Crafts make comeback

ROBERT CHARLES

Blanket stitcher: Julianne Lafferty at her kitchen table.

It has been going on for about six years, but seems to have passed Taranaki by.

Or maybe it hasn't. Maybe there is evidence of the trend taking over kitchen tables and lurking in spare rooms all over the province.

Home crafts have made a comeback. In the major centres like Wellington and Auckland, there are market days where people can sell their wares. And groups get together to swap ideas and technology.

But in Taranaki, the craft movement seems to be largely undercover. And Rebecca Mooney, owner of Kina NZ Design & Art Space, wants it to come out into the open.

"What we need is a craft day. It would be great to bring everyone out of the closet. I'm sure there is a huge pool of creativity out there. We need to get together to do something."

A craft revival began in New Zealand about five or six years ago. It was noted with the introduction of button necklaces, Ms Mooney says.

People started using their grandmothers' button collections and turned them into something different.

It's grown since then. And it's more than just a reintroduction of textile crafts.

"It's like they have the skills their grandmother had, but they are almost turning it into fine art, making it quirky."

There is a word used in art called upcycle: someone will take something, say a doily their grandmother crocheted, and turn it into an evening purse.

"So they've taken something and added value to it by turning it into something else. It kind of goes beyond the craft. It's almost craft art."

The internet has helped. There are websites that just focus on the handmade.

Ms Mooney thinks the return to handmade craft is a both a subconscious reaction to "made in China" and Kiwis getting back to their creative roots.

"We're a people with skills, be it sewing or knitting. I suppose people are looking for something special rather than reproduced. They are looking for something handmade with love, which you can't get in The Warehouse."

Writer Rosemary McLeod says our mothers knitted and sewed using Simplicity patterns.

"This is entirely different."

It is post-feminism, where women are rediscovering the feminine tradition, she says.

Ms McLeod wrote a book in 2005 called Thrift to Fantasy: Home Textile Craft 1930s-1950s.

The revival of textile crafts seemed to coincide with her book, she says.

At the time, she spoke to groups of women all over the country. And the women were thrilled to have that textile craft tradition validated, she says.