TOUCH - A Love Affair with Crafts

About the heart of craftsmanship, its role in society and the need to cherish it

Nannet van der Kleijn 2012

A few weeks ago I visited a butcher shop, Tol, in Rotterdam, talking to the third generation of a family that loves to make good meat. They have their own cows in a village in the east of the country. The meat isn’t displayed in slices, but on request the butcher puts his hand on the big handle of one of the heavy doors of the fridge and shows the whole part of the animal. With a sharp knife he slices a thin piece for you to taste, even if you request entrecote or beef. A better carpaccio then this you can’t imagine. The meat melts on your tongue and spreads a gorgeous taste in your mouth. That is where the conversation starts. Concerning meat he is the best kept secret in Holland. It is great listening to him. The way he talks about his love for creating perfect meat is like listening to the music that Dvorak composed along the Danube in Prague. One shares words, the other music. Words and notes filled with passion, knowing one’s skill and loving every millimetre of it.

Hands at work create a warm society. As we see how things work we are in touch with matter. A material consciousness is soothing for the heart and the senses. Touch is an underrated domain. Being in touch with your passion and in touch with matter through which one can express one’s passion, is of great value. And it is of all time. Every time we tend to get lost in our minds and neglect our hands, the fingers get cold, as do our thoughts. It is interesting to look at the development of society in this personal way. Warm and cold architecture and city planning, warm and cold products and retail, warm and cold relationships; they are infinitely interdependent.

Before starting to unravel the love affair with crafts, it is good to understand why particularly now there’s a common sense, say a trend, to be interested in craftsmanship. We have the luxury of a democracy and a wealthy society with a broad middle class. We have the luxury to develop ourselves. We can get to know ourselves through education and work. There is freedom of speech and expression, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. We are genuine personalities in a world of choices and we can make the choices we want to make. What happens in this situation of abundance is that we create systems to control the choices. We even let ourselves be carried away by all kinds of rules and regulations. This creates a biased society.

In design disciplines we saw this tendency to control develop. Personal became corporate. Unity meant oneness in form, colour, and typeface. Codes of conduct made a person a corporate link in a chain of commerce, production and presentation. Being part of this united expression was prior to unique expression. Even in school becoming one of the same was regarded as the highest form of becoming a good workman. Genuine personal expression, the personal interest, the personal development in craftsmanship, shifted to the realm of the private, the non-professional, of the hobby. We had to wait until the nineties to see designers who embrace all developments, both industrial and in crafts, and start working with heritage in a modern way. Hella Jongerius was one of these designers starting with her service ‘B’, organising differences. What we now see is a movement of people deciding to work with the systems as given things. They don’t see themselves as slaves of regulations. They except that they are a free person, with personality and the ability to respond to the material world around them. They express themselves using the systems, all systems available natural or controlled.

So the circle goes around again. More and more people see the world as a supportive space in which they can experiment, a supportive space in which they can, at least temporarily loose control. Machines and systems break down when they loose control, whereas people make discoveries, stumble on happy accidents (quote Richard Sennett in his book ‘The Craftsman’).

I love the periods in time when society wants to humanize and when there is a demand for the personal.

The heart of craftsmanship

‘Man cannot master the machine until he has learned to master himself. How can he achieve this when he does not even know what he possesses, what his abilities and capacities are’ (quote from artist László Moholy-Nagy around 1945)

All craftsmen share genuine, authentic quality. Being a carpenter, a lawyer, a lab technician, a designer or a music conductor, they all have one thing in common: ‘dedication to good work for its own sake’. They have discovered their abilities and capacities with lots of concentration and endurance.

What you hear and see from both the craftsmen from the past and present is that he has to work many years before becoming really good. The flamenco-guitarist Adrian Elisson said that 2 % is talent the rest consists of hard and prolonging work. Choreographer Hans van Manen insists on classical training as a fundament for modern dancers. Repetition of the basic elements is the foundation of development. The traditional steps should repeat again and again. Only then, he says, one can see a personality envelope and quality develop. Making kilometers counts. People who surrender to this practice become masters. And masters are the role models, teachers and treasure keepers for future generations. They are the Maecenas of their profession. They share their passion by doing their work well and make others part of a world of excellence.

The quality of a craftsman I so much love is that I can see personality in what he or she makes. I see personality in the sense of refined work developed through years of practice. I see a product made with dedication and love. There is an intimate knowledge brought into the product. Intimacy that creates sincerity. 

