Towards a Post-Consumer Subjectivity: A future for the crafts in the twenty first century?

Abstract

“I never met with a question yet, of any importance, which did not need, for the right solution of it, at least one positive and one negative answer, like an equation of the second degree. Mostly, matters of any consequence are three sided, or four sided, or polygonal; and the trotting round the polygon is severe work for people in any way stiff in their opinion.”
John Ruskin, Collected Works, Vol 16, p. 187

Perhaps a little unfashionably, I would like to suggest that an idea as to a future for the Crafts could be found by looking to the past and, more specifically, to the intellectual legacy of the nineteenth century. Considering the birth of the contemporary studio crafts as a political and social movement rather than a merely artistic one, reveals a depth of what shall be referred to below as ‘ecological understanding’ that goes far beyond an awareness of environmental issues at the, often superficial, level of nature preservation. This paper will review, very briefly, the philosophies of three of the most significant and influential nineteenth century thinkers in the Crafts.