Urban Field

urban FIELD

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Edited by Simon Olding with

urban FIELD

essays by Emmanuel Cooper, Linda Sandino, Sophie Heath and Ambre France

Published on behalf of urban FIELD by the Crafts Study Centre

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Contents

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Preface

page 5

The Cats are Jumping Emmanuel Cooper

page 6

Field Notes Linda Sandino

page 12

Escape from the city?

Are we there yet?

Sophie Heath

page 20

Coming and Going Ambre France

page 30

urban FIELD: the artists

page 36

Acknowledgments

page 76

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ISBN 978-09554374-1-0

Published on behalf of urban FIELD by the Crafts Study Centre

Front cover: Lizzie Farey (see page 52) Back cover: detail of table by Gareth Neal (see page 60)

Crafts Study Centre University College for the Creative Arts Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey GU9 7DS Book design by David Hyde, david@celsius.eu.com Book production by Alden Group Ltd, Witney, Oxon

Published April 2007 on the occasion of the exhibition urban FIELD held at Contemporary Applied Arts, Crafts Study Centre and The Devon Guild of Craftsmen.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.

The rights of Emmanuel Cooper, Linda Sandino, Sophie Heath and Ambre France to be identified as authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

urban FIELD is grateful to Arts Council England for funding through grants for the arts.

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Preface

urban FIELD is the title of a major new collaboration between three leading craft organisations in England. Contemporary Applied Arts (CAA), the Crafts Study Centre and The Devon Guild of Craftsmen have joined forces to present new craft works (many specifically made for this project) and to explore a forceful theme in three venues, located in the centre of London, in the market town of Farnham and on the edge of Dartmoor.

The exhibition deliberately upsets the norm: willow artists show work in the thoroughly metropolitan surroundings of CAA; a mix of London-based and South West makers present glass, metalwork and textiles in the Crafts Study Centre’s first group show and The Devon Guild brings urban interior design to Bovey Tracey.

A geographical route is implied in this new partnership, with its key outcome a significant exhibition exploring the rural/urban theme and its meaning for some of the Britain’s most celebrated craft artists. The issues are also addressed in this book. Essays by leading craft historians Linda Sandino and Sophie Heath are joined by contributions from two practitioners, one based in the city (Emmanuel Cooper) and one based in Devon (Ambre France). urban FIELD aims to establish a strong new touring model for the crafts, creatively linking three disparate venues which share common aims and aspirations for the presentation and sale of contemporary crafts. This book of essays is also a statement about the need to reflect and comment publicly on a rich craft theme, and to claim an importance for writing about the crafts.

Sarah Edwards, Alex Murdin, Simon Olding Co-Directors urban FIELD

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The Cats are Jumping Emmanuel Cooper

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‘Demystification is the order of the day, all the cats are jumping out of all the bags and even beginning to mingle...’

Thomas Pynchon1 When thinking about the concept of the urban field - a delightful and tantalising contradiction - in my own practice and craft in general, I happened to see a video loop

by Kim Schoen entitled Rotten Row 2. It features close-ups of a fine white horse being ridden through the stately streets of Kensington. But instead of trotting politely, the horse and rider move at a rapid pace, seeming to ignore the passing traffic, turning this way and that, as if lost and looking for some way of escape. It is an alarming performance, not least because you get the sense that the built urban environment - the ‘urban compound’ to use Marshall McLuhan’s evocative phrase - is not where they want to be; the speed at which they move, the constant stopping and twisting seem more appropriate for a rural setting, where horse and rider can command the space and race free. Craft, it seems, poses many of the same dilemmas in looking for its natural home; in equal measure it is identified with both country and town, art and craft, the conceptual as well as the functional and useful.

Paradoxically, while craft was traditionally practised in the country, today it has become 1

Thomas Pynchon, ‘Is it OK to be a Luddite?’ The New York Times Book Review, 28 October 1984, pp. 1, 40-41.

2

Royal College of Art, ‘Work in Progress’, Photographic students, January, 2007.

3

For instance, shops and galleries in the city could support rural craftspeople, so may, therefore, be offered help.

as much an urban as a rural pursuit. Whether it was the blacksmith shoeing horses, the weaver binding willow or the potter throwing clay, such activity was seen as part of country life, an intrinsic aspect of rural industry fulfilling a genuine need. When the Ministry of Agriculture set up an agency in 1921 to support and nurture craft, it was thought appropriate to call it the Rural Industries Bureau, later the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas, and now the Rural Development Commission, aimed at alleviating economic and social problems in rural areas, though no clear distinction was made between what was rural and what urban.3

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The dilemma for craft-as-art came with the advent of the so-called fine craft in the early decades of the twentieth century, when traditional craft skills and processes were appropriated by artists as part of a move to engage more closely with making and material.

Sculptors suddenly started carving stone rather than modelling forms in clay for the foundry to complete; potters installed small kilns in city studios to make individual or one-off pieces, while weavers set up looms in bedrooms to produce ‘hangings’. It is fascinating to see a loom in Anna Freud’s room in Freud’s house in London 4, a fitting activity for a thinking woman.

A notable exception to settling in the city is the potter Bernard Leach who established his pottery in the small town of St Ives, Cornwall. This was not because of a romantic desire to live 300 miles from London or because he was in search of a rural idyll, but because a local philanthropist, Frances Horne, wanted a potter as part of the St Ives Handicraft Guild and was prepared to subsidise the venture for three years.

For many makers, things changed in the 1960s and 70s when the countryside was seen as the natural home for craft resulting in an exodus to rural locations. Disillusioned with ‘consumer society’ and rejecting the ‘rat race’ of commercial pressure, makers retired early from lucrative but mind-numbing city jobs and sought out old, handsome but usually decrepit farmhouses at the end of long, often unmade lanes. Even college graduates scraped together meagre savings to settle in remote corners of Wales, Cumbria or Wiltshire. Many became part-time builders, constructing walls, repairing roofs, installing running water and sanitation. Making became part of a way of life that might have included keeping a few hens and the odd goat as well as growing vegetables. It often went hand in hand with a sort of genteel poverty in which children thrived, food was wholesome and nourishing and makers were free to ‘do their own thing’. It was a return to pre-industrial ways of living in which

4

Now the Freud Museum, Maresfield Gardens, London NW3. An enthusiastic weaver and knitter, Anna Freud knitted during psychoanalytic sessions with patients.

work, leisure and home were all one.

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The 1980s brought a different sense of reality. The taste for the rural suddenly seemed out of tune with the more hard-bitten competitive mood of the Thatcher years. These ushered in rapid commercial growth and a greater pressure to compete. Suddenly the countryside seemed remote, alien from what makers were about, and the handmade appeared too homespun, too self-conscious in the new cut throat commercial atmosphere. At much the same time property prices soared, putting the possibility of a country retreat, for most makers, out of the question.

By contrast, in towns and cities, slowly denuded of many small industries unable to compete in a global economy, factory buildings became redundant and were available at knock down prices. Many were ingeniously adapted to individual workshops with a labyrinth of passageways and partitions to accommodate communities of artists, be they painters, sculptors or potters. Space was at a premium and rented by the square foot, the more you had, the greater the fee. Despite the often cramped conditions, such spaces served a purpose and makers, whether in Cardiff, Edinburgh or London, were no longer isolated but were in the midst of like-minded artists as well as burgeoning markets. They were also able to tap into the support systems available in towns and cities.

The effect of urban as opposed to rural living had - and is continuing to have - a variety of effects. For jewellers, who generally require only a small bench, the space limitation is probably negligible, though the proximity of the built environment, as opposed to rolling landscape, may influence them greatly. Lois Walpole, following the traditional way basketmakers have used the material of their habitat, appropriates a variety of waste materials found in abundance in the city, the detritus of consumer culture, enjoying the freedom of expression offered by such a wide range of materials. For crafts like ceramics, glass-blowing, metal-working and furniture making, the influence is more profound. With

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ample space, potters can produce in quantity, often with a rough, ‘rustic’ finish and sell at relatively modest prices. A quickly made mug, for instance, which may retail profitably at only a pound or two would be uneconomic in the city. A move from quantity to quality may be the result. When Lucie Rie started to produce tableware with Hans Coper in the late 1940s and 1950s in her modest sized studio converted from a stable in a Paddington mews, the pieces were labour intensive, being carefully thrown and turned, highly finished and neatly glazed. The prices were at least double or treble those of country potters. It was truly metropolitan ware.

The city also poses technical limitations. In an urban environment flame-burning kilns or furnaces are often not practical or indeed legal, the chimney and flues too complicated and dangerous for tall buildings. Neither is there the possibility of a long, slow anagama firing and very little chance of the drama and spectacle of raku. Electric kilns are the order of the day and potters have to devise suitable glazes and finishes. Whether blacksmithing can survive in such controlled circumstances seems unlikely.

