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Zulu Bead-Mail

South African craft is characterised by an abundance of beaded products.  One of the most charming is the Zulu Love Letter, which according to legend developed when Zulu men began working in the mines. As they were illiterate, communication from sweethearts back in home took for the form of ornament, where particular coloured beads signified different emotions.

The meanings of the colours depend as much on their combination as individual symbolism. This is a rough glossary:

COLOUR	MEANING
Black	Marriage/separation
Blue	Trust/hatred
Yellow	Luck/misadventure
Green	Happiness/sorrow
Pink	Powerful/lowly
Red	Love/heartache
White	Purity

The status of a Zulu woman is readily identified through her ornament - her marriage status, the status of her sisters and her home region.

According to the grammar of ornament, the triangle represents father, mother and child. The meaning of the triangle changes with orientation.

ORIENTATION	STATUS
Inverted, apex downward	Unmarried man
Apex downward	Unmarried woman
Two joined as diamond	Married woman
Joined with apexes meeting	Married man

For a woman to express her love for a man, she would place a white triangle with apex down enclosing a red triangle with apex up.

Today, Zulu love letters can be obtained in tourist shops as a cheap gift. But in the context of contemporary jewellery, it does suggest particular possibilities of ornament as a communication device. While different coloured ribbons represent alternative good causes, the possibility of colour combinations has yet to be realised.

It could be objected that the meaning of any such system depends on its widespread use - something that jewellery today cannot attain. However, ornament is often the prompt for the dialogue between individuals. Translation of meaning is at least one kind of enunciation.

Really? You don't say.

For more information, see Beadwork in the ZULU cultural tradition.

Journal of Modern Craft 1.3

The final issue for 2008 is now out.

Articles

Cleverest of the Clever: Coconut Craftsmen in Lamu, Kenya
Author: Wright, Kristina Dziedzic

Disavowing Craft at the Bauhaus: Hiding the Hand to Suggest Machine Manufacture
Author: Marcus, George H.

Russel Wright and Japan: Bridging Japonisme and Good Design through Craft
Author: Kikuchi, Yuko

British Interventions in the Traditional Crafts of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), c. 1850-1930
Author: Jones, Robin

Statement of Practice

Introduction: Ena de Silva and the Aluwihare Workshops
Author: Robson, David G.

Primary Text

Commentary 
Author: Myzelev, Alla

My Life Impressions
Princess Maria Tenisheva (1867-1928)
Author: Tenisheva, Princess Maria

Exhibition Reviews

Jean Prouvé: The Poetics of the Technical Object
Author: Wilk, Christopher

Hands on Movement: A Dialogue with History
Author: Zetterlund, Christina

Book Review

What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images
Author: Clemens, Justin

The Craftsman
Author: Cooper, Emmanuel

The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art after the Readymade
Author: Shannon, Joshua A.

To order a copy, go here.

The Year to Come

Designed by Renato Imboisi in Jalapao, Brazil

Well, time to draw breath and look ahead to what 2009 will unfold. There are reasons to think that it will be a full year, particularly for thinking about craft.

Ideas

Early next year, a new networking platform Craft Talk about contemporary craft in the antipodes will be launched. Expect news in mid-January. Craft Australia's online journal Craft & Design Enquiry will provide an important academic forum for craft research. Meanwhile, the Journal of Modern Craft will be launching its new website in March, which should be a way of opening up the discussion about the place of craft in modernity.

Jewellery

Damian Skinner and I will continue work on the history of Australian and New Zealand jewellery. As this is an important opportunity to record some of the basic elements in the evolution of this remarkable antipodean phenomenon, some of the core material will be available on Wikipedia, opening up the process to the wisdom of the many.

With FORM I'll be working on the exhibition Signs of Change to accompany the next JMGA conference in Perth April 2010. This is already proving to be the source of many interesting discussions about the role of functionalism in jewellery and the breadth of its audience.

