crafts & tacit knowledge
The sense of interconnection was described to me by Nick Wright, Furniture School Manager at The Snowdon School of Furniture at Highgrove, who said: “Solving a problem through crafts today connects you to a whole line of makers who have been solving these issues for hundreds of years before us.” (N. Wright, personal conversation, July 2024). When I further discussed this idea with Kasia Howard, Senior Education Manager at the King’s Foundation, she expanded it by suggesting “crafts as a portal” through time and space (K. Howard, personal conversation, July 2024). Making, then, becomes a learning process that draws from the gestures and problem-solving of those who came before us. We study existing artefacts and learn how to construct our own work by examining how others have previously approached similar challenges. This mirrors my experience in the tailor shop, where I often unpicked old repairs and alterations and then reassembled them, which helped me understand their logic. Through this engagement with the materials and tools, we connect to the person who came before us, reinterpreting their intentions through our own hands. These examples illustrate what Scarry (1985) refers to when she writes about how the act of making shapes human sentience. This process is a form of dialogue - one that, when practised with attentiveness, can be expressed through mending and embellishing. In this context, the user joins a conversation with the maker, consciously leaving imprints behind. Through this, imprints help both the artefact and the labour of its makers resist the commodification that Marx critiques.
The concept of imprint, understood as traces left by both user and maker, highlights the potential as a source of agency and resilience. At the same time, it invites us to consider artefacts created through manual labour as nonverbal archives, carrying with them an entangled part of every hand that has contributed to their creation and eventual ‘publication’ - their entry into the world as objects with stories. Shining light on the many hands involved in producing the artefacts in our lives, and positioning these as archives, reveals how not only the objects themselves but also the labour behind them contribute to cultural production. Over time, these artefacts become relics: vessels that capture the zeitgeist and preserve the stories of their making. Framing handwork as the preservation of the makers’ stories, then, underscores its potential for agency, resilience, and care.
The sense of interconnection was described to me by Nick Wright, Furniture School Manager at The Snowdon School of Furniture at Highgrove, who said: “Solving a problem through crafts today connects you to a whole line of makers who have been solving these issues for hundreds of years before us.” (N. Wright, personal conversation, July 2024). When I further discussed this idea with Kasia Howard, Senior Education Manager at the King’s Foundation, she expanded it by suggesting “crafts as a portal” through time and space (K. Howard, personal conversation, July 2024). Making, then, becomes a learning process that draws from the gestures and problem-solving of those who came before us. We study existing artefacts and learn how to construct our own work by examining how others have previously approached similar challenges. This mirrors my experience in the tailor shop, where I often unpicked old repairs and alterations and then reassembled them, which helped me understand their logic. Through this engagement with the materials and tools, we connect to the person who came before us, reinterpreting their intentions through our own hands. These examples illustrate what Scarry (1985) refers to when she writes about how the act of making shapes human sentience. This process is a form of dialogue - one that, when practised with attentiveness, can be expressed through mending and embellishing. In this context, the user joins a conversation with the maker, consciously leaving imprints behind. Through this, imprints help both the artefact and the labour of its makers resist the commodification that Marx critiques.
The concept of imprint, understood as traces left by both user and maker, highlights the potential as a source of agency and resilience. At the same time, it invites us to consider artefacts created through manual labour as nonverbal archives, carrying with them an entangled part of every hand that has contributed to their creation and eventual ‘publication’ - their entry into the world as objects with stories. Shining light on the many hands involved in producing the artefacts in our lives, and positioning these as archives, reveals how not only the objects themselves but also the labour behind them contribute to cultural production. Over time, these artefacts become relics: vessels that capture the zeitgeist and preserve the stories of their making. Framing handwork as the preservation of the makers’ stories, then, underscores its potential for agency, resilience, and care.