Craft

Vibeke Hedvig Blindbæk Schou and Emma Lund Rask

Related terms: activism, artistic research, community, crafting as tools for academic understandings, embodied knowledge, environment, feminism, making, mending, sensuous society, sustainability.

This entry opens up for ideas of how a shift towards sensory, material, and bodily engagement in the art of crafting can create deeper connections with the materials and objects of our everyday lives. This is explored through a feminist lens and offers a general introduction to artistic research as well as a sensory ethnography approach that includes personal anecdotes.

Craft

Hands are spreading out fabric, using two legs as a table. It’s a pair of pants with a hole at the bottom. Worn so thin that, in places, one could see right through them if the light hits. The fabric has been turned inside out, laying bare the seams and craftsmanship. A sense of calm takes over as fingers glide over the cotton, preparing to take on the craft of mending.

This small act of caring for one’s textile belongings might seem like an unusual action today. However, for hundreds of years, people have tended to and crafted cloth, textiles, and other belongings (Barber 1994, 30-34). Throughout history, men and women (mostly women, however) have participated in the sensory and physically demanding act of crafting by carding, weaving, spinning, sewing, and sometimes even dying fabrics (Goggin & Tobin 2009). More recently, this (sensory) process has been far removed from human hands (at least in the Global North) and put into the mechanical ‘hands’ of machines and factories (Gordon 2013; Barber 1994; Bundgaard 2023). This presents a problem: when we remove ourselves from the sensory practices of engaging with the materials of the world around us, do we not risk losing respect for and awareness of these materials, their creation processes, and the cost of making them? The relevance of this concern is exemplified through today’s mass production of textiles. This is an industry characterized by the destruction of biodiversity, pollution of bodies of water, drainage of natural resources (Wolfe 2024), and numerous humanitarian problems (Bundgaard 2023). In this context, we open up the question of how we, as individuals, can look to and act upon environmental issues. Here, it becomes especially relevant to look towards the environmental humanities and their potential to bring forward sensory, embodied, and ecological forms of awareness – and to ask how something so seemingly simple as craft can grant renewed access. How can crafting and its embodied, sensory, and community-based knowledge weave a way towards a more considerate way of being with things in the world?

Defining ‘Craft’

As this essay aims to tackle the term ‘craft’ and our involvement with it, we must first understand what such a term encapsulates and how it relates to environmental humanities. The OED defines craft in rather broad terms: “to make or devise (something) with one's hands, materials, and/or tools, such as knitting, embroidery, mending broken fabrics or clothes” (Oxford English Dictionary 2025). We understand that to define ‘craft’ we must highlight its strong connection to materiality, the body, and the reforming of materials. However, if ‘craft’ is solely defined as a remaking of materials, many things, such as standardized production, which one would not ordinarily define as ‘craft,’ could be considered as such. Instead, Glenn Adamson proposes that ‘craft’ is defined by the creative act of making through material practices (Adamson 2010, 2-3). Similarly, Sinikka Pöllänen highlights that the creativity involved in crafting and the fact that “the makers can take full ownership of the activity” form essential parts of crafting (Pöllänen 2015, 60). Likewise, craft encompasses both a creative outlet and the creation of physical products. It equally encompasses cognitive, communicative, and social dimensions (Johnson & Wilson, 2005; Riley, 2008; Hackney, 2013; Bang et al., 2024; Robinson, 2020; Gordon, 2013). Let’s expand with an example: one day, you join a knitting club. On the surface, you are just there to knit a scarf, but as the club unfolds, you are sharing experiences, ideas, and advice about knitting and life in general. Crafting encompasses a unique social potential to mobilize and create spaces to meet others and share experiences through making and materials (Robinson, 2020; Gordon, 2013; Black, 2017).

We propose an understanding of craft as 1) an act of (re)creating something or devising something through materials, and 2) a social practice in which one can mobilize, express, and act through the makings that are produced, as well as through the inwoven meanings of different practices and materials.

For the sake of simplicity, we will limit the following part of the essay to dealing exclusively with textile craft. With this delimitation in mind, we find it necessary to briefly and generally expand the deeply rooted connections between feminism, textiles, and craft.

