Anyone who knows about crafts will be familiar with the famous Arts and Crafts Movement of 19th-century England founded by William Morris, John Ruskin and others.

However, the Birmingham Craftsman’s Club is not so well known. The Craftsman’s Club was inspired by the ideals of Ruskin and William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. Robert Catterson Smith believed that in the age of the machine, craftsmanship had become devoid of human feeling and stated “The business of craftsmanship is to express emotion.”

The Craftsman’s Club was a movement founded in 1902 with the object of establishing a high standard of craftsmanship in Birmingham. It was founded by Catterson-Smith, then Principal of the Birmingham School of Art.

Only men could be members, unfortunately, and they had to be established practising artists or craftsmen. Crafts included were :

Painters
Jewellers
Goldsmiths
Silversmiths
Sculptors
Architects
Draughtsmen

The Club was relatively small, with 21 subscriptions in the first year, growing to 50 members in its later years. Several members of staff from the Birmingham School of Art were active members of the Club. At the monthly meetings, one of the members would present a paper illustrated with photographs or lantern slides. The Club held annual exhibitions and also arranged summer trips.

In those days, crafts were taken very seriously and were usually based around professionals rather than amateurs and hobbyists, as today.

In the age of blogging, publishing at home is relatively easy — at least if you don’t mind putting your work online for everyone to see free, and freely copy at their leisure.

Yes, there are problems with online publishing, despite its popularity. But what if you want to publish serious work the old-fashioned way, in books or booklets?

You’ll have to look at some old material to find information on the craft of printing and publishing at home. One of the best books on the subject was published in 1984 in the UK by two professional people who happened to run publishing businesses from home.

The book is: Publishing & Printing at Home by Roy Lewis and John B. Easson. It’s published by David & Charles and can be bought second-hand online.

Here are the opening lines of the book:

The spare-time publisher. This book is about the craft of publishing books, booklets and periodicals in small editions from one’s own backroom or backyard. It is a leisure pursuit or an occupation for retirement that is as suited to home operations as weaving, pottery, cabinet-making, metalwork, or photography and comparable creative pastimes.

Although outdated in its technology, the book teaches invaluable skills in producing and putting together one’s own books.

Much recommended.

There’s a special offer on that interesting paper magazine for crafts: Crafts — The Magazine for Contemporary Crafts.

For a limited time only new subscribers receive an extra issue free.

Here’s how the magazine describes itself: “Crafts is the only British magazine to cover all craft forms, from studio work to public commissions, from modern experimental work to traditional and historic designs. It is committed to excellent quality in both the work it covers and the coverage itself. Published on alternate months, Crafts is lavishly illustrated to a high standard.”

Take a look at the current issue.

I studied what they call “Fine Arts” at university. That means drawing, painting, sculpture, that kind of thing. Whether a university is the right place to go to learn such things is a matter for debate but the experience did get me thinking about what makes art “art” and why something else made by human hands isn’t “art”.

In my personal blog, Gone Away, I wrote down some of my thoughts on this and you are welcome to read and argue, if you wish. My point in this post, however, is to consider the division we make between art and craft. Why do we classify one creation as art and another as craft?

If we accept that art’s primary purpose is to communicate something on a level that is not capable of being verbalized, we can begin to see where art and craft diverge. Craft is not necessarily concerned with communication - it is more practical than that. Craft has to do with such things as lifestyle, quality of environment and usage. It creates things that have a specific use and, by being beautiful, makes our interaction with those things more enjoyable.

So the essential difference is one of purpose. It’s the difference between a work of literature and a technical textbook; the first attempts to speak to us of the human condition, the other tries to teach us something useful. You will never be able to collect the eggs from the chickenhouse with a work of art, nor will you be able to drink from it; but with a work of craft, you just might (good grief, the man’s just called pottery a craft and not an art form!).

Which is not to say that either is of greater or less value than the other - they inhabit different worlds and their purposes do not compete. The practical man will appreciate a finely-turned pot or a handmade pair of shoes but will see little point in the slightly unsettling painting upon the wall; the philosopher will happily live with peeling wallpaper while considering the meaning of life.

Craft is about better design and cares about our environment; art wants only to say, “This is how it feels!”