All young lecturers are thrown in to a system not of their making and have to slot in. I was like Bambi on ice. I didn't really know what we were doing. At least on craft based courses I could lean on my experiences from my own education. I was too young to see that this wasn't the best foundation.
Ultimately I packed it in. I didn't think I was doing it well enough. This was the sole chance some would get at further or higher education, their only chance to lay the foundations of a career. Very important work. Not a job like making where you can go get a new piece of timber if you cut it too short. The students were leaving as moderate makers lacking the speed of someone spending a similar amount of time in a trade environment and designers that didn't break the mold. There were exceptions, some I am still in touch with, but these were successful despite rather than due to their education.
Since then I have thought long and hard about what we were doing wrong as lecturers and would like another go sometime. It isn't wise to employ a lecturer straight from college. Others my age have stayed in it perhaps never having the self reflection or high standards. There is a case for fresh, youthful enthusiasm but it is countered by the fact that such lecturers produce youthful enthusiastic designers, not necessarily good ones.
I went to college in 1990. By then there had been a first generation of designer makers. Many of these had gone in to teaching. If you study the first 25 or so designer makers of furniture whos' work appeared in magazines and shows you can see that each of them was following a new and separate line of enquiry. Most of these trained as designers or artists before learning how to make. Their work shows a flair that few have managed to mirror. Why should this be?
After graduating the first generation believed they had work of merit to show. The public weren't so enthusiastic. The makers tended to support their work by other means. Some, a very small number existed in a commercial sense but most had help from the crafts council or taught.
This generation of makers came of age at a time when there were serious concerns about the future of the crafts. If you read David Pyes 'The Nature of Art and Workmanship' you can sense a genuine fear that the hand made was under threat, that the one off craft object could be lost to industry. Pye was the Professor of Furniture at the RCA when many of these makers passed through. Though Makepeace, Alan Peters and others
took differing routes Fred Baier, Rupert Williamson, Richard La Trobe Bateman and others formed the backbone of the 1970s craft revival in furniture. Whether they were aware of it or not they were a reactionary movement.
Once in teaching positions they naturally tried to address faults in their own education and protect the future of craft. The courses they taught on; Shrewsbury, Rycotewood, Parnham etc. had a similar system. Students would be taught a technique such as a dovetail joint then asked to use this in a design that they would have to come up with. A typical example is a first year project that I did which required we learn how to make a traditional draw, a frame and panel back or door and use these in a wall cabinet. This pattern of teaching is contrary to other Furniture Design courses. These courses are a few of the overall body of furniture design courses. This system encourages the student to think in a certain way. I still find it uncomfortable.
The project that opitomises the folly was a project to design a 'hallstand' that needed to incorporate a draw and be able to hang a coat. The pieces that resulted are a hilarious group of oddities. I side stepped the brief by abandoning it altogether.
If you look at the bulk of designer maker furniture coming out of colleges it bares the same hall marks.
The majority, perhaps I dare say all of the first generation of designer craftsmen were from middle class backgrounds. Names like Rupert, double barreled even were common. They had no desire to be seen as trade. None of them came from a trade background.
In the crafts there is a communal knowledge, shared values, a family, sometimes unionised that protected the working classes.
Art is when something new is made. At the top end of trade it occurs just as it does in artr colleges. Let us explore these two, quite different routes to originality.
Originality is asked of students. When you take a trade, through years of practice, to fresh, never seen before levels we can call it art. George Best took football to a level at that time never seen before. Stradivari the violin maker took violin making to a new height we may call art.
Few these days will submit to the discipline of craft until they break through in to art in this way. Few take the trade route. Alan Peters may be seen in these terms.
Tracy Emin may take a shit in her handbag. This may be new and as such is art. It may not be good art but it is art.
This route is much easier for a student to aspire to. Indeed we encouraged them to do this.
I'm running out of energy but will come back to this.
The point I was getting to was that the way the first generation were taught was clearly better. Enough time has transpired to see that the educational experiment that they launched from finding little craft in their courses has gone wrong somewhere.
I have an idea to remedy this and will come back to explain it soon.
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