1. Regarding the history of objects - M. Anna Fariello

P.2 The purpose of this introductory essay is to brief the reader on the rich history of object-making and to explore assumptions and methods which affect the presentation and reception of this history.

P.3 To view objects anew, one must step outside the paradigm, step off the sand so to speak, and into the murky waters of postmodernism. Author Ellen Dissanayake suggests aesthetic analysis begin from a physiological point of view. In What Is Art For? and Homo Aestheticus, she uses examples from non-western culture to craft a paradigm in which aesthetics is imbedded in the cultural core.

P.5 Such integration of construction and decoration in a symbiotic state is a hallmark of fine craftsmanship, or what I like to call the “Craftsman Ideal.”

P.11 The movement (the arts and crafts movement in the 19th century as a counterrevolution to the Industrial Revolution) suggested that art save as a spiritual guide to counterbalance society’s growing dependence upon economic materialism and the harsh realities of capitalism. It represented a shift toward Eastern aesthetics, a corresponding reverence for simplicity, and an elevation of everyday experience from the physical to the spiritual, ideas that would come to characterise the English approach to craft and craftsmanship for an entire century.

P.17 The domestic aspects of pottery, textiles, and furniture fell prey to the prevailing sexism of the mid-century. The fact that women continued to create craft objects contributed to the perception that the objects themselves were domestic. Their creation in small, private studios, coupled with their subsequent use in the home, fostered an attitude that these were not real-world products after all.

2. Labels, lingo, and legacy: crafts at a crossroad - Paula Owen

P.30 Artists from all disciplines who share a desire to connect with the viewer on a sensory level, who believe in the expressive essence embodied in process, and who grapple with personal or sociopolitical issues have more in common, no matter what their medium, than do those who are artificially linked by materials, business plans, or academic camps. Indeed, tactility, materiality, interactivity, and the underlying procedural precepts of the craft arts have been informing the larger visual arts world for quite some time. Though the visual-cognitive properties of art are still dominant, the boomerang need for sensory experience brought on by the technological explosion has prompted crossover artists to incorporate a physical interaction between their works and the viewer.

5. Craft is art: tampering with power - John Perreault

P.77 Eliminating use makes form symbolic, denying the full force of the chief aesthetic virtue of craft objects: their perceptual and conceptual complexity. Most craft objects have a more balanced relationship between their haptic and their optic qualities than paint-on-canvas art or non craft sculpture, thus allowing a doubleness of being. Seeing and touching merge with or contradict each other. This is the purest art quality of objects made in the crafts tradition and the one unique to them.

9. “Reading” the language of objects - M. Anna Fariello

P.148 One of the marvellous things about aesthetic objects is that, through them, a transference of meaning can take place over vast periods of time.

P.149 As a document, the object is a physical record of the process that produced it. ... As a metaphor, the object yields insight into the human condition. The best works capture the motivations of an individual life and, extending specific circumstances and situations, translate these into a more universal language to reveal a collective human story. As a ritual, a work operates within the realm of day-to-day experience, enriching perception by diverse experiential means: visual, haptic, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and kinaesthetic. As part of daily life, the ritual object invites the viewer or holder to participate in a second creative act, thereby elevating ordinary experience to the extraordinary.
… An object’s meaning is manifest in its physical form and in markings on its surface, while its value is culturally ascribed. The latter part of this paper represents a shift in focus from the object itself to the value of the action of its making.

p.154 The system of interconnectedness and nested structures that characterises the World Wide Web is similar to the approach used in art making and may provide a new way to think about the creative process. In working a material into a finished object, the maker’s next mark has the potential to lead in an infinite number of directions. Thus, each mark implies a host of new possibilities. It is this expansive quality that is intoxicating to the maker — and threatening to those who become paralysed by and infinity of opportunity.

P.156 Containment is one of those subtle attributes of craft objects that may be explored in a metaphoric sense. The abilities to hold, to save, and to possess are basic human desires that satisfied the earlier human needs.

P.161 Ritual is a way of moving through an activity to bring a heightened awareness of the actions that form it.
… The repetitious activity of making and a self-conscious awareness of the object through use characterise ritual in craft process. … From a potter’s hand to the user’s hand, the object flows from a rhythm of making to a daily ritual of holding.

P.163 Could an elated feeling of creativity, similar to that experienced by a craftsman in the studio, be transferred to the object’s future holder? If so, then life has the potential for a day-to-day enrichment through a self-conscious awareness and appreciation of objects.

P.164 Even in use, however, the object can offer something apart from mainstream consumer culture in which production and consumption ride a merry-go-round of exploited resources, fashionable obsolescence, and unsatisfied desire. The object offers an alternative in that it is not wholly consumed in its utility. In contrast, a craft object is meant to be used again and again in a ritual of engagement and metaphor that intensifies its capacity for interaction and meaning with each encounter, rather than diminishes it.

11. Intimate matters: objects and subjectivity - Suzanne Ramljak

P.188 One of the primary ways that objects can engage us on an intimate level is through hidden or secret components. An element of secrecy or discretion adds to our personal involvement with an object, requiring extra investment and attention.

P.191 To be seen properly, small objects require us to get close, and this closeness is central to the intimate experience.
… Another operativ element in the intimate experience is bodily touch.

P.192 As seen in the figure at the beginning of this chapter, jewellery is a three-dimensional format that provides a direct and sustained form of bodily contact. Not just a bauble or visual diversion, jewellery of this sort can serve as a means of engaging the flesh, an instrument for self awareness, and as a source of tactile delight.

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