Technology, Innovation, and Craft Mastery

Craft making is a dynamic, collaborative activity requiring materials as well as tools and technologies that extend human capabilities. Together these elements constitute a complex web of relationships that enables some practices while constraining others. Material factors significantly determine what’s possible. The malleability of clay lends itself to applications that stone does not. Stone has to be worked by cutting away and shaping with force, but clay can be molded into myriad shapes by hand or on a potter’s wheel and further transformed through the use of heat technology. To create articles from clay, stone, or other materials therefore requires