History of Crafts
9/5/2007 6:30:00 PM
Themes:
#1 the functioning of the craftsman as a social animal
their relationship to society
#2 the development of the idea of individuality
#3 the development of craft of shaping tastes, or times
#4 a crafts person relationship with the patron. (important toward the
renaissance)
#5 the shift of the idea of craft where we have a maker as a
designer…compared to somebody who makes somebody else’s design
**originally the crafts person makes it for their needs/cultures needs
compared to today where craftsman are more o
-this division happened in the renaissance…division between fine art and
actually crafts that were needed
What is Craft?
Metals, ceramics, weaving, woodworking, leatherwork, stone masons,
cooking….
**craft these days is ambiguous. (ex: digital photo instead of going into the
dark room)
***members of a trade
**the applied arts, “the trades”
-it is the history of peoples discover of materials and how they are using
them. (history of copper, history of clay, etc.)
3 historical stages of craft:
*time when everything was craft
- all processes that were making were hand made.
- all of these things are linked together: religious, how it was made, the
process.
*the idea of craft and the idea of fine art
- fine art takes the lead in the renaissance
*the industrial revolution
- the craft object vs. the machine object (“the industrial product”)
- workmanship of risk vs. the workmanship
*the division of labor
- started by the Romans (even as early as the Greeks)
China – imperial decree in 1951 thousands of pieces of china were made in a
specific way and sold.
How do we look at craft?
Look at the future to see our past.
*helps us know when something is special.
What was common? What was everybody using?
The groundbreaking stuff isn’t that important…bread and butter is the stuff
that everybody/everyday you used.
Time, Culture, Use, and People. We need to look at the materials to
understand the craft. Need to know the motivation, setting of the
production, social, technological, etc. all important.
1,000,000 BCE – Old Stone Age Begins – Stone Tools
400,000 BCE – Built Shelter & “simple” Weaving – Terra Amata, France
* not a permanent shelter…built year after year.
UP TO HERE PEEPS LIVE IN CAVES
30,000 BCE – Homo Sapien clay – Fertility Figures, Chauvet Cave,
Adornment…important!
20,000 BCE – Lascaux Cave Paintings
10,000 BCE – Food Cultivation – Alta Mira Cave
8,000/6,000 BCE – Metallurgy first major evidence of Trade – Houses
at Catul Hoyak THIS IS THE NEOLITHIC ERA
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the Egyptians traded so much that on their furniture they didn’t
create the hinges.
5,000 BCE – Advance Metallurgy – Sittard Settlement
3,400 BCE – Literacy, Sumeria – THE END OF PREHISTORIC TIMES
3,000 BCE – Houses & Furniture at Skara Brae – Temple of Malta
 Houses were built out of stone in the ground cuz of the wind there.
Nothing would grow via the wind being so strong
2750-1500 BCE – Stonehenge
2670 BCE – Pyramid of Zoser
2570 – 2500 BCE – Pyramids of Giza
Prehistoric Art
*not always primitive
-prehistoric art is time related and primitive art is crude
-there was language, oral history, and tradition
-tradition is very molding and played and importance thing about how things
-were made. Religion, myths, etc.
-oldest form of art is found around caves because nomadic people left they
things there for when they came back next season.
-caves were ritualistic places. Only the shamans were allowed deep inside
them.
- #1 France & Germany where the earliest tools and such where found
outside of caves
Chauvet cave is very important because it’s where they found over 300
paintings and the first place for finding carved objects.
30,000 thousand years ago – people start making things for themselves
Containers, Shelters, Supports, Furniture, ****Weapons & tools for daily life
and survival, adornment aka jewelry
 Containers were the first thing that was created. They were made
out of things that wouldn’t survive so that the evidence is scarce.
Ex: baskets, bowls, etc. They were first things to be improved
upon. Gourds were probably the first thing used to carry things
around.

Shelter next important. Anything you can shelter yourself in,
clothes, huts, etc.
 Supports are like stools, etc. Stones and logs were the first
furniture. First things that worked to make the more comfortable
and altered instead of sitting in dirt.
 Adornment is like Talismans, fetishes to appease the gods, jewelry,
etc.
Containers, Shelters, Supports were all natural, found in nature.
These things were very crude, and had a definite use. Was not served as art.
Some cases they were adorned for religious reasons (so god’s would protect
or aid the hunt.)
People don’t NEED art. Ex: Eskimos and Africans who are nomadic and can’t
carry sculptures.
- Everything follows a basic form or pattern *called a archetype: rule book
or icon - a pot is a pot no matter where it’s made or what time its
made
If you want something to be successful it has to have a function.
Functional form has limits.
In England, a hot chocolate pot’s handle is 90 degrees to it’s spout. WEIRD!
Need to know your material to create the object successfully.
- What is it going to be used for?
- Form and function
- Ex: woven baskets can’t carry water, glass wouldn’t be used to carry
things because it would break.
- If you want to make a cup you want to know you’re liquids.
- If you want to make jewelry you have to know how the human body
moves.
- Objects for daily ritual.
Ceramics and Pots are the earliest crafts we can talk about.
The evolution for these things was slow.
Unfired pots were from the Mesolithic period.
A bird’s nest with clay was the earliest thing of weaving.
Heat & pressure (force) in order to create something.
