Hands-on Intellect: Integrating Craft Practice into Design Research

Craft disciplines such as ceramics, glass, and textiles might fall into the category of applied arts, industrial arts, decorative arts, fine arts, or crafts.1 They have been understood as “medium-designated” practices, the values of which are correlated with material objects and their production (Rowley, 1997). In Finland, due to the growth of design for industrial production in the 1950s,2 the term “design” was adopted to call these craft disciplines (Nimkulrat, 2009a, p. 19). Finnish craft practitioners working with materials and hand tools may create non-functional objects and call their work “art” (e.g., ceramic art, textile art, etc.) and themselves “artists” (e.g., ceramic artists, textile artists, etc.), regardless of their positioning in the design context. In the field of textiles, in which the author is involved professionally, practitioners tend to consolidate both art and design in their occupation (Niedderer & Townsend, 2010, p. 5; Svinhufvud, 2006, p. 145). In Finland, no single form of contemporary Finnish textiles exists. The field is multifaceted and stands independently between industrial design and fine arts. A Finnish textile practitioner is usually called “textile artist”, although he or she has manifold characteristics as an artist and a designer, and creates both art and design objects (Svinhufvud, 1998, p. 202). In textiles as well as other material-designated disciplines, craft is understood not only as a way of making things by hand, but also as a way of thinking through the hand manipulating a material (Nimkulrat, 2010, p. 64). Craft is thus “a means for logically thinking through senses” (Nimkulrat, 2010, p. 75) This understanding follows the notion of craft as “a way of thinking through practices of all kinds” (Adamson, 2007, p. 7) and “a dynamic process of learning and understanding through material experience” (Gray & Burnett, 2009, p. 51). Hence, the process of making material objects by hand can be identified as one way of thinking intellectually (Sennett, 2008, pp. 149-153). Since the knowledge of craft, or how a material constructs an artifact, is not necessarily available in words or illustrations, practitioners are required to perform individual practices and observations while working with materials (Rowley, 1997). Similarly, design knowledge exists in designing activities, in which designers, their creation processes, and resulting artifacts are involved – it is considered a “designerly way of knowing” (Cross, 1982, 1999). Knowledge of a creative practice thus lies in and can ORIGINAL ARTICLE