who could see a future in education and
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as practising craft artists. It set up structures, for example its Royal Charter, that
gave it credibility and through influential supporters it became the recognised

authority on craft art in Britain. The BCC had, over time, also built up a level of
support that could not be numerically defined in the same way as the CCNZ’s

membership database. Its constituency could not be as clearly classified as the
CCNZ’s, therefore, theoretically, its ‘members’ were ‘all’ craftspeople even if many

had no direct link to the organisation.

The CCNZ, notionally, continued to attempt to directly serve all craftspeople

throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The CCNZ had been most effective and
popular when it was assisting craftspeople in their fight against restrictive

government regulations and laws ‒ particularly when they had no other organisations

Constructing Craft