Craftsmanship Alone is not Enough

A diverse and profoundly transformable material, clay offers new designers and artists the possibility to push beyond the accepted ceramic applications into conceptually challenging contexts and outcomes.

This paper seeks to explore how contemporary artists, designers and crafts people exploit the materials traditional archetypes and production processes to comment, challenge or transform our understanding of what clay can do.

Drawing comparisons across a range of practices the paper will address the following questions; How does technological formation of clay explore craftsmanship and production values? When placed in a public context does clay allow for transformative engagement? Can we examine production values and systems through production? Does the handing down of skill from maker to maker offer opportunity for innovation? Does clays ubiquity offer transgressive, provocative opportunities?

These questions act as thresholds to a discussion about the modern context for Ceramics from education to practice and present us with the opportunity to interrogate a range of designers and makers, their work and attitudes through this lens.