Collaboration Through Craft

Offering a challenging new argument for the collaborative power of craft, this ground-breaking volume analyses the philosophies, politics and practicalities of collaborative craft work. The book is accessibly organised into four sections covering the cooperation and compromises required by the collaborative process; the potential of recent technological advances for the field of craft; the implications of cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural collaborations for authority and ownership; and the impact of crafted collaborations on the institutions where we work, learn and teach.

With cutting-edge essays by established makers and artists such as Allison Smith (US) and Brass Art (UK), curator Lesley Millar, textile designer Trish Belford and distinguished thinker Glenn Adamson, Collaborating Through Craft will be essential reading for students, artists, makers, curators and scholars across a number of fields.

Review: Collaboration Through Craft is a ground-breaking book. It sets out what we have known for some time but nobody has yet articulated - that the crafts are distinguished by their collaborative nature and the willingness of makers to share experience, knowledge and skills. From its insightful introduction, which eloquently sets the context for craft as a collaborative process and experience, this book's collection of essays maps the hugely diverse territory of contemporary crafts via the framing mechanism of collaboration. -- Matthew Partington, VA Museum Senior Research Fellow, University of West England, UK Nothing is ever made without collaboration.

Yet we continue to believe that every work is the product of a single hand. This book turns the belief in single-handed creation on its head. It shows that collaboration is not incidental to the crafting of things but the very power that drives it forward. Together, the contributors succeed in raising craft from its backward-looking association with traditional skills to where it belongs, as a dynamic, generative principle at the core of social and cultural life. -- Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen, UK This book is a compelling critical appraisal of the friction and risk in collaboration, posing new forms of collaborative expertise through craft that are both challenging and immensely productive.

These 16 chapters have deep relevance to makers in art, design, and craft as well as educators and practitioners within any field where working together is essential. This is an extraordinary resource! -- Anne Wilson, Professor Department of Fiber and Material Studies, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA