Past Present & Future Craft Practice

An important addition to the study of craft, offering new research and expert opinion.

A book created by craft practitioners for craft practitioners.

Crafts are being lost in our world of rampantly shifting high technologies and mass market products. But not completely. Here we see their vitality as eight experts explore the field's future and past. Crafts are almost as old as people, and traditionally objects combined a utilitarian purpose, were produced with ceramics, textiles, metal, glass and wood and were qualified by their beauty and workmanship. In the 21st century how are these assumptions being challenged and expanded upon? Provocative and informed essays and photos comprise this hardcover which is the result of a five-year research project organized by the University of Dundee in Scotland, a country with a very trong craft tradition. The international contributors explore new ways of visual thinking, profiling craftspeople, patronage through the ages and the decline in the importance of crafts. Among its contributors are Paul Greenalgh, director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, who explores the subject of Craft and the New Humanism, and Chinese-born Fanke Peng, who has created a new visual 'language' for studying different cultures.