Localism in the Making at the New Bezalel's Textile Department
Noga Bernstein
This paper will discuss the ideology of the textile department at the New Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts that operated between 1941 and 1969 in Mandatory Palestine and later Israel. The New Bezalel itself was established in 1936 by newly arrived Jewish immigrants from Central Europe who aspired to integrate the universalist principals of schools such as the Bauhaus, with an ideology of localism that searched for a Hebrew culture groundedi n the land and its sources. Yulia Kainer, who served as department director for over two decades, trained at Frankfurt's Arts and Crafts School (Kunstgewerbeschule Frankfurt) and directed its weaving workshop before immigrating to Palestine in 1936. While little is currently known about Kainer,she was responsible for training the first generation of Israel's textile designers, while also maintaining her own successful international career. This paper examines how the two main fields of the department, namely weaving and embroidery, were deployed to produce different meanings of localism:the former related to progress and modernity and the latter to ethnic identity and tradition.
Designing machine-made Nottingham lace at Home
Nichola Burton
In this paper I will explore social change which occurred as a result of educational developments in Nottinghamshire 1943-60. The College of Art and Crafts emerged to support the regional specialty of machine-made lace making and its success in this context is well documented (Jones 1993, Briggs-Goode and Dean 2013). However, there are also parallel stories to tell which relate to subsequent, societal changes and reforms. This paper will explore narratives of memory and experience of these lace design education. It evaluates the opportunities for female lace designers in post-war Nottinghamshire with evidence supported through original oral testimony, academic inquiry and archival research.
Moreover, I aim to identify and address a void which the Nottingham College filled. Cultural change meant that increasing numbers of women attended the Art schools, developing Art careers as students and as teachers (Jones, 1993). This paper considers the challenges and constraints of the curriculum offered at Nottingham College of Art and Crafts, and subsequently the adaption of work practices, to meet local need and access social mobility, via home working.
The paper presents an original contribution to knowledge, focusing upon lace Design Education in Nottingham, and the impact on women’s design education and social change. It debates:
What social and educational conditions were in place after WW2 which affected experience and opportunity?
Did gender affect opportunities available in educational and industrial contexts?
Why did designers begin to design at home?
Home sewing as sustain-ability
Sally Cooke
The home sewing of clothes has seen a resurgence in the UK in the 21stcentury, partly driven by the enhanced connectivity of the internet and increased interest in more sustainable lifestyles.The slow and hyper-local practice of sewing one’s own clothes is assumed to be a sustainable choice in contrast to the practices of a vastly wasteful and exploitative fashion industry. This presentation will draw on a series of interviews with seven sewing beginners, conducted during the Summer of 2020, to inform a wider PhD project which uses participatory design to explore how people learn basic functional sewing skills, the resources that help them do so and any difference this makes to their relationship with clothes. By exploring these beginner sewists’ motivations, experiences and ambitions in relation to learning to sew clothes, the interviews reveal how contemporary sewing patterns and a wealth of online resources are enabling a new generation of home sewers to develop their skills at home and often alone. The interviews also highlight the challenges beginners encounter, including in reconciling their making practices with their sustainable ambitions. By reflecting on the digitally entwined contemporary experience of once more common socio-cultural material practices,this preliminary study–carried out at a time when lives are lived more remotely than ever–problematises some of the assumptions made about home sewing and informs thinking about how sewing and a more material understanding of clothes making might be nurtured more explicitly as ‘sustain-abilities’.