Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • About
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Design
  • Craft fetishism
  • The Guardian
  • 2011
Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Craft fetishism

Flicking through the latest issue of Port, a new “thinking man’s” magazine, I came across a photograph of a kind that is increasingly ubiquitous. In an article about two young design practices, there’s a picture of a box containing a hammer, some leather-working tools and other bits and bobs of workshop flotsam. With the same pinpoint focus that a food photographer might train at a boeuf bourguignon, the image fetishises its subject – in this case not French cuisine but craftsmanship.

It seems no magazine about material culture, from Monocle to Inventory, is complete these days without a behind-the-scenes story on a little-known clothing or furniture brand featuring people in leather aprons and workbenches strewn with chisels and offcuts. There’s nothing new about the kind of products these studios create. What’s new is the desire to reveal the process and not just the finished object. These are not-so-subtle messages reasserting the value of the handmade over the machine-made.

On one level, this is just fashion. When Levi’s launches a marketing campaign called Levi’s Craftwork to sell one of the most mass-produced items of clothing in the world, we can collectively roll our eyes. But I wonder if there’s something more profound going on.

In his 2008 book The Craftsman, the sociologist Richard Sennett makes a case for homo faber (or “man as maker”). Harking back to the workshops of the medieval guilds and to the studio of violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, Sennett set out to prove Immanuel Kant’s dictum that “the hand is the window on to the mind”. It is only through making things, he says – by trying and failing and repeating – that we gain true understanding. He is not, like some latter-day John Ruskin, arguing that handmade things are better than machine-made ones. He is simply saying that skilled manual labour – or indeed any craft – is one path to a fulfilling life.

Sennett’s idea of a “craftsman” is highly inclusive, but, at least since the industrial revolution, the designer and the craftsman are traditionally different roles. In the world of the Fordist production line, the designer created the templates that industrial craftsmen would replicate in the hundreds or thousands. The conspicuous consumption that defined the second half of the 20th century was driven by mass production; by men (though not always men) in charge of machines. And what Karl Marx called “commodity fetishism” – that ineffable something that gives an object a perceived value greater than its actual material cost – is best exemplified by machinic perfection: the sheen on an iPad, the techno-treads of a Nike trainer. But it seems that increasingly we are swapping one fetish for another.

There is craft fetishism aplenty at an exhibition of work by young designers currently showing at the Villa Noailles near Toulon. The villa, which was built by an art collector couple in the 20s and became a productive playground of sorts for surrealists from Max Ernst to Alberto Giacometti, has a long tradition of patronage. Now it hosts annual exhibitions of work by young designers, and this year’s was typical of the direction that graduates’ work has been taking in recent years. Almost all the designers seemed concerned to introduce a craft dimension to what would ordinarily be industrial objects. Jean-Baptiste Fastrez created a series of hairdryers with a range of distinctive wooden handles. Is it so frustrating knowing that all those plastic handles are the same, or is the hairdryer-cum-tomahawk simply more manly?

Fastrez is not against industrial production. Indeed, you can’t make the working end of a hairdryer or a kettle without it. But his designs for kettles come with a set of standardised plastic and electric parts, while the bodies can be chosen from a series of hand-blown Pyrex or hand-shaped ceramic vessels. Like many designers of his generation, Fastrez is rejecting the one-size-fits-all outcome of traditional manufacturing. In his case, he is appealing to a growing taste for customisation – one that new production technologies are making ever more realistic.

Others in the show, however, have more primitive aims in mind. Icelandic designer Brynjar Sigurdarson created a torch with a long wooden handle, like a broomstick or spear. As many of our modern-day accoutrements – watches, calculators, diaries, newspapers and even torches – converge into a single device, the phone, it’s as though Sigurdarson wants to rediscover the atavistic quality of this product, a tool for the hunter-gatherer within.

A number of the designers expressed how important they felt it was to make things with their own hands. This is partly an ethos – much like the slow food movement – but it is also a necessity. Who else is going to make their work? The rise of the designer-maker has a lot to do with the fact that while design is an ever more popular career choice, the opportunities to work with manufacturers are not growing at the same pace (and in the UK are actually diminishing). Where product and furniture designers once aspired to get their work mass-manufactured, many have now given up on the idea. Before the recession, a phantom career path seemed to open up, where a select few designers could sell their work in galleries. Once that bubble had burst, the market replaced the notion of the designer as artist with a humbler proposition, the designer as craftsman.

The problem with craft, of course is that it’s expensive. In the 70s the Italian designer Enzo Mari was so disgusted by the quality of affordable furniture available to the public that he created a set of designs which people could make for themselves with a few pine planks, a hammer and some nails. He distributed his Autoprogettazione designs for free to anyone who would send him a stamped envelope. He had more than 5,000 requests. If you wanted to build yourself an Enzo Mari wardrobe today, however, the cost of materials alone would set you back more than a wardrobe from Ikea. And if you paid a craftsman to build it for you, you’d be looking at about four times the cost. This is how much global economics prohibits the idea of accessible craftsmanship, at least in the developed world.

