D&T: Craig Whittet

The Demise of Skilled & Traditional Manufacturing

Craig was my tutor when I was a sophomore at Glasgow School of Art and is the head of the department in Product Design Engineering. And he gave us a lecture on the Demise of Skilled & Traditional Manufacturing and during the lecture, he mentioned handcrafted products, automated processes, and the relations and differences between mass-manufactured products. This reminds me of the demise of traditional crafts because manufacturing has been replaced by automated machines with the development of technology and science. And today craftsmen mostly live in our memory and maybe one day just in the museum.

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In China, thousands of years of Chinese civilization have nurtured countless exquisite handicrafts. Traditional handicrafts have been handed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. At first, people made handicrafts just to maintain the source of life. Later, with the changes of the times and the emergence of machines, the original handicrafts became more precious. But at the same time, the original handicraft had to deal with a wide variety of threats. For instance, if everything is measured by the market effect, the traditional handicraft products of each nation, such as national craftsmen who take a long time to make a copper or silver product or handmade fabric, gain no competitive edge with modern industrial production line because it has higher efficiency. Only customers who appreciate the inherent cultural connotations and individual characteristics of folk traditional hand-made creations can get rid of the shackles of the same machine-made products. Therefore, the protection and promotion of ethnic folk handicrafts in contemporary times also depends on the improvement of people's aesthetic taste, appreciation level and the understanding of the value of ethnic cultural heritage.​​

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Some people regard traditional handicrafts as something that is opposed to development. In my opinion, traditional handicrafts are not always opposed to modern development. Similarly, machine production is not always in harmony with development. It contains the essential attributes of a specific culture. The same is true for the development of handicrafts. No matter how the era and industrial society develops, the products themselves should always shine with the light of the cultural spirit of different nations, so that time, the traditional beauty and personality can be organically integrated, and the beauty and historical sense of traditional handicrafts can be endowed with them. Contemporary folk crafts have profound cultural and aesthetic connotations. Only in this way can they have a lasting vitality and stand out among the world's national crafts.