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On Craftsmanship: Towards a New Bauhaus

The book consists of a series of linked essays about the role and significance of the contemporary crafts in education, in history and literature, in the workplace, in the English language and in the critical landscape of art and design. In particular, the essays focus on the concepts of ‘tacit knowledge’ (which the author introduced into the crafts debate, adapting Oakeshott and Polanyi), ‘skill’, ‘workmanship’, and ‘function’; on the relationship between the crafts and digital technologies, which have been interpreted by some as driving a wedge between the creation of objects and the skills of the craftsman; on the uses of the word ‘craft’ in everyday parlance; and on the continuing relevance of the crafts, as idea and as practice, in a post-industrial economy. Together, the essays aim to contribute to a current debate which includes Matthew Crawford’s Case for Working With Your Hands (2009), Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman (2008) and Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), all of which, in different ways, also challenge romantic accounts of the historical crafts, the legacy of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which are still influential. The concluding essay explores the idea of a ‘new Bauhaus’ in the radically changed contexts of the early twenty-first century.