Thinking through Craft

Abstract

Peter Dormer's excellent edited volume The Culture of Crafts (1995) considered the status and future of craft at the close of the twentieth century and was a key development in the mapping of the critical terrain for the apparent marginality of craft. In the intervening decade, a proliferation of critical texts demonstrates that crafts still present a problem to thinkers (inter alia, Exploring Contemporary Craft—History, Theory & Critical Writing, edited by Jean Johnson, Coach House Books and Harbourfront Centre, 2002; Howard Risatti's A Theory of Craft—Function and Aesthetic Expression, University of North Carolina Press, 2007, and Richard Sennett's The Craftsman, Allen Lane, 2008), their authors grappling to find meaning and purpose in something that has in equal measures the ability to embarrass, confuse and inspire on the subject. Nonetheless, despite the American Craft Museum in New York's decision in 2003 to expunge craft from its name, rebranding...