Page 53 - Constructing Craft

Josephine and Sybil Mulvany, 1928. Photo: Lassig and
Fenwick, eds, The Mulvany Sisters: Weaving & Other
Adventures.

Jewellery and Metalcraft

Jewellery, before and during the Second World War and throughout the period this

book examines, was recognised as a mainstream business in most towns and cities
in New Zealand. Manufacturing jewellers operated from shops and in small factories

and were often involved in the repairing of jewellery and clocks as well. Jewellers

might also create items that could not be categorised as jewellery – teapots,
spoons, boxes – and therefore they should be more accurately described as metal

crafts. Many of the later jewellers also identified in this way and tended to emphasis
the unique nature of the items they produced to distinguish their ‘craft’ from the

‘normal’ jewellery or the metalwork ‘trade’. Jewellers and metalworkers who
identified themselves as studio craftsmen and craftswomen increasingly saw

themselves as ‘artist craftsmen and craftswomen’ but their roots were based in the

jewellery shops and factories of New Zealand or, in a small number of cases, the
European traditions of apprenticeships, guilds and art schools.

Constructing Craft