Since the word first appeared in English over a thousand years ago, we’ve lost touch with what craft really means, says Alexander Langlands. Here’s an extract from his brilliant new book Craeft: How Traditional Crafts Are about More than Just Making

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GERMAN philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgement, differentiated between free and dependent beauty, and this is a useful distinction when considering the future of British craft. In the world of art, free beauty can be tainted by a reliance on the functional: form and appearance should always be appreciated as part of a pure aesthetic. But I would judge the forging of a good billhook, not on how pleasing aesthetically it is to the eye but on how close its form is to that of other billhooks I’ve used. Its attraction – and therefore its beauty – is dependent on its ability to function as a billhook.

We’ve become pretty adept, in the western world, at enjoying and celebrating the pure aesthetics of crafted objects, no doubt a legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement. But we increasingly struggle with dependent beauty because we don’t know how to place or use functioning crafted goods. We don’t know what to measure that beauty against. What is it dependent on? We struggle with the true value of a woollen blanket because our central heating never allows us to get cold enough. We can’t appreciate the ergonomics of a good scythe because we don’t need to make hay. We aren’t aware of the cooling properties of a stoneware storage jar because we’ve only ever known life with a fridge. We care less about the workmanship invested in our shoes because when they start to fall apart we just buy another pair. If the 1970s craft revival movement in Britain was about saying, ‘Hey, we’re losing something – the last generation of makers is dying out!’, then the meta-narrative of the current crop of craft-orientated writing is about disconnection: we have become detached from making, and it isn’t a good state for us to be in. It’s unhealthy when we are disconnected from making.

At its deepest root, I think this disconnection is derived from our illiteracy of power. Beyond getting a bit puffed out after hefting a few boxes up the stairs, we don’t, in society as a whole, really know what energy is all about. It’s too macro for us to comprehend. We’ve become too used to electricity or gas on tap – flicking a switch and using as much as we can afford – facilitated by increased automotive and mechanical complexity. This is the age of the leaf blower, the electric window and the battery-powered pepper grinder (with a built-in light). The people who argue that the price of wind and tidal energy will have to come down before we can further invest in them are so enslaved to an economic model founded on petrochemicals that they completely miss the point: we’ve never had power so cheap and, arguably, will not have again. Our over-reliance on fossil fuels, stemming from the Industrial Revolution, has sold us down a dead-end street. And we can’t afford to back up.

Craft has, and always will, enjoy buoyancy among the luxury markets, for those who can appreciate it and for those who are simply buying a price tag. But for the everyday, the cost is prohibitive. Take drystone walling. Even in the Cotswold region of England – where money is in no short supply, delivery is cheap and raw materials are widely available – wire fencing still proliferates over dilapidated stretches of ruined walls. Why, when a drystone wall is clearly a superior form of land boundary? Because we haven’t found a machine to do the job. Because it takes a hand-eye coordination that only the most complex machine we have at our disposal – our own body – is capable of. But we can no longer afford to pay for this human source of power.

This may change, though. Fuel costs, in real terms, are rising. We’re on the brink of an energy crisis and there is an emerging oil shortage. More to the point, planet Earth is roasting and, if it isn’t too late, we may just be able to pull it back from disaster. If we do, it will be because it’s cheaper to go back to using people, rather than machines, to do the work. Rake up your leaves. Grind your own pepper. Use your own arm to wind your car window up and down. Use your legs, in the first place, to get you from A to B.

Perhaps, when we once again start to use our own bodies – our own kinaesthetic sensibility – to support our existence we may regain a literacy of power and rediscover the knowledge of cræft, as it first appeared in written English over a thousand years ago. Our problem with British craft is that we have over-fetishised the point at which a crafted object is put together. We’ve conflated craft with skill and design with art when, following the German definition of Kraft, it should be about more than just making. It is the power, the force, the knowledge and the wisdom behind making – the cræft behind it.

Alexander Langlands’s book Craeft: How Traditional Crafts Are about More than Just Making is published in November by Faber & Faber (£20.00 Hardback). You can buy a copy here.