Thinking Through CraftThinking Through Craft

This volume provides an introduction to the varied concepts and theories of modern arts and crafts. The author writes about craft as a process or an approach -- not as things. He demonstrates the complex interdependencies of craft and art as well as "craft's" own conflicting historical tendencies. The author presents five aspects of "craft's" supposed second-class identity: supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. Contrary to the implied second-class status of these themes, he suggests that these are in fact the things that make craft significant and unique.
This book provides an introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion.