Questions
Context
This research focuses on identifying and understanding the value of eighteenth-century Midland enamel trade’s crafts skills, both in relation to the past and the present, for the fields of History and contemporary craft.
For historians of Midland history, understanding manufacturing and the context that it operated in is important. Within the metal trades of Birmingham and adjoining South Staffordshire, hand-making—craft—was combined with early forms of mass production to make early consumer products. However, their practices were mostly undocumented and consequently not understood. Understanding this aspect supports developing a broader understanding of how and why these trades emerged; trade consumer interactions; and, consequently, the region's development. Historians have suggested that to address this knowledge gap, new research approaches that use objects as primary sources are central. This research focuses on the craft of the enamel trade: it suggests that the contemporary crafts maker’s technical and tacit knowledge, derived from practice, can provide a unique and powerful lens to analyse and interpret historical objects in this regard. The methodology sort to utilise practice-based research to identify, and understand the craftsmanship of enamel’s substrate manufacture; and, Midland enamel transfer-printing. Furthermore, it sort to demonstrate the value of a craftsmanship-framed approach to object-based historical research and the value of re-emergent historical craft to the craft-maker community.
Enamel Form
Past enamel research principally focused on understanding who was engaged in the trade Rackham. Late nineteenth-century scholars placed over-significance on York House works, Battersea, Surrey, for producing the best painted and enamel transfer-printed ware. However, later research identified the Midlands as the important production centre, and how transfer-printing was a Birmingham invention. A principal shortcoming of this scholarship was a focus on decoration to attribute the ware; this resulted in the copper substrate being overlooked. This production area created the form upon which the all-important enamel decoration much desired by consumers and therefore, crucial for manufacturers, was applied. However, what was not understood was how the craft-makers created these wondrous forms, the bird-shaped bonbonnières, and scent bottles formed as fruit, for example, and the critical role substrate played in this. The Enamel | Substrate exhibition presented, for the first time, the significance of this aspect of production, bringing to life the modes of production and explained the hidden construction of a selection of eighteenth-century enamel objects.
Furthermore, the value of this lost making knowledge was considered in the context of contemporary craft making. This is unusual within the field of Craft because for many contemporary craftspeople, the relationship between craft and industrial manufacture is a thorny one. William Morris's legacy has shaped a widely held perspective that craft is in opposition to industrialised production and that there is no relevance in the making practices undertaken in the factory. Consequently, contemporary craft scholars and practitioners' research into manufacturing activities are mostly neglected. Therefore, the research and enamel | substrate exhibition sort to understand and present the value of lost making practices of the enamel trade to contemporary (enamel) craft making.
Enamel Decoration
Transfer printing invented c1750, enabled for the first time, printing ceramic and enamel surfaces. The process used paper or gelatinous bat to transfer ‘printing black’—enamel—from an engraved copper plate to ceramic/enamel surface. Whilst the process is strongly associated with ceramic decoration, it is curious that it was invented in a metalworking area. Consequently, its use and likely perfection within the Midland enamel trade is therefore important. Existing Midland enamel transfer printing research focuses on emergent timelines, key protagonists—the engraver printers and manufactory owners, and analysing the minimal extant technical writing to understand the process. Consequently, there is a knowledge gap concerning the craft practices used in the extensive Midland workshops. This research focused on identifying and understanding the technical and tacit craft activities used in the region's workshops.
Aims and Objectives
Aim: to reveal, understand and present the importance of the (lost) craftsmanship methods of the eighteenth-century English enamel trade critical to construct form and decorate enamel objects.
Objectives:
· To demonstrate the value of eighteenth-century Midland copper substrate craft to both the trade and therefore historians, and contemporary craft makers;
· To identify, understand and present the critical craft process integral to the utilisation of the new invention of transfer printing in the eighteenth-century Midland enamel trade;
· To explore, develop and demonstrate the value of contemporary craftsmanship knowledge—practice—within an object-based historical research methodology for historians and craft makers.
Questions
1. Can contemporary craft practice provide a framework for analysing historical artefacts to understand unwritten historical enamel craftsmanship methods?
Contemporary craft practice concerns making, principally but not exclusively by hand: the craft's maker develops skills and knowledge through a combination of technical learning, and repeated practise leading to a tacit understanding of tool use and material manipulation. Craft authors have various definitions of craft, but all agree that craft makers' tacit making knowledge is acquired through the iterative process of making; 10,000 hours required to become skilled. Furthermore, contemporary craft tools and processes have lineage back to those used centuries ago. Jack Ogden highlighted how historical silversmithing tools and process left witness marks, such as the parallel striations created by a file on the edge of metal, and how these marks can be identified, interpreted and understood. Consequently, craft makers possess a unique making literacy, because they have heightened recognition of these marks and can use this knowledge to identify and interpret the marks left by past makers in the objects they made.