Home & World

Many things to fill the calendar:

• Selling Yarns conference Canberra 6-8 March
• Art and Artisanship Castlemaine Festival Victoria, 27 March - 5 April
• Sandra Bowkett's Crosshatched tour of Indian ceramicists, Victoria in April
• Making Futures conference UK 17-18 September
• World of Small Things exhibition and forum Craft Victoria June
• Cheongju Craft Biennale Korea from 23 September

Also on the horizon for 2009 is a series of workshops on the Code of Practice for Craft-Design Collaborations. After the project's endorsement by the World Craft Council, it is intended to host workshops on the ethical dimension of craft in Australia, Latin America, India and South Africa. It seems a good time to consider the way the crafted object might embody relations between people we think are worth aspiring to.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was fond of quoting William Faulkner, who said on accepting the Nobel prize, 'I decline to accept the end of man.' While the future casts long shadows over 2009, the story of craft will certainly continue, perhaps even flourish.

Thanks for all your support during 2008 and best of fortune for the coming year!

A voice for craft in the art tropics

Glenn Adamson's first visit to Australia was engineered by the current president of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand, Peter McNeill. On Thursday 4 December Adamson gave the keynote of the AAANZ annual conference at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. Here's the outline:

Modern Craft: Directions and Displacements

After many years out in the cold, craft is a hot topic for art historians. Received narratives of nineteenth-century imperialist and industrial aesthetics are being displaced by studies that focus on the figure of the artisan. Fixtures in the Modernist firmament, from the Bauhaus to Minimalism, are being re-evaluated according to new ideas about production. Meanwhile, contemporary artists are embracing carpentry and ceramics, and a whole youth subculture is taking up knitting and other hobby techniques. In this talk, Glenn Adamson will provide a brief survey of recent scholarly work. By looking closely at three areas of contemporary practice - DIY protest art, ceramic sculpture, and so-called 'Design Art' - he will also suggest where modern craft is heading next.

It was a masterful talk that introduced fascinating new practices, particularly in the agit-prop domain. Adamson continued the line from his book Thinking Through Craft that while craft sits alongside visual art, is still a distinct practice of its own. A particularly charged word in Adamson's talk was 'friction', which was used to express that element in craft that resisted conceptualisation.

The discussion that ensued was very interesting. The last questioner proposed that what made craft different from art was that 'anyone can do it'. Adamson differed and argued that the 'friction' of craft is produced by many years of dedicated training in the understanding of materials. There seems quite a divide between the agit-prop craft that is energising collectives and the specialist craft techniques practiced by artists. How to bridge this divide is a very interesting challenge facing commentators on craft.

Leftover from Adamson's talk is still the question of craft's political voice, as it echoes back to the idealism of the crafts movement. Is this just 'ideological baggage', 'academic chatter', or a rationale whereby so many craft practitioners dedicate themselves to learning skills that may not seem to be overly rewarded in this world?

From trash to spectacle

Shinique Smith, Arcadian Cluster, 2006.  Installation view from P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center.  Clothing, fabric, found objects, acrylic, collage & binding. Approx 8' h x 11' w x 8' d, (500-600 lbs)

Here's an interesting discussion about new craft that eschews skill in favour of collaboration and randomness. It raises an important question about the place of craftsmanship in an un-monumental age.

Public Lecture Series, Spring 2009
Department of Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Fiber and Material Studies Department Faculty (2008 - 2009): Anne Wilson, Chair, Mike Andrews, Jeremy Biles, Marianne Faribanks, Surabhi Ghosh, Karolina Gnatowski, Diana Guerrero-Macia, Kathryn Hixson, Amy Honchell, Joan Livingstone, Christy Matson, Darrel Morris, Karen Reimer, Rebecca Ringquist, Ellen Rothenberg, Shannon Stratton, Fraser Taylor, Christine Tarkowski, Sarah Wagner.

FROM TRASH TO SPECTACLE: MATERIALITY IN CONTEMPORARY ART PRODUCTION
Recently, artistic strategies for production have been shifting.
Materiality and crafting are back with a vengeance. The handmade and sensuous are gaining increased favor even though, or perhaps because of, the ubiquity of current computer-screen culture and the ever-widening practice of digital processing. The New Museum's inaugural show in New York "UN-monumental" was filled with work made of cast-off materials from the street, hobbled together; while the MCA Chicago's recent retrospective of Jeff Koons featured his shiny stainless-steel baubles, the result of years of technological experimentation at a great cost. The 2008 Whitney Biennial presented sculptures of bird dropping patterns, along with work of sloppy craft and studio trash. Across town at Pace Wildenstein, Zuang Huan's show presented a spectacle of art produced by teams of skilled wood carver artisans in Shanghai, and a giant gallery-filling mother and baby pair made of scores of pieced together cowhides. Artists across the world are collaborating in spontaneous or programmed DIY projects on the internet and in the street; while Takashi Murakami's collaboration with Louis Vuitton was served by a boutique selling the artist-designed purses smack in middle of the staid Brooklyn Museum.

Trash and spectacle, collaboration and stardom, the haves and the have-nots. How and why do artists choose how to make art, and with what materials? What does the renewed interest in craft -- from the sloppy to the chic -- signify? Is the overall global economy impacting our artistic economy? How do the exigencies of labor and production in the global economy effect artistic choices for production, collaboration, and outsourcing as strategies? What has happened to the challenges of identity construction within recent changes? And specifically, how are artists who employ cloth and fiber as materials and strategies responding to aesthetic and economic forces?

This Fiber/Material lecture series presents views on Trash to Spectacle from the perspectives of art practice, art history, and art criticism. Two recent books offer platforms for some of the questions and debates posed in this lecture series: The Object of Labor: Art, Cloth, and Cultural Production by Joan Livingstone and John Ploof (Chicago and Cambridge, MA: SAIC Press and MIT Press, 2007) and Thinking Through Craft by Glenn Adamson (London, UK: Berg Publishers and the Victoria & Albert Museum, 2007).

This lecture series is made possible by the William Bronson and Grayce Slovet Mitchell Lectureship in Fiber and Material Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  All lectures are free and open to the public.

SPEAKERS

Thursday March 5th, 6pm, SAIC Columbus Drive Auditorium, Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard
GLENN ADAMSON

Dr. Glenn Adamson is Head of Graduate Studies and Deputy Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. In that capacity, he teaches on the History of Design graduate course run collaboratively with the Royal College of Art. His research ranges from modern craft and industrial design to English and American decorative arts during the 17th and 18th centuries. He is the author of Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World (Milwaukee Art Museum/MIT Press). Dr. Adamson's monograph Thinking Through Craft (V&A Publications/Berg Publishers) was published in October 2007. He also co-edits the new Journal of Modern Craft (Berg Publishers), with Tanya Harrod and Edward S. Cooke, Jr. Currently Dr. Adamson is at work on a project about Postmodernism for the V&A, to be on view in 2011.

Wednesday April 1, 6pm, SAIC Columbus Drive Auditorium, Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard
KATHRYN HIXSON and SHANNON STRATTON
Kathryn Hixson is an art critic, art historian, and full Adjunct Professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a PhD candidate in Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, currently working on her dissertation "Body/Image: Presentation and Representation of the Body in the 1970s." She writes for Art US, Art on Paper, among other art journals and is the former editor of the Chicago-based New Art Examiner.

Shannon Stratton is an artist, curator and writer. Her current creative focus is ThreeWalls, an artist residency and visual arts program that she co-founded in 2003 where she acts as Director and Chief Curator. Her writing focuses on contemporary fiber and craft, and with artist Judith Leemann is producing "Gestures of Resistance: The Slow Assertions of a Craft," an exhibition and book project slated for public release in 2009/2010. She teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Wednesday April 22, 6pm, SAIC Columbus Drive Auditorium, Columbus Drive and Jackson Boulevard
SHINIQUE SMITH

Shinique Smith is a painter/sculptor who combines elements of graffiti, Japanese calligraphy, abstract expressionism and popular culture. Working with a variety of materials, Smith creates mixed media works inspired by fashion, urban detritus and the objects that we cherish and discard, which come to shape our personal mythologies. She received her BFA (1992) and MFA (2003) from The Maryland Institute College of Art and has held residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The Headlands Center for the Arts. She has exhibited at The Deutsche Guggenheim, The New Museum, The National Portrait Gallery/ Smithsonian, PS 1 Contemporary Arts Center, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Smith is represented by Yvon Lambert Gallery, Paris/New York/London.

Respondent: JANIS JEFFERIES
Janis Jefferies is an artist, writer, curator, and Professor of Visual Arts in
the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is Artistic Director of Goldsmiths Digital Studios and Director of the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles. Jefferies was trained as a painter and later pioneered the field of contemporary textiles within visual and material culture, internationally through exhibitions and texts. In the last five years she has been working on technological based arts, including Woven Sound (with Dr. Tim Blackwell). She has been a principal investigator on projects involving new haptic technologies by bringing the sense of touch to the interface between people and machines and generative software systems for creating and interpreting cultural artifacts, museums and the external environment. In the spring 2009 semester, Jefferies will be a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies.

