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Notes on Tending Feminist Methodologies

Jessica Gerschultz

in Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today

This chapter reflects on feminist methodologies for research on women artists and art forms that are both feminised and racialised, existing on the fringes of art historical scholarship. The author’s ... More

This chapter reflects on feminist methodologies for research on women artists and art forms that are both feminised and racialised, existing on the fringes of art historical scholarship. The author’s recent work on women's weaving and fibre art sketches a productive pathway for crafting analytical approaches to asymmetrical relationships. Employing Sara Ahmed's writing on feminist sensations, citational relations, and the analogy of a 'wall', the chapter considers underlying reasons for the continued marginal status of women artists, 'feminine' space, and 'craft' production. Focal points of feminist labour include locating archival and artistic records, contending with their relative inaccessibility, invisibility, and vulnerability, and cultivating essential relationships around these materials. If tended to, these records and collaborative relationships yield an exciting picture and scholarship of care that work to destabilise hegemonic art histories.Less

Economic Organisation and Social Class

André Béteille

in Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village

This chapter explains the organization of production in Sripuram. It investigates the relations which are entered into by the members of the village, among themselves and with outsiders, for the ... More

This chapter explains the organization of production in Sripuram. It investigates the relations which are entered into by the members of the village, among themselves and with outsiders, for the purpose of production. Some brief observations are then reported on the mechanisms of distribution and exchange. Most of the cultivable land in the village is irrigated and used for cultivating paddy. Additionally, most of the land continues to be held by the old landowning class. It is noted that ownership of land is vested in people with different social backgrounds and that landowners do not constitute a homogeneous class. Land has come into the market; the old landowners are now scattered; new laws have been passed which seek to reorganise agrarian relations. Village handicrafts have undergone a process of disintegration. The village has become, in a multitude of ways, part of a much wider economic system.Less

Four Workers’ Stories

Gary S. Fields

in Working Hard, Working Poor: A Global Journey

This chapter aims to put human faces on four of the world's 3.1 billion poor people. The stories are told of a woman who hand-rolls cigarettes in India and earns a piece rate, a handicraft maker and ... More

This chapter aims to put human faces on four of the world's 3.1 billion poor people. The stories are told of a woman who hand-rolls cigarettes in India and earns a piece rate, a handicraft maker and vendor in South Africa, a farmer in China, and a fireworks producer in Mexico. Similarities and differences between their stories are discussed.Less

Small-scale Industry

Tirthankar Roy

in The Economic History of India, 1857-1947

In 1900, most of India's manufacturing workers were employed in industries that did not use either machinery or large factories. A century later, more than two-thirds of manufacturing employment ... More

In 1900, most of India's manufacturing workers were employed in industries that did not use either machinery or large factories. A century later, more than two-thirds of manufacturing employment remained intensive in manual labour and were concentrated in small firms, some of which had roots in the traditional handicrafts. During the colonial period, the scale of employment in the handicrafts declined. Small firms and industries producing handicrafts experienced major turmoil and increasing differentiation. Commercialization polarized and differentiated the handicrafts industry, essentially transforming traditional industry and giving rise to modern small-scale industry in colonial India. This change was characterized by the growing scope for commercial and industrial capital in the business, as well as increasing use of wage labour in place of family labour.Less

‘Practical power and faith’: 1 Ruskin and the Companions of the Guild of St George

Stuart Eagles

in After Ruskin: The Social and Political Legacies of a Victorian Prophet, 1870–1920

Ruskin's utopianist Guild of St. George was the embodiment of his social challenge. An extension of his personality, it grew partly out of his early involvement with the Working Men's College in ... More

Ruskin's utopianist Guild of St. George was the embodiment of his social challenge. An extension of his personality, it grew partly out of his early involvement with the Working Men's College in London. In microcosm, the Guild served directly both to help educate the workman through a free and carefully organised Museum in Sheffield, and to return a few of Ruskin's most loyal Companions, to a simple rural life. Others, working in the spirit of the Guild, but not directly for it, revived traditional handicrafts in the Lake District and on the Isle of Man. Before Ruskin's death, the dedication of his Companions was responsible for securing the Guild's modest successes, and although their efforts became less focused after 1900, they continued to support the sorts of progressive social institutions in which many of Ruskin's disciples congregated outside the Guild.Less

How to Read Wax Coral, and Why

Talia Schaffer

in Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

This book explores domestic handicraft as a cultural practice in Victorian England and its portrayal in literature. More specifically, it presents a cultural history of the handicraft movement by ... More

This book explores domestic handicraft as a cultural practice in Victorian England and its portrayal in literature. More specifically, it presents a cultural history of the handicraft movement by drawing on four novels: Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford, Charlotte Mary Yonge's The Daisy Chain, Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, and Margaret Oliphant's Phoebe Junior. The book examines how an artifact's worth and beauty were assessed during the period, along with the kinds of associations these objects carried and how those meanings changed over time. It also considers a set of beliefs known as the craft paradigm, which refers to the representation, production, consumption, value, and beauty underlying creative work during the mid-Victorian era. Finally, the book argues that the domestic handicrafts' global trade and their modes of production were driven by the Victorians' need for “personal or familial mementos”.Less

Women’s Work: The History of the Victorian Domestic Handicraft

Talia Schaffer

in Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

This chapter traces the history of the domestic handicraft movement, as well as the uses of the craft paradigm, in Victorian England from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. ... More

This chapter traces the history of the domestic handicraft movement, as well as the uses of the craft paradigm, in Victorian England from the eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century. It examines some of the major trends in the production of domestic handicraft, together with the crafts' growing popularity from the eighteenth century through the 1840s, then from the 1840s through the 1860s. It also looks at the 1851 Great Exhibition, which showcased the compatibility between art and industrialism and called handicraft “ornamental industry”; the rise of a new needlework technique called Berlin-wool work; and the rhetoric of craft manuals that reflected the shifting relationship between the women's world and the world of industrial production. Finally, the chapter considers the decline of handicraft movement after 1860, when it was displaced by new aesthetic and financial trends such as the Design Reform movement and the Arts and Crafts movement.Less

Postscript: The Novelty of Craft

Talia Schaffer

in Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction

This postscript considers the connection between modern handicraft and the cultural aspects of domestic handicraft in Victorian England, with particular reference to the similarities between them. ... More

This postscript considers the connection between modern handicraft and the cultural aspects of domestic handicraft in Victorian England, with particular reference to the similarities between them. The emphasis is on the novelty of craft rather than the novel craft. More specifically, it examines whether modern handicraft originates from the Victorian domestic handicraft, citing the Pringles bracelet and its relationship to the wax coral of the Victorian period. It also shows how domestic handicraft today perpetuates many of the values of its Victorian predecessor, including salvage, amateurism, and sentiment. Finally, the significance of that relationship to the contemporary craft industry is discussed.Less

Zen Veterans and the Vernacular: The Black Mountain Pottery Seminar

Jenni Sorkin

in Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community

Black Mountain College’s 1952 Pottery Seminar has been an overlooked moment in the college’s history. But the Seminar stands as a pioneering moment, when the therapeutic properties of ceramics were ... More

Black Mountain College’s 1952 Pottery Seminar has been an overlooked moment in the college’s history. But the Seminar stands as a pioneering moment, when the therapeutic properties of ceramics were integrated into an avant-garde context utilizing Zen philosophy, rather than a discourse of welfare. This is particularly significant against the backdrop of rural North Carolina, Black Mountain’s immediate vicinity, an Appalachian state with a history of vernacular craft initiatives largely established by women and driven by strong social mandates. It is previously unknown that local groups were in attendance: through archival evidence, the Pottery Seminar’s legacy can be further recovered through the pedagogical contributions of women, which converged with Eastern ideas to alter the medium’s reception in the United States.Less

Live Form Disseminated

Jenni Sorkin

in Live Form: Women, Ceramics, and Community

The collectivity in artistic practice that flourished during the 1970s could not have occurred without the pedagogical networks put into motion by craftswomen of the 1950s. Their relentless ... More

The collectivity in artistic practice that flourished during the 1970s could not have occurred without the pedagogical networks put into motion by craftswomen of the 1950s. Their relentless experimentation has gone largely unnoticed because they did not produce from inside, but beside and alongside other modernist practices.Less

Selling Sufficiency

Vicky Albritton and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson

in Green Victorians: The Simple Life in John Ruskin's Lake District

London barrister Albert Fleming spent a portion of every year in the Lake District, partly to be closer to Ruskin. In a bid to bring meaningful work to a poorer segment of the rural population, he ... More

