Tablecloth made by my great-grandmother (crochet)

Let today mark the launch of The Sources of Our Craft. This is a history project dedicated to the people who have taught and inspired us or the ones who will come after us.

I struggled to come up with a title for this dear-to-my-heart project, discussed in a few posts over the last month. I like “The Roots of Our Craft” quite a bit, but I believe the Australians will look askance at this. 🙂 Effectively, this is a title with a North American bias (am I right?). So I’m switching out “roots” for “sources.” I also cringed a little at the “my,” just as I cringe a little each time I see my blog title, chosen in haste a year or two ago. I considered “On the Origin of Our Craft,” but that had the ring of Darwin about it, of course, and some (OK a lot of) attendant pretension (not Darwin’s fault).

provenance (n.) 1785, from French provenance “origin, production,” from provenant, present participle of Middle French provenir “come forth, arise, originate,” from Latin provenire “come forth, originate, appear, arise,” from pro- “forth” (see pro-+ venire “come” (see venue). (Definition from from www.etymonline.com)

I also considered provenance, for the etymology: a clear Latin root and direct equal in French and Italian (provenance, provenienza), athough my friend C. squashed that one as it sounds “self-important.” In art, provenance is used to describe the situational path a piece of art follows through its existence. It is often critical in assigning authorship or in proving ownership. It conjures up wonderful images of the world’s great paintings as they sat in the drawing rooms of wealthy patrons or were forgotten in dusty attics or under beds in foreign lands, with the links in their storylines temporarily broken. In the end, however, I think that “source” is clear, simple, and in French it can also mean “spring.” Think of the film Manon des Sources. Spring in Italian is sorgente and source is probably fonte, which is delightful, no? (although if I used the English word “font” someone would undoubtedly whack me over the head) Un sorso means “a sip,” which I also love.

All of that said, no words quite do justice to all of the “works and days of hands” that bring a crafting life into being.* As I’ve been reflecting on my own learning and the crafts I feel most connected to, I’ve realized how much unheralded, steady and sometimes joyful work – presence – on the part of my mother, aunts and uncles, grandparents and great-grandparents has guided my own urge to make things with my hands. I wonder about the many individuals I could never know who guided my mother’s, father’s, grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ hands in the same way, extending back to…whoever knows. I’m supposedly distantly related to a randy daughter who broke free of her family and fled for America with a sailor, marrying in the free church in the Netherlands on the way. I wonder if she stitched on the boat or if she mostly vomited the whole way over, as I surely would have done? More poetically, I have ancestors from Islay among other places in Scotland (surely they were knitters!), from Northern Ireland, and from a number of parts of England and Wales (my great-grandfather escaped the coal mines and remade himself as an accountant in Ontario). When I look into the mirror sometimes I see my grandmother’s chin staring back at me and I imagine another woman with that same perky chin, maybe a hundred years before my grandmother was born, bending over her needlework or kneading bread in a hot kitchen. Maybe there was a little girl or boy hanging around her apron just as I did my grandmother’s, yearning to have the knack of making that bread and to taste the first slab, undoubtedly slathered with butter. (I’m a big fan of butter, which I also learned how to churn by hand as a kid…)

*Works and days of hands is a phrase I have always loved, stolen from TS Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. If the Internet yields the correct answer, it is probably a reference to the poem by the 8th century BC Greek poet Hesiod about the farming year (entitled “Works and Days”). My mother’s degree is in Classics and she even learned ancient Greek (Gianni also learned Latin and Greek in collegio with the priests), but I confess that I am a complete ignoramus in these matters. I held the tape recorder when I was twelve and my mother was recording herself during her ancient Greek lessons, always with one eyebrow raised.

Project Proposal: To write about the people, places and things that have inspired us and taken us on our crafting journeys. To write about the journeys that people who have inspired us have taken in their own craft, using the contents of personal memory if that’s all that we have, or, if not, through documentary sources or through in-person interviews.

Format: This is a personal decision. It could be a series of questions answered. I have proposed a detailed list of questions to stimulate thought on the subject in this entry. It could be a series of essays. In my own case, I am going to write a small series of essays starting with my own learning at the hands of my mother and other family members, and then as much as I can glean from my mother about her own learning. After that, I’m taking this to as many elderly persons as I can find, and also to the Italians, because I’ve been casually interviewing Italian craftspersons for several years now and will make this an official undertaking. They are fascinating!

A brief list of questions to answer could be:

-How did you learn to craft?

-What special memories or connections with family members or friends/neighbours/teachers manifest in your crafting?

-What has crafting taught you and what do you think it can teach us going forward?

-Are there any special projects that you recall particularly or that shaped your crafting? Likewise are there any special items that were made for you or that linger particularly in your memory?

-Do you recall any special stories about crafting recounted to you or are there any funny memories you could share?

-What is most important to you in engaging with craft?

-How has your crafting practise changed over time? How have your materials changed? What has remained the same?

-What is the legacy, if any, that you hope to share via your crafting?

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Time Frame: There is no time frame, other than from today on forward.

Blog Button/Graphic: I would like to develop a graphic, but I am unsure about developing a blog button. I don’t have any graphic design capability and I am not interested in promoting this blog. What interests me is honouring something that is important and enjoying the stories and connection that I hope will result from this undertaking. I will think about this a little bit more.

Help/Advice: If you’d like some more specific advice about what to write about or how to structure it, I’d be happy to help, although if you’ve been reading this page for any length of time you’ll know that I’m the last person to ask about structure. Likewise, I extend once again the offer to post your essays here, however brief, if you don’t have a blog and would like to share your story in this context. Your words would remain your own and you would retain control over the post. If you don’t want to post something, write something in your journal and maybe one day you’ll want to share it with someone you love. You might be surprised at how interested they will be.

Finally: Let’s have fun with this. No skill is too small and no story uninteresting. I feel that too often things get forgotten or neglected because we don’t think they are important, until some distant time when suddenly we realize that they were. I’m not talking about drowning in memory; I’m talking about delighting in making the connections it affords us. I also believe that honouring the teaching of the past is essential to creating the future that we want, too. I often think about how craft can make a difference in how we think about resource use, necessity, hard work and sharing of our skills and resources.

Addendum: I’m possibly most excited about the international dimension, as I’d like to know about differences across place and culture, as well as across time. Maybe that’s just me, but honestly it’s an aspect that is endlessly fascinating to me. Through understanding and interest we find so many commonalities.

Whee! I feel as though I ought to throw some confetti or launch some balloons….

Trish Burr book pile, for my embroidery learning; my knitting “base” for my faux Valentino sweater; and my favourite knitting accessory: a red ruler purchased at the dollar store when I was in my twenties. It’s taped because I recently sat on it in an airport lounge and snapped off the top. I simply can’t measure sweaters without it, however, so it’s not getting thrown out…ever!

So I’m off to do some sewing today. I have a mound of stuff cut out and I’ve been making progress on one of the sweaters for my Sewing with a Plan. Perhaps I’ll be back tomorrow with a quick update. In any case, be well! Spring is coming! Or at least it is in the Northern Hemisphere. That’s optimistic coming from me, as we do often have snow flurries in April. Also, everything is melting here today and when things melt all of the detritus from under the snow is everywhere – smelly, mouldy, and generally irritating. I shall be looking for crocuses soon though. Being of generally sunny disposition has its advantages.

I think it looks great with my hat…