Last week we were asked by Cerys to send her no more than 3 photo's to visualize what we wanted our class to be known for. We spoke a few weeks ago about different decades and their movements in the craft world, we spoke about the Bauhaus movement about how they credited the craftsmanship where their designs were often functional pieces with simplistic forms but a breath of fresh air in History with limited decoration.
This helped me to think of what craft is known for today and how the meaning is constantly changing in a commercialized way. The word 'Craft' is often thought of as hobbies, something you can learn from Youtube and magazines that's easily accessible. I think it's great learning new techniques this way but in reality I find it slightly discrediting to someone such as myself who would like to make a career out of this and sell my work as original pieces that have been thoughtfully designed.
We all explained what our photos meant as we went around the table, explaining what we wanted to be known for and why we thought we weren't, I find these seminars so helpful as they change and widen my mind the more we discuss various subjects.
I want our class of 2016 to be known fr giving Craft it's true identity, taking craft from the mainstream and focussing the attention back to us as designer makers, We should speak confident about our work and support our small community of makers with collaborations as wearable jewellery becomes more extreme and a walking work of art.
Azza Fahmy Jewellery.
I chose this piece by
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About Azza Fahmy Jewellery.
"We are an independent purveyor of hand crafted jewellery inspired by 7000 years of culture & defined by contemporary minds.
Our spirit is proudly Egyptian whilst the appeal of our creations is now global with stores on four continents and pieces worn by those with spirit worldwide.
As an international fine jewellery house of provenance Azza Fahmy brings different cultures and heritage to life through its unique and contemporary designs. Founded in 1969 with Azza Fahmys great passion for design and a desire to translate this passion into jewellery, the Azza Fahmy brand now has an exclusive international reputation with clients including world leaders, royalty, celebrities, and connoisseurs of jewellery worldwide.
Our journey started with a leap of passion in Egypt in 1969. We traveled the universe and back and our pieces have traveled with us. It was time that we bring all these travels back home with us, celebrating with a commemorative collection for Egypt’s icon Umm Kulthum. Each jewel has been made with love, taken on a journey together with more than 200 skilled artisans, designers and creative individuals. Every piece unveils an emotional story capturing a moment in a time capsule and a place in history. This story has become ours and is now becoming yours to tell."
I chose this piece and the story behind it because I appreciate the journey of being a designer and growing the business into something magnificent as this still keeping the same inspiration behind each piece using heritage, traditional techniques and keeping that quality amongst quantity.
The next image I chose was my own work which was inspired by building structure and body structure, these pieces appear to be growths as i played around with scale. I made these pieces using silk organza, starch, silver and magnets.
I found the comparison between the two pieces interesting as the heritage of what I was surrounded by inspired me the same as the founder of the company Azza Fahmy Jewellery.
I think it's important to research and find out about our heritage, experience different cultures and appreciate surroundings and history.
The craftsmen orignal techniques, how they achieved their work and spreading it allows people to have an insight into handmade, designed product.
As a group we spoke about how schools curriculum is more based around academic subjects rather than the arts suggesting these creative techniques and thinking process dieing out. I believe it's important to pass down these traits even when new technology arises as they're a huge part of history within design.
At the end of our discussion in expressing our thoughts on what our manifesto would be, a kind of deep brief after having each of our says. A lot of people mentioned they wanted their work to be beautiful and wanted people to feel something positive when looking at it. We all wanted to be appreciated highlighting the fact there are people out there that want these handmade pieces even if they cost more, where quality is priority over quantity. Toni mentioned she wanted the extraordinary to become ordinary and for people to open their mind about unusual work which we agreed on as making work technically beautifully and using the correct materials makes a piece desirable not just the overall look. We agreed on bringing back heritage and collaborating on projects or working in various medias and experiment to move forward in design we agreed on brightening the world with our designs and starting conversations with them which is a huge part of getting our work out there, if our pieces had nothing to say they wouldn't be as satisfying to make, we need to get up and return to our workstation or think about design each day as it takes 10,000 hours before we can call ourselves craftsmen.
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