Lili Krakowski on sat 27 oct 07
Well, Mme Savino, as you are single-handed right now, and overdue rains
prevent my digging up the dahlias...we can talk. I obsess about "La Condition
Potiere" and understand not only that the times are a'changin' but that I
do not understand them. Where I had hoped for a grasp, a grip, a handle on
it all, I slip daily. As you live on the cutting edge--no doubt kept sharp
with one of those Japanese stones--c/would you illuminate?
The Arts& Crafts Movement grew out of the Industrial Revolution, made
possible in part by population growth.
The small craftsperson--crafts family really--was an economic unit, starving
half the time, and the factory system offered an economic improvement. I
will skip the horrible aspects which were less visible but as intense when
the small individual crafts family was on its own. In fact the uniting of
starved people IN the factory brought their tragedy into the public
arena--and books such as Mrs Gaskell's into middle class homes.
Still the factory system provided excellent cheap goods, including pottery
wares from toilets to teacups...
Middle class intellectuals like Wm Morris, seeing the destruction of the
intimate relationship between hand and object, and the mental disruption
that came from doing only part of the creative job, started the Arts &
Crafts Movement... the re-creation of hand crafts by middle class ,
well-educated folk...who meant to retain that particular bond between blue
collar and white collar hands. (Hands mean literally--collars figuratively).
(Morris was not alone, there were others)
Ok. That is where we were at the end of WWII when there was such a surge in
the craft world. Depending on discipline, we could or could not expect to
make a living at it outside of teaching and or working in some sort of
workshop situation. Woodworkers did very well, and weavers and silversmiths
found interesting work--because commissions for objects such as chasubles,
Ark curtains, chalices and commemorative platters brought in a livelihood.
Potters as rule did not do so well in the market.
As I have written elsewhere, the simple life has become extremely difficult.
The society as a whole is opposed to it.
Meanwhile--and this concerns me here--is that there are ever more people
going into clay. Most of ClayArt I think is new to it, this is something
they have chosen to do after a lifetime, or, at least many years, of doing
something else--more profitable, I hope.
And "everyone" in clay today feels obligated to sell, to show, and so on.
Not just in clay... in everything. The other day I was talking to a retired
woman who took up A Craft as a pastime about two years ago. She is quite
good at it, but far from being a master. Yet she is looking for "outlets". A
friend of hers, visiting at the same time I was is "into" another
at-this-time-popular craft and also looking for places to sell! You
commented on how many people were willing to buy your apprentice pots...There
clearly are people willing to sell and others willing to buy apprentice pots
in all crafts.
At the other end of the line there are all those who go on to more and more
schooling, at huge cost, and one wonders where that is going to lead.
So, Kelly, when you write: "Lili I am not sure that
making-for-the-joy-of-learning, or paying to break even with expenses, were
understood by the village potters of old, or many potters now around the
world." you are absolutely right.
Those old potters , and those in many countries today , make pots for daily
use by their peers. Their wares are needed. Many of these potters belong in
families that have made pots forever, even in villages where everyone makes
pots, and it is a long long apprenticeship. (People who visit the wine
"countries" of Europe see only the vintage and the labels and ignore the
kids out in the fields doing the backbreaking work of caring for the
vines...where is where wine making starts. (WINE not WHINE! Which starts in
the cradle!!!)
It is "Oh, the donkey broke the water jug--run down to the market and get
another!" When I see the prices of some pots in Ceramics Monthly and such, I
am dealing with a world I do not understand . Certainly these potters, some
fabulous, are creating metaphors for useful pots, because I know no one who
cold afford to use them. Sometimes there are pots in my league--both for
what I make and what I can buy. But none of that would involve an advanced
college degree.
The life you recount, which I assume you led (!) appears to have been one of
privilege and good fortune. (Are Les Enfants really that old, already?)
Right now, because of circumstances you chose, you live the life the Average
American Working Woman. Up at dawn to feed the kids, hubby, pack lunches.
Catch 6:30 bus to the factory/the cleaning job/the baby sitting. Back home
at 7:30 to cook dinner, do the laundry, help with homework, talk to
hubby --unless he works second or third shift...IF she is a single mother, or
looking after an elderly parent, or a disabled child, print this in
boldface.
If she is a farm woman then the only "improvement" is fresh air and water,
and possibly better nutrition.
The exhausting, demanding life you are living right now by choice, is the
real life of the Real America. Saltglazed, woodfired Shino teapot anyone?
How when everyone in clay has a PhD will these real people buy pots?
Can this be resolved? Will the Arts and Crafts Movement be killed and buried
entirely? Will newbies sell their wares to the folk--who in simpler cultures
buy it from experts--and the Ph.D's sell to millionaires?
