I was at the Selling Yarns market in the National Museum, chatting with Valerie Kirk, head of textiles at the Canberra School of Art. I noticed she had some string tied around her wrist. At first I thought it was some practical material related to a workshop she was assisting on the day. But when I inquired about it, she revealed a very different story.

Valerie had been given this string at a ceremony in Laos, where she had been visiting a silk farm. The ceremony is known as Baci, and consists of 32 pieces of string that are tied around the wrist. The purpose of the ceremony is to coax back the 32 spirits (kwan) that animate the body. These are wayward spirits who often need bribes of food, drink and chants to make their way back home.

The Baci ceremony is performed at times when a person is likely to be needing extra support, such as a woman who had recently given birth, or a young child going to a distant school. In Valerie’s case it was the mark of respect for a distinguished visitor.

In a way, it seems similar to the Brazilian braided friendship bracelet, which is usually fastened on the wrist as a mark of solidarity with someone else. In both cases, the bracelet is ideally worn until it falls naturally from the body. This finite time is appropriate to a relationship that cannot endure indefinitely without some further contact.

Jewellery like this tends to come to us from exotic places. It is often without cost, but we value it greatly for the tradition and warmth that it brings. It should make us wonder whether anything like this might emanate from a capitalist society like our own, when most public things tend to be commodified.

But perhaps things are changing. Maybe this is something we can look forward to.

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There’s a raging debate in the US media about the call to bring design into account for its recent elitism. Echoing the recriminations over reckless financial dealers on Wall Street, Michael Cannell argued in the New York Times that the indulgent excesses of celebrity design will be a natural victim to the economic downturn. He says this is something to celebrate:

The pain of layoffs notwithstanding, the design world could stand to come down a notch or two — and might actually find a new sense of relevance in the process. That was the case during the Great Depression, when an early wave of modernism flourished in the United States, partly because it efficiently addressed the middle-class need for a pared-down life without servants and other Victorian trappings.

Naturally, there were many designers who took umbrage at these remarks. Murray Moss lead the defence in Design Observer to argue that one-off works like Campana Brothers $9,000 Corallo Chair represent great creative achievements that all should aspire to.

We are the fortunate benefactors, not the dupes, of design’s evolution since our recovery from the last Great Depression. We should defend that progression with resolve. We should push forward, in whatever ways are still possible, even more strongly. We should lock arms and support one another. And we should not hesitate to challenge those, like Mr. Cannell, who would somehow, mistakenly and punitively, equate the current global economic meltdown with design’s recent surge. We should, and will, refuse to go back into the box.

What seems missing from this debate is a sense of the creative possibilities of egalitarian design. This involves changing the social dynamic of design from individual distinction to collective identity. That’s kind of transformation has certainly been successful with online networking. We can only imagine what kind of promiscuous design it might foster.

• The image above is from Marcel Wanders’ Happy Hour Chandelier

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Barack Obama marks the inauguration of his Presidency with a homage to labour and ‘the makers of things’:

Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labour, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

Does this signal a move away from the spectacle of wealth and celebrity?

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Yet while we often dismiss these corny notions, we can’t help being curious about the new fangled ideas that emerge across the Pacific. At least they give us something to react against.

The US jeweller Gabriel Craig is a particularly eloquent source of new perspectives. In his blog Conceptual Metalsmithing recently he writes about the ‘plural genius’ of the 21st century.

You walk into a gallery, you choose a piece you like, you buy it, and then that unique piece stands for your uniqueness. In the prosumer paradigm, the participation of the consumer is not passive – I choose that one – but active, I made this. Prosumer jewelry is asking for the consumer and the viewer to become an active participant. It is not quite a regression to the pre-choosing identity paradigm, but a shared middleground between choosing and making. Again the responsibility for the object and what it represents resides in multiple entities.

The relational paradigm is a particularly important source of threat and opportunity for contemporary craft. There’s the fear that we are lured into an ‘audience-friendly’ concept of craft only to find the very specialist skills on which the medium depends wither away.

But I tend to see it as something that can extend a craftsperson’s capacities. At first, there is the direct challenge of constructing an object on a modular basis for re-assembly (the same challenge faced by designers in IKEA). Like a good composer, you need to know the capacities of your orchestra. And then there’s the matter of working at the sociological level of human relations, and the key role that objects can play in constellating social bonds in the here and now.

It doesn’t mean jumping on a bandwagon, but it can mean that the construction of the bandwagon becomes part of our business.

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Kula entails the exchange of two different sets of ornament. In a clockwise direction, long necklaces of red spondylus shell (soulava) travel from villages to village. In the opposite direction travel bracelets of white shell (mwali). When someone receives one of these ornaments as a gift, they are then indebted until they can reciprocate with the alternative good.

Though an ornament can be ‘owned’ by an individual, its destiny is to circulate through the region. Malinowsky makes the comparison with the English Crown Jewels that whose value lies in their symbolic rather than aesthetic function. He compares the ornament to a trophy that is won in a competition, but will eventually move on to the next winner in due course.

Thinking of the Kula sheds an interesting light on our economy of jewellery. In a Western society, ownership is final. An object can be exchanged for money, but we don’t tend to think of ourselves as a temporary custodian of our things. We own things for life, unless we decide otherwise.

So could a contemporary jeweller build into their work a principle of exchange? Perhaps their work creates a network of owners who can circulate jewellery between themselves?

• Bronislaw Malinowski Argonauts Of The Western Pacific: An Account Of Native Enterprise And Adventure In The Archipelagoes Of Melanesian New Guinea  London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987 (orig. 1922)
• Roger Niech and Fuly Peraira Pacific Jewellery And Adornment Auckland: David Bateman, 2004

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The meanings of the colours depend as much on their combination as individual symbolism. This is a rough glossary:

The status of a Zulu woman is readily identified through her ornament – her marriage status, the status of her sisters and her home region.

According to the grammar of ornament, the triangle represents father, mother and child. The meaning of the triangle changes with orientation.

For a woman to express her love for a man, she would place a white triangle with apex down enclosing a red triangle with apex up.

Today, Zulu love letters can be obtained in tourist shops as a cheap gift. But in the context of contemporary jewellery, it does suggest particular possibilities of ornament as a communication device. While different coloured ribbons represent alternative good causes, the possibility of colour combinations has yet to be realised.

It could be objected that the meaning of any such system depends on its widespread use – something that jewellery today cannot attain. However, ornament is often the prompt for the dialogue between individuals. Translation of meaning is at least one kind of enunciation.

Really? You don’t say.

For more information, see Beadwork in the ZULU cultural tradition.

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Here’s a brief outline (the full document is available here):

Exhibition Curator: Elisha Buttler/FORM (elisha@form.net.au)
Exhibition Guest Curator: Kevin Murray (change@kitezh.com) Exhibition venue and dates: April-June 2010, Midland Atelier, Perth

Can jewellery function as an instrument of change?

Jewellery is expanding in scope. Traditionally, the production of a beautiful adornment served as a marker of individual status. Emerging trends in jewellery and related object design are beginning to challenge many customary ideas of jewellery. The creative power of the jeweller is extending beyond the bench to the world which the object will inhabit.  This includes jewellery as a functional device, an agent of social change and a way of bringing people together. These trends provide the basis of a FORM exhibition in development for 2010.

Concepts such as ‘functionality’ and ‘change’ are open to multiple interpretations. However for the initial purposes of this exhibition, they have been grouped into two key categories:

1. Function and Technology

This category includes jewellers and related designers who create products possessing tangible functions or new technologies which aim to deploy specific benefits to individuals and/or the broader community. Emphasis will be placed on designs that point to long-term benefits, rather than one-off, largely conceptual pieces.

2. Sociology and Symbolism

This category includes the less tangible elements of contemporary jewellery which have potential to alter perspectives and promote action through their symbolic connotations. Like the Function and Technology category, the underlying themes here are designs which focus on benefits and heightened social awareness for individuals and the broader community.

The exhibition will explore jewellery that fits into either (or both) of the above groups, while focusing on the varied levels of ‘change’ jewellery can wield; namely in the areas of health, technology, sciences and community.

This is a relatively new area of development but one which possesses immense potential for groundbreaking innovation and cross-disciplinary, cross-industry advancement. A central aim of the exhibition will be to highlight this potential for innovation and cross-sector collaboration through jewellery design, and the strategies, investment and other conditions required to foster these new directions.

Also key to the exhibition will be examinations of the crossovers between the two categories, and the relationships between aesthetics and practicality.

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