Jefferies will participate in the construction of a SAIC bog-website that invites public interaction on the topics presented in this lecture series.

___________________________________________________________________

Tongue in cheek ceramics

Mabelle Marra came out to Australia from Argentina in the early 1990s. She discovered ceramics at Chisholm TAFE and has been a big presence there ever since. When Mabelle returned to Argentina, she met up with an archeologist who had learnt ceramics in order to work with people in the north of the country, linked to the ancient Condorhuasi people. Mabelle became fascinated by the forms and started creating her own interpretations. They show a characteristic Andean facial feature - a bulging cheek (abruñita) stuffed with coco leaves. The other cheek has a coco leaf painted on it. Should they sue Toblerone for copyright?

Mabelle's show is currently at Pan Gallery,

The Secrets of Henna

Humna Mustafa is a Pakistan-born artist currently living in Adelaide. She has an exhibition coming up at Brunswick Gallery in Fitzroy, Melbourne, opening December 5. You can visit her website here. Below she answers some questions about her practice, in particular the history of Henna.

How did the decorative art of henna develop?

The history of Henna goes back 5000 years and is believed that the Muslims have used it since the early days of Islam. It is said that the prophet Muhammed (p.b.u.h)  used it to colour his hair as well as, more traditionally, his beard. He also liked his wives to colour their nails with it. Prophet Muhammed (p.b.uh.) was and remains a model of perfection for Muslims has ensured the continuing popularity of Henna as a decorative art within Islam.

It is also said to have been used in ancient Egypt to colour the nails and hair of mummies, as a mark of protection when entering the new life. Hindu goddesses are often represented with mehndi tattoos on their hands and feet. In the 12th century, the Mughals (Moguls) introduced it into India, where it was most popular with the Rajputs ot Mewar (Udaipur) in Rajasthan, who mixed it with aromatic oils and applied it to the hands and feet to beautify them. From then on Henna has been regarded as essential to auspicious occasions, particularly weddings, birthdays, celebrating the maturity and many such occasions across the world now.

What are the designs based on?

(this is my own interpretation of the designs!!)
The designs, motives and patterns are influenced by religious and cultural environments. Muslims like to draw repeated floral trellis patterns, as a form of worshiping, a prayer. The hindhus designs are more inspired by symbols of the gods e.g ganesh for good luck. The Moroccans are influenced by their environment and hence using the geometric lines of the mountains they are surrounded by. The patterns of Henna, have always been looked at only for its beauty but there is a secret language of the souls behind every single creation.

Which parts of the body are used and why

(this is my own interpretation of the designs!!)
The two main parts of the body henna is applied on for centuries are the hands and the feet. They get the darkest colour of all, due to the skin texture.

The feet, are the vehicle to make you walk on your journey on this land, and the hands make you achieve that destiny that is yours. Both parts are gifts that are these days and also in ancients times been taken for granted. Hence the Art of Henna, gifts these parts the moment of just being.  Henna celebrates these the miracle of creation and a vehicle of love, by taking care of our Hand and feet. It focuses our attention on the sacred nature of their activities. It is after all the hands that we join in greeting or farewell, in worship or wedlock !!

When is henna applied to the body?

Henna is applied to the body at night, as an old myth told to me by my grandmother "Henna is shy in the morning and for it to grow on your, it needs the darkness of night, and the warmth the body" - I am not sure if this was to make me get it done before I went to bed, so I wont spoil it or is it really true. not sure !

In general henna takes a few hours for it to mature and give the body its best colour and hence it is usually applied at night time, so the pigment can stay on the skin for a long undisturbed period of time.

The silver lining

A scene from November 2005, when the rise of the stock market seemed as endless as the war on terror.

Below is a copy of the speech I made for the opening of the graduation show of RMIT Gold & Silversmithing 2008. It was a wonderful show. Students showed how they had mastered their materials by transforming a cold material like metal into quite organic shapes and textures. It was difficult in such a celebratory atmosphere to raise the issue of our current financial crisis. But it seemed important to address this directly, in a positive way, rather than have it fester away as a silent doubt that dare not be spoken.

