I DRAW THE LINE AT STRINGING PEARLS

Abstract

This paper contributes to developing understandings of strong commitments to particular forms of work and how they are sustained against bleak, unstable, exploitative and self-exploitative conditions. It approaches this duality between feeling and structure within the temporal and relational qualities of hope as they are experienced by women jewellery designer-makers in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter. The paper locates these hopes in the Craftswoman's Imperative, a symbolic good and material practice that is concerned with upholding objective values of the truth and beauty of artisanship. The paper details how the hopes of these designer-makers become aligned with those of policy-actors for a reinvigoration of British craftsmanship. It then explores how hope is upheld, and challenged, through sensory experiences of engaging with the material world. Finally, the paper explores these designer-makers’ optimistic practices for achieving the value of the Craftswoman's Imperative.

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