31 March 2022, 12 - 12am

How has craft been represented through a variety of media? What impact does representation through the particularities of images, films, spoken and written words, digital platforms have on how craft is practiced and understood? To what extent do representations focus upon materials, tools, practices, makers, environments? How has the dialogue between craft and representation informed the transmission of craft skills? How has the mediation of craft informed its status within debates about heritage and identity? In what ways might translation across particular modalities of communication resonate distinctly locally, transnationally, globally? How has the representation of craft been mobilised to generate or to problematise consumption?

This open online seminar will investigate these pertinent topics with speakers worldwide and across the widest range of disciplines and career stages who are thinking critically about intersections between craft and representation.

All welcome to attend on fortnightly Thursdays 19.30-21.00 hrs GMT via Zoom. The event is free but registration is required to secure places via Eventbrite.

20 January Crafting Labour

Rethinking representations of industrial craft: Beyond the nostalgic “lost craftsman”
Jesse Adams Stein

Inherited stitches. Journal of an anonymous seamstress Anita Puig

A Trading Space: Realist Images of the Worker in Carved Timber Reliefs at Copenhagen’s Workers’ Assembly Hall, 1934-35 Courtney Schum


3 February
Digital Agency

Visualizing change: online representation and resistance in the Canada-US hand knitting industry
Shannon Black

Crafting The Internal ‘Other’?
Laya Chirravuru

Critical Ethics for Communicating Indigenous Craft Practices
Teal Triggs, Celia Matsunaga, Matt Lewis


17 February Disarming Craft

Weapons of Honour: Colonial Disarming Laws, Kodava Modernity and the Restructuring of Artisan Economy in Kodagu Chinnappa BG


Representing Enslaved Labour in the American Index of Design Hampton Smith

Cema-Chile’s Political Imaginaries in Artesanías Daniela Salgado Cofré



3 March
Craft Institutions
Institutionalizing National Heritage: Exhibition of Indian handicrafts in America Vinod Bhatia

Putting the Art into Craft: The Craftsman’s Art exhibition, 1973 Andrea Peach

Material mastery of the Far North: re-imag(in)ing Norwegian carpentry and the multiform histories of crafting Flydalsjuvet Erika Brandl

373. Bagabos Women in the Philippine Village Anna Helgeson



17 March
Craft Communities

‘A million pounds of memories:’ the material culture of Lemington Glass Jenna Allsopp

Al-Nazla Village: Re-presenting clay pot as a building material Mohamed Fareed

Representations of Indian handloom weaving and their impact on weavers’ job roles and relationship with their market Ruth Clifford



31 March
Craft Typologies

Harris Tweed
Beth Wilson

Le Klint pleated lamp shade
Eva Storgaard

Decolonizing Taiwan through Craft: Yan Shuilong and the Taiwanese Folkcraft Movement
Lingjia Xu

Representing or mediating regional crafts?
Elise Kleitz





Registration is free!

Please register to this event by clicking here.