Introduction: Crafting Knowledge

Walter Gropius addressed all of these widely-discussed questions in his founding Manifesto of the Bauhaus, which opened in April 1919: ‘The ultimate goal of all artistic activity is the building! […] Architects, sculptors, painters – we must all turn to crafts. For there is no such thing as “art by profession”. There is no essential difference between the artist and the artisan.’[1]

The manifesto was illustrated with a zinc etching after a woodcut by Lyonel Feininger titled Cathedral of the future. Here, the spire of the Gothic cathedral is surrounded by a triple star representing the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. At the Bauhaus, this was to epitomise the unity of architecture, art and craft. As such, the Bauhaus Manifesto is explicit – craftsmanship forms the foundation of all artistic activity. But the vision of an equitable working community and a community project represented a complex undertaking from the start. What sounded rather impassioned on paper pursued a democratic fundamental idea – that at the Bauhaus, there would be no class differences between artisans and artists. This is one of the central postulations of Walter Gropius’s manifesto. Such idealised hopes and the status of craft in general changed over time at the Bauhaus. Visions had to be continually adapted to new realities, new conditions.

Éva Forgács describes the demands placed on Gropius as a ‘balancing the appreciation of the traditional and promotion of the new’. Before he could take over Henry Van de Velde’s art school building, training workshops and remaining machines, tools and materials and unite the school of fine arts and the school of arts and crafts, Gropius was compelled to cede to political demands even at the application stage: ‘[They made it clear] that they would prefer a leader for the planned institution who would put crafts, clean and simple, in the very focus of his pursuits and teaching, instead of art-infused industrial production: they would much rather see a leader who fully embraces the teaching of crafts.’[2] According to Forgács, Gropius understood at this point that the insistence on crafts also had a moralistic, patriotic connotation. The resurrection of the crafts tradition after the WW I was understood as a means of healing on a societal level. The Bauhaus’s foundation occurred in the context of nationwide endeavours to reform the education of artists and designers. From the late-19th century, the main objective of various reform-oriented schools was to unite artistic education in the free and applied disciplines and, in doing so, to break with conventions handed down since the Renaissance in the traditions of the art academies.

The desire for a foundation in craftsmanship was coupled with the demand for workshops in schools of art and applied art. At the Bauhaus, the subject was particularly ideologically charged, owing especially to the widely publicised manifesto. From a purely objective standpoint, practical work in the workshops was supposed to stand at the heart of training at the Bauhaus. The separation of theory and practice was thus largely given up because each of the workshops was led by a so-called master of form and a master of works. The position of master of form, that is, the tutor responsible for design, corresponded to that of a professor at the art academies. In the workshops, the masters of form were assisted by a master of works who was in charge of teaching technical skills. The masters of works were master craftsmen who had completed their training with a master’s certificate from a chamber of crafts and who also often still ran their own workshops. In addition to the Bauhaus diploma, all Bauhaus students were required to obtain a formal qualification from a craftsman’s company. This precautionary principle ensured that they would be economically independent after completing their studies.

Following the school’s move to Dessau in particular, the Bauhaus workshops became laboratories for industrial production. From this point on, the focus was less on individual works of art and more on the development of well-designed everyday products which were to be manufactured in collaboration with industry. In Dessau, serial production processes come into play on a whole new level. Now, in addition to the unique artefact, the focus was increasingly placed on the design of extensive product ranges and everyday worlds.

Looking back in the 1950s, Walter Gropius stated: ‘The crafts training in the Bauhaus workshops was not an end in itself, but an irreplaceable tool of education. The aim of this training was to bring forth designers who, through the precise knowledge of materials and work processes, were in a position to influence the industrial production of our time.’[3]

When it comes to the interconnection of design, craft and theory, the Bauhaus remains an important point of reference in schools of art and design today. Many contemporary debates about crafts training in design refer explicitly or implicitly to the Bauhaus model, either approvingly or critically. Although crafts training has changed a great deal in art and design schools in the 21st century, both in terms of content and structurally, many of the learning experiences of the Bauhaus and other historical reform-orientated schools are still valid today. These include the acquisition of material knowledge in workshops, interdisciplinary work, understanding design as a societal task or thinking critically about artistic traditions. In all this, craft is viewed not as an isolated skill or a purely technical form of knowledge, but as a creative process which is integrated in many aspects of art and design practice. Students learn to combine crafts techniques with digital and interdisciplinary approaches in order to find new forms of expression and reflect social, ecological and political themes.

