Industrial Craft in Australia: Oral Histories of Creativity and Survival

Abstract

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (2020)1 records 190 “Patternmakers (Wood)” and 2,400 “Patternmakers (Plastics and Metal)” in the whole country. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (2016)2 documents 270 engineering patternmakers, and according to Jesse Adams Stein’s observations, this number may diminish to 180 by the time the 2021 census is published (15). Should the design profession care about one of the smallest occupational groups in manufacturing countries around the world? Indeed, it should. Industrial Craft in Australia joins the growing critical discourse that questions—and illuminates the negative consequences of—the designer’s hegemonic place in design. Stein’s book is based on research and recorded interviews. Topics include class and gender, the demise of patternmaking as a result of advancing technology, and the consequences for individual makers. In line with the argument that patternmaking is a craft, Stein documents the creative practices that existed alongside or subsequent to a career in patternmaking. Photographs assist the narrative, and the writing style is eminently accessible. Stein defines industrial craft as “the confluence of refined manual skill and specialist production knowledge in manufacturing processes,” including “manual processes undertaken in the pre-production stage of manufacturing, and in the hand-finishing stages, after machine production” (2). These skills are normally learned over four years of indentured apprenticeship in an industrial manufacturing facility that specializes in trades, such as fitting and turning, toolmaking, or patternmaking. In addition, the apprentice attends classes in technical education. In the heyday of twentieth-century manufacturing in the West, industrial patternmakers were dedicated to hand-making forms for gears, wheels, bearings, and so on that were molded or cast, in sizes that ranged from railway and mining equipment parts to buckles and bobbins. Traditionally the forms were made from timber, requiring patternmakers to develop woodworking skills that enabled precise depiction of minute detail. It was necessary to have knowledge of timber species along with technical drawing, metallurgy and metal contraction, toolmaking, problem solving, visualization, and production planning. Timber forms were used during the burgeoning of plastic products, some of which were small and finicky, for example, pasta or confectionary molds. As the twentieth century progressed, new materials, like epoxy resin, silicone, fiberglass, polystyrene, and aluminum were added to the patternmaker’s resources. This brief description of patternmaking, elucidated in the book’s initial chapters, is merely didactic, because Stein points out that her book is about pattern makers: “their training, the role of class and gender as a structuring force in their working lives, their creative practices and their evolving relationship to technology and the labour market” (3). Her methodology (biographical oral history interviews) focuses on twelve existing and former patternmakers in Australia: ten men and two women aged thirties to eighties (18). This allows reflection on family, training, workshop relations, the place of women and “suspect” men, the production of “foreigners,”3 and the creative outlets that arose out of the patternmakers’ skills. The stories are engaging and informative. Regarding the technology and employment aspects of their careers, the statistics mentioned already give an idea of the presence of the trade: the primarily male workforce has been replaced by CAD/CAM (computer-aided design and computeraided manufacturing), and CNC (computer numerically controlled) machines. Some patternmakers have adapted to computer-driven mold making, others have been demeaned to finishing molds to degrees impossible for CNC machines, and still others