The (Digital) Craftsman
“The laborer with a sense of craft becomes engaged in the work in and for itself; the satisfactions of working are their own reward; the details of daily labor are connected in the worker’s mind to the end product; the worker can control his or her own actions at work; skill develops within the work process; work is connected to the freedom to experiment; finally, family, community and politics are measured by the standards of inner satisfaction, coherence, and experiment in craft labor.” – C. Wright Mills
Photos by Anna Rosa Krau, words by Dörte de Jesus
Upon exploring haptic thinking and the intuitive wisdom of working with our hands, we move to the wider notion of craftsmanship and its relevance today. Usually, when we think of craft, the ‘hand-made’ immediately comes to mind. Yet, we live in an increasingly accelerated, digitalised age. How does this shift effect the position of the craftsperson, the definition of craftsmanship, and its value?
Etymologically, craftsmanship derives from the old English word ‘craeft’, meaning strength or skill. In his book The Craftsman, sociologist Richard Sennett offers a further definition: “Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake.” According to Sennett, the realm of craft connects activities as unrelated as music, pottery, cooking, and computer programming. Its essence is a notion of embedded quality that evolves from taking the time to do something well – which, in return, is profoundly grounding and satisfying to the maker as well as the user, and honours the resources involved in the process. Sennett’s definition points to one of the key challenges for craftsmanship in today’s fast-paced world: What happens to a culture in which the implicitness of time and reflection has been replaced by profit and growth, and how is this further effected by an expanding digitalisation?
We delve into this topic with Paolo de Jesus, a product and furniture designer (who also happens to be my husband) whose design practise fluctuates between traditional craftsmanship and digital making. In a recent collaborative jewellery design project, Hōrai, he explored the merging of computational design with the human voice and the ancient craft of lost-wax casting.
Paolo kindly agreed to be the model for the following fashion story. You can read the interview with him below.
Four questions for Paolo de Jesus:
What is your definition of craftsmanship?
Paolo: My definition of craftsmanship involves in some part the application and development of ‘skill’ or ‘technique’. The skill as being the result of a directed ‘practice’ of improvement and learning (‘practising’, becoming more skilled). It also involves an element of re-working, self-reflection and iteration. A process of refinement, the way a potter constantly adds or removes material to refine the shape of a mug or the recursive stages of editing and rewriting that a writer goes through to ‘craft’ a well-written article. It also contains an appreciation for the process of the craft in-and-of-itself (enjoyment in the beauty of the process of doing). It is a kind of constant ‘becoming’, a never-ending process of self-development and awareness, with perfection never being totally achieved. It is from this process that usually a sense of quality is achieved. Going back to the example of the potter, regardless of what one thinks of the style or function of the pottery produced, the hours of attentive care for the craft that she/he puts into practice creates an intuitive wisdom in the hands of the potter which cannot help but produce evidence of excellence and ‘quality’.
Apart from the human touch, what distinguishes traditional craftsmanship from a digital process? Is there such a thing as “digital craftsmanship” and does it matter if the craft is handmade?
Paolo: Apart from the one-to-one physical/intimate connection that you get with traditional craftsmanship (i.e., mastering an instrument or tool, throwing a clay pot, whittling a piece of wood to form a spoon, tailoring fabric, etc.), the main difference with the digital processes is the abstraction from the physical. The objects that are ‘crafted’ are metaphysical. They are usually ideas or abstractions that still relate to the physical world but exist in a space that is more difficult to touch, hold, taste, or smell. The ‘design’ or ‘drawing/plan’ of a table is different from the physical reality of a particular table. With this delineation of subject and object, physical and digital so to speak, the concepts of ‘craft’ and ‘design’ begin to separate and overlap. In some cases, the creation of the idea becomes separated from its execution.
One of my early influences in my thinking about both ‘design’ and ‘craftsmanship’ was my reading of a book by David Pye called the “Nature and Aesthetics of Design”. David Pye was a professor of Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art in London between the mid-1960s and 70s. The book has deceptively simple yet insightful writing, with passages that are unusual but that stay with you for a long time. He writes about concepts of art, design, ornament, usefulness/functionality, craftsmanship and workmanship, and shows how each is differentiated yet all weave in and out of each other, inextricably linked.
