Co-crafting the Meaning of Potter’s Craft

Abstract

The article is based on ethnography and the autoethnography of making. It presents an anthropological reflection on pottery craft as a way of life in a 21st-century village in Poland. The individual case of a village pottery shop in the region of Masuria is in focus, a place located in the north of the country. The exchange of knowledge and a participatory mode characterised the ethnographic enterprise. The author’s approach combines critical reflections on the social construction of folk art and craft in Poland with discursive renderings of craft-related bodily knowledge and the embodied recognition of materials and their affordances. Highlighting the alienating potential of the folk representation of the rural, it follows the meanings of pottery craft having been accommodated in the lifeworld of a modern village potter. The pottery workshop is presented both as an environment where skills and techniques are mastered as well as where experimentation happens and knowledge is built. The author focuses on recognising features of the world that are only made available through practicing the potter’s craft. The craft is also a way of establishing meaningful links with the local environment of the potter.