What are Important Intangible Cultural Properties?
Hello All,
As you can see, I’ve started a blog. This is on the one hand a part of my big website re-design, on the other an attempt to provide an insight into the weird and wonderful world of contemporary jewellery and anything else that takes my fancy. Soon, here you will find everything about the things I make, as well as the things made by my friends and acquaintances and other amazing jewellers, artists, designers and weirdos on the planet which I haven’t met yet (but hopefully will in the future). But mostly I hope that this will become a forum for us all to discuss the broader issues and implications of current economic climates and developments in artistic movements faced by our (relatively small) community. I hope this blog will transcend the relatively mundane aims of self-promotion and make us all question what it really means to be a contemporary jewellery/object/silversmithing/”stuff” artist/designer/maker/thinker now.
The title of my Blog refers to the Japanese honorary title of Protector of Important Intangible Cultural Properties, the highest distincition bestowed upon the craft behemoths of this small quirky island nation. Often these makers are extraordinarily skilled craftspeople, who come from a long line of similarly skilled artisans, perfecting their discipline through absolute dedication and amazing tenacity through the generations, with trade secrets and special techniques passed on from father to (mostly) son. Anyone who has ever seen an object made by a Japanese National Treasure will surely agree that their skills are truly beyond compare.
I love the idea behind this title, but what could the term mean for us, the next generation of contemporary practitioner? What are the things we will pass on to future generations, and how can we re-define this term to suit our current culture of object making which relies more and more on digital processes and less and less on hand-skills? I hope this Blog will provide a forum to think about and discuss these issues - Ladies and Gentlemen, the floor is open!