For years we have been reading predictions of a financial crisis. It wasn’t so much a question of it, but when. There was just too much leveraging going on. It would take a small shock for the market to suddenly call the bluff of derivative dealers, and the system would implode.

So while we’ve enjoyed an unprecedented period of economic growth, we have always had in the back of our minds the sense that this would come to an end. This leant an air of unreality to our prosperity—that we were living on borrowed time, as well as money.

And now that the crash has come, with prospect of a long and hard recession, we can’t help experiencing a little relief. It’s like sitting in the dentist’s chair, squirming at the pain, but inwardly knowing that at last that nagging toothache is being addressed.

While the financial situation is the ongoing story of late 2008, it has special pertinence here today, as we welcome the next generation of jewellers into the fold of Melbourne’s extraordinary jewellery culture. The last five years have seen amazing growth in the jewellery sector, with one or two new galleries opening every year. I can’t think of a city in the world with this many new jewellery galleries. And this has provided a rich field of opportunity for young jewellers, who have been extraordinarily successful in attracting the surplus capital created by an economic boom.

So what will the future hold? Jewellery is very much at the discretionary end of a personal budget. Apart from wedding and engagement rings, there is little reason other than whim to purchase an item of jewellery. We need to face the prospect that Melbourne will not have so many jewellery outlets next year, as it does today.

That’s a difficult prospect to consider right now, as we are cheering on these talented young jewellers, into a world that may not be so inclined to buy a $1,000 necklace, or $800 brooch.

But in the immortal words of Percy Bysshe Shelly, ‘If winter comes, can spring be far behind?’ While for the past few years we have been distracted by dark clouds on the horizon, now the storm is here, we can focus instead on the silver lining. As Spinoza said, ‘There is no hope without fear, and no fear without hope’.

So while cycle will eventually begin its upswing, we have possibly two or three years when things will be tight. What can be done during the lean years?

I’ve been recently fascinated by the contrast between rich and poor in Australian jewellery. This is self-evident in jewellery, with the quality of metal and stones marking a clear class distinction in their wearers. There’s an obvious contrast between the elite conceptual works made by jewellers purchased from galleries with an international reputation, and the cheap manufactured chain wear you find on the pavement in Swanston Street.

But rich and poor do not always follow a clear demographic divide. These styles quite readily flip their assigned position in society. Nothing so defines the working class as bling with bold fake stones, while versions of poverty chic are enduringly popular among the cultural elites. Ali G versus Naomi Klein.

Poor craft provides a potential rich vein of creative endeavour during a recession. And Melbourne jewellery has a strong tradition of found materials—what Penelope Pollard refers to as objets trouvé in her erudite catalogue essay.

But how will this jewellery circulate if there are fewer galleries. I think it’s interesting at this point to look across the Pacific to our cousins in Latin America, which experienced quite radical financial crisis in the early years of this millennium. In Chile’s capital, Santiago, there is a new cultural movement they called abajismo, from the word ‘abajo’ for below. This movement is led by the young people who are leaving their wealthy families in the suburbs to live close to the street in the inner city. Like Melbourne’s enchanted glade of Gertrude Street Fitzroy, a new streetwise economy has been borne.

By chance one evening recently I was walking down a very busy street in Santiago’s Bellavista, equivalent of Fitzroy, and stumbled across an incongruous looking vegetable garden in the middle of the sidewalk. Various greens showed signs of a loving care and there was a sign in the middle inviting neighbours to take a leaf or two, as long as they left enough for the plant to keep growing. I traced the garden to a small shopfront right opposite called Jo!, which contained a wild assortment of inexpensive jewellery made from found materials like computer keyboards. Talking with the owner, while she continued assembling these pieces on her shop counter, it seemed she had a real engagement with her neighbourhood.

That’s an enduring story of financial downturn. It brings people together. When things look good, our focus is more on individual aspirations, distinguishing ourselves from others. But during bad times, we must rely more on others.

10,000 hours is a long-term investment. You have a lifetime ahead to reap the rewards. Thankfully, these skills will be honed in the first several years after graduation. Necessity will be a faithful companion, guiding your choice of materials and design.

As the Chinese say, ’the gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.’