Its role in society

As I mentioned before it seems to be the ultimate expression of the four freedoms that we genuinely can be craftsmen in whatever we do, when we do what we do best and share that with others.

In England one can see how vocational studies are returning into the fabric of everyday life. Society, communities and industry need skilled and dedicated people. Universities who have taken over polytechnic schools have failed to cherish the human being that wants to learn with both head and hands. It is seen now that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is not effective. Not even in a service society and totally not in an experience society. Skilled people are the elasticity, the resilience of society. It is the comfortable mattress on which we can all sleep well. The carpenter, the butcher, the baker, the designer, the painter, they are people anchored in tangible reality. Real people who make real things. As Richard Sennett put it, “the craftsman is one with material consciousness; all his or her efforts to do good-quality work depend on the curiosity about the material at hand.” What they make has not stayed mere ideas; they pulled it through a process of thinking and doing and made the ideas happen. They are people that take pride in their work. They know what they are doing, they are educated, have exercised, again and again, rehearsal of movements, shaping products, shaping society. Creating a real world with real people and real products.

India counts 17 million craftsmen. Laila Tyabji of Dastkar mapped the provinces and saw specialties per province, village to village. By mapping the skills of these devoted people these skills became accessible to others. Her workshop in Delhi is open for others to work with her and her craftsmen. An Italian client has his beautiful carpets made by women from Gujarat. Their love affair was the craftsmanship; their crossroad was beauty of color and ornament, their product a unique synergy of Italian and Indian hearts and hands. It was business but in a sublime form of the meeting of skilled people with respect to each others background and abilities.

Making space to let this unfold and grow is all we have to do. Everything is already there in every corner of a country, a city, sometimes even of a street. If you look at for example Amsterdam, who knows what is there behind the veils of people that have migrated to Holland? Countries that harbor beautiful crafts are practiced behind closed doors. How great an opportunity even within Holland, within Amsterdam to make meetings of people and their skills happen.

A fabric is build of a warp and a weft; the respect for each others potential and skills makes things happen. Sharing is the fabric of society. People that feel good about what they do and are recognized in doing so, do sharing naturally.

The need to cherish it

When I got in touch with Celine Charlot and her project ‘Les Canaux de la Mode’ I immediately knew that she is one who is in touch with the sign of the time. She cherishes people’s abilities and capacities by connecting different skilled people to inspire each other. A meeting of beauty and a smart business at the same time.

To cherish craftsmanship is not a hobby, but it’s intelligent business. It is back on the political agenda in the department economic affairs. Monocle’s July issue focuses on cities who show a new entrepreneurial spirit. It let’s urban visionaries speak on how they reinstall the attention on the making industry/small industry/prototyping industry, refurbishing the mattress of society. Even in the city I live and love, city marketers have found the way to urban practices that create new activities to make the city alive. Material practice leads to social engagement. The material can be found in every corner of Amsterdam when one wants to see it. It is the charm of Amsterdam to see people’s work. So many specialties are still at work. It just needs to be polished to shine. What is made is then shared through trade, the good old Amsterdam style. By letting people be in touch with materials at hand to make beautiful things a close knit society is created.

As of the role of education I think that in Holland as in other parts of Europe we made a huge mistake by letting students work too much with their head.

I think that with all the different people coming from so many different backgrounds and countries, educating them in the techniques they bring from their countries would enrich our culture enormously. A perfect example is the graduation project of Lotte van Laatum that she called ‘Bloei’ - ‘Bloom’, a labor of heart. She asked Turkish women to come together and do what they normally do at home: crochet. But instead of making a tablecloth she let the women crochet necklaces and collars. It is said that the limits of language can be overcome through active involvement in a practice.

Touch and be touched

Imagine a city, a country where this is the buzz. One big lively marketplace. How warm and comforting it is. Just listening to the words of the butcher, listening to the notes of Dvorak makes me want to make something I am good at, putting my hands on something I love to do. It is contagious. Inspiring Cities are made of people that inspire each other.

Butcher Tol https://www.btol.nl/

Richard Sennett writes about cities, labor, and culture. The Craftsman https://www.richardsennett.com/site/SENN/Templates/Home.aspx?pageid=1

Dastkar strongly believes in crafts as a social, cultural and economic force. https://www.dastkar.org/organisationalmap.htm 

Les Canaux de la Mode https://lescanauxdelamode.com/

Monocle https://www.monocle.com/

Lotte van Laatum https://www.lottevanlaatum.nl/

Woolmark Campaign the 'wool muse' personifies the journey from farm to fashion in one garment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHDdUfisBKY&feature=plcp