In the modern era, crafts always exist in a productive tension with technological developments and their politico-economic context. The teaching plan of the Bauhaus marks a turning point in the historical process by which crafts practices lost their meaning, which begins in the 19th century at the latest. In light of the leap in scale in production that accompanied the emergence of industrial capitalism, traditional manufacturing methods become largely obsolete for economic reasons. The concept of ‘craft’ as we understand it today was first properly grasped against the backdrop of this loss, and it was long seen as the antithesis of industry. In the arts and crafts movement, for example, given the view of craftsmanship as a pre-capitalistic practice which was widespread in socialist movements, craftsmanship is positioned as a creative process which is beyond exploitation and alienation.[4] By contrast, there is the understanding of craft that is reflected in the curriculum of the Bauhaus in Dessau. Here, the students’ crafts training served in the first instance an epistemic or didactic objective. In the school’s workshops, the students master the entire production process for both utilitarian and artistic objects, thus enabling them to gain a thorough understanding of industrial production based on the division of labour.[5]

Current approaches to crafts training at art and design schools are part of the same historic continuum. Here, craft is understood first and foremost as an epistemic practice, as an activity that, in addition to specific processes, products, techniques and social structures, also and in particular generates specific forms of knowledge. Defined in this sense, craft stands for the interconnection of knowledge, practical experience and a creative approach to materials. It is closely linked with the physical act of creating, in which both physical and mental abilities come together. It encompasses not only manual skills but also a critical examination of the concept of creativity and the social meaning of production. It is an interactive, slow and frequently error-strewn process in which knowledge grows through trial and error, reflection and adaptation.

In view of the deep-seated technological, political and environmental upheavals of the recent past, the question of the importance of craftsmanship becomes all the more pressing in respect of both its processes and its products. As the essays in this book clearly illustrate, placing a focus on the singular relationship between craft and knowledge also enables a productive examination of the resistive potential of craft practices. Craftsmanship as knowledge production, as a mode of recognition, expresses itself in various ways and is consequently contradictory. As an iterative practice, it is per se invariably incomplete and subject to continuous negotiation processes. It thus stands in opposition to simplistic appropriations, whether by the narratives of the extreme right who project an ethno-nationalist idea of identity onto craftsmanship and its products or by neoliberal education systems that see craft education as one more step before entering the employment market. In this sense, craft’s position in the design discourse has also emancipated itself from the Bauhaus’s instrumental understanding of it.

In an interview with filmmaker and ceramicist Will Schwarz, the cultural and social dimensions of craft and craft’s political power of resistance are examined using the example of South Bear School, an art school in Iowa which Schwarz and his family have revitalised. South Bear School, originally founded by Will Schwarz’s grandfather, Dean Schwarz, who studied at the artists’ colony Pond Farm with former Bauhaus student Marguerite Friedlaender-Wildenhain, has focused on reviving the Bauhaus’s ceramic tradition and furthering the teaching methods of Marguerite Friedlaender-Wildenhain in a contemporary context. Schwarz describes clay as a ‘very patient medium’ with which the students learn to value firstly, resilience, and secondly, the process of slow, careful work more than the finished product, thus, in a sense, ‘crafting knowledge’ in a slow and patient way. In terms of both location and practice of South Bear School, the Schwarz family focus on more than making vessels. Much like Friedlaender-Wildenhain’s rigorous teaching model, they focus on a contemplative and creative way of life, a holistic approach that combines material knowledge, collective knowledge, an ecological sensibility and community living.

In her essay, art historian Alexandra Panzert looks back at the European history of art education from the late-19th century to the 1920s, describing it as a story of continuous crises and reforms and an international phenomenon. Panzert uses the well-established research term ‘art school reform’ to describe the reform efforts of art academies, schools of arts and crafts and schools of applied art which were seeking a new kind of school for the emerging professional field of industrial design. This new school type would place the fine and applied arts on an equal footing and, at the same time, put craft front and centre as an essential foundation of artistic practice. In doing so, Panzert outlines how many reform-oriented schools including the Bauhaus – despite their initial innovative self-identification – reverted to traditional, in part idealised notions of craft and, first and foremost, viewed craft as a concept from the perspective of the artist, rather than the practitioner. An emphasis on the creative aspect of design was to weaken its conservative connotations and later, with a more technical focus, the term craft was broadened to allow the inclusion of industrial design.