Within the field of History, there is increased interest in objects as primary data. History Through Material Culture illuminates how the 'Material Turn' has seen increased interest amongst historians in analysing artefacts. The Making and Knowing Project demonstrates how the same community is embracing craft-making to understand the past. However, it could be suggested that because their knowledge base is drawn mainly from literature and not hours of experience in the workshop, their understanding is limited. This is particularly the case concerning identifying and understanding the making process from objects where there are no primary literature accounts from which to cross-reference. In this context, the craft person's knowledge is valuable.
2. What is the value of lost past making practices associated with emergent industrialised manufacturing to contemporary crafts practitioners and historians?
In The Invention of Craft, Glenn Adamson describes how craft as a term only came into existence due to the need to differentiate between hand-making and industrialised production. However, many contemporary craft makers see their practices' as the antithesis of that carried out in the manufactory. Therefore, they do not appreciate how historical making activities are relevant to contemporary practise; the rise of digital making technology exacerbates this. Researching historical defunct industrial craft-making methods appears to be considered backwoods looking and tainted by its use in the factory system. Therefore, it is considered of no relevance to the making of contemporary work. There is a misconception around the latter. In reality, the eighteenth-century emergent manufacturing relied heavily on craft skill to make objects. The eighteenth-century manufactories were places of skill, ingenuity, adaptability and innovation. The enamel trade was a prime example. They manufactured objects from perplexingly thin copper 0.010"; stamped into multiple components. These were assembled using a range of different mechanical connections—solder was incompatible with enamel—to create complex three-dimensional forms. It was how the historical craftsman made and decorated enamel that was the critical focus of this research. This knowledge was valuable for historians because it illuminated making methods and its relationship to the manufacturing context. For contemporary craft makers, the lost making techniques provided a means to make light, complex enamel forms when synthesised with 3D printing technology.
3. What is the value of imperfect museum artefacts for the researcher? Can they provide valuable data sources leading to a more comprehensive understanding of lost technical and tacit knowledge?
Concerning these enamel objects, past scholarship has focused on celebrating and seeing of value the artistry of the decoration, the technical wonder of the richly painted neoclassical scenes, the rococo decoration; and the technical accomplishment of the celebrity engravers including Simon François Ravenet and John Brooks, associated with transfer printed enamel objects, particularly those connected to the Battersea manufactory. This was a legacy of the connoisseur approach of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century collectors of these objects whose private collections often transferred to public museums such as the V&A in London. These collectors assumed decoration and artistic skill of its creators, whether in painting or print engraving, were the only valuable attributes. Furthermore, their somewhat London centric world-view appears to have resulted in bias that assumed all the accomplished enamel objects were a product of the Battersea manufactory and the inferior from the Midlands. Initially, as collections transferred from private to public (Museum) collections, this established thought migrated with the objects in the late nineteenth century. The curators and researchers' approach has attempted to correct the attribution question, but there is still a large knowledge gap, particularly around Midland production.
Collections on display in museums often present exemplar artefacts. However, enamels are fragile by nature, the mode of manufacture—multiple components tied or folded together coated with a thin layer of vitreous material—means that objects dropped will chip easily, and often will crack along natural lines of weakness—the joints. Numerous examples of these exist in collections, but because of imperfection often languish in museum stores. These objects are undervalued as sources of knowledge, but the chipping and cracking provide unintended windows to view and analyse copper substrate construction generally hidden below the enamel decoration. Also, where enamel integrity is intact poorly applied enamel; imperfect printed images; staining from misfiring; brush strokes in enamel decoration; and, print imperfections provide other interpretable clues, a road map for deduction of the craft processes used. In this context, the struggles and failures of the craft makers often are more telling. As such, imperfect objects provided the means to investigate forensically; carefully composing a matrix of clues to the mode of forming and joining copper substrate and the materials and methods used to apply print decoration to the enamel. This method's value is that it revealed and explained modes of production critical for curators to better understand their collections. It revealed the skill, ingenuity, and importance of the craftsman in creating wondrous forms for historians. Their struggles with materials and process revealed how the innovation of transfer-printing was being used in the Midland trade.
