Making: Place, material and metaphor

The editorial highlights how the practitioners featured in issue 14.2 seek intrinsic value within and through making, supported by relationships with the natural and social world. The contributions are clustered into three themes. In ‘materiality and nature’, Tara Chittenden explores ‘Ceramics in the wild: Deep mapping and the moon jars of Adam Buick’, and how the ceramicist’s vessels represent the cycle of a material, and life itself. Myriam Perret‘s ‘Rhythms in the production and commercialization of crafts in Chaco’ reports upon her ethnographic study of the Qow people of Argentina and their craft of cattail harvesting and weaving, revealing seasonal and weather-related choices. Theme 2, ‘making and metaphor’ includes ‘Data becomes quilt’, by Jayne Jackson, who analyses a range of influences and social semiotic meanings encoded within her own and others quilt-making. The relationship of social meanings and craft activities are researched by Miriam Gibson and Rachel Spronken-Smith’s ‘Learning in online and physical craft groups: Motivations and meanings’, while Linnea Kilpi, whose work is featured on the cover, presents ‘Meaning-making through experimental knitting practices’, supported by the concept of ‘Knittedness’. Theme 3, ‘tradition, heritage and the future’, begins with Sara Sintonen and Mikko Snellman’s portrait of ‘Tarmo Thorström’ whose contemporary craft practice is rooted in the cultural tradition of bobbin lace making in Rauma on the west coast of Finland. Wendy Ward’s review of the exhibition, We Are Commoners, speculates on how historical notions of sharing – as represented by ‘the commons’ and exemplified by the Right to Roam and Right to Repair movements – could be re-imagined as the basis for sustainable craft practice. Sarah Teasley’s (2022) Designing Modern Japan, is reviewed by Marie O’Mahony and the Tradition/Innovation: Craft and Future Intangible Cultural Heritage conference held at West Dean College in March 2023, by Paul Harper.