Page 296 - Constructing Craft

Chapter Sixteen: What went wrong?

The New Zealand studio craft movement emerged from the worlds of art and industry

in the late 1940s and the 1950s. The movement began like many others – a long

period of growth and maturation – but it experienced a decline more sudden and
dramatic than most others. The craftspeople involved initially demonstrated many

characteristics that are associated with new movements, such as a sense of unity
forged through shared learning and a sense of discovery. However, by 1992, all

pretence of unity had largely disappeared and the movement became divided along
the fissures that had always existed, even when they appeared to have become

irrelevant in the minds of some or not existed at all in the minds of others.

I was a part of the movement but was often puzzled by the conflicting constructions

of craft I observed around me. In 1987 I took part in the New Zealand Society of
Potters annual exhibition at the Sarjeant Gallery in Wanganui. The exhibition is

discussed in Chapter Four. The reaction to the work on display in the exhibition

seemed to encapsulate that dilemma faced by many craftspeople. One of the pieces
of ‘ceramic art’ that was displayed was made by me and was employed as a

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metaphor by the reviewer, Joanna Paul. In the review she expressed concern that
the changing role of potters/ceramic artists was a failure of the craft ideal. The

Gallery Director, Bill Millbank however, believed that the work in the exhibition was

by then indistinguishable from art and praised potters/ceramic artists for successfully
making the transition. Millbank and Paul appeared to be advocating two completely

different roles for craftspeople. From within the craft movement, I was aware that the
craft world was divided. Only a very small number of craft artists could exist solely on

‘one-off art pieces’, but these works boosted the status of the makers ‒ and
increasingly this ‘cultural’ capital appeared to be as important as economic capital in

the craft world I was a part of. I found myself straddling these two different worlds.

When, in the words of the Australian potter and writer Janet Mansfield, ‘the craft

movement proper started in the 1950s and 1960s’ the new generation of craftspeople
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began to think about the history of ‘their’ movement. In New Zealand the people who
first called themselves studio craftsmen and craftswomen considered the largely

Constructing Craft