Apart from the technical and practical restrictions, for me, with a studio in central London, the biggest influence on my work is the city itself. As an urban potter I do not want to ape the colours or qualities of reduction-fired stoneware and, when establishing my studio I sought to discover what I could produce in a small basement working with an electric kiln.

Scandinavian minimalism seemed more inspirational than the temmokus or celadon greens espoused by Leach and his followers.

Some years ago, when wandering through the Natural History Museum, I was struck by a case full of mineral samples - brilliant green malachite, purple quartz, pyrites or fools gold - nature brightly coloured in tooth and claw. It also dawned on me that these were also the colours of the city where yellow and red lines edge roads, traffic lights glow red, amber 10 OFC-p37-2.indd 10

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and green, the colours particularly sparkling at night, and the green of parks after rain contrasts brilliantly with the greys of tarmac. The textures too are different - gritty and assertive - space is more intrusive, much of it constructed and controlled, formed and built by humankind. All have found a place in my pots.

So the urban and rural have their own stories to tell, craft belongs nowhere and everywhere.

Today, some makers settle in rural locations and find that with more space their work gets bigger, even freer; they are able to store pieces, even have a showroom and deal directly with the public. As Thomas Pynchon observed the cats are jumping out of the bag; craft and those involved in it are refusing to lie on the bed history or convention had decreed for it and consistently invent new ways of working, finding different markets, exploring art/craft/design cross-overs, identifying new locations.

Like the horse and rider in Rotten Row, craft can be restless, endlessly searching for an identity, a home, a place where, free of presuppositions, it can be seen and enjoyed for what it is. For many, the city - the term used here to refer to the built-up environment - is not alien, but full of possibilities and opportunities. Just as nature and natural form in all their modesty and glory can be a touchstone, a magic starting point for some, so can bricks and mortar, neon and laser for others.

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Field Notes Linda Sandino

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In his polemic essay on the crafts ‘The Ideal World of Vermeer’s Little Lacemaker’ (1988), the late critic and writer, Peter Dormer, described the craft aesthetic as ‘anti-technology, anti-science and anti-progress’.1 This view, though outdated even at the time of his writing, demonstrates, nevertheless the persistence of the urban/rural opposition in discussions about craft. Nowadays, however, I am puzzled over whether ‘urban’ is a positive or a negative term, or whether it is merely descriptive, having lost any negative connotations. Similarly, I get no feeling about ‘rural’, although I am beginning to hear the moral high-ground of ecologists. So, is craft ‘green’ and anti-urban? Or, is it ‘cool’ and metrosexy? Is it metrorural? Are we living in the age of oxymorons? Or, rather do we use them because they are able to capture, or fuse, the contradictions in which we live and work?

The nature/culture opposition has been a key structuring concept in Western thinking. Like any classification, it has its dangers in that it can stultify thought rather than using it to understand the ways in which concepts structure our thoughts, attitudes and behaviours.

Nature and Culture in some sense are useful as categories necessary in order to conceptualise the world. While it assumes an either/or position, in fact, we now tend to understand them more as a means to engage with their meanings as conceptual tools. For the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss culture always involved a distinction between nature and culture.

Meaning was created from this difference in which the natural was not simply opposed to culture but acted as signifying a fundamental opposition between Nature [the natural], and the artificial conventions of the social sphere. Nature became a classificatory principle as 1

P. Dormer, ‘The Ideal World of Vermeer’s Little Lacemaker’, in J. Thackara (ed), Design After Modernism: Beyond the Object, London: Thames & Hudson, 1988, p. 135.

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a means to identify what is cultural [rather than natural], in order to understand what is cultural, though of course, finally this means understanding distinctions as cultural - since nothing is ‘natural’.

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One of Lévi-Strauss’ key classifications is the distinction between the engineer and the bricoleur, the latter someone who works with the available means and materials including conceptual ideas.2 Although within the overall context of Lévi-Strauss’ writings one can detect a privileging of the ‘other’, the concept of the bricoleur is an attempt to understand what he saw as two ‘scientific’ forms of thought. However, both the engineer and the bricoleur are constrained within their systems of thought, both have to begin projects by ‘making a catalogue of a previously determined set consisting of theoretical and practical knowledge, of technical means, which restrict possible solutions’ (p.19). What differentiates them rather is that the engineer always attempts to go beyond the constraints, while the bricoleur does not, since the latter works with available signs and is therefore ‘constantly on the look out for messages’ while the scientist seeks to extract another, as yet undiscovered, new message.

The contrast between the presumed objectivity of science is also set in contrast to the more personally engaged approach of the bricoleur who: ‘derives his poetry from the fact that that he does not confine himself to accomplishment and execution: he ‘speaks’ not only with things ... but also through the medium of things: giving an account of his personality and life by the choices he makes between the limited possibilities.’ (21) So, while the engineer attempts to change the world by means of structures, the bricoleur creates structures in order to create meanings. Artists, according to Lévi-Strauss, combine both forms of knowledge (and action) since ‘by his craftsmanship [the artist] constructs a material object which is also the object of knowledge’ (22). In attempting to clarify the artist’s hybrid strategies, Lévi-Strauss discusses the painting of a lace collar, proposing that science would produce a lace collar by inventing a loom, while art works to re-produce the object, in his example, through the means of metaphor by reproducing ‘an image homologous with the

2

C. Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (La Pensée Sauvage), London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1966. All quotations following will be from this edition. Although much critiqued, I wish to show the value of Lévi-Strauss ideas in relation to Urban Field and craft practice.

object’, ‘uniting internal and external knowledge’ of the object - here a lace collar (24, 25).

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Although Lévi-Strauss takes a painting as his example, or to put it accurately, the representation of a lace collar, his account maps more directly the conceptual activities of the contemporary applied art object maker.3 Donna Wilson of Twine succinctly sums up her approach: ‘I tend to look at the oddities, deformities and imperfections that we find in nature, and I find a beauty in that. For example, in the “hands on” rug, each “finger” is felted which lets it take on its own unique form, its unity comes from the multiples of unique forms.

With felting lambswool you are never sure of the effect, so I try to let the materials and techniques lend themselves to the outcome. I never have a rigid idea of what I want so that the end result is not too laboured or contrived.’ 4 In his essay ‘Domestic Animals: the neoprimitive style’, the Italian designer Andrea Branzi takes up the convergence of science and myth, nature and culture, stating that neoprimitivism is a ‘condition into which various languages and already diffuse attitudes fuse.’ 5 Heterogeneity is the condition of 3

The applied arts are discussed as giving priority to ‘purpose and execution’ in contrast to the assumed autonomy of painting. If execution is ‘entrusted to machines’, ‘applied art is transformed into industrial art’ (28-9).

4

creative practice but what Branzi significantly focuses on is the proliferation of signs and identities and their reconfiguration. His ‘domestic animals’ synthesize and oppose natural and artificial materials in order to highlight, what is in effect, the strategy of the bricoleur who takes what’s available, while at the same time pushing towards a new kind of event (Italian neoprimitivism).

Furniture because of its ‘purpose and execution’, perhaps more than other objects, can

Email communication with the author February 2007.

reveal more clearly, what I will refer to as ‘engineered bricolage’. urban Field exhibitor

5

Gareth Neal has commented that while living in Wiltshire ‘my work started craving the

A. Branzi, ‘Domestic Animlas: the Neoprimitive Style’, Design Issues, vol. 3/1, Spring, 1986, subsequently published

by MIT Press, 1987.

6

Email communication with author February 2007.

urban, often using hard and harsher materials’ possibly due to ‘the amount of beauty that surrounded me.’ Now after living in London the reverse condition has set in: ‘I crave the countryside: my work reflecting on the beauty of the shires but also picking up on the rapid, moving trends of the city, becoming more conscious of fashion but trying to hold onto the value of making something that withstands trends and the passage of time.’ 6

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The context of each provides a way for re-presenting furniture, drawing on existing materials but reconceptualising the meaning of the urban and the rural. Materials play a key role here as creators of meaning, as part of the system of signs.

Synthetic materials have been the subject of scholarly and critical enquiry because they are seen as having a history, as constructed signs which require decoding.7 Wood, on the other hand, is taken as ‘natural’. Baudrillard, however, points out how this meaning is still entirely ‘cultural’.

