Page 94 - Constructing Craft

Davis was convinced that commercialism, in effect capitalism and individualism, had

divided the arts and crafts and, furthermore, it had aligned art with the ruling classes
and creativity while craft was aligned to the rest of the population and identified with

drudgery. Creativity became a tool to be used to exert power. The ruling class
suppression of creativity amongst craftspeople was achieved through the demands

of employers:

[T]hose who followed the other arts, i.e. the craftsman or
artigani, were losing their freedom and their dignity in the
interests of commerce. Furthermore one must keep in mind the
effect of repetition under the orders from an employer, with the
added circumstance of subdivision of tasks, which had an
inevitably dire impact on the element of creative sparkle in work
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done.

In 1986, the year he died, a bitter article written by Davis under the title ‘Hand Craft
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Pottery, Whence and Whither’, was published in the New Zealand Potter. In it
Davis identified five strands leading to the craft ‘revival’ and how the dominant

influence was class. The strands included the post-Renaissance separation of art
from other aspects of ordinary life, the collecting cult of ‘“gentlemen”’, the rise and

fall of social protest linked to crafts (the Arts and Crafts Movement), the teaching of
craft in art schools and finally, the setting up of St Ives Pottery in 1920 by Leach and

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his Japanese colleague Shōji Hamada. Linking class and status, Davis claimed
that ‘Leach had been saying repeatedly that pottery and potters must be given the

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status and prestige accorded to painters and sculptors.’ This, Davis suggested,
led to the use of the title ‘Artist Potter … the pathetic obsession with the desire for
recognition …’ and finally to the linking of language and class.

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Staite-Murray at the Royal College was soon heard to be
saying that an Artist Potter must at all cost avoid involvement
with function. All this was gradually reflected in the use of
language. Things were renamed and acquired subtle overtones
of class. An apprentice became a student, a shop was called a
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gallery and the potter’s place of work became a studio!

Davis in 1986, twenty-four years after arriving in New Zealand, continued to relate
the art/craft debate to events at an earlier time in Britain. He had nothing to say

about the craft movement in New Zealand; partly because his formative experience

was in Britain; partly because he remained detached from the craft community while

Constructing Craft