There’s no real question of returning to a craft-based economy (or only in the darkest fantasies of a global economic meltdown). What we have here is a post-industrial nostalgia for the pre-industrial. In a culture with a surfeit of branding and cheap mass-produced goods, we romanticise the handmade because we yearn for quality, not quantity. The irony is that while western consumers aspire to craftsmanship, the majority of the world’s population lives in countries that have local craftsmen but aspire to industrialised products. Mass manufacturing will be essential to lifting a billion people out of poverty, and providing basic goods that we took for granted long ago. Meanwhile, we’ll be seeing more crafted industrial objects coming our way, as we lust after craftsmanship we can’t afford and disdain the industrial products we can.

Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Category
  • Title
  • Publication
  • Year
  • Architecture Activist architects Al Jazeera 2014
  • Architecture Djenné’s mud mosque Icon 2010
  • Architecture Honeywell, I’m home! e-flux journal 2015
  • Architecture Maison Dom-ino Dezeen 2014
  • Architecture PREVI, Lima Domus 2011
  • Architecture Revolutionary housing in Argentina Domus 2011
  • Architecture Robin Hood Gardens SQM 2014
  • Architecture The Base, Chocó Nuevotopias 2013
  • Architecture The High Line Icon 2009
  • Architecture Walter Benjamin puts activists to shame? Here 2013
  • Cities Beirut Icon 2006
  • Cities DIY cities (the limitations) Uncube 2014
  • Cities Edge City (São Paulo) Strelka Press 2012
  • Cities How radical is Radical Urbanism? Catalogue 2015
  • Cities Istanbul Icon 2010
  • Cities Jenin Icon 2005
  • Cities Life on the edge Moscow Urban Forum 2013
  • Cities Seoul Condé Nast Traveller 2012
  • Cities Shenzhen Icon 2008
  • Cities Unreal estate (London) Domus 2012
  • Cities Urban commons The Guardian 2015
  • Design Adventure gear The Guardian 2010
  • Design Beneath the street, the wilderness: Occupy and Bear Grylls Here 2012
  • Design Craft fetishism The Guardian 2011
  • Design Craft fetishism: From objects to things Disegno 2012
  • Design Design and the Right Domus 2013
  • Design Design and violence Dezeen 2013
  • Design Dreaming of year zero Bio 50 2014
  • Design Fabbers, dabblers and microstars Icon 2009
  • Design London riots The Guardian 2011
  • Design Luxury watch culture The Guardian 2010
  • Design Milan’s PR economy The Guardian 2011
  • Design On William Gibson on design Dezeen 2014
  • Design Open design Dezeen 2014
  • Design Samsung vs Apple Domus 2013
  • Design The internet of broken things Dezeen 2014
  • Design The post-spectacular economy Van Abbemuseum 2011
  • Design Ultramundane Domus 2013
  • People Alejandro Aravena Icon 2009
  • People Do Ho Suh Icon 2008
  • People Enzo Mari Icon 2009
  • People Ettore Sottsass Icon 2007
  • People Francis Kere Icon 2010
  • People Richard Sapper Domus 2013
  • Reviews Cool Tools by Kevin Kelly Dezeen 2014
  • Reviews Hearts of the City by Herbert Muschamp Icon 2010
  • Reviews Latin America in Construction at MoMA Architectural Record 2015
  • Reviews Mad Max: Fury Road Dezeen 2015
  • Reviews Max Bill Icon 2010
  • Reviews Philips shaver Icon 2008
  • Reviews Postmodernism at the V&A The Guardian 2010
  • Reviews Rebel Cities by David Harvey Art Review 2012
  • Reviews The Craftsman by Richard Sennett Icon 2008
  • Reviews The Historical Museum, Sarajevo The Guardian 2011
  • Reviews Together by Richard Sennett Art Review 2012
Justin McGuirk
Selected writing 2005 – 2015
  • Design
  • Craft fetishism
  • The Guardian
  • 2011
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Flicking through the latest issue of Port, a new “thinking man’s” magazine, I came across a photograph of a kind that is increasingly ubiquitous. In an article about two young design practices, there’s a picture of a box containing a hammer, some leather-working tools and other bits and bobs of workshop flotsam. With the same pinpoint focus that a food photographer might train at a boeuf bourguignon, the image fetishises its subject – in this case not French cuisine but craftsmanship.

It seems no magazine about material culture, from Monocle to Inventory, is complete these days without a behind-the-scenes story on a little-known clothing or furniture brand featuring people in leather aprons and workbenches strewn with chisels and offcuts. There’s nothing new about the kind of products these studios create. What’s new is the desire to reveal the process and not just the finished object. These are not-so-subtle messages reasserting the value of the handmade over the machine-made.

