Gustav Thane
About Gustav Thane
The Blacksmith’s Craft: An Embodied Theory from the Workshop Floor
Skilled craft actions develop thought and understanding of a situation by solving the material complexity of a task at hand. These modes of thought, embodied by experienced craft practitioners, are different but complementary to other modes of academic thought. Experienced practitioners, known in the blacksmith’s craft as Masters, typically recognize this embodied knowledge in each other’s work. But when it comes to dissemination or discussion, academic discourse has, to date, paid little attention to this knowledge. Craft scholarship has a tendency to discuss craft practice from a generalized, theoretically elevated perspective, detached from the crude messiness of raw materials. Its concepts easily overlook the particular modes of thinking that come with extensive motor skill, resulting in a gap in knowledge about how this mode could contribute to academic discourse.
My research proposes a Workshop Floor Theory that makes it possible to recognize and accesspatterns of thinking and knowing, informed and guided by craft skill. Drawing on the gerund verbs of the blacksmithing craft, Grounded Theory, and concepts from craft scholarship, skilled actions are conceptualized to form the basis of a pragmatic piece of embodied craft theory. In this research, Grounded Theory is adapted to embodied actions, grounding technique verbs in skill to narrow the gap between a Master’s perception and that of a craft connoisseur or interested scholar. Craft-specific technique verbs, following Strauss and Corbin’s understanding of theory, are conceptualized through infographic video descriptions and systematization into a nomenclature of craft techniques.
Workshop Floor Theory offers a discursive access to embodied modes of thought, applicable to craft practice, the sciences and humanities, and puts the craft concepts material negotiation, material force, and material flow (Kenji 2003; Ingold 2010; 2013) in dialog with the more generally used concepts of material agency, material affordance, and tool affordance (Malafouris, 2008; Kirchhoff, 2009; Kimmel and Groth, 2024). Specifying the[GT1] connections between conceptualizations makes the academic tradition of research applicable to craft practice, but also the hands-on tradition of craft practice applicable to wider academic research. Concepts are developed as a tool for researchers to theoretically access, and apply, embodied knowledge within academic discourse.
[GT1]Grace wrote: wider research craftwork, + finer refinement. (marking the italic concepts here).
I may need to specify what my paradigm is, American pragmatism, and blacksmith craft practice research. But that also feels a bit off to put here…