Here's One I Made Earlier: Making and Living with Home Craft in Contemporary Britain

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the ways in which the makers of home craft negotiate the meanings of ‘design’, ‘craft’ and ‘art’. Developing from studies in sociology, anthropology, design history and material culture, this paper questions the production and consumption of home-crafted objects within the domestic environment and aims to question the meaning of making in contemporary Britain. A discourse is constructed around oral history testimonies in which home craft makers are also its consumers, which situates the home as a site of production and consumption. Rather than interpreting person/object relations as an extension of ‘taste’, a more dynamic interplay of social and cultural relations is established by investigating the choice of kits, patterns and subjects made by respondents. This is discussed in relation to their display and juxtaposed with popular concepts of art, artistry, aesthetics and decoration. This article therefore confronts the ordinary and its consequent transformation into the extraordinary.