He questions whether its qualities of being of the earth, of time, of organic ‘growth’, its ‘image of richness’, all of which ‘nourish our nostalgia for the days of luxury’ still have meaning for us today, given that they are easily reproducible by synthetic means? Through its artificial reproduction, wood like other ‘natural’ materials such as glass, leather, silk, are ‘stepping back from their natural symbolism towards polymorphism, towards a superior level of abstraction ... a move beyond the formal opposition of natural materials and artificial materials.’ 8 Objects become by this means carriers of new conceptualisations as well as interrogators of past systems of meaning.

7

Craft, consequently, can embrace image making in complex ways. Some makers use images in their work while others re-present images, or construct a new image for an existing body of knowledge or works. Craft both produces and re-produces the world of things through the means of bricolage and engineering, as outlined above. All of its works are cultural and never ‘natural’ whatever the Arts and Crafts might have wished. Moreover, the vision of nature as opposition to culture, cannot produce or manufacture ‘things’ which arise from the rule-governed, rule-breaking contingency of social and historical contexts but there is no history in nature. Evolution is not history but rather a way of conceptualizing change.

The urban field.

Urban expansion coincided with the high point of Romanticism which can be understood in

See R. Barthes, ‘Plastics’, Mythologies, London: Cape, 1972; P. Sparke (ed), The Plastics Age: From Modernity to Post-Modernity, London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1990; J. Meikle, American Plastics: a Cultural History, New Brunswick NJ/London: Rutgers University Press, 1995; S. Mossman (ed), Early Plastics: Perspectives, 1850-1950, London: Leicester University Press/Science Museum, 1997.

8

J. Baudrillard, ‘Natural Wood, Cultural Wood’ in P. Sparke, op. cit. p.112.

part as a response to industrialization. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature (1836) describes the 16 OFC-p37-2.indd 16

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city as artificial, unnatural, inferior to the wilderness, and destructive of poetry, philosophy and solitude. Its characteristics were seen as corrupt and corrupting, overcrowded, dirty, polluted, dangerous, alienating, and the site of over-consumption. For the poet Baudelaire, however, the urban was a site for modern poetry, a place of sights and signs. In contrast the country is a place for sites and vistas. The demarcations between the two were clear whereas the increasing expansions of cities and suburbs has led to the phenomena of urban fields.

In his definition of the urban field, the sociologist Stefan Metaal, notes that: ‘A particular region can be considered an urban field when the constituent parts stretch over a territory larger than a single city and are still proximate enough to each other to suggest an “urban” density. More importantly, there should be strong signs of spatial deconcentration of residence, business and retail, as well as a moderate level of territorial specialization of functions, to such an extent that the field can be regarded as essentially polycentric, bearing witness to criss-cross relations in terms of the flow of people, commodities, money and information.’ 9 It is particularly apt, therefore, for thinking about the location and identity of craft practice in the 21st century when it can no longer be sited solely within a rural or urban context: craft 9

S. Metaal, ‘Oases in the Exurban Desert: An Essay on Changing Identities in the Urban Field’. http://members. chello.nl/smetaal/smw1.htm 23/02/97.

10

C. Frayling & H. Snowdon, ‘The Myth of the Happy Artisan’ in J. Houston (ed), Craft Classics Since the 1940s: an Anthology of Belief and Comment, London: Crafts Council, 1988, p. 111.

is produced and consumed everywhere. However, despite the advent of the concept of the urban field, it denotes a phenomenon that has been at the heart of craft’s identity problem since the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th century, with its romanticization of the countryside, leading to Ebenezer Howard’s plans for the Garden Cities of Tomorrow (1898).

The idealism of the crafts has been intimately tied to its idealist sites of production.

Christopher Frayling has traced the genealogy of ‘retrospective regret’ in the crafts, from the furniture-maker Edward Barnsley right back to a medieval ‘Merrie England’, ‘implicitly based on a series of contrasting images - between “the craftsman” and “the industrial worker” ’.10

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Drawing on the personal account given by the cultural critic, Raymond Williams in his evocative The Country and the City (1973), Frayling and co-author Helen Snowdon, reiterate how the influence of this opposition has been fundamental to an emergence of craft identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, current theories as Mataal demonstrates, can no longer tolerate these distinctions. Cities strain at the edges; suburbs sprawl beyond their former limits into the countryside, and the hierarchy inherent in any binary opposition is dissolved. While the urban field is nevertheless a site, a place, a location, it does not conjure up any particular image unlike the terms ‘country’ and ‘city’. While ‘field’ evokes open country spaces, maybe cultivated with a special crop, the oxymoron both confronts, and integrates the nature/culture opposition in an entirely conceptual way since it cannot conjure up a vision or scene; there is no ‘urban field’ in my repertoire of images, only empty spaces which are neither within the city, nor in the country.

The architectural writer Anthony Vidler has noted how space ‘has been increasingly defined as a product of subjective projection and introjection, as opposed to a stable container of objects and bodies.’ 11 This helps to explain the imaginary aspect of our conceptions of the urban/field. For Williams, the city and the country evoked specific sensations, and feelings such as the ‘pulse’ of the city. So, it is perhaps within the imaginary that this opposition is most meaningful and creatively productive. This sentiment is echoed by several contributors to the exhibition summed up by Sasha Ward: ‘When I give these two aspects of my work, the characteristics of the rural and the urban, I come to the conclusion that I should not think of the city and the country as being in opposition to each other, rather that they work in harmony to give us what we need.’

12

Urban field suggests that the opposition between town and country has been overtaken but I don’t think it has been overcome. Rather that each accepts the other’s qualities.

11

A. Vidler, Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture, Cambridge MA: The MIT Press, 2000, p1.

12

Email communication with author February 2007.

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So far, the choice between urban and rural has been discussed in autonomous terms, the individual is outside both, free to select and move at will. This obscures the actual conditions such as availability of workshop/studio space, transport, outlets, galleries which sometimes force people to live in certain places. However, when a craftsperson uses location as an identifier it impinges on how their work is read. In the urban field, identity is less transparent than the easily understood ‘urbanite’ or ‘villager’, or ‘suburbanite’ as Mataal notes. If identity is a problem in the crafts, then the urban field while useful as a place of deconcentration, adds to the sense of a non-identity but perhaps this is where it can forge a new one? Craft is in a period of transition, its direction is confused though this can be seen as positive since it forestalls any ‘retrospective regret’. People constantly on the move, nomads without a rooted identity: research has shown that people become attached to types of places rather than specific locations: urban, country, suburban. Mataal argues, however, that the old hierarchy in which cities are at the top and villages at the bottom, no longer holds. Suburbs, the ideal or compromise location have now become dominant, becoming ‘exurbs’. ‘Where city and village were once opposites, they now stand side by side against the exurb’, or the non-place of the urban field.

‘The experience of being lost is central to urban fields’.13 The increasingly multiple 13

personality of the crafts, its decentering from its original location in the romance of Mataal op. cit.

14

R. Williams, The Country and the City, London: Chatto & Windus, 1973, p. 4.

15

‘To almost every urban theorist, what characterizes an urban field the most is the presence of so-called crisscross relations.’ Mataal op. cit.

the workshop, is now replaced by its transient state, forging, nevertheless, connections between its multiple, dispersed communities and peoples. Just as there is no centre, neither is there a periphery. Everything is ‘in-between’. Raymond Williams was sensitive to the importance of communication networks between the country and the city 14, permeating each other’s territory and linking disparate worlds. The urban field acknowledges this spatially through the concept of ‘criss-cross relations’,15 a concept explored by this exhibition and its contributors.

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Escape from the city?

Are we there yet?

Sophie Heath

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1

University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) with thanks to my sister; Institute of The Arts (ITA) library, part of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, thank you to the librarians here who provided me with a guest log in to access journal databases.

I am writing this article in Australia where thanks to an Internet connection I was able

2

exhibitions. As a tertiary graduate and current employee in the heritage sector I was also able

The UK is at the forefront of a trend in Europe and other Northern and Western countries noticeable since the 1970s where the net population growth is out of cities (Woods 2005: 15), reversing a worldwide phenomenon of migration to urban centres that began with the spread of capitalism through the European Empires in the 17th century (Byrne 2001: 7).

3

The other two are Maws Craft Centre and the newly redeveloped Jackfield Tile Museum all within close proximity in the Ironbridge Gorge. The museums at Coalport and Jackfield are part of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust http://www.ironbridge.org.uk.