Crafting as a Tool for Feminism and Social Change

Even though early crafting was practised by all genders, in the past many years it has been largely practised by women, thereby constructing it as women’s work (Goggin & Tobin, 2009, 2; Parker, 1984, 103-115). As with many things constructed as feminine, the interlacing of textile craft and women has been used as a means of social control, ridicule, and exploitation of women (Goggin & Tobin, 2009). Still, women have not solely suffered under this interlacing, but have been able to take up the needle and use it for aesthetic expression, as well as for protest and social change (Goggin & Tobin, 2009; Black, 2017; Gordon, 2013). The engagement in textile craft can act as a way of empowerment and “as a tool of substantive, feminist social change” (Black, 2017, 698). We understand crafting in the context of its feminist roots. Therefore, we seek to present it as something with which an adoption of a feminist viewpoint is integral, as when we try to present crafting and its potential as a tool for resilience. A pair of pants is not just a piece of fabric on our body but carries relational, social meanings, or significance that is context-dependent (Shove, 2007: 5-8). So, as I pick up the needle myself to repair my torn pants, I am just as much stepping into the complex feminist space of exploring how craft can be a tool for social and environmental change (Black, 2017: 699-703).

As we unfold multiple senses of ‘crafting’ in the spaces of feminism, art, hobbies, and its social potential, in the following, we explore the inherently embodied, artistic, and sensory knowledge production of crafting and inquire how these aspects can be operationalized as a tool to engage with problems in the area of the environmental humanities.

Weaving Body, Earth, and Actions together

In recent years, the humanities have increasingly emphasized how the arts, the body, and the sensory apparatus can be places for knowledge production (Hallberg, 2015; Haywood-Rolling Jr., 2010; Finnegan, 2014; Howes, 2021; Pink, 2015). Equally, we advocate for an increased understanding of our sensory, bodily being as essential when exploring the human impact on our environment and surroundings (Hallberg 2021). It may seem easy to dismiss crafts like sewing or knitting as nothing more than textile-overusing hobbies, and textile crafting has often been dismissed this way (Parker, 1984; Bryan-Wilson, 2017; Goggin & Tobin, 2009). However, by placing crafting in the larger context of artistic research and ways of knowing, picking up the needle could be more than a way of passing the time. It can be further used as a way to position oneself in the world. To make this statement more tangible, we will bring out an example from our own lives.

At 19, I had a part-time job at a bookstore; troubled by the what-now? And the very pressing knowledge of a climate in array, I found myself apathetic and at a loss for direction. At the bookstore, I met Ghitta, who, in quiet moments, taught me to knit. She taught me techniques and foreign languages of knitting patterns with formulas like ‘2r, 2vr, 2r sm’. With this, a new world opened itself to me. Knowledge was not necessarily stashed away in lecture halls or hidden between pages. Knowledge was produced in between Ghitta’s embodied presence and my own, and in the care and time she took to teach me.
With this experience, it was made clear to me how a focus on bodily presence and the social, co-creating components present in crafting carries a potential for reflection that previously seemed inaccessible.

Today, the process of fabricating cloth has been moved far away from our bodies and senses (Bundgaard, 2023; Barber, 1994). Our sensory involvement in craft is no longer necessary. Yet, as Hallberg states, we need to move towards a more sensory involvement with the practices that make up our everyday life and the objects that surround us. Because, as we move ourselves away from the sensory and embodied involvements of making and creating, we equally distance ourselves from the influences of our actions and their consequences. To challenge this, we argue that the act of crafting has an inwoven connection to the body, the senses, the arts, and lived experiences, which makes it a unique tool for reflection. Gardner (1990) points this out in rather simple but precise terms:

...crafting can be viewed as a creation process. However, the ‘what’ it creates can be both physical objects, but certainly also more emotional or symbolic ones (Gardner 1990).

When taking on the task of mending, we connect with the embodied memories of carefully threading through fabric, the soreness in the fingers, the constant alternation between frustration and relief, as well as the incomprehensibility of how women in the past were able to do this solely in candlelight.

As Hallberg describes, aesthetic and bodily interventions can be mobilized as tools to criticize and oppose unsustainable ways of engaging with and being in society (Hallberg, 2021, 12). She claims that artistic, sensuous practices can ”stimulate an ecological awareness of connectivity,” which, according to ecological theory, is pivotal to a sustainable transition (Hallberg 2021, 430). We see how crafting can be a means to deploy artistic, embodied, and sensory knowledge production to raise ecological awareness.

