A recent Background Briefing was devoted to the culture of MBAs. It claimed that the arrogance fostered in business schools like Harvard encouraged the reckless financial speculation which triggered the current global crisis. image The program featured the views of Will Hopper, an economist and author of The Puritan Gift: Triumph, Collapse and Revival of [...]
Posts Tagged ‘rich’
Kraf Tidak Berikat – Craft Unbound in Malaysia
image Kuala Lumpur’s Craft Complex promises to be a ‘one-stop craft centre’. It’s quite an extensive series of buildings, including museum, shops, design workshop, café and artist colony. The museum features an exhibition of quite sumptuous gold embroidery. The shop promotes elaborate filigree work as desirable corporate gifts. The textile outlet has a functioning loom, [...]
Observations on the Olympics of Chinese craft
The World Craft Council General Assembly in China provided an opportunity to see aspects of a craft culture that is ancient in a very modern way. We were taken on an official visit to the Zhongyi lace factory, which is one of the economic jewels of the Toglu province. The showroom featured a performance by [...]
After the Missionaries
image 2009 will feature a number of forums for thinking about the role of art in a new bilateral world. The Selling Yarns conference in March will include workshops for artisan-design collaborations. In June, at Craft Victoria, the World of Small Things: An Exhibition of Craft Diplomacy will feature the fruits of dialogue between first [...]
Campana Brothers on the power of nature
From a recent exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt museum, the Brazilian designers reflect on their romantic ideals. In particular, they celebrate the artisanship, individual expression, the presence of nature in urban life, recycling and dreams. The time seems ripe for the Campana Brothers. Its in this broader context that we might view the turn to [...]
Rich jewellery, a little closer to the source
37-pendant The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has just acquired a work by the Italian goldsmith Andrea Cagnetti. Like Australia’s Robert Baines, the 40 year-old Cagnetti has specialised in the ancient technique of granulation as practiced by Etruscan artisans. Unlike the speculative Baines, Cagnetti employs his craft reverentially. The work above is thus described: [...]
