Folk material culture

1
Folk material culture

• objects and ideas about object that are
  traditional and non-popular.

2
On being folk

• Every object has three components any one of
  which, or all of which may be folk.
• Form
• Construction
• Use

3
Same old Stuff

• Material culture differs from language-based
  culture in two ways.
• There is a dislocation of production and
  consumption.
• Practitioners learn by doing, or imitation, not
  by hearing about objects.

4
So Why Study?

• The study of material folk culture is an attempt
  to understand cognitive process and aesthetic
  choices from the variation between existing
  objects.
• Techniques of construction are processes that
  link conceptual models and raw materials into
  finished products.
• Techniques link classes of material artifacts
  together

5
Why do they do that?

• Folk technologies are traditional systems that
  exploit a portion of the environment to meet
  basic felt human needs.
• Technologies support particular economic systems
  and are in turn, supported and rationalized by
  belief systems.
• No culture uses all available technologies.
  Groups focus on a limited set of operations to
  make and do the tasks of material artifacts.

6
Systems of measure are cultural products

• Linear (feet, inches, yard, chain, mile)
• Areal (acre, hide, county, hundred, square)
• Weight (ounce, pound, ton, stone)
• Liquid (teaspoon, cup, pint, quart, gallon)
• exchange (dollar, bit, shilling)

7
Natural vs Abstract

• There is a general movement from accepting and
  utilizing the forms existing in nature, holistic
  systems towards
• Rationalistic systems that create reduplicative
  forms. In architecture this is seen in the
  movement from cruck construction to standards for
  bricks and boards.

8
Technologies focus on particular raw materials

• Traditional technologies in the eastern United
  States were oriented to the woodlands and the
  profligate use of forest materials--especially
  hardwoods. More recent mass distributions are
  based on pine and other conifers.
• Just as Eskimo have elaborate classifications for
  snow, Americans have an elaborate vocabulary for
  trees. Often much more elaborate than botanical
  descriptions. Sweetgrass, white oak.
• How are the different woods used?
• Oak is used for strength and equally important
  because it splits well. Splitting is an ancient
  process that does not destroy the fibrous bundles
  in the wood so it retains the full measure of its
  strength.
• Hickory was used for toughness and because it
  turned well. Hickory is often found used in
  chairs and handles of tools.
• Tulip poplar was used for its ease in working and
  is often used as the back woods for furniture
  built of maple, walnut or oak. It was also used
  extensively for molding and trim that was to be
  painted.
• Where the traditional technologies do not fit the
  environment (the result of migration)
  modification and borrowing occur.

9
Technologies also focus on different techniques.

• The oldest crafts are subtractive processes. In
  the Platonic sense you carve away every that
  isn't a bowl and you have a bowl--or a chair or a
  house. Virtually all wood crafts are subtractive
  technologies.
• Other technologies involve techniques to work
  plastic mediums--clay, metal, mud, or water.
• A third important group of techniques widely used
  in traditional technologies is weaving.

10
Folk Crafts

• Folk Crafts involve the skilled working with a
  non academic tradition, making objects for
  someone else's use or consumption primarily by
  hand and primarily alone.
• Crafts are often divided into art or craft
  depending upon whether the researcher feels that
  utilitarian or display aesthetics predominate.
• Except where folk art overlaps with the genres of
  fine art the distinction isnt useful.

11
Chain-saw bear carving
12
Craftsmen are usually defined by the type of
material worked, or the kind of process in which
they specialize

• Extractive crafts such as mining do not involve a
  finished product but supply a raw material.
• Woodworking crafts can be separated on the basis
  of whether they saw or bend wood, but most are
  named by the product which they
  produce--chairmakers, furniture makers, coopers,
  wheelwrights, etc.
• Many crafts are today oriented to repair,
  blacksmiths, seamstresses.
• Salvage crafts make new items out of the
  partially worn out products of other crafts.

13
Home crafts

• Home crafts provide much of the spice of life
  that is unavailable through stores.
• Preservation crafts--canning, smoking, pickling,
  drying.
• Cooking.
• Textiles. Consider that in the early 19th century
  some probate laws forbid the forced sale of a
  woman's loom and wheel. Sewing of garments is
  also an important folk craft.
• Brewing and distilling.
• Gardening and grafting.
• Skillful collection of some wild foods should be
  considered as well, sugaring and fishing, as well
  as collecting persimmons, mushrooms, poke and
  other wild foods.

14
Sewing crafts
15
The Fate of Traditional Crafts

• Traditional crafts have become very rare because
  their market has been plucked by mass production.
  For several reasons, however, some crafts still
  exist, if they are not flourishing

16
Craft continuity

• Religious isolation.
• Poverty
• Repair and salvage are cheaper or produce objects
  unavailable in the mass market.
• The craft may produce something which cannot be
  profitably made by machines.
• Prestige may be attached to the handmade object.