Gesture

Each craft has its own unique set of gestures.  Curiously, in Old Irish singing there is a winding gesture whereby the arm of the singer is moved by another, presumable to keep to the rhythm of the tune. Repeated craft gestures are like beats in music. Spinning and weaving has traditionally gone hand in hand with the singing voice providing a steady rhythmical background to the work. I plan to video gestures while preparing fibres, spinning thread and weaving cloth and hope that we collaborators can meet in person to witness the shapes that define the making of cloth.

The essence of craft gesture is most vividly summed up by the musicality of the blacksmith as he works around the anvil: swinging, beating, resting and moving (dancing).  Seamus Heaney’s poem the forge is an elegy to the art of blacksmithing.

The Forge

All I know is a door into the dark.

Outside, old axles and iron hoops rusting;

Inside, the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,

The unpredictable fantail of sparks

Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water.

The anvil must be somewhere in the centre, 

Horned as a unicorn, at one end square,

Set there immovable: an altar

Where he expends himself in shape and music.

Heaney, S. door into the Dark. London: Faber and Faber (1969)