The Crafts That Carry a Community’s Memory

Family history can be preserved in a piece of woven cloth. Community can be incorporated into a beadwork pattern. An activity can be captured in a carved figure, and a traditional pot can contain generations of knowledge of materials, place and everyday life.

The word craft is used to refer to hand-made items. However, for a great many communities it serves as a method for recalling.

The origin of knowledge is transmitted through weaving, beadwork or basketry, pottery, carving, embroidery or jewellery-making in various countries around the world. Their preservation of not only techniques, but beliefs, values, histories, relationships and a sense of belonging.

In this way, crafts can be expressions of cultural identity which speak of people's culture through living objects.

More Than Objects

With traditional crafts, it's very easy to see only the product: colours, material, patterns, craftsmanship. But UNESCO's discussion about traditional craft is more focused on the knowledge and skills used to produce these objects than on the objects themselves. Preserving a craft tradition means promoting craft work among artisans to keep it alive and to pass it down to others.

It is important to understand the difference between these.

The handmade basket can become worn after a period of time. A potter can break a piece of pottery. Faded woven cloth fabric. The knowledge of how to make them can be perpetuated, however—as long as someone learns it, understands it, and passes it on.

Such knowledge constitutes cultural heritage.

UNESCO adopted a general definition of intangible cultural heritage, encompassing living traditions, knowledge, practices and skills transmitted between generations. Traditional craftsmanship is a part of this living heritage because it is not only about the physical product; the value is also in the knowledge and meaning, transferred through creating it.

Stories That Patterns Can Tell

Written words are not always necessary when telling a story through a craft.

Ideas about a community's history and the values/ worldview can be expressed through patterns, colours, fabrics, shapes, and techniques. Newcomers to a particular design might be indicated on a specific design. A color palette may be associated with a culture or something that is unique to it. A particular technique of weaving may have been carried on among a certain family or group.

According to WIPO, traditional cultural expressions can be identified as their expression in handicraft, designs, symbols, art, narratives and other forms constituting a traditional or indigenous community's identity and heritage. These expressions can represent knowledge, skills, values and beliefs handed down through the generations.

The craft is consequently more than just for beauty. It turns into a language.

Learning Without a Textbook

Historically, much of traditional knowledge has been passed on through a process of observation, imitation, practice and conversation, rather than written instructions.

The child may sit beside the parent/grandparent as they watch the thread held. It can be years of learning for an apprentice to know how to shape wood. A young craftsman can learn what comes within their own reach, when it is available, how to prepare it and how to apply the technique to undertake a particular task.

According to UNESCO, many intangible cultural heritage systems are "oral and based on direct knowledge sharing and do not depend upon written texts. It also recognizes intergenerational transmission as crucial to the sustainability of these traditions.

Teaching the weaver, carver, embroiderer or potter to the elderly, then, is not merely teaching a skill, but a way of life.

A bit of community history is being handed to them.

Weaving Memory Into Everyday Life

Textiles are a very striking instance. Motifs, colours, techniques, and patterns can all help to maintain cultural identity, as they become a sign of something belonging to a culture. Wrapping the documentation from UNESCO in the instance of Jamdani weaving, for instance, shows that it imparts cultural identity and continuity, as well as income and empowerment to the community.

Such traditions have more meaning than the finished piece of cloth.

It can encompass the knowledge of making materials, the skills necessary to design elaborate patterning, stories connected with patterning, and the connections via which the knowledge is passed on.

Each new item is added to the longer story.

When Craft Carries Place

Old-fashioned techniques can also help to maintain a community's connection to the environment.

Media employed in a craft project may well vary in response to availability in the region, such as plants, fibres, clay, wood, shells, metals, natural dyes or other materials. The methods that evolved from these materials can encapsulate centuries of 'how to' information about their place in the environment.

UNESCO mentions some traditional crafts that rely on natural resources, implying that protection of traditional crafts can complement environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources.

This is but one dimension of the preservation of a craft, not merely keeping an artistic style alive.

Preserving knowledge about a place can also be a part of it.

A specific material can reveal information concerning the landscape. One technique can provide information on how a population responded to the local environment. A traditional artefact can illustrate a community's way of life, working, celebrating, travelling, and/or their relationship with nature.

What Happens When the Knowledge Disappears?

When a craft is lost, it doesn't only mean that the product is no longer available in the market.

It may refer to a technique, to a set of symbols, to a relationship between generations, or to something known only in existence (but not written), to a fact, or to a person.

The transfer of traditional craftsmanship could be more challenging with the advent of globalization, urbanization, migration, transitioning economies, and a decreased interest in traditional craftsmanship among the younger generations. Weaker inter-generational ties and other social changes are specifically mentioned as challenges affecting the continuation of intangible heritage by UNESCO.

The transmission will be broken, and if the transmission is not recreated, the finished object may not be created.

A picture can record a scene or a thing or its appearance.

A museum is an institution that can preserve an object.

You can have an archive record of a technique.

Those who continue to practise and teach the living knowledge, however, are of vital importance in its preservation.

Keeping Culture Alive, Not Frozen

No, cultural preservation does not imply preservation of past cultures. Living heritage changes. UNESCO stresses that intangible cultural heritage is subject to ongoing re-creation as communities pass it on from generation to generation and adjust to the evolving context.

Leap out of the past: A young artisan can add the colors of the new in an ancient textile! The old technique can be combined with the new way of life. The inherited technique can be used, along with new materials, by an artist.

Not all changes are barriers to cultural heritage. They may be proof that it's alive. It is not necessary to recreate something as it is. It is to ensure access to knowledge, skills, meaning and agency to sustain community traditions in ways that are relevant to them.

Supporting the Hands Behind the Heritage

The survival of these depends on people at the end of the day. Ensuring the support of traditional craftsmen and women, providing opportunities for the next generation to acquire the skills, securing viable markets, supporting better training systems for the apprentices, and giving communities a voice in the representation of their cultural products are all ways the support for cultural products can result in the support of the artisanal producers practising these arts.

Additionally, there's also a significant question of ownership. Traditional cultural expressions may be susceptible to copy or abuse, and the social, cultural and economic values of traditional handicrafts are seen as being sensitive to abuse and desecration by others, WIPO says.

A great respect for some craft is a great respect for people and knowledge.

Not all heritage belongs to the artisan –

It's the know-how of the artisan that matters.

The Memory in Our Hands

Books are some histories.

Others live in songs, ceremonies, stories, landscapes, and objects made by hand.

A woven pattern may remember an ancestor. A carved form may carry a belief. A beadwork tradition may mark belonging. A clay vessel may preserve a technique developed generations ago.

These crafts are symbolic of the importance of cultural identities that are not only present in monuments or museums. It may or may not predominate in daily life; it can be found in every craftsperson; it can be found quietly from one generation to the next in the lessons.

A community that both creates and imparts its traditional craft, adapts it to suit local needs and shares it with others is creating more than just beautiful objects; it is maintaining its legacy. It's maintaining the memory in perpetual motion.

Sometimes the unrecorded story is the one that is remembered.

They're the ones that we're still producing.