What is the Clay Archive?
Craft–its practices and objects– can tell stories about a community’s history, knowledge, identity, and aesthetics. Telling these stories challenges colonial legacies of what is deemed worthy of being recorded. Craft practices have been passed down from generation to generation, to preserve a practice that is specific to a community, allows for cultural agency, and most times provides financial support. The passing down of craft knowledge places focus on the artisan rather than the object and thus promotes the continuance of producing craft and passing skills and knowledge onto others, specifically their own communities. Intergenerational practices promote a sustainable and lasting form of intangible and tangible cultural heritage.
In order to highlight the importance of craft and artists, this project focuses on the work of three artists: Doña Rosa Real de Nieto (San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca), Maria Martinez (San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico), and Juan Quezada Celado (Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua).
These three artists are all rural and/or Indigenous people whose communities they are a part of depend on craft work financially and at times socially. At the core of their practice is the intergenerational passing down of craft knowledge and the preservation of traditional craft practices specific to their area and culture. In turn, their work and legacy challenges those colonial legacies that have created hierarchies of knowledge and aesthetics favoring Western standards.
Definitions:
What is craft?
The Oxford Languages dictionary definition of craft will describe it as “an activity involving skill in making things by hand.” Craft researchers have described it as being “…ubiquitous, many forms of crafting, craftsmanship and skillful material considerations exist in multiple contexts and situations…with the consensus that craft evades definitions and instead thrives as an adhesive between other domains” (Groth et. al)1. As craft is “ubiquitous” so are its definitions. Architect Miguel Gómez Ibañez describes craft as “Craft is a way of doing things involving deliberateness and attention to detail and representing the accumulation of skill over time. Craft invites a life in which the objects that surround us speak to us of what is important” (Lovelace)2. Artist and designer Tanya Aguiñiga describes it as “. . .a connection to our body memory, an acknowledgment of labor and all of the inherent context of materials, and the active continuation of tradition while in conversation with it.” (Lovelace). The multiplicity of crafts and its definitions– layering of various skills, relationship to place and community, and material knowledge– suggests the crucial role they have in preserving cultural heritage.
What is tangible and intangible cultural heritage?
UNESCO defines cultural heritage as “Cultural heritage includes artifacts, monuments, a group of buildings and sites, museums that have a diversity of values including symbolic, historic, artistic, aesthetic, ethnological or anthropological, scientific and social significance.” Furthermore, according to UNESCO, intangible cultural heritage refers to those traditions or living expressions inherited from ancestors and passed down, including “knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.” In this sense, “intangible cultural heritage is an important factor in maintaining cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization. . . The importance of intangible cultural heritage is not the cultural manifestation itself but rather the wealth of knowledge and skills that is transmitted through it from one generation to the next.”3
Creator note & background:
My name is Miren Neyra Alcántara. I am a senior Ada Comstock Scholar at Smith College and will be completing my major in Latin American Studies and my archives concentration. I consider myself a craft practitioner. I taught myself how to crochet when I was fourteen and have added many other mediums since. Pottery and ceramics is something that is intrinsically linked to my cultural identity as a Mexican woman and has been present since I can remember. From growing up with ceramic trees of life to a colorful talavera mug, each ceramic piece is a unique depiction of history, my history. I have been practicing clay for a while now and have been fascinated by the lessons it’s taught me as well as the creative outlets it has given to me.
Over the past year I have been researching how craft–its practices and objects– can speak to us about history, present, and look towards the future. In my research I have explored the intergenerational transmission and transfer of craft knowledge, the industrialization of crafts, and the effects crafts have on tourism. My research has additionally illuminated how crafts also provide ways to think about the process of labor, modes of making and their relationship to our neocolonial and late stage capitalist system, to traditional archival practices and to silenced stories.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to acknowledge and express my gratitude to all the people who have supported and given me feedback to complete my capstone– our professor Kelly Anderson and my peers, Travis Grandy, Becca Keyel, and Sydney Nguyen.
- Groth, Camilla, et al. “Craft is Ubiquitous.” Craft Research, vol. 13, no. 2, 2022, pp. 211–220,
https://doi.org/10.1386/crre_00076_2. ↩︎ - Lovelace, Joyce. “Craft: Seriously What Does The Word Mean?” American Craft Magazine,
October 2018.
↩︎ - UNESCO. 2018. “What Is Intangible Cultural Heritage?” Unesco. 2018. https://ich.unesco.org/en/what-is-intangible-heritage-00003.
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