The Concept of Permanence in the Crafts and its contribution to a sustainable future

Abstract

Craft, like the making of all works, (as Hannah Arendt observed in The Human Condition) has ‘the capacity for producing durability’ (Arendt, 1998: 172)

In our commodified world there are issues of duration that impinge on the clutter and congestion of our planet, through its overpopulation with things. Through an interrogation of the ‘craft object’ I indicate a way to understanding the basis for a more sustainable future, through the concept of the persistence of the object, and the processes that lead to its inception.

I use a framework derived from a theory of making based on the writing of Hannah Arendt to examine an understanding of the handmade and the readymade. This position is mediated by a reading of Merleau-Ponty and Raymond Tallis, and his thinking about ‘the hand’. I conclude with an analysis of fire informed by Gaston Bachelard.

By returning to the hand(made) and hand(making) I propose an emancipatory position that is based around a re-thinking of the hand-made object and its permanent, sustained place within our lives.