Changed perceptions of handicraft through
design
collaboration: The Dutch meet
Kutch project.
Article printed in the June 2005 issue of
Indian Design and Interiors
...
by Arlene Birt
Before arriving in India, my limited American
idea of ‘craft’ reached only as far as reading about the ‘Arts
and Crafts movement’ in art history books. In my mind, the handicrafts
of today were romanticized icons collected by tourists to fill their shelves
back home as memories of their vacations: it had no place in modern design
and no contribution for the future. I didn’t think working with rural
crafts would benefit my design future other than checking it off as ‘a
cultural experience’.
But that changed.
For four weeks, 11 students from The Netherlands
worked with Kutchi craftspeople to create products for Indian and western
markets. Bringing together design students from a concept-oriented masters
program in the Netherlands and craftspeople with generations of skill in rural
Kutch villages, the students worked individually or in pairs with artisans
in workshops of lacquered turned wood, embroidery, wood carving, bell making,
leather work, pottery, block printing and weaving. Coordinated by Indian NGO
Dastkar, the project culminated in an exhibition in Delhi and was part of
the students’ coursework in the Man + Humanity program at the Design
Academy in Eindhoven. The aim of this 2-year graduate program in humanitarian
and sustainable design is to anticipate change and respond to the world’s
need for a new generation of compassionate designers with global awareness,
local engagement and personal integrity.
A collision of traditional crafts and abstract
industrial design, the project had its share of stumbling blocks: language
and cultural differences between students and artisans, and difficulty in
bridging the gap in process between market and survival-driven crafts and
concept-heavy Dutch design.
Handcraft in this context was a fresh method
of design for many of us students – and the shock in adjusting to the
design-as-you-go crafts’ process in contrast with our academic design
structure was as great as the culture shock of Kutchi village life. But through
this project, we found a different type of producer-designer relationship:
A symbiotic collaboration where each gets to know each other and values the
other’s knowledge and expert input. Ideally, this sort of collaboration
manifests itself in the results and products created.
Don’t get the impression it all happened
so smoothly for us: The student’s dreamy, pre-departure notion of ‘cultural
exchange and communication’ was abruptly cut short when we arrived
in India to hear one crafts woman’s comment that they didn’t
see anything they want from our Western culture.
But I think cultural communication happened
in different ways than we anticipated. For both the craftspeople and us growth
was propelled by interaction with the other side of the craft/design fence
and observing creative processes different from our own.
As a case in point, Shamji Vishram Vankad and
I worked together in his handloom weaving workshop in Bhujodi: I grew up in
the United States, study in the Netherlands, and have traveled internationally.
As a designer relying on computers (and
taking hours to decide where a single element may go), I have barely touched
a loom in all my 25 years.
Shamji, on the other side, hasn’t been
outside India. His family has been weaving on pit handlooms for generations.
He makes quick work of decisions of color and motif and calculates complex
layouts of pattern throughout the warp and weft in his head.
So when Shamji and I worked together, we concentrated
on our own areas of expertise: Inspired by the multitude of ways women in
India wear shawls, I looked at how the form of a shawl can adapt to fit the
Western idea of garment. And communicate its use to a European and North American
audience. Shamji integrated pattern into the new garments to highlight their
function and accentuate the beauty. And he fitted traditional Kutchi motifs
to these new and dimensional forms of shawl.
Making use of the village’s Rabari women
who have traditionally stitched widths of woven cloth together, the result
is a series of three shawls that provide clues as to how they can be worn.
Intended for a Western audience, each shawl is a new design that still speaks
of its Kutchi origin and the heritage of weaving.
But the ‘ah-ha’ moment of collaboration-bliss
occurred in the final 2 days of the project, when Shamji used the concept
of dimensional-shawls I had been developing for the past 3 weeks as a springboard
for products he could create for the Indian market. That moment the inspiration
felt mutual, and not an outside designer dictating new designs to a producer.
And it’s this sort of collaboration
and interaction that launch us into the future of design: employing traditional
techniques to create artifacts for today. Returning to the roots of design
(to craft), we can better understand the historical basis of what we make
and the processes involved, and thereby develop products distinct with time-honored
character for today’s industrialized lifestyles.
And all in a much more sustainable manner:
Using natural and local materials, techniques of cultural and traditional
significance, and employing skilled workers in healthy atmospheres, crafts
is one of the most sustainable options of production available. Consciousness
to all parts of design is evident in the final product and can be felt by
the hands of western consumers tired of the sameness of industrial production.
Sensitivity for culture propels globalization of cultural diversity rather
than plowing through it.
But I think where our project falls short is
its nature of being an academic project; it is not a long-term, ongoing plan.
Four weeks is just enough to get over our initial upset-stomachs and heat
stroke, not long enough to delve into the greater complexities of the system.
Ambitions to ‘help these people’
can be easily misguided when we realize how little, as designers, is within
our realm of helping. I can’t bring running water or connect their
village to electricity. And I’m not a qualified sociologist to be able
to say if they even ‘need’ these things in the first place.
But hopefully by revitalizing, for however
brief period, the market for their crafts, I can help improve their income
by employing them in something they enjoy doing, and assist in keeping their
crafts alive while participating in their development. This is not preservation
of handicrafts, but evolution.
And this evolution in crafts is what I value for the future of design. I could easily shrug off my 4 weeks in Kutch as a ‘cultural experience’, but much deeper than that, it has revealed the roots of a more sustainable future for design.
...
Article printed in the June 2005 issue of Indian Design and Interiors