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Finding our way
from Ellen Collins, Friday, October 17, 2008
Maps everywhere last night at the Origin craft fair: on handbags, scarves, even little cut-out paper shoes. Last year, when I went to interview makers for the knowledge transfer programme research, I don’t recall maps: they obviously didn’t make such an impression. I suspect have observed a new interest in ‘finding the way’ – but does that interest begin with the makers, or with me?
Eavesdropping, as one can’t help but do in such a buzzy atmosphere, I overheard several designers speaking with pleasant surprise of the fact that they’d sold out, or very nearly. ‘I was bracing myself for a bad year,’ said one, ‘but it’s the best I’ve ever had’. Clearly the credit crunch is biting in an unexpected way for the purveyors of beautiful, luxury goods – the direction their customers have taken is not what they would have predicted. I wonder whether there’s a parallel here with our observation about the particular need for substance in business during troubled times: people searching for meaning but also for joy. I think the sector certainly has an important offer there.
We too are finding the way as we embark upon the next stage of this research programme. What we do depends so much on the people who become involved in it, that attempts to predict, define or even direct too far seem doomed to failure, at this stage anyway. When I entered the exhibition last night, I began trawling up and down the stands in a terribly orderly fashion, inspecting each in turn. It wasn’t long before I got distracted. I think I went around the exhibition four or five times, and each time I noticed something new, surprising, thought-provoking. Sometimes it’s better to drift away from the path and see what happens.
I think my favourite cartographic craft last night was an old OS map, embroidered along all the main arterial roads. The map was framed, reverse side facing outwards. At first glance, it looks like a lazy child’s needlework project, all wobbly lines and trailing ends. Then you look again, and begin to see a pattern. Then you look again, and realise what you’re getting is a colourful clue to the information on the other side. Maybe that’s one thing that craft, the arts and our sector more have in common: exciting interest in getting to your endpoint, without forcing you to travel there in a particular way.
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And hats. I noticed a lot more hat stalls this year. Do we need more headgear and millinery in troubled times to give us our poise and confidence back, I wonder?
Two words stayed with me from the award speeches.
The first was joy. The joy that being with the object and the making of it brings.
The second was discernment. The quality of bringing discernment to every aspect of creating.
I’d like to take these words into other business contexts and see how they hold up or trigger reactions.
My favourite objects last night were Jacqueline Cullen’s Whitby jet rings. The jet as a natural object, the Yorkshire of it, the Victorian funeral and mourning jewellery history, the jewellery which Jacqueline makes which embraces the flaws in the jet. I liked the amount of raw material, making and craft, history and geography all bound up in a single ring.