“Whenever humans design and make a useful thing they invariably expend a good deal of unnecessary and easily avoidable work on it which contributes nothing to its usefulness. Look, for instance, at the ceiling. It is flat. It would have been easier not to have made it flat. Its flatness does not make you any warmer or the room about you any quieter, nor yet does it make the house any cheaper; far from it. Since there is a snobbism in these things, flattening a ceiling is called workmanship, or mere craftsmanship; while painting gods on it or putting knobs on it is called art or design. But all these activities: ‘workmanship,’ ‘design for appearance,’ ‘decoration,’ ‘ornament,’ ‘applied art,’ ‘embellishment,’ or what you will are part of the same pattern of behaviour which all men at all times and places have followed: doing useless work on useful things. If we did not behave after this pattern, our life would indeed be poor, nasty, and brutish.” (The Nature & Aesthetics of Design)
Since the 19th century (and due to the increasing complexity of the modern world), industrialisation (along with the division of labour) has made the specialisation of designing more abstract. In some industries, the designer has become more and more removed from the maker, whereas in the past the designer and the maker were often one-and-the-same person. Today, with the complexity of some objects, this is now close to impossible. Some objects, products, and services cannot be created in the mind and by the hand of a single person anymore (e.g., the development of computers and digitalisation, large buildings, complex organisations/systems designs, etc.)
I would say that there is such a thing as digital craftsmanship if you take ‘digital’ as just being a subset of craftsmanship. It is just a different form of craftsmanship. The same characteristics are there: the application of a constantly improving skill or technique, e.g. the skill of coding (for a programmer), or the skill in using digital tools, coupled with the learning, application, and enjoyment of that skill for its own sake. Just go to any number of online communities devoted to the improvement of their digital artistic skills for their own sake (such as Artstation, Blenderartists.org, etc.) where you can find people of all kinds, discussing the craft of their art just for the sake and enjoyment of it.
The love of doing something for its own sake is an important characteristic of craftsmanship to me. There is an aesthetic beauty that can be appreciated in the way one does a ‘skill-based practice’ that often results in the object of that practice being of high quality. This can be seen, for example, in the appreciation of how a basketball player hones his/her skill of shooting a ball into a hoop. The individual style of a particular player’s shot is often just as admired as the actual success of the shot ‘going in’. The more one practices, the better one usually gets at producing results of that practice, resulting in a higher level of quality. One often hears the description of a ‘musician’s musician’ or a ‘designer’s designer or a ‘cook’s cook’. I think this is based on the appreciation from that person’s peers – not necessarily of the object or style of that person’s work but of the way that that person has mastered their particular ‘craft’. One can recognise quality musicianship while not in necessarily ‘liking’ his/her particular style of music.
In traditional crafts, I think you can often recognise the quality of a thing when it has been produced by a person who has, through hours of practice and a love of the process, achieved a certain level of skill. I think the ‘handmade’ quality that people admire, in say artisanal pottery, is a longing to see/feel the ‘human’ in the objects of our production. Machines, technology, and digitalisation have made this perception of ‘quality’ problematic. An example of this could be modern electronic products such as mobile phones or computers. Apart from the assembly, the fabrication of most, if not all their components, are made by machines or production line tools/robots. Most would now accept that the accuracy and precision of these machine-made things are generally of a production quality that would be very difficult to match with traditional ‘handmade’ means. The craftsmanship involved here is harder to see but still is, to me, embedded in the people behind the design and development. The craftsmanship of the designers and technologists, with their constant refinement, judgement, testing, prototyping (practising) imbue the recognisable ‘quality’ in the end product. A similar analogy could be made of electronic music or digital photography – one cannot deny the craftsmanship evident in many artists in those fields, it’s just that the tools have changed that the craftsperson is using.
Could you tell us about your algorithmic jewellery project Hōrai, its objective as well as the process and the people involved? Do you consider it within the tradition of craftsmanship?
Paolo: Hōrai is a collaborative project developed by my wife Dörte de Jesus and myself, Yuchen Chen, a Taiwanese computational designer, Sydney-based poet Stacey Cotter Manière, and Vipa Designs, a traditional jewellery foundry in the UK specialising in fairtrade and recycled metals. It was initiated as a grant application for EU-funded Worth Partnership Project, where we proposed the exploration of how we could infuse a level of personalised meaning into a jewellery collection. This led to the use of the human voice and its sound wave patterns as a material in the crafting of the pieces. My background is in product and furniture design and Dörte’s in creative direction and fashion – so this led us to also working with Yuchen, whose digital computational skills complemented exactly what we wanted to achieve. He advanced the project by crafting an algorithm that would take personal recorded sound files (such as Stacey’s commissioned poem Return to Knowing), and translate them into intricate organic shapes. These digital 3D-shapes would then be used to produce patterns for traditional lost wax casting.
I personally enjoyed the mixing of both the digital and analogue in the design and making processes. We started with something as personal and natural as the human voice, translated it digitally and modified it within a computer algorithm (which was incidentally, also a ‘natural’ growth algorithm). We were then able to take these digital 1’s and 0’s, and convert them back into physical forms, manifesting in bronze in what looks like very organic looking shapes. Often digital design ends up with a computer-generated ‘aesthetic’, whereas the shapes that we were able to produce are not only personalised and one-of-a-kind but also evoke natural forms. To me they look coral-like, evocative of something that is grown at the bottom of the sea, possibly commemorating what we are also quickly losing (as an Australian, the degradation of the Great Barrier Reef comes to mind). Dörte refers to them as lichen, reminding her of ancient forests. As the final stage of our project, the traditional lost-wax casting method used has been around for thousands of years and still expresses the mark of the maker in the hand-finishing required.