The limb I cling to is being cut down. And yes, the hope I see is a
realization by more people that craft is a discipline, not a hobby, that the
world does not need more pots, but more potters who use the discipline for
introspection.
When I was seven we summered in the real original Spa--not so bizarre as we
lived in Antwerp. One day we toured the bottling plant. I was SO impressed.
But never ever expected to see higher education turned into a bottling
plant. The bottle is checked out if it is good enough. (in schooling "can
pay enough") Then the bottle goes onto a conveyor belt with several paths:
lemon, orange, plain, etc. to be filled . capped, labeled, and off it goes.
In college nowadays it is similar--the cap comes with a gown, of course, the
label is a diploma...
As to cream separators: Lehman's has them for $200...unless you can find one
at a farm auction, where, they probably sell for a lot more to collectors
who want to make lamps out of them. My friend Judy recommended a long time
ago, that one get a calf from an Angus, or other beef breed, bred to a
Jersey. Apparently--and I won't go into details--many farmers breed a cow
having her first baby to a smaller breed...this makes delivery easier.
So...because if you have a pure Jersey or Guernsey you will have far more milk
than you will know what to do with.....
Wishes for a speedy recovery
Lili Krakowski
Be of good courage
primalmommy on sun 28 oct 07
Lili: I am two handed again, though elbow and shoulder still protest at
load-bearing work, so I I have learned to rely on borrowed muscle:
Patrick in the studio, Jeffrey at home.
I am sorry about the dahlias. Hope you get to them before the freeze.
"La Condition Potiere"... heck, what do I know? I grew up eating every
meal from hand thrown stoneware because it was the 70s and my mom loved
the Ann Arbor Art Fair. I didn't know WIlliam Morris from Morris the
cat, or Bauhaus from Barbie's dream house. I was a child of TV, mass
marketing and factory-model schooling.
Your wider view of history -- both the part you have been schooled in,
and the part you were there for --- is enviable. I am looking hard,
since you asked, for something I might add to your post.
You wrote:
>"The small craftsperson--crafts family really--was an economic unit,
starving
>half the time, and the factory system offered an economic improvement.
I
>will skip the horrible aspects which were less visible but as intense
when
>the small individual crafts family was on its own. In fact the uniting
of
>starved people IN the factory brought their tragedy into the public
>arena--and books such as Mrs Gaskell's into middle class homes."
I guess I was reaching farther back, looking for a more natural, healthy
parallel to what you are seeing as competitive-potting (vs. making for
personal enrichment.) Specialization in tribal cultures, potters in
Mesopotamia and the fertile crescent, even American colonials "competed"
to make their best work and earned a decent livelihood, with something
to sell or barter. Enrichment was no doubt part of the package, but not
'the point" -- and competing to make a more lovely product than the
potter upriver did not make them shallow, greedy for the limelight, or
victims of a sinister rat-race.
You wrote:
>"Meanwhile--and this concerns me here--is that there are ever more
people
>going into clay. Most of ClayArt I think is new to it, this is
something
>they have chosen to do after a lifetime, or, at least many years, of
doing
>something else--more profitable, I hope."
Are you sure, Lili? Is there some way to quantify this? Maybe everybody
has always been going into clay, only now the internet brings them by
the thousands into your inbox. Are there more potters now than in the
70s? Maybe so... like I wonder if there really is more "stranger danger"
for today's children, or whether the media just brings us every horror
from anywhere on the evening news, so we live in fear and lock our
children indoors... who knows what the big picture was, really, back
when we had only our neighborhood to judge by?
You wrote:
>"And "everyone" in clay today feels obligated to sell, to show, and so
on.
I agree with you here. I have my theories about why that is. Some are
practical -- (where do you put all those pots? How do you justify an
expensive hobby?) Some are ego based -- (I could make a pot better than
the lumpy one I saw in that street fair!) (My friends think my pots are
good enough to sell!)
And for some, the public is the only available critic. I used to feel
like my pots "made it" if they sold. Now I'm horrified about what people
have bought from me.
My own conditioning also had something to do with the messages I got
about what "mattered". My dad, bless his well-intentioned heart, looked
at my grade school report cards and said, "Everybody gets an A in Art.
What about your Math grades?" (My brother was equally discouraged from
pursuing music, lest he starve.)
And everyone knew that the work Daddies did was real and important,
because they Brought Home the Bacon and then sat at the dinner table
talking about their day. Mommies just did baby stuff, and house stuff,
and other tasks historically relegated to slaves and servants by anyone
who had the means. Mommies of my parents' generations certainly didn't
bore their husbands with talk about their mundane days, PTA, kids, and
the new detergent that gets rid of skid marks... (no matter how orgasmic
the women in TV ads used to seem about victories in laundry).