London barrister Albert Fleming spent a portion of every year in the Lake District, partly to be closer to Ruskin. In a bid to bring meaningful work to a poorer segment of the rural population, he initiated a revival of handicrafts, particularly of the centuries old tradition of spinning and weaving by hand. He was the first Ruskinian to turn an environmentally conscious industry into an economically viable, labor friendly business. Before Fleming, Egbert Rydings wrestled with the thornier issues of ethical production, finding it difficult to maintain safe working conditions while avoiding air, noise, and water pollution. But working with his “ingenious” Lakeland housekeeper Marion Twelves, Fleming overcame these problems and revived the pleasure and beauty of hand-spun flax and hand-woven linens. As a testament to the importance of meaningful, individual labor, Fleming helped create an entirely hand-made book, even down to the hand-made paper, and included within it a list of everyone who had taken part in its production.Less

October 1908: Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia

Elizabeth McCutchen Williams

in Appalachian Travels: The Diary of Olive Dame Campbell

Under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation, the Campbells outfitted a wagon to travel through the Southern Appalachians in order to discover the true nature of educational, economic, and ... More

Under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation, the Campbells outfitted a wagon to travel through the Southern Appalachians in order to discover the true nature of educational, economic, and social conditions in the region. Along the way, Olive Campbell was captivated by the ballads and native crafts she encountered.Less

Fair Trade Craft Production and Indigenous Economies: Reflections on “Acceptable” Indigeneities

Patrick C. Wilson

in Fair Trade and Social Justice: Global Ethnographies

This chapter examines European constructions of indigenous “Others” through catalogues of material practices and their implications for the design and implementation of indigenous artisan fair trade ... More

This chapter examines European constructions of indigenous “Others” through catalogues of material practices and their implications for the design and implementation of indigenous artisan fair trade projects. More specifically, it explores the relationships between materiality and indigeneity in handicraft fair trade production by focusing on a set of alternative trade organization projects in Ecuador. It highlights the issue of ethnic identity in discussing Ecuadorian craft producers, who either gain or are denied access to a lucrative fair trade market according to their ability to deploy “acceptably indigenous” behaviors. It also considers what indexing indigenous peoples through a catalogue of material items might reveal about cultural assumptions driving artisan fair trade and its economic consequences. It argues that certification standards originating in the developed North impose an essentialized definition of tradition that excludes some indigenous communities from the benefits of alternative markets.Less

. Introductory Case Study: Tales Told by a Pillowcase from Chiapas

Chris Goertzen

in Made in Mexico: Tradition, Tourism, and Political Ferment in Oaxaca

This introductory chapter presents a case study involving a pillowcase from Chiapas. The pillowcase is an untraditional object handwoven in traditional ways, presenting a modern version of an ancient ... More

This introductory chapter presents a case study involving a pillowcase from Chiapas. The pillowcase is an untraditional object handwoven in traditional ways, presenting a modern version of an ancient and sacred design—an object made with the tourist in mind. Should we consider its existence a symptom of another layer of colonization, in which the craftsperson must debase his or her work and values to earn a living? Or is it a natural and healthy outgrowth of tradition? The chapter analyzes the following factors: the fact that a sacred design decorates this pillow case; the identity of the design; the size of this version of the design; the number and choice of colors used; techniques of weaving; and the process by which this item was designed and marketed.Less

The Remains of the Day (1875–1915)

in A Frenchwoman's Imperial Story: Madame Luce in Nineteenth-Century Algeria

This chapter explores in more detail what has been termed “The Remains of the Day.” The inventory and will established at Madame Luce's death testify to the astute business acumen that guided her ... More

This chapter explores in more detail what has been termed “The Remains of the Day.” The inventory and will established at Madame Luce's death testify to the astute business acumen that guided her throughout much of her life. She died leaving a comfortable sum of money to the young girl whose memoirs do the most to bring her great-grandmother to life. But she also left a legacy in artisanal handicrafts that circulated widely across France, Great Britain, North America, and North Africa, thanks to universal and colonial exhibitions. Her granddaughter Henriette Benaben continued the workshop Luce established in Algiers and actively worked to assemble collections of “oriental embroideries” that now lie in the storerooms of museums in Algiers, Paris, and London. These collections constitute the most permanent and highly gendered legacy of Madame Luce's Arab–French school.Less