Reading 4

Chapter 4 "Material Consciousness", from The Craftsman
By Richard Sennett

I found Sennett's thoughts about material consciousness very interesting. Many of his ideas came back to one's interest in working with the material, which most often comes from change. I thought it was interesting how he described the history of clay's ability to arouse material consciousness, by either altering, marking, or identifying with the material. He writes a lot about change and "how the principle guiding one practice can be applied to quite another activity", which means a "domain shift". By applying old techniques in a different way or to a different activity, clay is able to continue to change and grow with history. Thinking about the first potters using a coil building system in the exact same way we do today makes me realize how little the system has changed in comparison to the outcome. As the time the system has been around increases, the more people and different personalities and ideas have to impact how it can be used.

Sennett also has some interesting thoughts not just about the artist or crasftsman, but also about the critic. He put the critic's job into a different light than I had thought about at first. Sennett describes how spectators at the time of Aristotle became some of the first critics and "sought to speculate then about what the stage characters did not understand about themselves." He also adds the thoughts of classicist Myles Burnyeat, who describes how these audience members turned critics, began "seeing with the minds eye". This is an interesting thing to think about as a potter participating in critiques of fellow class-people. For the artist to take an outsiders view on a piece can be thought more of as seeing with the minds eye in some cases, than a critique. As makers, we often overlook details in our own work that we wouldn't in a peers.

Sennett talks a lot about the beginning of bricks and the brick maker's that labored on huge projects in ancient Rome. One thing that he points out is the size of the bricks and the messages they can send. Bricks are made more personal by the small size they are formed in so they fit into the human hand. This is interesting to think about in the relation of the bricks to the humans using them to create a much larger aggregate. The once hand-sized bricks become huge buildings. The clay goes through so many different points and hands to end up in its final position it is hard to give credit of the project to just one designer holding the whip.

Erin Doherty