People discover things BY ACCIDENT!
6,000 BCE fire hard vessels. Earliest.
First ritualistic in ceramics. **some cultures only done by women,
sometimes only when there was a full moon, etc.
Firing alters the atomic structure…CAN HOLD WATER!
To remove the porosity of clays so that they won’t absorb water people
found out about Glazes.
Glaze seals it. It’s GLASS.
Hot thing to do in the middle East (Egyptian time blah blah)
Clay tables are used for writing and then fired for documentation sake.
5,000 BCE Sumerian City of Worka – First evidence of the potters wheel
#1 achieve a regularity of shape.
#2 produce things faster than ever before.
 Ex: earliest form was two disked potter wheel (see figure 1) foot
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wheel didn’t arrive until the 200 CE
First real decorative pots that come around is When peeps wanna
make their mark.
Egypt started to play with a bunch of colored gazes (green, blue,
yellow, red, are most important colors – they come from oxides and
when you fire them, they turn different colors)
Copper makes things green, Colbat blue, Copper red, etc.
Mining becomes important to gather the ores for these colors.
450 BCE Greece – Red & Black colors and figureware
- Using different types of oxides and glazes and firing them in different
ways.
- Greeks started playing with it for the first time.
- Ferris oxide was black Ferix oxide is red.
Fire it in the oxidizing atmosphere (LOTS OF OXYGEN)
Reducing atmosphere (less oxygen)
WEAVING!
- don’t survive.
- Turkey place has the earliest evidence of true weaving.
-Badar had the earliest evidence of ancient weaving, which is cotton fibers,
or vegetable fibers.
- Wool is like…2,000 years ago
- Silk is 1,000 BCE and stays there exclusively in china. Known for it’s
strength and sheen.
EGYPTIANS DID LOOPED TOWEL… 2,000 BCE (I’m using one today)
#1 makes absorb water faster
#2 makes it nice and soft!
1500 BCE embroidering in the west.
Dyes were closely guarded secrets and you didn’t have it unless you were
RICH! Purple was the most sought out colored. From a crestation in the
Mediterranean. (think roman dudes!)
Weaving was told in old stories…Odyssey, from Homer. Weaving was a past
time in aristocracy.
WOOOOOD
Suffers the same problem cuz it didn’t survive due to weather etc.
Common people didn’t have furniture
Most people didn’t have furniture until the middle ages.
Most joints on furniture existed in ancient Egypt.
The lave carved wood, pre dates Egyptians by 1,000 years.
Egyptians exceeded in “in-lay” **cut in the surface of the wood and puts a
different kind of material as a decoration.
Wood was as valuable as gold in Egypt.
NO BAD FURNITURE…they prized them.
Most woodwork was covered with gold sheeting.
Cedar and Fur were the 2 most common woods in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Greeks would carve tree columns before they did stone.
Metal changes the world.
Iron ore you have to dig out of the ground.
Gold and copper you can just find.
Turkey, Iraq, Iran – earliest metal techniques.
Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia were glass dudes.
2,000 degree Fahrenheit
3,000 BCE mining
Gold was associated with sun therefore GODLIKE!
Gold never tarnishes. Pure silver turns brown over time. Copper oxidizes.
Copper which was stronger was used for both jewelry and weapons – 3,000
BCE *first signs of treating metal
Evidence of 6 foot long copper saws that were used to cut the pyramids
blocks.
Copper becomes the most practical metal in ancient societies.
Copper and Tin creates BRONZE! This becomes an alloy…. Bronze was the
hardest metal of its day! Fought with bronze weapons YOU WIN! Only the
people who had tin ended up dominating.
Ceramics got dirty and lived in their own section of town because they were
“witches” same with metal workers because they would use fire and create
something new.
Early iron pieces were made from meteorites.
Iron becomes valuable because Iron kills Bronze. The Hittites were the first
to use it and kept it as a secret. Iron gets hard when you heat it …copper
gets soft when you heat it.
Steel is iron plus carbon. Steel is harder than Iron. 650 BCE in India.
Heat treatment to steel wasn’t discovered roman times.
GLASS
Known for glaze for ceramics
discovered somewhere in asia then brought to Mesopotamia.
Glass is a glass and sodium carbonate and limestone.
Early glass was opaque. Very high impurity content.
You make it out of elephant dung, sand or clay….and then put it on a rod
and then put your molten glass on it.
1200 BCE Egyptians learn how to press glass into open containers.
Lost wax technique- make it out of wax….put it in a clay mold/form clay
around it….melts out the wax then makes the mold…pour in your metal or
glass and you get your object.
Combed glass – 3 century BCE Mediterranean where you take take a stylus
and drag it through to create lines to create a wave like motion.
Millefiori or a thousand flowers – fuse a bunch of glass to create different
rod flowers and then cut them into pieces then fuse THOSE pieces together.
Cased glass has 2 different colors….dark color outside light color
inside…carve outside to inside then you get 2 different colors.
Blowing glass increased production…much quicker, everyday item.
Roman empire DOMINATES GLASSS!
Casting glass onto flat stone….created windows! (sheet glass)
HOMEWORK:
Know topic for next week…must focus on craft.
9/5/2007 6:30:00 PM
9/5/2007 6:30:00 PM