There is strength to be found in engaging in and learning crafts as a way to gain an understanding of the material world and its nature. As MacEachren (2000) argues, craft allows one to interact and engage with the environment in a way that encourages sensory experiences and deepens one's relationship with the Earth and its materials. Learning a craft involves processes of becoming more aware of the skills, knowledge, time, labour, and materials that form the backbone of any object. We are not just mending but studying the fabrics and processes closely, both cognitively and sensorily. We do not only engage in the practical act of familiarizing ourselves with an everyday material; we also allow ourselves to make sense of their multifaceted nature (Buchzyk, 2020; Skjold, 2018): As hands brace over a small patch on the knee, it can remind us of a difficult hike, while a small cigarette burn in the fabric can transport you back to drinks with a friend. By becoming familiar with the object and its materiality through crafting, one might also experience a growing acknowledgement and appreciation for the craftsmanship behind the making of the objects, which was (perhaps) previously taken for granted.

Furthermore, it can be useful to view crafting through its social potentials, as laid out in the anecdote of Ghitta. Here, crafting can be employed as a tool with which one can reflect upon knowledge, materiality, climate action, and social movements. The act of crafting becomes a social tool with which we can collectively meet problems that, before, seemed too large to engage with on one’s own (Røstvik & Johansen, 2015; Riley, 2008; Robinson, 2020).

Gaining knowledge of and participating in sensory and cultural actions of craft offer opportunities to recognize the value, work, and craftsmanship of everyday objects we otherwise take for granted. Gaining knowledge of it together with others allows crafting to become a tool with which we can engage in larger environmental issues. Involvement in not just the techniques of craft, but also the social potentials it holds can open a world of reflections through shared experiences, knowledge of materiality, bodily engagement, and furthered awareness of the world around us.

Back in the living room, a darning needle is threaded, ready to plunge into the flimsy edges of the hole. One wrong incision in the pants’ porous fabric and it may run further, expanding the tear even more.

References

Adamson, Glenn. 2010. The Craft Reader. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Barber, Elizabeth Wayland. 1994. Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times. New York: W.W. Norton.

Bang, Anne Louise, Gitte Engholm, Susanne Lervad, Marie-Louise Nosch, and Else Skjold. 2024. “Textile Craft as Empowerment.” Dress 50 (2): 151–73.

Black, Shannon. 2017. “KNIT + RESIST: Placing the Pussyhat Project in the Context of Craft Activism.” Gender, Place & Culture 24 (5): 696–710.

Buchczyk, Magdalena. 2020. “Making Certainty and Dwelling through Craft.” The Journal of American Folklore 133 (528): 178–92.

Bundgaard, Julie. 2023. Der er blod på dit tøj, Julie. North Audio Publishing.

Bryan-Wilson, Julia. 2017. Fray: Art and Textile Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gardner, Howard, and Getty Center for Education in the Arts. 1990. Art Education and Human Development. Los Angeles: Getty Center for Education in the Arts.

Goggin, Maureen Daly, and Beth Fowkes Tobin. 2009. Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750–1950. Farnham: Ashgate.

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Hallberg, Gry Worre. 2021. “Sensuous Society: Carving the Path towards a Sustainable Future through Aesthetic Inhabitation Stimulating Ecological Connectedness.” PhD diss., Københavns Universitet, Det Humanistiske Fakultet.

Johnson, Joyce Starr, and Laurel Wilson. 2005. “‘It Says You Really Care’: Motivational Factors of Contemporary Female Handcrafters.” Clothing & Textiles Research Journal 23 (2): 115–30.

MacEachren, Zabe. 2000. “Crafting as a Practice of Relating to the Natural World.” Canadian Journal of Environmental Education 5: 186–99.

Oxford English Dictionary. 2025. “Craft (v.).” June 2025.

Parker, Rozsika. 1984. The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: The Women’s Press.

Pink, Sarah. 2015. Doing Sensory Ethnography. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications.

Riley, Jill. 2008. “Weaving an Enhanced Sense of Self and a Collective Sense of Self through Creative Textile Making.” Journal of Occupational Science 15 (2): 63–73.

Robinson, Katherine. 2020. “Everyday Multiculturalism in the Public Library: Taking Knitting Together Seriously.” Sociology 54 (3): 556–72.

Røstvik, Camilla Mørck, and Thomas Palmelund Johansen. 2015. “Craftivisme: Politisk Protest Med Nål Og Tråd.” Slagmark: Tidsskrift for Idéhistorie 71: 79–92.

Shove, Elizabeth. 2007. The Design of Everyday Life. Oxford: Berg.

Skjold, Else. 2018. “Making Sense of Dress: On Sensory Perspectives of Wardrobe Research.” Artifact 5 (1): 4.1–4.15.