4

At Coalport China Museum there are the studios of Jonathan Harris Glass, and potters David Graham-Stevenson and Ralph Jandrell; Maws Craft Centre includes glassmakers Melanie Lewis and Kinki Glass, jewellery makers, and a hair and wig manufacturer A.S.C. Hair and Wigs Ltd (http://www. mawscraftcentre.co.uk); Jackfield houses the monumental stonecarver and bike shop, contact the Ironbridge Tourist Information Centre tic@ironbridge.org.uk.

quickly to access considerable information on craftspeople living and working all over the UK including images of their work, articles, CVs and artists’ statements, and reviews of to access the resources of university libraries in Sydney and Canberra, especially monographs and journal databases.1 Australia of course has a vibrant craft and design scene of its own which has parallels and links with British practice such as exchanges with Japanese culture.

So what does this instantly accessible presence of contemporary British craftwork, whether made in country or town, demonstrate? Does it show the profoundly urban nature of this occupation in the 21st century where the inspiration and location of craft, however rural, is conducted via the infrastructure of the spreading metropolis worldwide and uninterrupted?

What does it suggest about the place of those who dedicate themselves to handwork and those who consume and comment on it in societies where large-scale manufacturing is declining? The cosmopolitan exhibitors of urban Field exemplify a mobile and educated class in a post-industrialising world where cultural production is a crucial sector of the economy.

To change tack, after five years of living in South London I have recently moved to Shropshire where I live in a village settled since the 17th century though now classed as the outskirts of Telford urban development of the 1960s-70s. In this individual experience of the broad demographic trend in the UK of moving out of urban centres,2 I find myself within ten minutes walk of three complexes housing practising craftspeople including the Coalport China Museum where I work.3 The tenants of these include glassblowers, potters, monumental stone-carvers, and a bike-hire centre that will also source the parts to build you a bespoke bicycle.4 These small businesses (some are new ventures, others of long standing) demonstrate the viability of the designer-maker model outside the network of World Cities. These are centres defined by a cluster of characteristics including high

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concentrations of fast communication networks, a significant presence in global financial markets, and as attractors for immigration; on a points scale where twelve is the maximum London scores twelve and Sydney between six and ten.5 The reflex associations of craft with traditional values, methods, and materials and, in a parallel manner, design with modernity and industrial production, are so refracted by counter-examples as to be useless as a model for current practice. Ruth Dresman’s glass vessels are decorated with lively plant and animal motifs achieved through her virtuoso skill in the slow work of engraving and hours spent sketching from life; the vibrant colours of the glass, often built up in layers, are imported from the sophisticated technical economy of 6

Germany. The links and successful crossovers of craftspeople with industry and designers with craft practice are well-documented from Ron Arrad to Droog to cite two celebrated instances.7 One observation worth making with respect to these familiar constructions is that they recognisably evoke historical periods - potting and weaving suggest pre-industrial and therefore rural communities; furniture design as practised by Tomoko and Shin Azumi and the architectural glass installations of Sasha Ward, for example, rather seem born of the city and a modern, industrialised age. Herein lies our schizophrenic identification of making with country or city, and here springs the reactive counter-identification.8 The freedom of work such as Frances Brennan’s wire sculpture is founded on the 1970s disintegration of the Arts and Crafts justification of handwork; Brennan’s constructions make reference to both weaving and natural motifs but are essentially explorations of technique and abstract form.9 ‘People always ask me where I get my inspiration and, of course, it comes from nature, but when I’m making things I don’t know until I’m half way through what I’m doing. I try and stop myself imposing a concept. That was one of the battles for me at college - being free rather than contrived. The work evolves while in my hands, and not everything is successful.’

5

David Byrne (2001) Understanding the urban, p. 91.

6

Ian Wilson (2002) ‘Cut to colour’ Crafts Vol. 176, May/ Jun, pp.37-38.

7

See Designing minds: current issues in craft, design, and industry (2000) edited by Robert Crocker, the collected papers of a conference held in Adelaide in July 2000; see also Lesley Jackson’s article available on the web ‘Craft wars’ (2004) http:www.iconmagazine.co.uk/issues/016/ essay.htm.

8

Alison Britton is a quintessential example of this: in the 1970s and 80s her monumental jugs and vases with cubist inversions of form and expressionist decoration confronted everything that was expected of the medium, the functional form, and the female maker.

9

Liz Hoggard (2003) ‘Another dimension’, Crafts, Vol. 184, Sept/Oct pp. 48-50.

10

From Hoggard (2003) p.50.

10

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The post-modern turn in making craft which incorporates irony, admits any and many cultural references and influences, and above all celebrates personal expression has been explained and encouraged as a throwing-off of old strictures. It is my argument here that this timely shrugging-off of stereotypes which has gathered pace since the 1970s has been little-analysed relative to the rapidly changing social and technological conditions over the past three decades that have nurtured this hybridity. That is, the ability to live by handcrafting wilfully and whimsically in a post-industrial economy is thoroughly connected to the snowballing of the knowledge economy and the growing importance of cultural production. This profession therefore merits investigation with respect to the character and contradictions of our international lives. Studio craft is not a lifestyle led outside of or in spite of the global system - its combinations of the simple and the sophisticated, leaps from local to global, and juxtapositions of natural and urban mirror many of the ambiguities of 21st century Britain. We are constantly plugged in to news and messages from all over the world, and enthusiastically consume international music, food, and movies yet we simultaneously dream of escaping the rat race and holidays in places of outstanding natural beauty. Many of us now travel miles to incorporate the countryside somewhere in an hectic urban lifestyle; what is the huge popularity of gardening and cooking as leisure pastimes but a miniaturising of the natural in the city? Sociologist Bruno Latour and others have 11

Taken from the discussion in Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin (2001) Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition, pp. 184 - 89, but any bibliographical search on Bruno Latour will bring up his thought-provoking works.

argued that the abstract distinction between the human and social, and the mechanical and technological fails to reflect our actual experience of technology. Latour proposes that we are now more properly considered cyborg than human - moving at automotive speeds, supported by central heating and plumbing systems, and enhanced by infinite electronic connections.11 We certainly identify with, humanise, and rely on our stylish and enabling techno-devices. This love affair with the smart object has parallels with the value-added materiality of contemporary British craft and small-scale design which incorporates

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aesthetics, thought, and innovation into its treatment of materials, skill, and purpose.

Janet Stoyel’s high-tech fabrics are exceptional for making explicit the collision of science, sensuality, and function in modern material culture.12 The exhibitors across the three venues of urban Field are notable for their engagement with the natural world or our urban habitat (or both) but this does not emerge as a faded vision of the medieval seen contra the machine state. Rather, the works shown here animate our own fragmented experience of balancing urban pace and connectivity with a rurality that promises peace, environmental harmony and organic food.

Of course a polarisation of an ever-evolving cityscape and a stable countryside with timeless values is as false as the contrasts of craft and modernity that I have rejected above. The societies and economies of rural Britain have changed in concert with the growth and development of cities reflecting in and out migrations, the rise and fall of new industries, and the spread of transport networks. This process has continued into the turn of the 20th century with transformations including the growing coverage and power of telecommunications, the decline of organised religion, the development of sophisticated rural recreation and tourism, and the rise of environmentalism.13 These material changes in rural life have occurred in parallel with the net population movement out of cities in Britain since the 1970s and the rise of the commuting lifestyle.14 The late 20th century practice of studio craft and its consumption is both constituted by these patterns and works to represent them. As Emmanuel Cooper points out in his essay at the start of this book, many craftspeople have moved out to the countryside, frequently after training in urban-sited art and design schools. This change has supported and inspired their practice and significantly their production continues to be widely accessible to city inhabitants via websites, representation at urban outlets (galleries, shops, and fairs) and the mobility

12

See Janet Stoyel’s curriculum vitae posted on the University of the West of England website - http://www. media.uwe.ac.uk/etc/stoyel. htm.

13

See chapter one of Michael Woods (2005) Contesting rurality: politics in the British countryside, ‘The strange awakening of rural Britain’ pp. 1-23.

14

Woods (2005) p.15.

granted by car ownership. Contemporary craft also mediates and interprets emergent visions 24 OFC-p37-2.indd 24

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of the countryside. Heritage and green tourism are fast outpacing agricultural production as the economic foundation for rural regions. Large conservationist organisations like English Heritage and the National Trust now exert considerable influence in facilitating and representing our experience of the rural and its history. Eleanor Pritchard’s woven textiles are evocations of natural landscapes such as ‘shingle beaches’ and ‘flint walls’ with their subtle palette and rhythmic patterns.15 They are designed and produced with domestic furnishings and fashion textiles in mind. Plainly Pritchard’s diffuse capture of the light and structure of different rural vistas through weaving skill and considered composition recommended her to the National Trust who commissioned the maker to create a series of hangings for their new headquarters in Swindon (completed late 2005);16 Pritchard’s panels strike the eye as gorgeous abstractions yet each is also linked in inspiration to the Trust’s five main areas of stewardship in Britain - Buildings, Farmland, Gardens, Woodland, and Coastland - hence contemporary craft becomes the medium for an holistic and responsible mission for national heritage. The panels are the showpiece of a staff meeting area featuring oak furniture, a clear signifier of traditional, wholesome Englishness. Another example is the Corn Exchange in Newbury where in the 1990s Sasha Ward was one of the craftspeople involved in remaking this central space of the agricultural economy (by then largely deserted) into an arts and community centre.17 In this new incarnation the Exchange is 15

Review of ‘100% design’ (2003) in Crafts, Vol. 184, Sept/Oct, p.35.

