Craftsmanship is Dead, Long Live the Craftsman

Craft, as we casually understand, is the art of making with one’s hands. But more traditionally, a craftsman, idealised and romanticised by proponents of the Arts and Crafts movement, represented someone who exercised skill, patience, thoughtfulness, and love for their labour work.

However, through the three industrial revolutions, craft was displaced from the everyday by mechanical production, then divided into design and labour, and finally removed from production where possible. The modern-day craft now exists mainly through the hands of curious amateurs (as in amātor, a lover of), and through niches that either remain as tradition or as something the machine cannot replace. As we live through the Forth Industrial Revolution, one wonders what values of craft are left, if any, in the modern day?

This project investigates the possibilities of digitising craft through re-contextualising the wicker designs of Peacock Chairs within the digital and virtual space, whilst retaining and experimenting with its iconic qualities. In doing so, the hope is to bring craftsmen to the forefront of today’s dialogue and to become a vessel for reinventing tradition and regaining agency of a stagnant past.