Sir, - It is an interesting reflection of our post-modern times that Bernice Harrison, previewing this year's Showcase at the RDS, should find bone-china tableware "a very welcome antidote to the many stands selling chunky pottery." By definition, bone-china is made using sterile industrial techniques from which Bernard Leach and generations of craft potters turned away.
Ms Harrison's remark raises the question of how crafts and craftsmanship are perceived in Ireland. Ms Harrison is looking for "product variation". The IDA and Forbairt look for job creation in the "crafts sector" (as many a ministerial Showcase-opening speech has reminded us) and, significantly, the Crafts Council operates under the wing of the Ministry for Enterprise and Employment, not Culture and the Arts. This is despite the fact that many "craft workers", particularly those working in clay, see themselves as artists or sculptors.
The unspoken belief seems to be that the crafts must justify themselves by providing employment, creating jobs, generating "product variation", or whatever, in order to be worthy of semi-State funding and investment. Unlike "the Arts" and "Culture", the crafts must make money, attract overseas buyers, penetrate markets, stimulate cash flow, and start small businesses.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. But if crafts have a value (other than providing innovative clutter for bourgeois mantelpieces, tantalising table-decoration for the chattering classes and high-class souvenirs of the Emerald Isle), it is precisely in bringing the touch of individual skill and vision to enrich objects for everyday use, whether it be tableware, jewellery, furniture or clothing. That said, as a one-time violin-maker, I have always been keenly aware of the many craft skills still flourishing in Ireland, which are not represented at Showcase, and mainly of little concern to the Crafts Council, Forbairt, the Export Board and other "craft sector" marketeers.
But Ms Harrison does have a point in that there is a plethora of bad design at Showcase - "shamrock-embroidered Irish hand-crocheted jock-straps", as one cynic remarked. Sadly, much Irish pottery is blighted by precisely the bad craftsmanship, poor design, inappropriate decoration and ill-considered glazing which merits her disparaging remark. It is not enough that a thing is made by hand. If it is not well made, it is no substitute for good industrial design.
Showcase is driven by commerce first and foremost, and even in the Crafts Council "village", craftsmanship has to be "economically viable". A difficult balance to maintain. - Yours, etc., Anthony O'Brien,
Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4.