16

Ruth Pavey (2005) ‘Screen star’, Crafts, Vol. 190, Nov/ Dec, pp.44-49.

17

Clare Barrett (1994) ‘The Corn Exchange’ Crafts, Vol. 130, Sep/Oct, pp. 14-17.

the vehicle for a cosmopolitan and inclusive cultural programme injected into this country town. Ward’s stained glass window successfully encompasses the old and new with a bold overall design announcing the adventurous departure of the initiative while the finelypainted detail depicts the fields, river, and canal which made Newbury an important market town built on farming and trade.

Any British farmer will tell you that an understanding of rurality now must take into account the rest of the world, its distribution of production, and networks of trade. Our

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supply lines for energy, food, and essentials are as far-flung and more tangled than our internet connections. The juxtaposition urban Field also contains within it an opposition of westernised countries and unfamiliar destinations since the global distribution of urban and rural life has roughly divided about this distinction. This is changing as the previously predominantly rural populations of vast nations including India, China, and Indonesia begin to tip towards city-living. This is occurring in concert with the growth of massive manufacturing industries echoing the industrial metamorphosis of Europe 250 years ago.18 The recent work of silversmith Chien-Wei Chang sensitively explores the contrast between his own international, complex life story and the rural heritage of his traditions. The maker has created several series of works springing from one object - the ladle - and its traditional uses and associations in East Asian societies. Chang grew up in Taiwan and studied German language and literature in Taipei before coming to London to study silversmithing where he currently lives and works.19 In his ladle series Chang used silver and bamboo and focussed on numerous elegant variations on handled instruments closer or further away from the functional form; he also made a series of giant sculptural ladles.20 18

‘To produce new work is like going through a psychological journey. This time I look back to my cultural roots to seek inspiration. In particular I am fascinated by the raw, rough utensils, which were used to collect crops in the harvests of aboriginal tribes in ancient Taiwanese society since 3500 years ago. I try to enhance the Eastern aesthetics by combining seductive silver with another ordinary yet earthy material: Bamboo.’ 21 These spare and beautiful items with a sophisticated conceptual life both evoke the routines of ritual and sustenance in remote farming communities and participate in the ambition and cultural awareness of contemporary East Asian cities. Studio craft is as international

David Byrne (2001) p.12.

19

See curriculum vitae posted on Chien-Wei Chang’s website http://www.chienweichang. co.uk/backgrd1.htm.

20

See recent Crafts article of Sep/Oct 2006, Vol. 202, p.42 but also the statements on Chang’s website http://www. chienweichang.co.uk.htm.

21

From Chien-Wei Chang’s website http://www. chienweichang.co.uk/ inspiration3.htm.

as painting and haute couture in making broad references to different places and cultures

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reflecting the multicultural reality of our societies. However, the facility of such homages can sometimes echo the ease of our foreign holidays in search of seclusion and simplicity.

Exoticism in the post-colonial globe is a widely available accessory but the world-at-large is a complex system of inter-dependencies, debt, uneven resources, and different perspectives.

The American writer and social commentator Michael Ventura collaborated with psychologist James Hillman on a collection of essays composed as letters to one another about the American obsession with therapy called We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world’s getting worse (1993). In one of these essays Ventura ruminates on how the growing reach of 24-hour technology into people’s homes, especially satellite television channels and Internet connections, has transformed the experience of living in conservative states where for example the widespread consumption of MTV and porn belies the morals and measures observed in daylight.22 His argument is that via technology and the democratisation of choice in westernised countries we are now living in a dream world whose surreal wealth of possibilities and absurd juxtapositions profoundly alters the relationship between the real and the fantastic.

But now we live in a technologically hallucinogenic culture that behaves with the sudden dynamics of the dream, that duplicates the conditions of dreaming. Technology projects 22

Michael Ventura (1993) ‘Welcome to the Dreamtime’ in Hillman, J. and M. Ventura We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the World’s getting worse, pp. 114-23.

23

Hillman &Ventura (1993) p.122.

the subconscious into countless things. What distinguishes the 20th century is that each individual life is a daily progression through a concrete but fluctuating landscape of the psyche’s projections. The surrealism, sexuality, and instantaneous change that occur in our dreams also occur all around us.23 That is our myriad and infinitely changeable options to individuate every aspect of our lives reverberate psychologically - our waking and material world is a phantasmagoria which brings to life both fantasies and psychoses. Ventura’s vision extends Latour’s functional

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and social effects of mechanisation on humanity into the psychic realm and gives us a more gothic reading of our custom-made lifestyles. What on earth has this got to do with contemporary craft practice and the theme of urban Field?

While craft skills and an intimate knowledge of materials play a surprisingly important part in many high-tech industries (cutting-edge instrumentation for example) the making of everyday objects and adornments by hand no longer has any foundational economic basis in Britain. Yet the barest acquaintance with studio craft demonstrates that making craft and consuming it is satisfying and stimulating on many levels for its practitioners and those who engage with it and possess it. Simone ten Hompel is one of Britain’s most esteemed metalsmiths. Her spoons, beautifully worked in silver, reproduce a simple and familiar implement which as a functional item is pressed out industrially by the thousand. Ten Hompel’s spoons exercise the glamour of a precious material but incorporate unexpected angles, unsymmetrical curvatures and offset elements which challenge our parameters for the object.24 ‘There is always a notion of the vessel, but sometimes it moves as far away from that as possible, I am always striving for an engagement with the viewer.’ 25 The allure and power of these objects springs from their play on our imaginations and the psychological force of the forms themselves which contain a tension between the primitive and the sophisticated. This is characteristic of contemporary studio craft which embodies a fantastic orchestra of associations from sensual suggestions of the hand and body, through narratives of memory, identity, and history, to celebrations of and confrontations with materials and techniques. These contexts and meanings are far from simplistic fables of joy in work and wholesome wares making happy homes but grow out of enactments of odd

24

See web-page on Simone ten Hompel’s commission for the Millennium Canteen http://public-art.shu.ac.uk/ sheffield/cantn34.html ; also http://www.ncsscotland.org. uk/collections/aberdeen/ christine_rew/3_spoons.

25

Simone ten Hompel quoted in Susannah Woolmer (2005) ‘Simone ten Hompel’ http:// findarticles.com/p/articles/ mi_mOPAL/is_526_162/ai_ n15980769/print.

fixations, storytelling and imagination, the therapeutic physicality of making and remaking, 28 OFC-p37-2.indd 28

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or the symbolism of a certain shape, colour, or texture. The exhibits of urban Field cannot just be reflected on as contained representations of a conceptual conceit but might be magnetic and haunting instruments in the guise of accessories where we may recognise our better or worse selves. Ventura’s moral conclusion and call to arms is that the mixing of our psychic envelope with the actual offers the opportunity of knowing ourselves better than ever before and perhaps transforming our relationship with the World.26 This poses a particular challenge with respect to the theme of urban Field in an era when the greater majority of the globe, for so long rural in the old sense, will move into an urban age, and the natural world threatens to become more extreme through climate change, our ability to integrate our city and country hyper-selves with the real worldscape becomes imperative.

References Byrne, David 2001, Understanding the urban, Palgrave, Basingstoke, UK. Crocker, Robert (ed.) 2000, ‘Designing minds: current issues in craft, design and industry’ Designing Minds Symposium, University of South Australia, Adelaide, July 21-22, 2000.

Graham, Stephen and Simon Marvin 2001, Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition, Routledge, London.

Hillman, James and Michael Ventura 1993, We’ve had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the World’s getting worse, paperback edition, HarperSanFrancisco, San Francisco.

26

Hillman & Ventura (1993) p.123.

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Woods, Michael 2005, Contesting rurality: politics in the British countryside, Ashgate, Aldershot, UK.

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Coming and Going Ambre France

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I was filled with a slight anxiety not to be left behind when I moved to Devon after completing my MA in London. Having lived in the Capital for just over seven years, I had become accustomed to the immediacy and speed of city life; I was concerned that it would be very difficult to continue my jewellery practise outside of this environment. As it turned out, the move to a rural setting allowed me to really concentrate my efforts on becoming successful within the art and craft industries and helped me to reflect on what was important to me in my work outside of the ‘bubble’ I had been living in.

In terms of developing the ideas for my work, I don’t feel that I am limited to drawing my inspiration from a particular environment. I tend to reflect on intangible or conceptual aspects of the world and translate these into pieces of work. For example, I have a strong desire to make my work interactive and this has been a consistently recurring theme in both rural and urban settings.

The physical / visual presentation of my pieces on the other hand, has been shaped heavily by the working processes available to me in my locality. I prefer to have my work made locally as this allows me to maintain personal contact with the people who make my work; my requirements can be explained more easily this way.

Perhaps ironically, I think that my work’s physical presence has become a lot more industrial since moving to the countryside. This is due to the fact I haven’t had access to specialist jewellery equipment and suppliers. In order to realise my ideas, I have therefore had to approach small-scale local industry for help with problem-solving and the fabrication of elements of my work.

Having to adopt new ways to make the work in my new surroundings has had a very positive impact on enabling me to set up my business. The cost of production is considerably lower

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in Devon compared to London and this has made out-sourcing work financially realistic, in turn enabling me to realise ideas I had shelved in London. Smaller rural companies have also been far more willing to take on smaller production runs than their competitors in the city, making them much more approachable to a small business like my own.

I think its necessary to point out here that the physical nature of jewellery has allowed me to develop a remote working relationship with my audience. The cost of sending my work to far-flung places is negligible compared to the expense and logistics craftspeople have to deal with who work on a larger scale. The Internet and postal service play a large part in the day-to-day running of my business, but my reliance on these infrastructures has somewhat replaced the personal contact with suppliers and stockists I experienced when living in London.

So far, I have made this change from urban to rural living sound like an entirely rational, logical and fruitful process. This is certainly not the way it felt at the time. I was in a state of shock for quite a while after making the move to Devon. This was an experience that is difficult to explain now I feel more established here, but by looking at some of the experiences I had during my transition from urbanite to ruralite I feel I can express at least some of the issues I have faced as a ‘rural’ maker.

Moving out of the big city was not an attempt on my behalf to escape the ‘rat race’. I had just finished my MA course; I had to move out of the place I was living in and I was offered a job in Torquay where my mother was living at the time. More than anything, I found myself in Devon by chance.

In an attempt to keep hold of a strong link to London through my jewellery, I jumped at the chance to work with a London-based, self-styled ‘Urban’ fashion company who had

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seen my work in a gallery in London and approached me with the offer of a commission. I was really excited by this prospect, as it appeared to fulfil my aspirations for collaborating with a prominent design-based company, whom I assumed would be well connected in the London area. The fact that they were involved in fashion held a special relevance to me as a Jeweller and it seemed that this was the recognition I had dreamed of finding having recently left education.

After travelling up to London for the meeting, it turned out that they didn’t want to see any of the work they had asked me to bring along, it appeared they were only really interested in one particular piece, which they effectively wanted me to re-work to their specifications.

It became apparent quite early on in the meeting that their intention was to get something for nothing and their tactics for doing so were to make me feel insignificant in the larger scheme of things. Feigning ignorance to my locality was something they focussed on in order to do this, which stood out to me bearing in mind they had gone to great lengths to track me down in Devon.

It was an interesting if disheartening experience. I had been confronted with preconceived ideas (that I had previously held myself) that country dwellers weren’t as in touch with the world as their urban counterparts. This is complete rubbish. The longer I have lived away from London, the more I have become aware of the rest of the world, in particular the British Isles and Europe, the lack of things on my doorstep encouraged me to do this.

There is a difficulty in getting the right audience to see my work in Devon. Rural craft fairs have a stigma attached to them, people either come along expecting cream teas, face painting and homemade craft and cakes, or stay away for the very same reasons. Although I don’t consider my work to be serious, it is difficult get it taken seriously in this environment.

My experience of urban craft fairs is entirely different, or maybe it’s just the audience that is. urban FIELD OFC-p37-2.indd 33

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A lot more of the people who I consider to be my target audience attend urban craft fairs and there tends to be more of an atmosphere of an exhibition or exposition, and the sales are considerably higher.

Craft seems to be finding its way into consumer lifestyle at the present time, it is verging upon being fashionable, and fashion comes at a price. What feels strange about being a contemporary designer-maker in this part of the world is that most of the local population cannot afford to buy my work.

In the outlets I stock with my work locally, it is nearly always well received, however one of the most frequent comments is that the prices are too high. In actuality, the work is often priced cheaper than it is in urban outlets, but people are poorer here, which is unfortunately the other side of the coin to my cheaper production costs. Locally, I find myself competing with relatively cheap, mass-produced costume jewellery. I think this situation is the product of a combination of a more relaxed attitude towards ‘keeping up’ with culture and fashion, and the smaller economy here in the South West.

I spent a lot of time worrying about these issues when I first moved to Devon and to some extent they are still part of the day-to-day concerns with my business. I am not alone in having these concerns and I don’t just share them with other artist-craftspeople, or even businesses in the South West. One thing I have become aware of is that by having experience of both rural and urban living, I can see that the answers to some of my problems in this locality can be found in urban areas. I guess you just can’t have everything; some level of difficulty is always going to be involved in running a business.

The reality of being a maker in a rural setting has made me focus on important decisions I have about the lifestyle I want to lead. I have never been an artist who draws their

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inspiration from nature, but it doesn’t mean to say it doesn’t have an influence in my life when I have needed periods of calmness. Living somewhere that’s beautiful somehow gives you the space to reflect on things outside of what’s going on in your own head. I have also been able to access, utilise and enjoy all that the Capital has to offer on a scale much larger than when I resided there, possibly due to a less lazy approach on my part and not taking it so much for granted.

I like the sense of individuality I get living in a rural setting and enjoy the feeling that I stand out more down here. It’s fair enough that the majority of my audience isn’t right on my doorstep but then again who ever really does have that luxury?

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urban FIELD: the artists

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The Co Directors of urban FIELD wanted to express the vitality, innovation and distinction of contemporary craft practice in the city and countryside, and to do so through three companion exhibitions that challenged convention.

For Contemporary Applied Arts this led to the first ever selection of makers working exclusively in willow, bringing the material of the rural expanse into the heart of London.

The Devon Guild selected London-based makers working in the broad territory of interior design, transporting a metropolitan ‘room’ to the edge of Dartmoor. The Crafts Study Centre looked both to London and to the South West to present new work by makers addressing the dual theme through an interest in illumination and reflection: the Centre’s first group show since setting up in its museum in Farnham.

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Dail Behennah

My work is constructed rather than woven and I am preoccupied with line, light and shadow. No longer concerned with function, I create sculptural forms.

The three crosses in this exhibition were inspired by one of my favourite beaches, Traeth Mawr in Pembrokeshire. They contain elements of the landscape: the slate cliffs, marram grass on the sand dunes and driftwood on the tide line. X marks the spot, as on a treasure map, and a row of X’s is often used as a sign of affection.

The three intersecting circles reflect my interest in geometry and the grid. As the sphere revolves the lines and light constantly change.

My degree in geography and an interest in landscape and ecology inform my work, as does the art of the Constructivist movement.

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Frances Brennan

I am a metalsmith, making contemplative sculptural objects. My work makes constant reference to nature whether intentional or otherwise. I work with both the random and the planned, valuing the process and the ideas that emanate from the process. The work evolves while in my hands and I am often surprised by the results, sometimes only understanding the origin when the work is complete. I am comfortable with my chosen material, metal, but relish the excitement that the introduction of other materials brings. I envisage these contemplative sculptures in domestic settings, gallery spaces, public art situations and architectural interiors and exteriors.

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Chien-Wei Chang

A metal artist’s practice in contemporary silversmithing I love metal just because of the characteristic of the material. The process of making a metal work: treating it with fire to anneal it, using hammers to translate the invisible ideas into visual forms, and bathing it into water to clean it. When I put metal, especially silver, into the acid to purify it and turn it white, it feels as though I have finished a personal ritual - almost like a baptism.

Driven by a passion for metal as a material and my personal interest in the ritual of the making process, as a foreign silversmith based in London I try to enhance the Eastern aesthetics by combining metals with other natural materials, such as wood, bamboo or found objects. To produce new work is like going through a psychological, spiritual journey.

Each time I look back to my cultural roots to seek inspiration. In particular I am fascinated with the rough, raw utensils, which were used by aboriginal tribes in ancient Taiwanese society since 3500 years ago. I try to transfer the most humble daily object into a meaningful artwork with an almost spiritual quality.

