Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-201) and index.

Craft at the limits -- Craft as a process -- Supplemental -- Homage to Brancusi -- Wearable sculptures : modern jewelry and the problem of autonomy -- Reframing the pattern and decoration movement -- Props : Gijs Bakker and Gord Peteran -- Material -- Ceramic presence : Peter Voulkos -- Natural limitations : Stephen De Staebler and Ken Price -- Crawling through mud : Yagi Kazuo -- The materialization of the art object, 1966-72 -- Breath : Dale Chihuly and Emma Wooffenden -- Skilled -- Circular thinking : David Pye and Michael Baxandall -- Learning by doing -- Thinking in situations : Josef Albers -- from the Bauhaus to Black Mountain -- Charles Jencks and Kenneth Frampton : the ad hoc and the tectonic -- Conclusion : skill and the human condition -- Pastoral -- Regions apart -- Two versions of pastoral : Phil Leider and Art Espenet Carpenter -- North, south, east, west : Carl Andre and Robert Smithson -- Landscapes : Gord Peteran and Richard Slee -- Amateur -- "The world's most fascinating hobby" : Robert Arneson -- Feminism and the politics of amateurism -- Abject craft : Mike Kelley and Tracey Emin.

This volume provides an introduction to the varied concepts and theories of modern arts and crafts. The author writes about craft as a process or an approach -- not as things. He demonstrates the complex interdependencies of craft and art as well as "craft's" own conflicting historical tendencies. The author presents five aspects of "craft's" supposed second-class identity: supplementarity, sensuality, skill, the pastoral, and the amateur. Contrary to the implied second-class status of these themes, he suggests that these are in fact the things that make craft significant and unique.

This book provides an introduction to the way that artists working in all media think about craft. Dispensing with clichéd arguments that craft is art, Adamson persuasively makes a case for defining craft in a more nuanced fashion.

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