In the previous century, the reclamation of land by closing off the Zuiderzee had an enormous impact on the local economy and culture. Old crafts were no longer what they had been. The work of the cooper, rope-maker, net-maker, tanner and coppersmith was supplemented with mechanical skills, but this did not mean that the craft vanished completely – it was transformed into something new: the fisherman took up new employment in a button factory or in the ceramics industry.
Own small industries
In this exhibition, Studio Makkink & Bey examines the development of the craft by demonstrating interrelationships between production processes from the past of the Zuiderzee and contemporary translations of tailor-made industry. In the past few years, attention has been increasingly devoted to the design process, the action. Within that process, artists and designers create their own crafts and their own small-scale industries or artefacts.
Studio Makkink & Bey provides a platform for national and international designers who display, in a broad sense, the evolution of crafts and artefacts in their work. For example, designer Merel Karhof built the Wind Knitting Factory, a machine that knits a scarf using wind energy. In cooperation with Tim Knapen, Unfold developed a 3-D printer for ceramics. The exhibition juxtaposes these works with historical craft tools: a needle for mending nets and moulds from the ceramics industry.