This allows the audience to look at things with a profound perspective. continued

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Chien-Wei Chang

With an ancient, rural look but still strongly connected with traditional functional forms, I also attempt to convey some meanings through my visual language by combining and joining different materials in an unusual way. Each piece has a title and tells a story about itself. It depicts different stages of my life in the journey of being a foreign craftsman living in this modern city. I aim to deliver some social message through my metalwork to engage with the audience in a conceptual way.

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Lubna Chowdhary

Emmanuel Cooper

My pleasure and delight in pattern was inspired during visits to the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, where all-over designs which are often used, have been attributed to horror vacui - horror of empty space. In recent work, I have worked purely with pattern and colour on two-dimensional or low relief tiled pieces.

My work, whether in stoneware or porcelain, is influenced by the urban city environment where I live, by such things as hard, textured surfaces, by the glare of street lighting, the endless movement of people and traffic, and by a general sense of urgency. Colours are those of roads, pavements and buildings, colours and textures those we encounter in the metropolis. It is mostly thrown and turned on the potter’s wheel.

The resulting work bears little direct relationship to Islamic or Indian traditions. More often it evolves from my interest in structure and detail within the urban industrial environment.

When producing tile commissions, I work closely with the client to produce a response to the space in which the piece will eventually be placed.

Technically, the surface effects are achieved by applying layers of slip and glaze and multiple firings.

For the porcelain I like deep ultramarine blue-greens and brilliant yellows. All are fired to 1260ËšC in an electric kiln in a slow-firing cycle to allow body, slip and glaze to interact.

I tend to work in batches or series of shapes and ideas, and these may take three to six months to develop, so that the making and glazing may be extremely slow as the success rate is low due to the unpredictable reaction between slip and glaze, and the constant surprise at opening the kiln.

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Jenny Crisp

I have been a professional willow grower and basket maker for twenty years. I make functional items for use in the home and garden.

My involvement with the complete process, from the very first planting to the final stages of making has given me an awareness and understanding of the link between making a functional object from an indigenous material. I try in my approach to be both forward looking and innovative, whilst at the same time retaining a respect for the sound and established traditions of my craft.

The pieces I have selected for this exhibition are a response to a need in me to push further the accepted boundaries of my own practise. This was inspired by considering the use of materials I would normally reject through lack of uniformity. The resulting pieces show an interesting link between the natural forms found in nature and the skill needed to control this recalcitrant material.

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Ruth Dresman

Certain themes are recurrent in my work: many of my images are submarine: fish, octopus, seaweed and shells, which suit the transparency of glass and the glimpses it affords of designs made on opposite surfaces of the vessels. I also enjoy observing animals, birds, flowers, leaves and seeds, and translating their forms and their textures into my work. The medium is not only glass, but light: I redirect the way light travels through my pieces, achieving depth of colour and piercing highlights of pure transparency.

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Olivier Droillard

Olivier Droillard worked in upholstery and textiles before debuting as a designer at Hidden Art’s award-winning stand at 100% Design in September 2005. He also exhibited at the Chelsea Crafts Fair in October 2005 where he received an Elle Decoration Future Classic Award.

Characterised by an elegant and sometimes striking use of colours, his tables and wall hangings are made up of a modular system of boxes that can perform various functions. For example one can be a drawer, another can have a lid. The boxes are also available in a variety of colours and finishes.

Since exhibiting at Milan’s Salone Satellite in April 2006, Olivier has worked with Harrods and Habitat and participated in the first ever Origin: The London Craft Fair and in Hidden Art’s annual Open Studios.

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Dawn Dupree

1. My work explores narratives in an urban context.

Inspired by a constant state of transition in a city where construction/deconstruction oddly juxtapose, momentary glimpses of scenes are observed, two planes often collide, vying for our attention.

Reference also includes urban wastelands, films

by Antonioni and David Lynch, landscapes seen travelling and autobiographical stories.

2. I construct new landscapes from images of found, recorded and imagined places, producing distorted, sometimes ambiguous and potentially unsettling results. Abandoned domestic objects, industrial structures and derelict buildings act as clues, trigger memory, allude to mystery or fantasy, or express gestural qualities.

3. Richly coloured, saturated and layered surfaces are achieved using dye pastes, discharge recipes, translucent and opaque pigments on cottons/linens/ canvases and furnishing fabrics. By integrating traditional print methods with digital technology; a process of adding and subtracting, and masking and revealing, I reflect a blurring of boundaries between past/present, urban/rural and internal/external landscapes.

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Lizzie Farey

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I take my influences from the Galloway countryside where I live and work. I am surrounded by hills, lochs, larch trees and heather, the essence of which I try to recapture in my work. My studio is a converted tool shed on a farm. I grow my willow in nearby farmer’s fields and collect ash and other materials from the hedgerows. My working life is governed by the cycles of nature. Winter is for planting and harvesting the willow. Spring is for sorting the rods to dry out in the barn. Summer and Autumn I work to order, soaking the dried out willow rods in a large cattle trough.

The pieces of work that I create, as well as being inspired by nature, can also be expressions of my inner state. This is more often than not a release and can be surprisingly fulfilling. I don’t think I would gain the same satisfaction using non-natural materials.

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Stewart Hearn

Professionally I have been involved with glass for over twenty years, my practice has always been defined by skill, the understanding of a challenging material, the domination and control of its fluid language into strong shapes and largely symmetrical forms.

As well as making my own collections, I run London Glassworks, where I offer my manufacturing skills to individuals and companies who need small batch production, bespoke designs, prototyping, restoration work and various other projects that require traditional handmade glassblowing skills.

However, all of this and the constant fight to survive financially has sometimes led me to ignore the expression of creative freedom.

Lately I have been able to develop my emotional relationship to glassmaking and my visual expression, which has been liberating. This understanding has subsequently imbued the work with a tangible enjoyment that speaks still of skill... Form, colour and decoration combine to create desirable pieces that portray a love of the craft and the material... but balanced with new found inhibition.

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Kay+Stemmer

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Kay+Stemmer formed their partnership in 2000 when they were commissioned to design an exclusive range of contemporary furniture for the award winning hotel, Cowley Manor, in the Cotswolds. Having started as designer-makers of one-off commissions, their expertise as cabinet makers gives them an edge in resolving technical aspects and in communicating with a close network of some of the best craftspeople.

Last year they were commissioned by Heal’s, a chain of high end stores which sell contemporary craft, to design their first range for the retail market.

This was a superb opportunity to show that good contemporary design can also be beautifully made and at an affordable price - and in the UK. The pieces and spaces designed by Kay+Stemmer share a practical, elegant aesthetic. They have a meticulous approach to the commissioning process and an ability to listen and interpret, which enables them to respond to a wide range of briefs and budgets.

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Chris Keenan

The pots that I make are to be used and enjoyed in domestic life. There are certain forms that have been present since I began making - cups, bowls, pots for flowers - and I still derive pleasure and satisfaction from the formal refinements that come with each

fresh exploration. For me, the bowl remains the form where subtleties of line are most elusive and consequently most rewarding when successful.

The work is thrown Limoges porcelain, glazed using combinations of tenmoku and celadon and reduction-fired in a gas kiln.

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MissPrint

MissPrint is a company founded by designers Yvonne Drury and daughter Rebecca. Yvonne has previously worked within the fashion textile industry as a freelance designer creating textile prints for the fashion houses around the world.

Rebecca holds a strong flair for design which has successfully provided her with an international clientele. MissPrint gives Yvonne and Rebecca the opportunity to work together and diversify into the interior/furnishing realm.

The collections of beautifully crafted and contemporary printed textile lampshades, cushions and notebooks are either hand printed onto raw silk or digitally printed in high resolution onto cottons.

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MissPrint is based in London and the cosmopolitan influence is apparent throughout the collections.

Working together Yvonne and Rebecca produce designs that are contemporary and decorative, they embody traditional elements of defined pattern, whilst using modern imagery and bold colour.

Inspiration is drawn from many areas. “As designers we are constantly searching for new imagery, we often visit ‘flea markets’ on our travels, and collect ephemera from different countries and eras” says Yvonne. “I love 1950’s design and illustration but nature and organic influences also play an important part” notes Rebecca.

MissPrint collections aim to collaborate nature and culture to create a sense of calm for every modern home.

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Gareth Neal

Within my work I am continually exploring the places that are just out of reach: below the skin, beneath the sea and outer space. Developing themes through observations in science and nature, I use fluid movement and repetition to produce decorative and sculptural forms.

Aiming to twist the normal and shuffle the ordered, I invite the onlooker to question, evaluate and respond.

