Craft as a Catalyst

Noted author, curator, and scholar Glenn Adamson believes craft is much more than a hobby—it’s a vital, timeless tool for teaching us about one another, and about humanity as a whole. Adamson positions craft as a means of connecting with fundamental issues and ideas about art, history, humanity, and identity.

When were you first introduced to craft?

I had two influential introductions to craft. The first was through my grandfather who was a self-taught woodcarver. He had a sort of double personality, as he was also a professional engineer who designed aircrafts. Growing up, I was able to watch him in his workshop. In my mind, he has always been a kind of avatar of what I call material intelligence – the aptitude to understand and transform the world around us. Artisans have material intelligence, obviously. But so do artists, engineers, scientists, and even museum curators. So he was definitely one big influence.

And then the other moment that I often talk about was in college. By happenstance, I took a course on Chinese ceramics and had the opportunity to go into the collections storage facilities with one of the curators, Bob Mowry. He placed a T’ang Dynasty pot in my hand, and I was able to turn it over (carefully) and truly feel the object. You have these moments of intuition, you know: something is important about an object, then you go out and try to figure out why. In a lot of ways, that moment has fueled a lot of other moments in my life. And it's been renewed over and over again, because I keep finding objects that connect with me. I keep wanting to form deeper connections, perhaps through research, or by meeting the person who made that thing. For me, it is often a matter of object first, theory second.

What’s your interpretation of the philosophy of mingei? Which mingei principles are still relevant today?

In a way mingei is a simple philosophy: it tells us to acknowledge the skill and cultural value of everyday objects – which are, of course, much more widespread than the fine art world. In this sense, the Mingei Museum is perched on the edge of something vast. Its topic is more wide-ranging than let's say, a contemporary art museum because it includes the kind of objects that everyone has encountered in their lives, either as a maker or owner of things. So mingei is actually everywhere.

A second aspect of mingei focuses on the importance of beauty. To me, this idea of beauty is subjective, and everybody is going to look at an object differently. In my view, a critic, historian, or curator shouldn’t impose their own ideas of beauty onto an object. It is a slippery term. Beauty reminds us that our relationship to an object doesn’t need to be reduced to logical arguments and rational reasons. Instead, an aesthetic relationship with an object reveals its special qualities, allowing us to make sense of it in our own way.

What role can museums play in the craft community?

Museums are places where we can see the totality and cross-disciplinarity of craft. For example, when I was at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) we did a show on Wendell Castle, inspired by his use of digital technologies like 3D scanning, 3D modeling, and computer-controlled milling. His new and old works were then exhibited together for the show. This was an expansive definition of craft, and to me much more engaging than a static or traditional interpretation of the term.

I think some of the finest artisans in the world are working in factories or research and development laboratories. A lot of the people that I work with these days, particularly designers, are combining very high-tech skillsets with artisanal techniques. We need to do away with the idea that craft is backward-looking, traditional, small, a weak thing, the opposite of industry, which embodies the forward-facing future. We need to get back to the point before that opposition was made, and think of making as an integrated field of mutually relevant skills, potentialities, tools, and possibilities.

What connections do you see between craft and design?

The key term I would want to introduce there is the concept of professionalism. Certainly, you can be a professional craftsperson, and you can be a professional designer. But for me, the concept of mingei and its original usage, “folk craft” embraces practices that don't necessarily get organized by a business or professional practice.

That being said, I think the rise in social media is blurring this line, eroding the professionalism of design. It’s a very interesting time to think about mingei because the whole idea of professionalism seems to be getting shaken apart. The whole economy is getting non-professionalized. People are kind of making it up as they go along. They don't necessarily need credentials in the way that they used to. As we’re steering into this new design space, I’m thinking about who does design? How are they trained? How do they put their work into the world? What kinds of frameworks are they operating within? Because you might find that a lot of designers today are actually more like what we would call folk artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, even in terms of the way that they make a living. If you think of mingei as the non-professionalized domain of creativity, then maybe we’re all becoming mingei practitioners now.

What’s the importance of craft today?

As an American, I often think of craft as a way of honoring the individualistic traditions of our society, and at the same time embracing collective values. Oftentimes those two ideas are really at odds, but craft is one of the few areas where they don't feel in conflict. You can live a very individually expressive life, nurtured by the craft community.

Another way of thinking about this is politically: craft really reaches across the aisle in a way hardly anything else does in our nation. Whatever state you're from, red or blue, however, you vote, whatever your ideology is, you probably have some room in your life for craft, or at least you're probably not against it. That gives it a kind of potential. The last chapter of my most recent book is called “Can Craft Save America?” It dives into the idea that craft could be a social adhesive - the basis for decent human conversation, which seems to be badly lacking. Ultimately, this is why I think craft matters so much today, and mingei is a great way of focusing on the idea: it is kind of common ground for us all to stand on together.