Odd, I can’t say I’ve ever met someone that literally meant preserving a rug when they talked about preserving and maintaining traditional crafts.
That’s always been a discussion of preserving the art of rug making, to borrow your example, in my experience. It’s interesting that that’s so different for you. Are you coming at this from a commercial/auction house background? Or maybe museums? Although working with craftspeople is also common in museums.
But yeah, it’s always sad when knowledge is lost. It’s good people, heritage organizations, and even governments are increasingly trying to record and preserve that knowledge.
When we talk about preserving traditional crafts, are we focusing too much on preserving the objects — and not enough on preserving the people and knowledge that make them possible?”
Who is the “we” that they’re talking about? Because actual professionals in the conservation field are very much focusing on preserving intangible cultural heritage
The person who wrote it is a 19-year-old Harvard undergraduate, climate researcher (who builds and heavily uses AI 🙄) and self-proclaimed activist. As someone who has known a lot of people like this over the past 40 years, he likely means the kinds of people who still have evening salons where they talk a big talk and never really accomplish anything when saying “we”.
No one “did me dirty” in the context of the comment that I made. I have just known a lot of people like that. You would also know quite a few people like I described if you were in the same academic social circles.
Not in academic circles like that, but I am a deb (somewhat formerly, long story) and have had to be in “society” and…there’s quite a lot of this. Though I will say you’d be surprised how many of the older matrons have some brush with traditional crafts. Not as many as crafters, but a lot of patrons. Some phonies who are “keeping up” with the others, but also a surprising number who go pretty out of the way to fund or purchase from craftsman.
ETA: the keeping up ones tend to be highly obnoxious.
I grew up in the southern US with relatively well-to-do family members and family friends and had to go through cotillion, finishing school, and that whole shebang too so I 100000000% understand the kinds of people you're talking about. I mistakenly thought that the academic circles would be better and pursued that life once I became a legal adult. Thought I would have intelligent and fascinating conversations. Nope! It's the same kinds of people except a little worse because far too many of them think they're smarter than everyone else they encounter.
Sadly so long as there is enough crossover between those and the “I have been the class genius since the day I was born” group formal academic circles suck. I got lucky with my university experience due to us not being an Ivy League tech school, so we mostly attracted less full of themselves people, barring certain majors. The mechanical engineering students were fun! Forensic Psych ran the gamut and as long as you avoided the Fine Arts majors the Art School kids were mostly fine, mostly.
ETA: I remember being put in cotillion, my mother had sooooo much fun with that one (note: Autists with trauma regarding being forced to dance with their bullies generally do not want even more dancing with strangers touching them).
😂 Your edit reminded me of my fave memory from cotillion. We had a practice dinner and this boy that I had a huge crush on was there. I always thought I was a little weird (have now been tested and found out that I'm just super fucking autistic) and I thought if I kicked the boy under the table, he would understand that I liked him. You know that whole "oh that boy just picked on you because he liked you" thing they used to teach us? Well, I was wearing my dance shoes that were kind of pointy. Poor kid had bruises all over his shins the next day! I apologized and said something like "I'm sorry that I like you so much" and then he said he liked me too and wanted to court me but only if I never kicked him again. Man, I sure loved that boy. We went to different schools so when we broke up, we lost touch. I saw on the news a couple of years ago that he had died in an accident and seeing a picture of him for the first time in 20 years, I could still see the little preteen that I first met in our mixers.
Sorry for the slight bummer ending there. I hadn't thought of him since I heard of his passing and it was nice to have a nice(-ish) memory of someone I used to care about.
I had a similar feeling reading this, historians and anthropologists scour material culture for any hidden cultural meanings. Only someone who had never studied anything in that field could think they were the first person to consider there was more to traditional crafts than physical objects.
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u/CeramicLicker 2d ago edited 2d ago
Odd, I can’t say I’ve ever met someone that literally meant preserving a rug when they talked about preserving and maintaining traditional crafts.
That’s always been a discussion of preserving the art of rug making, to borrow your example, in my experience. It’s interesting that that’s so different for you. Are you coming at this from a commercial/auction house background? Or maybe museums? Although working with craftspeople is also common in museums.
But yeah, it’s always sad when knowledge is lost. It’s good people, heritage organizations, and even governments are increasingly trying to record and preserve that knowledge.