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Yumi Nozaki

‘Ma’ Series Yumi has exhibited worldwide at the Museum of Glass in Madrid, L’outil Museum in France, the Crafts Council in London and Luniverre Gallery in Paris.

Her installation work ‘108 Desires’ (hand blown glass, audio and video projection) was made at the University College for the Creative Arts where she has worked as an artist in residence for five years.

The installation was shown in 5 countries in 14 exhibitions including the British Glass Biennale 2006 at Stourbridge where she received the runner’s up prize.

The work for the exhibition is inspired by the ancient Japanese ‘Ma’ character that depicts the ‘moonlight’ shining under a ‘gate’. Historically the notion of place precedes our contemporary idea of space as a measurable area: ‘space between’ or negative space is integral to its meaning. My conceptual approach is concerned with giving expression to a delicate balance between what is actually seen and what is imagined between the objective and the subjective.

The light that streams from under the gate opens up to a hidden world made of infinite dreams.

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Sarah Pank

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Eleanor Pritchard

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Eleanor Pritchard designs and produces woven fabrics for interiors and fashion. Much of the work draws inspiration from traditional British textile crafts such as tweeds and Welsh blankets, which are re-interpreted in a modern context. Techniques include doublecloths and distorted wefts which are used to create gently patterned surfaces. The palette is influenced by early-mid 20th century British art, evoking a sense of nostalgia, whilst retaining a contemporary edge - soft colours with unexpected accents.

In addition to my bespoke hand-woven work, I also work on large-scale commission projects as well as designing for mill production. ‘ Eleanor Pritchard’s woven fabrics and interior accessories are a glorious mix of soft colours and chunky textures. Her fabrics have a sophisticated hand-crafted feel that’s unique. ‘ The Independent on Sunday

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Michael Ruh

Caroline Sharp

The woven forms are based on studies of seeds and seedpods and capsules. Form is the most important part of my work: form reflecting natural forms/ elements in nature.

I try to make the most complete aesthetic statement possible by the simplest means I can think of. I strive to creative pieces of the utmost aesthetic complexity and flexibility while utilising a minimum of colour and decoration.

My physical surroundings often provide the inspiration for my work. My String and Cocoon vessels have evolved from the delicate patterns on sandbars caused by receded water, or lines drawn into fresh snow by leafless windblown shrubs.

The effect achieved by the layered constructions of cocoons and wasp nests exerts a fascination that is reflected in the delicately carved lines on inner surfaces of my vessels which leave a trail of shadow and light.

Materials used in the pieces submitted are mainly gathered birch, white poplar and red dogwood with some willow. The weave is a random weave I have developed which emphasises form and movement within the piece. Tips of rods left to give texture.

Leaves left on to give contrast in both texture and colour.

A recent commission with the Creative Footsteps Project along the Wessex Ridgeway has led to the development of some new work influenced by the “chalk and cheese� landscapes of North Dorset.

Drawing on the idea of geological layers; hidden layers under the earth and their subsequent revealing I have worked with covering woven forms with various materials such as cob, chalk and papier mache. The outer layers have then gradually eroded away or have been scraped or burnt away to reveal the weaving beneath.

I personally make and sign each piece of glass, which I blow and shape free-hand.

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Simone ten Hompel

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I think Constable said, “Painting is but another word for feeling”, when I imagine a piece I get into a feeling that I would like to express. And when I then go into making, I go into a thinking, feeling mode.

Then when I’m in my workshop that’s the zone of making, empathising, the material takes over, my hand becomes an extension of that. It’s a bit like a contemplative place...where I have time to have a dialogue, debate questions, think and feel whether that which is coming out still confers with my initial feeling with the initial intention for that piece.

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Janet Stoyel

Susie Thomson

Urban FIELD: Ode to Autumn Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness, Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun...

This poem has long been a favourite. The words in these two lines have the ability to paint such glorious technicolor images on the memory of my mind.

Personally, trees and leaves embody autumnal emotions, changing and metamorphing through the seasons, in form and colour, to become beautiful wafer-thin shapes pressed between the pages of a recycled telephone directory.

Such leaves are given a new lease of life, allowed to live again in a permanent state when sandwiched between layers of sheer woven metal where the leaves impart a timeless design aesthetic and unusual dimensional quality. The hard-edged qualities of the metals with their ambiguous moirĂŠ capabilities contrast strongly with the delicacy and ethereality of paper fine leaf shapes. The permanence of metal and the impermanence of nature brought together in glorious visual combinations of colour, texture and form.

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Living in London and working with willow creates a dichotomy: the material I use is essentially rural but after a childhood spent in north-east Scotland I have lived from early adulthood in one of the busiest cities in the world.

The countryside is present as an inescapable background to my work. London is, however, a vibrant body that cannot be ignored. Nor would I wish to do so.

I imagine that the tension and dynamics of London shape many of my attitudes and views. Analysing this, however, is not something that particularly interests me. What I am aware of is that I do not look to outside images for inspiration. Instead it is from vaguely recalled memories and fleeting thoughts that I look to for shapes and ideas. Very often I want the eye to see the object and imagine what it feels like, more so even than what it looks like.

The one great decision maker in the work is the material itself. Willow imposes restrictions by its particular nature. Using these natural restrictions and looking to go beyond them allows for new shapes to emerge. By creating catalysts the willow reacts and changes course.

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Sasha Ward

Most of my glass panels are made to commission for public buildings that can be anywhere, in urban or rural settings. Over the years, I have found that what the people who use these buildings want from the art that is commissioned for them is a link with the natural world. I see my task as balancing this craving for nature with my own tendency towards geometric pattern making.

My most successful commissions seem to be the ones where I strike a balance between roughly drawn organic details and quite clinical shapes that have a relationship with the surrounding

architecture. When I give these two aspects of my work the characteristics of the rural and the urban, I come to the conclusion that I should not think of the city and the country as being in opposition to each other, rather that they work in harmony to give us what we need.

Sometimes I find that my invented patterns become exhausting and obsessive, and need breaking up with found patterns, often drawn from nature. This is what I decided to do for this exhibition, finding patterns and executing them as beautifully as I can.

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Donna Wilson & Carmel McElroy

The ‘Hands on’ rug was our first collaboration conceived at the Royal College of Art. It has been created by combining traditional techniques with industrial materials. 3,000 knitted woollen fingers are fixed into a felt base to form a soft, cushioned surface. The concept is inspired by the repeated modules in carpet pile. The ‘Pom Pom’ rug and the ‘Grassed Up’ rug combine the playful nature of our work and sensitivity to techniques and materials.

Through a combination of our textile backgrounds and inspiration from recognisable objects we create eye catching and functional products. All of our designs are hand made and produced in the UK. Donna comments: ‘The tactile quality of my work comes from my childhood spent in the Scottish countryside. It has had a strong influence on me both in my need for textural and organic forms. I enjoy using handcrafted techniques like felting, sewing, knitting and wrapping. My involvement with wool and felt allows me to create a closeness and cosiness that I want people to connect with.’

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Acknowledgments

Photographs for urban Field have been supplied

The urban Field exhibition was shown at:

by David Westwood, Dave Hotchkiss, Tim Cuff,

Contemporary Applied Arts 12 April to 2 June 2007

Damian Chapman, Ian Forsyth, Shannon Tofts, and the urban Field artists and their photographers.

Thanks to the Crafts Council for the quotation from

Crafts Study Centre 10 April to 2 June 2007 The Devon Guild of Craftsmen 5 May to 17 June 2007

Simone ten Hompel.

Grateful thanks are due to my urban Field Co-Directors Alex Murdin and Sarah Edwards for their

Contact details

support and help in the production of the book. It

Contemporary Applied Arts

could not have been realised without the hard work and

2 Percy Street, London W1T 1DD

commitment of Susan Campbell and Susie Alcock from the Crafts Study Centre.

Simon Olding

www.caa.org.uk Crafts Study Centre University College for the Creative Arts Falkner Road, Farnham, Surrey GU9 7DS

About the authors Emmanuel Cooper is a potter and writer living in London.

Linda Sandino is Senior Research Fellow, Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London.

Sophie Heath is Curator of the Coalport China Museum.

www.csc.ucreative.ac.uk The Devon Guild of Craftsmen Riverside Mill, Bovey Tracey, Devon TQ13 9AF www.crafts.org.uk www.urbanfield.org.uk

Ambre France is a jeweller based in Devon.

Professor Simon Olding is Director of the Crafts Study Centre, University College for the Creative Arts.

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urban FIELD Edited by Simon Olding with essays by Emmanuel Cooper, Linda Sandino, Sophie Heath and Ambre France

Published on behalf of urban FIELD by the Crafts Study Centre ISBN 978-0-9554374-1-0