 Let’s
discuss the quality of craftsmanship said a correspondent - what defines a
master craftsman? Surely it’s just the quality of the work produced, the
balance between utility, workmanship and the purely aesthetic choices made
during the creation of the object - the look of it, the feel of it? Our
subject was canal painting, as ever, how to objectively judge the quality of
the work being produced today. The ‘today’ bit is the problem, the present
situation of an historic folk art form in modern conditions. In the working
canal past the business adjudged itself by the ordinary commercial process
of the price arguing with the quality acceptable to the customer. But the
customer wasn’t a single individual worrying about personal taste. The
customer was a complete functioning society, a bunch of discerning,
complaining, bargaining, gossiping boat people, carrying the inherited
knowledge of what was ‘right’ for the job, practically and aesthetically.
There was time too, an apparently unending working life to try things out,
time to accept or reject innovations at leisure. If the boat doesn’t look
quite right this time we’ll take it to a different boatyard in two years
time and have it done better. Polesworth dock may be a bit more expensive
but the paintwork will always look wonderful.
 But
then everything changed. Waterways were no longer for work - canals were for
fun, for larking about on leisure boats in shorts and bobble hats. The
history and the culture of the boat population was an add-on, an interesting
adjective to the water that carried the new holiday makers to the next pub
and pump-out. And the roses and castles were a quaint paint-on too, an
affectionate token of respect to the lovely old sun tanned bargees of the
nostalgic past. At the time it seemed like a slow change, an evolution even,
from transport barges to holiday boats, but with some hindsight we can see
it for its suddenness in the 1950s and 60s, a smack in the face for two
centuries of heritage. A long established working transport system with its
own population of skilled tradesmen was down-graded to a grown-up playground
within a generation. The traditional art of the boats, that special unique
culture of the boatpeople, was quite suddenly stolen by the holiday boat
business and became a staple ingredient of a souvenir industry. The
paintwork was supplied by new people for new customers for new reasons.
Right, how do you judge that sort of work by old-fashioned criteria? With
difficulty.
That paragraph is obviously a jaundiced
bitter generalisation by someone getting old, but happily the broader
waterway preservation movement has always had its enthusiast fringe,
obsessive individuals determined not to lose the essential kernels of the
waterways culture. In the field of the traditional arts and crafts this
concern for core values led by degrees to the formation of the Waterways
Guild, an organisation of enthusiasts and friends that seeks to help the
traditions survive intact into the future. It has bravely stepped into the
dangerous ground of setting standards, to encourage newcomers towards good
practise and to define the quality towards which they should aspire. Get
good enough and the member can eventually be designated as a ‘master
craftsman’, and will gain both respect and business thereby, and perhaps
help history too. Hence the opening discussion about the nature of
craftsmanship.
 The
situation today is radically different to anything that’s gone before. The
modern master craftsman has to match good practical ability with far more
theoretical understanding than was ever required in the traditional past. To
be traditional the work must be within the conventions and rules of that
tradition, and to work within them the artist has to recognise and
understand them first. Yes, it is a restraint on free-expression in the
modern free-wheeling sense, but that’s the deal - study the rules and work
within them and help to conserve the tradition, or ignore and break them and
spoil it. The conscientious modern craftsman has to be self disciplined and
the trade must be self policing for today’s customers no longer have the
inherited understanding that controlled the business in the past. We are
conserving a tradition rather than simply partaking, and proper conservation
demands much stricter standards than simple commercial practise, leading
rather than following.
Phew! Do we have to? Most of us I suspect
simply aspire to being good journeymen—doing the job in a workmanlike
manner, earning a living giving simple pleasure whilst not ignoring or
demeaning the generations of boatmen and boatbuilders who created it. How’s
this for a motto then?—doing it well without mucking up the memory. |
