"Their sole passion directed, once their days of love had guttered, on the production of this wooden sculpture, and among the muddle of huts at the foot of the outer wall, existed a score of creative craftsmen whose position as leading carvers gave them pride of place among the shadows".

From Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake.

The curatorial function relevant to the amassing, sorting and labelling of a collection highlights both the power and the tyranny of language. Labels necessary for identification, cataloguing and eventually as common denominators for rational discourse, assume the power of
extending the description of what has been done into a prescription for what will be done. In a sense, this happens in woodwork, in fact in all craft practice. The method, developed to meet a need, readily becomes a framework dictating the next generation's direction.

Conversely, how do we, for example, understand the word 'wood' to be a satisfactory common denominator for everything that is collected in its name? The continuum through hand-made functional objects made of wood to sculpture in wood, to sculpture partly in wood, through furniture to furniture partly in wood, to furniture with no wood at all, which is being seen in exhibition programs, may well be an example of the 'rich tapestry of life', but it highlights the ambiguities of a functional language.

Wood, more than most materials, brings with it a rich emotional, romantic and even spiritual tradition.

As one of the primordial substances underlying not only man's practical endeavour, but also his ideas about his own beginnings, it has evolved as a central symbol of the mythologies of many cultures.

Along with stone, it represents one of the base elements of structure in our collective psyche and its physical qualities, both as tree and as post, are part of a building language for structure. This is still central to construction, engineering and architecture.

The tree as a symbol of beginning, strength and growth, and as a shrine to the gods of nature, is evoked as a contemporary image with no less fervour than it was by the ancients at the beginning of the 'tree of life' stories. Many who fashion in wood are still overwhelmed by this power, enshrining it in their work.

Some do this positively; combining these widely accepted emotional 'truths' with their own visions. Much of the turned work we see, such as that by Heinz Moritz (147WIO, 154WI2) and Jim Hammerly (1W1), makes use of the inherent qualities of the material, speaking in the vernacular to those eager to hear.

But some do it negatively, by trivialising nature and draining instead of uplifting the material: witness polished mallee root table lamps and that whole plethora of schlock that threatens to swamp any image of the professional wood worker that may exist in the public mind.

The whole area is a latecomer to the contemporary crafts movement. A longer history of decorative and fine cabinet-making exists over a layer of cottage crafts, over yet another layer of that ability to improvise that is a much-loved part of the picture Australians have of themselves.

Dickie Blackman (55W4), a leading exponent of the British cottage furniture tradition, has highlighted the inheritance of one of the oldest of our very young Western traditions.

In a sense, Bryan Poynton (317W26) represents the extension of this tradition into that of the 'woodies', the most widely known aspect of studio woodcraft, which is the backbone of so many wood groups. This was the growth area of the 1970s and emphasised both the technical aspects of carpentry, joinery and cabinet making, and the turned and carved tableware, produced by people such as David Ralph. It looked to individual and small studio modes of working.

At its best, this movement, through people such as Neville Selleck (263W22), absorbed the refinements of an educated and rational design
method.

However the visit of Stephen Hogbin, amongst the first of a series of major fillips to the practice of woodcraft in Australia, had mixed results. On the negative side, it heralded the biggest rash of cloning we had witnessed outside the antique reproduction industry.

Positively, however, his visit opened up vistas for people sensitive to the opportunities of an improving environment and capable of extending an idea instead of copying it. Prominent amongst these people was Vie Wood (150W11), who has not looked back. Together with Richard Raffan (318W27), John Woolard (291W24, 377W31) and a handful of others, he has re-invigorated woodturning.

Other visitors have included McKinley, Makepeace and Cooper; and Ingham and Smith came and stayed. George Ingham (328W28) carried the undiluted Makepeace message in his work and in his teaching at the Canberra School of Art. A generation of new woodworkers is now beginning to carry the 'style' into practice.

The role of formal education was and is a much-underplayed hand in the game. Besides Ingham in Canberra and the significant influence of John Smith in Hobart, the system has trailed badly in serving the crafts community.

Malcolm Harris (337W29) is one of the few to surface from the sometimes-temporary TAFE courses in Victoria; and Anthony Russo (203W16) from the valiant Wood major at Melbourne State College.

Significant in the history of woodcraft is the overlap between craft and art. Confused perceptions of what constitutes sculpture as compared with woodwork have paralleled a major tendency in all the crafts to compensate for the lack of a critical language by adopting that of the fine arts.

Craftspeople have striven sometimes for the status they perceived the art world had, helping to remove artificial barriers, but sometimes confusing intellectual obscurity with conceptual purity.

Clinton Greenwood (184W13), Bryan Poynton in some of his work (250W18) and Barry Mills (214W17) at certain stages, trod that fine line. Conversely, Tony Pryor (255W19) never doubted what he was doing, and left the confusion to others.

If the 1960s and 1970s carried with them many elements of the notion of crafts as a rear-guard action against industrial depersonalisation, the era of the Post-Modem may yet be seen as the age of the cease-fire.

Mainstream design, with architecture, interior and industrial design at the forefront, rediscovered symbolism, cultural references, ceremony and celebration. In fact decoration, an aspect of personalising and delineating objects and structures — which had been kept alive by the crafts movement, sometimes against great odds and always against the holy inquisition of modernism — found renewed favour. No longer was minimalism and abstract pure geometry a divine truth. Industry, artists, designers and crafts people experimented with a new ecumenical approach.

The anarchic, sometimes fey, Memphis style swept over us, and again many were reborn in its image: witness Annabelle Collett (302W25).

Similar though not identical local movements are best seen in the work of Biltmoderne, and some of the Urban Works team followed suit.

Today therefore we can conjure up a picture of a constructive, creative continuum of design, art and craft practice not dreamed of since the visions of Morris and the like. Let us hope it proves to be more than a mirage.
Peake gives us an image of a collection:

Standing immobile throughout the day, these vivid objects, with their fantastic shadows on the wall behind them shifting and elongating hour by hour with the sun's rotation, exuded a kind of darkness for all their colour. The air between them was turgid with contempt and jealousy.

If the collection has faults and gaps, well then, maybe the profession has too. It's early days; given the funds and a recently improved selection policy the 'contempt' can be turned.

The 'jealousy'? Well, craftspeople are such