On one level, this is just fashion. When Levi’s launches a marketing campaign called Levi’s Craftwork to sell one of the most mass-produced items of clothing in the world, we can collectively roll our eyes. But I wonder if there’s something more profound going on.

In his 2008 book The Craftsman, the sociologist Richard Sennett makes a case for homo faber (or “man as maker”). Harking back to the workshops of the medieval guilds and to the studio of violin-maker Antonio Stradivari, Sennett set out to prove Immanuel Kant’s dictum that “the hand is the window on to the mind”. It is only through making things, he says – by trying and failing and repeating – that we gain true understanding. He is not, like some latter-day John Ruskin, arguing that handmade things are better than machine-made ones. He is simply saying that skilled manual labour – or indeed any craft – is one path to a fulfilling life.

Sennett’s idea of a “craftsman” is highly inclusive, but, at least since the industrial revolution, the designer and the craftsman are traditionally different roles. In the world of the Fordist production line, the designer created the templates that industrial craftsmen would replicate in the hundreds or thousands. The conspicuous consumption that defined the second half of the 20th century was driven by mass production; by men (though not always men) in charge of machines. And what Karl Marx called “commodity fetishism” – that ineffable something that gives an object a perceived value greater than its actual material cost – is best exemplified by machinic perfection: the sheen on an iPad, the techno-treads of a Nike trainer. But it seems that increasingly we are swapping one fetish for another.

There is craft fetishism aplenty at an exhibition of work by young designers currently showing at the Villa Noailles near Toulon. The villa, which was built by an art collector couple in the 20s and became a productive playground of sorts for surrealists from Max Ernst to Alberto Giacometti, has a long tradition of patronage. Now it hosts annual exhibitions of work by young designers, and this year’s was typical of the direction that graduates’ work has been taking in recent years. Almost all the designers seemed concerned to introduce a craft dimension to what would ordinarily be industrial objects. Jean-Baptiste Fastrez created a series of hairdryers with a range of distinctive wooden handles. Is it so frustrating knowing that all those plastic handles are the same, or is the hairdryer-cum-tomahawk simply more manly?

Fastrez is not against industrial production. Indeed, you can’t make the working end of a hairdryer or a kettle without it. But his designs for kettles come with a set of standardised plastic and electric parts, while the bodies can be chosen from a series of hand-blown Pyrex or hand-shaped ceramic vessels. Like many designers of his generation, Fastrez is rejecting the one-size-fits-all outcome of traditional manufacturing. In his case, he is appealing to a growing taste for customisation – one that new production technologies are making ever more realistic.

Others in the show, however, have more primitive aims in mind. Icelandic designer Brynjar Sigurdarson created a torch with a long wooden handle, like a broomstick or spear. As many of our modern-day accoutrements – watches, calculators, diaries, newspapers and even torches – converge into a single device, the phone, it’s as though Sigurdarson wants to rediscover the atavistic quality of this product, a tool for the hunter-gatherer within.

A number of the designers expressed how important they felt it was to make things with their own hands. This is partly an ethos – much like the slow food movement – but it is also a necessity. Who else is going to make their work? The rise of the designer-maker has a lot to do with the fact that while design is an ever more popular career choice, the opportunities to work with manufacturers are not growing at the same pace (and in the UK are actually diminishing). Where product and furniture designers once aspired to get their work mass-manufactured, many have now given up on the idea. Before the recession, a phantom career path seemed to open up, where a select few designers could sell their work in galleries. Once that bubble had burst, the market replaced the notion of the designer as artist with a humbler proposition, the designer as craftsman.

The problem with craft, of course is that it’s expensive. In the 70s the Italian designer Enzo Mari was so disgusted by the quality of affordable furniture available to the public that he created a set of designs which people could make for themselves with a few pine planks, a hammer and some nails. He distributed his Autoprogettazione designs for free to anyone who would send him a stamped envelope. He had more than 5,000 requests. If you wanted to build yourself an Enzo Mari wardrobe today, however, the cost of materials alone would set you back more than a wardrobe from Ikea. And if you paid a craftsman to build it for you, you’d be looking at about four times the cost. This is how much global economics prohibits the idea of accessible craftsmanship, at least in the developed world.

There’s no real question of returning to a craft-based economy (or only in the darkest fantasies of a global economic meltdown). What we have here is a post-industrial nostalgia for the pre-industrial. In a culture with a surfeit of branding and cheap mass-produced goods, we romanticise the handmade because we yearn for quality, not quantity. The irony is that while western consumers aspire to craftsmanship, the majority of the world’s population lives in countries that have local craftsmen but aspire to industrialised products. Mass manufacturing will be essential to lifting a billion people out of poverty, and providing basic goods that we took for granted long ago. Meanwhile, we’ll be seeing more crafted industrial objects coming our way, as we lust after craftsmanship we can’t afford and disdain the industrial products we can.

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