Abstract: Of the 143,374 Americans in the armed forces who were taken as prisoners of war (POWs) during the Second World War, Sergeant Morris William Larkin (1919–2009) was one. This essay tells the story of his capture and time as a POW, a story that is central to and embedded in the sampler he meticulously stitched while imprisoned. Sergeant Larkin's sampler acts as a synecdoche, a commemoration of the Second World War, a commemoration of the POW experience, and a personal commemoration of the time and experiences of Larkin and those who served in the Second World War with him. This article demonstrates how handcrafts play complex roles beyond the aesthetic—commemorating and memorializing experiences, acting as a form of discourse in abject spaces, railing against political forces, crafting identities, and working through trauma.

Abstract: This article examines medicine from a craft perspective. Surgery—from dissecting to drawing tissues together—is easily recognized as a craft, traditionally learned by apprenticeship. Concern about patient risk has fueled a drive toward simulation education, where patients are represented by living or artificial stand-ins. The lack of context and variability afforded by simulation is a weakness, making medicine more like a production line than a craftsman's workshop. Elements of craft can, however, be introduced to simulation. People acting as simulated patients can add context and variation to standardized procedures and simulation technology can be fed with data that reflect real people's variability. But these measures cannot fully replicate authentic patientdoctor communication, which, more than instrumentation, truly defines medicine. Surgeons' ability to relate to people, as well as their skill with the knife, affects surgery's outcomes. Furthermore, much medicine involves no surgical procedu...

Abstract: In the first half of the twentieth century, the government of colonial Malaya sought to rejuvenate the country's traditional craft through exhibitions, craft promotion, and training. However, British intervention was not necessarily premised on the best interests of the craft industry. Drawing on official documents and colonial commentaries, this article examines colonial constructions of Malay traditional craft. Here, the purported demise of craft skills validated colonial encroachment into craft production. Despite promoting craft as an industry and in technical education, the colonial government's approaches naturalized craft as rural work associated with low intellect. By focusing on expanding the markets for Malay crafts, I argue that they also provided an opportunity for colonial officers to emphasize a shift in craft patronage and endorse alternative forms of knowledge about local craft.

Abstract: Relying largely on archival sources, this paper attempts a historical and critical narrative of the pottery experiments and ceramic art pedagogy in colonial Nigeria by the British artist and art te...

Abstract: Before the advent of the industrial revolution everything used by man was made by hand craft methods as a matter of course. The best things made were pervaded by a quality which we call craftsmanship, showing mastery of technique and embodying fitness for purpose, trueness of material, and beauty of form. Craftsmanship was both a method and a quality, the quality being essential, the method incidental, because the methods and tools had changed in the past and were to change again.

Abstract: As a response to John Roberts' article in this issue (“Temporality, Critique, and the Vessel Tradition”), this essay argues against his description of toilet or urinal manufacture as “postartisanal.” Sanitaryware is still made by living people who manually rig up heavy plaster molds piece by piece, pour liquid slip, and athletically finish them with scrapers and sponges. Roberts' sighting of a “crisis of artisanal labor in the alienated form of factory handcraft” is an ahistorical narrative that, having issued forth from the keenly poetic pens of John Ruskin and Karl Marx, lives on in contemporary academic jeremiads (for example, Richard Sennett and Howard Risatti). This essay builds on scholars who argue for nuanced examinations of the histories of skilled production and mechanization that are material-specific (such as Isobel Armstrong, Peter Dormer, and Michael Ettema on glass, textiles, and wood, respectively). It proposes that there is greater value in researching the marginalized voices and ...

Abstract: Starting from the recent promotion of the inuksuk, which was crowned the official logo of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games, this article examines the ways in which Inuit culture is currently being deployed within Canada and to what ends. We focus our examination on sanaugait, the Inuktitut term for things created by hand, which encompasses what is conventionally labeled craft production. Structuring our discussion around two case studies, we first delve into the artistic practice of Inuk textile artist and arts administrator Theresie Tungilik. This analysis reveals how Tungilik employs fiber arts to engage with oral histories and to comment on the production of sanaugait historically. Subsequently, we address the changes in the management of visual and material culture in Nunavut, Canada's newest territory, which was established in 1999. Examining territorial policy and strategies, we assess how sanaugait have been harnessed for specific economic growth. Through our examination of sanaugait as the...

Abstract: This abridged conversation arose from a meeting of artists, academics, and factory workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2012. The artists had all contributed work to the “Tool at Hand,” an exhibition at the Milwaukee Art Museum. The gathering afforded the opportunity for productive discussion about tools, material knowledge, the transmission of skill, and the opportunities of the piecework system.

Abstract: This article discusses the book English Pottery by Bernard Rackham and Herbert Read, first published in 1924. A publisher's proof of the book was given to Cardiff School of Art and Design as part of a series of donations from Rackham's family over a six-year period from 2002 to 2008. This publisher's proof is marked in colored pencil and these markings appear to indicate which parts of the book were written by which author. An analysis of the marked text gives opportunities to assess the relative contributions of Rackham and Read and to discuss key passages in terms of the two authors' particular interests. Points of divergence between them are noted. This analysis gives an opportunity to review some of the interpretations of the book made by commentators in recent years and to reassess Rackham's role in developing a new critical framework for the understanding of pottery.

Abstract: (2013). Arts and Crafts, Nietzsche und die fruhe Brucke. Studien zur Graphik Ernst Ludwig Kirchners Louisa Theobald. The Journal of Modern Craft: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 243-245.

Abstract: This paper examines craft in contemporary India by looking closely at Dilli Haat, a popular commercial craft-village in New Delhi, alongside a series of crafts maps. Produced by the non-governmental organization Dastkari Haat Samiti in collaboration with local artists, the visual depictions on the maps identify, classify, and catalog a range of objects and artistic labor unique to the subcontinent. Both these crafts maps and the space of Dilli Haat serve in defining, fixing, and ultimately producing craft as specific forms of labor and types of objects, which are dependent on geography and inhabit an ambiguous relationship between “the village,” “the city,” and “the nation.”

Abstract: With the rise of the Internet, skills, patterns, and ideas are being shared more widely among people engaged in the crafts, which seems to break with some of the underlying assumptions about the lone genius craftsman. Much discourse about craft has been focused on the hands of the artisan, or the “tacit” knowledge used by the maker, but as crafters collaborate in a larger extent some other perspectives could be of use, especially since the surrounding environment seems to take a more active involvement in the production than the mere maker. Increasing Internet prevalence has made this even more obvious, as do-it-yourself instruction and the sharing of skills are abundant in craft forums online, blurring the borders between influences, makers, and situated modes of production. This article examines some concepts and metaphors by which some of the potentials of craft collaborations could be understood. Combining theories of cognition from super-organisms like ant colonies and their “bodyhood” with t...