Material + Technology: Reconsidering the Object © Anna Fariello

 

This essay appeared in the catalog ReFORMations: New Forms from Ancient Techniques, an exhibition which opened at the Portsmouth Museums and traveled to the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen, the Appalachian Center for Crafts, and Longwood Center for the Visual Arts.

 

Human-scale objects have always played a significant role in culture, a role interwoven with complex interrelationships of meaning and value.  Maker meets material on the stage of process and through the application of technology, old or new, an object is created.  Over time, this creative triad is re-enacted: material and technology yield object, its meaning recorded in form and in markings on its surface.

          During the earliest of human times, things not of the natural world were rare, consequently, their making was often accompanied by ceremony, ritual and magic.  Those first craftsmen had the capacity to transform base elements -- while not into gold -- into useful implements, which in many cases were more critical to the survival of their nascent cultures than gold would have been.  The primary elements of scientifically isolated principles -- Earth, Air, Fire and Water -- were recognized for their role in Nature’s balanced and mysterious environment.  It was the artisan who controlled them, interacting with the stuff of life to perform the earliest alchemical experiments.  Taking Earth, adding Water, applying Fire and Air, a maker would transform the intangible and fluid into something physical, solid and lasting.  The metamorphosis of material into form was an awe-inspiring accomplishment and conveyed respect, so much so, that we have documented evidence that handskill was used as a defense for murder during the Italian Renaissance.1 

          That craftsmanship was considered integral to production well into the Industrial Revolution is reflected in the etymology of the word manufacture: from manus meaning hand and facere meaning to make.  Thus, implicit in manufacturing was the handmade.  The eminent physicist Cyril Smith recognized the artist’s role as innovator and proposed that, throughout history, most technological experimentation took place in the artisan’s studio rather than in the scientific laboratory.  Today, influenced as we are by science-driven standards and values, it may seem unlikely that the artist could have played a primary role in technological discovery.  But in his essay “Metallurgical Footnotes to the History of Art,” Smith concluded that most technological modification of materials appeared “first in decorative objects, rather than in tools or weapons necessary for survival.”2  Of course, until modern history, there was little distinction between the fields of art and science, between technique and technology.  Indeed, fire-controlling smiths and potters were considered part artist, part scientist and part wizard by virtue of their power over the elements and their ability to turn raw matter into finished object. 

          Craftsmanship has long been celebrated in myth and song for its capacity to harness natural elements for human use.  Some creative acts were marked with explosive fanfare; the god Vulcan captured bolts of lightning to fuel his forge.  While weavers did not wield apparent super-human power, they possessed the capacity to calculate the warping of a loom which required an understanding of complex mathematical reasoning.  Obviously this process was not commonly understood, otherwise, Odysseus’s wife Penelope could not have so long deterred her fate by clever manipulation: weaving by day and unraveling her work by night.  All early cultures celebrated handskill and some linked more than one craft metaphor with another, such as the Pueblo creation story in which the main protagonist was both spinner and potter.  Spider Woman used Earth to create the people in a rich array of colors: red, brown, white and black from various clays.  She spun her web and, in the process, wove the fate of her human creations.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the craft of carpentry was honored with special status in Bible stories which described Jesus as a carpenter.  Working at a trade involving hand skill, he was both humble and wise.  This fusion of mortality with the divine, with matter and mind, is apparent in ancient epic poem which credits Athena with the creation of pottery and weaving:

Ancient Weaver, I am but a novice at the craft you taught, a mere mortal attempting to disentangle the threads of your unsurpassed divinity....Yet still I cannot weave the pattern before I add the colors of your inventiveness to my armful of scattered threads, for they tell me that it was you who first invented the wheel for the potter...and, of course, Ancient Weaver, it was you who designed the first weaving loom.3

From a contemporary standpoint it may be difficult to appreciate the fact that craftsmen did play a significant role in developing technologies which evolved into our modern professions.  The earliest forms of mathematics, pyrotechnics, metallurgy, physics, as well as other fields which produced material, were part of craft process.

          From an age of scarcity to one of iconoclasm, from a display of virtuosity to an era of sumptuous decadence, from a rich materiality to a stark aesthetic, we now live in an age obsessed with material abundance.4  What value have things, old or new?  In an unpredictable ebb and flow, we’ve valued and de-valued the object at various times throughout human history, depending on current social constructions and assumptions.  The value we ascribe to material culture varies, influenced by changing perceptions and paradigms.  Today’s object is critically positioned as a fulcrum between maker and viewer.

          To achieve full measure of an object’s value we must not confuse its use with function.  Use is specific to form and can be understood strictly in physical terms, while function exists in the realm of the metaphysical.5  Does this teapot pour?  Does it drip?  How much liquid can it hold?  Does it become too hot to hold?  The use of a quilt may be as a bed cover, but its function is greater than the sum of its component pieces and encompasses the autobiographical story of its maker.  Thus, the function of an object exists apart from its use and is made up of an intangible meaning rather than its physical properties alone.  Likewise, we should not confuse the value of an object with its cost.  Cost concerns its current economic position and fluctuates over time.  During the Renaissance it was the cost of an inherent material which bestowed value on a product, rather than the skill with which it was executed.  Surprisingly, paintings were less expensive than brocade hangings or bronze bells and certain colors -- blue from cobalt and gilt from gold -- were more costly in a work of any kind.6  Today, if an artist wishes to donate a work to a museum, the Internal Revenue Service recognizes only the cost of the materials which went into its making.

          But function and value have meaning beyond the surface, beyond the physical and measurable properties of use and cost.  Each mark -- in clay, wood, stone, fiber, glass, pigment, or metal -- is a record, documenting what went on in the studio.  Each is the archeological evidence of a creative action taken by an object-maker.  The makers of objects are articulate storytellers, although their language not easily understood by a society with dulled visual and tactile capacities.  The stories contained within craft objects are subtle reenactments of maker with material. As viewers, we are privileged to share in the magic of making when the genie of meaning is released from its hiding place within the object by the touch of our hand.