This work is at once a mobile workshop and a plinth, designed to facilitate making in the confines of modern apartment living during the Covid19 lockdown. Three sections, each dedicated to an altered form of craft, are combined within this portable structure. It is the width of a domestic doorframe and is accompanied by an adjustable stool.

Craft is often seen as traditional and non-progressive, opposite to modernism which is perceived as making way for the new. However, material intelligenceis at the heart of craft, and this skill leads to innovations of new materials and processes. For this reason, craft is arguably more vital now than it has ever been. It finds alternatives to the ecologically and socially damaging patterns of production associated with the expansion of modernism. And it will enable us to forge a new normalwith what remains post-lockdown, questioning our previous attitudes and consumption culture. This piece exemplifies an expanded conception of craft, as a meaningful attitude to making and a respectful relationship with materials.

 The first section is a loom, made to accommodate leather scraps rejected by industry. This questions the modernist principles of design which have resulted in such waste-stream. Secondly, there is a chain-maille rig used to create lace patterning. Combining two material representations of binary gender demonstrates how craft can interrupt our acceptance of such symbols. Lastly, a level for the recycling of clay supports a newly developed method of casting which produced the vessels also on display.

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@kj_art.craft.design

To view a short film of the mobile workshop in use, follow this link: