Paper short abstract:

In contemporary society crafts are increasingly taught within educational institutions, rather than through apprenticeship. Comparing two different pedagogical approaches to teaching the craft of lace making, this paper shows how modes of transmission are key to the reproduction of separate craft communities each struggling to define and own craft knowledge.

Paper long abstract:

Based on ethnographic fieldwork amongst lace makers in Central Slovakia, this paper looks at how different modes of knowledge transmission influence shared conceptions of skill, progress, pattern and design. Embracing this notion that craft is learned through an inductive experience that creates social persons, as well as objects, anthropological studies of craft have commonly focussed on understanding knowledge transmission within the context of apprenticeships. This study, however, takes into account that in contemporary society crafts are increasingly taught within the institutional parameters of schools, colleges and evening courses. Thus, this study contrasts and compares two different pedagogical approaches to teaching the craft of lace making (apprenticeship and class-room based teaching) and examines the consequences these have for lace makers' practical and conceptual approaches to craft practice. My approach is informed by the observation that learning is a socially and historically situated process of community inclusion (Lave and Wenger 1991). The different modes of transmission found in the villages and at evening classes in the city are key to the self-perpetuating reproduction of separate communities of lace makers each struggling to define the nature of craft knowledge. These divergent conceptions of the nature of craft knowledge, in turn, form the basis for competing claims of ownership, the right to access and reproduce designs, and commercial benefits.