Based on his classes at the Kuwasawa Design School (KDS) in Tokyo, Jun Tamaoki describes the role of the Japanese craft tradition in the training of designers, and its central physical-sensory exploration of form and material. Inspired by the Bauhaus and founded in 1954, the design school combines Western modernism with Japanese craft traditions. Especially during the first year of training, its design education focuses on the physical experience of form through drawing, sculpture, photography and especially through a direct, experimental approach to materials. In an age in which design is increasingly automated by AI and digital tools, KDS purposefully focuses on manual processes, intuition and chance. The school understands ‘crafting knowledge’ – here specifically, a process of ‘form-finding with the hands’ shaped by dialogue with the material – as the antithesis of the calculated precision of technology. For Tamaoki, the experience of the material informs the cognitive process. In the digital age in particular, the learning process and the imperfect, the sensory, the processual and thus physical knowledge it entails gain a new significance for future design processes.

The contribution by Cesar Peña investigates the role of local craft traditions in national development and modernisation projects in the Andean region. Based on two education programmes in Columbia (Seminar on Craft Design, Artesanías de Colombia, 1972) and Ecuador (Inter-American Course on Craft Design, Centro Interamericano de Artesanías y Artes Populares – CIDAP, 1984), Peña examines the understanding in each case of the relationship between craft, design and cultural identity that was reflected in the different approaches of the programmes. He presents the programmes in the context of the geopolitical frameworks and national agendas of the second half of the 20th century. While he positions the projects differently in the field of tension between global market orientation and a focus on social welfare, he simultaneously emphasises the shared reference to methods of participatory action research in the tradition of Columbian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda. The essay clearly shows that the connection between craft, tradition and identity can be interpreted in entirely different ways depending on the given historical and political context.

The next essay focuses on the project MADE IN Platform, which presents an attempt to preserve diverse, sometimes forgotten craft traditions and to reevaluate them in respect of their specific technological, ecological, aesthetic and social potentials. In its present form, MADE IN is a European network of craftspeople and design researchers who, in regional and transregional cooperations extending from the Algarve and the Erzgebirge to Sovenia’s Velika Planina, work to document marginalised knowledge about craft traditions and transform the knowledge acquired into prototypical designs that are committed to an integrated approach to sustainability. To mark its completion, founding member of MADE IN, Ivana Borovnjak, takes stock of the project in association with Astrid Suzano and Jacob Strobel as representatives of associated institutions and initiatives.

One of the challenges that we repeatedly face as editors of the series ‘Schools of Departure’ arises from our unique position. We, employees of a foundation that attends to the legacy of the historical Bauhaus, run a project that focuses on a nuanced historiography of the modern era from, of all places, one of the central hubs of the classical historical narrative. The design researchers Triin Jerlei and Lilo Viehweg address this ultimately unresolvable field of tension between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’ using the role of craft in design education in Estonia as an example. In their discussion they relate the current curriculum of the craft studies MA at the Estonian Academy of Arts (EKA) in Tallinn to the history of (post-)Soviet teaching concepts for applied arts and their respective instrumentalisations of craft knowledge. Lilo Viehweg und Triin Jerlei point out that it is precisely the ambiguity of the concept of craft, in both the past and the present, which makes it particularly compatible with diverse design practices and communities. In its ambiguity, craft often eludes the control of authoritarian systems; it is an undisciplined practice in the best sense.

Impacted by the recently completed structural reform at Sheridan College, Ontario, design researcher D Wood reflects on the status of craft training in a tertiary education system. In autumn 2024, the college announced that it would no longer accept new students on dozens of programmes, some of which had been well-established for decades, including courses at the School of Craft and Design.[6] The college’s governing body pointed to the necessity of budgetary consolidation and at the same time implemented swingeing staff cuts. Since then, the measures have been a subject of controversial debate among college members and the Canadian public. The students and tutors affected by the cuts accuse the governing body of recklessly phasing out study programmes established over decades due to alleged economic constraints, thus causing lasting damage to the profile of the college and its mission as a public educational institution. D Wood herself completed a craft course at Sheridan College in the 1990s. Based on her research into the political significance of craft from a global perspective,[7] she makes a case for the importance of publicly accessible craft study programmes.

Finally, in her epilogue, Regina Bittner addresses the importance of craft in the reception history of the Bauhaus. In view of the various politically motivated instrumentalisations of craft practices at the Bauhaus in the historiography of the school, she proposes a departure from a homogeneous narrative framework, enabling diverse ways of interpreting craft and its products in the Bauhaus context.

Picture right: Toolbox of Alfred Schäfter, master craftsman at the Bauhaus, 1927/1931. Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (I 46724)/Photograph: Gunter Binsack, 2018.

are research associates at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation Academy and have been leading the digital research project ‘Schools of Departure’ since 2021.