Part 1: In the winter of 2005 I walked into the National Gallery of Scotland. Four panels’ embroideries attracted my attention amongst the paintings, they were life size, sensuous, and delicate. The craft practitioner’s name was Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852 -- 1936). At a later date, I came across her enamels and piano decoration in the National Museum of Scotland. The colour of her work was outstanding. I could not help but wonder why she chose these particular disciplinary as a means of expression? What else did she create? Who was she?
This first experience triggered a desire to gather information on Traquair and her work. She was ‘the first significant professional woman artist in modern Scotland’ (Cumming, 2005), and a key figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. She produced a huge body of work, from highly sensorial embroideries and exquisite enamels to illuminated manuscripts and vast, breathtaking mural decorations.
I then went to see her mural in the Mansfield Traquair Centre in Edinburgh, previously the Catholic Apostolic Church. The building is the size of a small cathedral. I entered the building from the front entrance, and as I went through the small entrance hall, I was surprised by what met my eyes. The mural on the great arch (the east wall of the nave), which faced the congregation, was the first thing I saw. It was a very colourful and meaningful panel, detailing the Holy Spirit and the worship of Heaven. The wall was twenty – two metres high, and must have presented a real test of designer maker’s physical and artistic strength. It proved a stark contrast to Traquair’s delicate enamels and embroideries. My experience of seeing Traquair’s work from the small scaled enamel and the life sized embroidery to the big scaled mural provided me with a unique perspective to explore the visual language in these various media. My questions were: how do craft practitioners express their idea and faith in different media? How do we read it? Is there a universal way to understand the designer’s philosophy and intelligence embedded in design practice through their visual language? Can digital design help the analytical process?
Part 2: I am an interactive media designer, doing a PhD within a crafts research team. My PhD began with the question: what can we learn from craft? ‘The designer’s role is changing, from being the designer of things to being the designer of process and ultimately becoming the facilitator of innovation itself’ (Thackara, 2006). ‘The craft process is fundamentally different from the design process and in this difference lies its great value’ (Risatti, 2006:14). In order to learn from the craft process, we need a tool to help us (designers) to make explicit connections with the craft process. Is there a common language in design and craft? Visual analysis is the common language in all visual arts.
Do we have a visual analysis model for reading the visual language in design and craft? Is there a common process that could help define and create an understanding of this visual language? The critical and academic analyses of paintings have long been established, but this, as yet, does not exist for design and craft. This is not to say that there are no examples of excellent design and craft critics1. There are a few, such as Peter Dormer (arts writer), Liz Cumming (historian), whose analyses can be viewed as an external perspective (historians, educationalists, sociologists, psychologists, and so on) on the works of design and craft practice. However, their analysis is predominantly literary rather than based on visual analysis. No previous attempt has been made to visually analyse craft or to explain it from the perspective of visual intelligence. I believe that craft is three dimensional both in terms of the object and the thinking process, which ‘was seen to impart a particular tacit spatial awareness only to be gained in “playing about with things three dimensionally”’ (Kettley, 2005:545), so it is necessary to identify and verify a method to analyse three dimensional visual works rather than use criteria and parameters that are available for analysing canvas painting.
Phoebe Anna Traquair is an ideal subject for this exploratory model due to the quality of her work and the complexity of the subject matter including mural decoration, enamel jewellery and embroidered textiles. Her work has been extensively discussed in reviews, articles and books by known scholars. The leading art historians are Elizabeth Cumming and Murdo Macdonald, so that findings from the prototype model can be verified with documented evidence.
The purpose of the model is to develop the experience of interpreting craft practice by reading the visual language and communication of craft from the perspective of practice, and by creating a discourse to compliment existing historical and theoretical approaches to the appreciation of craft. This visual analysis model is therefore a process model using data from both documented sources and a close examination of actual work in the ‘field’. The process model attempts to provide a framework for reading visual craft practice by exposing the intellect and philosophy embedded within the original process of making. The visual analysis model will be used as both a design tool and an education device for the deep understanding of craft process and craft practitioner’ vision.
1 Not including Press criticism, which is written very quickly and briefly, and not intended for an academic audience.
Reference
Risatti, H. (2006) In Metalsmith summer, pp.14-17.
Thackara, J. (2005) In the bubble: designing for a complex world, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass and London.
Cumming, E. (2005) Phoebe Anna Traquair 1852-1936, Edinburgh National Galleries of Scotland in association with the National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh.