THE ART OF THE MAKER

Peter Dormer

What is Craft Knowledge?

Practical knowledge - Tacit knowledge or “know-how” = CRAFT

CRAFT -> local knowledge, part of everyday experience that is taken for granted

• not easily described by language has its own verbal, written language
• technical language of craft
• difficult to translate into theory, logical language
• you do not think about the exercise of craft
• identifiable knowledge, but resists written, verbal or mathematical description
• impossible to articulate precisely
• taught by demonstration
• learned through observation
• uses precise descriptive language
• expressing the knowledge of materials, tools and the process
• set of rules is NOT known to the person following them, known self - reflectively

Public Aspect:

destructive analysis
judgement of other practitioners

Private Aspect:

resides in individual people
part of the self
no means of describing it adequately, even to oneself.

Learning the Craft

• NOT always fun
• not a mechanical activity, but an emotional, as well as intellectual and physical process
• requires self - discipline
• to enter by free choice
• affects commitment

Rules remain external to our inner lives. They regulate us but they don’t constitute us as individuals.

• fully understood by doing them
• grow into them, go native in the craft
• do not regulate our behaviour - ARE our behaviour
  
  
  
• ability to judge what is relevant and what is not
• ability to experiment -> increases sense of discrimination

1. Requires time It is a slow process. Knowledge cannot be apprehended intellectually, without being able to do it first.
2. Apprentiship (from the skilled person to novice)
3. Need to acquire the whole body of knowledge, rather than a set of small tricks
4. Small Tricks are testing expertise
5. Requires discrimination and judgement
6. Conceptual Reflection - experiment