The adult women in my family had come of age across the gap from me --
before the women's movement, the birth control pill, etc. They were of
the Donna Reed and June Cleaver mindset, even if they kept up with the
latest beehive hairdos and Marlo Thomas skirts. So while I was raised in
a society that told me I could be president, an astronaut, Free to Be
Me, it was not the way I understood the world to work. When my mom
wanted to buy those Bunny McBride bowls or an Edith Franklin "LOVE" pot
at the AA street fair, she had to go to my father and ask for money,
explain her intentions and wait through the ritual of the wallet. Never
mind that he always forked over... it seemed to me that she, without
earnings, had no more say/power than we kids.
A long digression to make this point: I learned early that it doesn't
"officially" matter unless it makes money. Wait, don't rend your
garment: I KNOW this is not true. Probably the most important things I
have done in life were invisible and unpaid: rocking my babies, washing
diapers, schooling three kids at the kitchen table (a decade, this
year). I published very good poetry and was paid 'in copies". It was
still good.
But in the wide world, the difference between "hobby" (that word so many
clayarters bristle at) and "serious potter/artist" is apparently
measured in dollars and cents. So, people sell.
You wrote:
>"At the other end of the line there are all those who go on to more and
more
>schooling, at huge cost, and one wonders where that is going to lead."
Most investments involve cash up front, or sweat equity, or both.
I am told that it is now impossible for a family to survive on one
income.
I have learned that the man who retires with a gold watch, and a company
retirement package that will take care of his widow one day, is now
extinct.
How many coffee cups and colanders would I have to sell if hubby
inherits his father's heart-attack-at-50, and it was up to me to support
us all? Rare characters like David Hendley can raise a roof and a family
on production pottery, but even Hendleys and Clennells start to think
about health insurance and a pension as they get older.
Anyway, that's just me, the only one I pretend to speak for. I am a damn
good teacher, and always preferred to teach college kids, who are there
by choice and can sink or swim without my interference. I like college
towns because the are diverse and culturally interesting. And I have no
interest in going back to the English department and grading, grading,
grading papers, so I would rather teach ceramics because it keeps me
excited, year after year.
I do know of one clayarter with a non-clay career who told me she got
her MFA because she was tired of not being taken seriously as a potter,
though. So there's that, too. Which is OK with me.
You wrote:
>"The exhausting, demanding life you are living right now by choice, is
the
>real life of the Real America. Saltglazed, woodfired Shino teapot
anyone?
>How when everyone in clay has a PhD will these real people buy pots?
>"Can this be resolved? Will the Arts and Crafts Movement be killed and
buried
>entirely? Will newbies sell their wares to the folk--who in simpler
cultures
>buy it from experts--and the Ph.D's sell to millionaires?"
I agree that it's a complicated matter, Lili. More people want to make,
you say, and quite likely less people want to buy their wares.
My parents had a historic home and used to love spending saturdays at
antique auctions. Now that we kids are grown, they winter in Florida and
live in a condo here, and don't buy any more. Mom went back to the
auction recently and says "They can't GIVE the antiques away. Fine old
china, silver tea services, lovely handcrafted wooden furniture...
nobody wants it."
She blames my generation. We won't hand wash dishes, nobody cooks,
everything is contemporary and furniture comes from Pier One or Ikea.
Grandma's inherited Sunday Best goes right to ebay, or goodwill.
So who will buy pots? Diana gives me grief over some doodad I put on a
pot that she says is "way too 70s" and forbids me to use. I think,
"Hell, the whole idea of handmade pottery is way too 70s." What is the
age bracket of the folks who buy it, I wonder? What about generation
next?
The "folk" and the millionaires are all drinking out of styro starbucks
cups, plastic water bottles and aluminum cans. The difference between
wanting a carbon trap shino mug and wanting a 99 cent Walmart mug that
says "I'm with stupid" -- may be the customer's level of understanding.
Without painting with too broad a brush, it seems fair to say that
education is part of that, or at least exposure to "cult-chah" of some
arty sort.
And you offered, most generously and off-topic:
>"My friend Judy recommended a long time
>ago, that one get a calf from an Angus, or other beef breed, bred to a
>Jersey. Apparently--and I won't go into details--many farmers breed a
cow
>having her first baby to a smaller breed.this makes delivery easier.
Apparently it is also a good plan because the offspring has a 50-50
chance of being the "unmilkable" gender... and might end up in the
freezer instead.
Lili, I don't know if any of these musings are useful to you, or even if
we're singing to the same music here... but I enjoy your perspective and
your words.
Yours
Kelly in Ohio
http://www.primalpotter.com
http://www.primalmommy.com/blog.html
Click for free info on college degrees.
o9Tm8WkQ4P9kvFj/>
_______________________________________________________________
Get the Free email that has everyone talking at http://www.mail2world.com
Unlimited Email Storage – POP3 – Calendar – SMS – Translator – Much More!
| |
|