Based on my definitions and characteristics of ‘craftsmanship’ above, I do see elements of ‘Hōrai’ within the tradition of craftsmanship. Although not primarily formed by the hand, the designs are crafted using each of our respective skills working collaboratively together towards a result over the time of a year. There was also the possibility of reflection, refinement, and improvement of the algorithm as we learnt and adapted to changing requirements of the project, users, and makers. For me, the ‘skill/craftsmanship’ involved in this project is very much a timely one of collaboration and of working and learning together.
How could craftsmanship of a digital world thrive and what benefits could it bring to traditional craftsmanship? What are the factors that work against it
Paolo: The acknowledgement of the existence of craftsmanship in other ‘non-traditional’ fields such as the digital world, would not only raise the level of quality of that field but also help to augment the traditional spheres of craftsmanship. It will not replace traditional ‘crafts’ because the objects of digital craftsmanship are different from physical practices. They can overlap but they are also separate. In the same way, the craftsmanship of musicians is different from the craftsmanship of composing. Each needs the other to make music but the objects of the skills are different. Sometimes the musician and the composer are one-and-the-same, but in other instances, they are a collaboration between separately skilled individuals. In the case of our ‘Hōrai’ jewellery collection, we would not have been able to execute the project without the different skills and competencies of our respective team members. The way the forms were created could not have been achieved by any traditional jewellery techniques but, at the same time, the craftsmanship of the foundry was indispensable to the execution of the forms.
The coupling of ‘making’ with ‘profit-motive’ capitalism is problematic as it is less conducive to and breaks down the ‘for-its-own-sake’ characteristic of craftsmanship. Once you introduce the idea that the purpose of a thing is not for the love of the process in-and-of-itself but instead, for the purpose of profit (selling as much as possible, and as fast as possible), then craft-based practice can invariably suffer. This can lead to a homogenisation of the results, both in style and quality, as time is always of the (capitalistic) essence. Allowing slow time and development for the improvement of skill is, in my opinion, a fundamental characteristic of craftsmanship. This does not necessarily mean that craftsmanship cannot exist within this economic framework but it certainly doesn’t make it any easier.
Besides, you can still point to and recognise the characteristics of well-crafted website design but in some sense, it is harder to locate. The marks of craftsmanship are less apparent and, due to the complexity of the technology, our grasp of the skills required is (for many of us) on a surface level. On the other side, we can viscerally understand the mastery and skill required for making pottery on a human level. But as the complexity of the product increases, our understanding of the processes and skills required in high tech digital production are obfuscated. The problem of ‘profit-motive’ capitalism along with ‘blind faith’ in technology are issues that we all face and not just in the spheres of craftsmanship and design.
I think we have to stay vigilant and invested in how the physical world around us works, how the worlds inside our screens are created, and how our social world is organised. Of course, we can never be experts in everything, but having a holistic view and basic understanding of processes, both natural and abstract, will help all of us to work together democratically to craft, maintain, and improve our physical, virtual, and social environments.
The Hōrai jewellery collection will launch in Winter 2020, and you can receive more information here.
In addition, Paolo is launching his new furniture label, Nomade Editions, that will enable you to customise, personalise, and download designs to make yourself with the help of local CNC fabricators.
References:
Pye, David. Nature and Aesthetics of Design, 1995, Cambium Press.
Sennett, Richard. The Craftsman, 2008, Yale University Press.
Team Credits:
Model
Paolo de Jesus
Photography
Anna Rosa Krau
@talentandpartner @klaus_stiegemeyer
Styling
Kamilla Richter
@shotview_management
Credits:
Page 1:
Left: Earring by Horai
Right: Glasses by Mapleton
Page 2:
Earring by Horai
Page 3:
Rings by Eva Niemand and Bergner Schmidt
Page 4:
Ring by Eva Niemand, trousers by Richert Beil, shirt by Oftt, glasses by Mapleton, scarf by Manakaa Project
Page 5:
Overall by Marrakshi Life, necklace by Bergner Schmidt, ring by Eva Niemand, jumper by Hess Natur, shirt by Stoffbruch
Page 6:
Trousers by Hess Natur, jacket by Oftt, necklace by Jojo Corväiá, other jewelry by Eva Niemand, shoes by Veja
Page 7:
T-Shirt by Oftt, Bracelet & Rings by Eva Niemand
Page 8:
Overall by Marrakshi Life, jacket vintage, necklace by Eva Niemand, glasses by Mapleton
Page 9:
Denim suit by Richert Beil, concrete ring by Bergner Schmidt, silver ring by Eva Niemand