For a long, long time now, I’ve been focusing on primarily the indie craft world in English speaking countries. As I’ve lived in both the UK and the US they’ve gotten the most attention, with Canada and Australia** lagging behind. Well, guess what?

I’m flip-flopping and focusing more on international craft these days instead of mainly indie craft! It’s time for it to happen, it’s a new year, so -Huzzah!- posts around here will still be all about craft and creativity, just may be about things farther afield. It’s all so very exciting!!

But this gear shift does come with a whole new host of questions and thoughts, which means beginning to ask some things that, frankly, at first seemed a bit uncomfortable. Here are two of the ones I’ve been pondering lately in brief, so you can chew on them and see if they resonate, appall or make you feel kinda queasy. Any reaction is, of course, fine… Just as long as you have a reaction.

First, as if the word “craft” isn’t hard enough to define, it gets even sketchier to flesh out when you add in cultures that still craft for utility, whether it’s 100% or partially. Sometimes this chasm seems almost impossible to connect because the handspun knitted iPod cozy with an owl looks pretty darn frivolous when compared to, say, a handwoven basket created because you don’t have a basket and you need one.

Secondly, we enter “want” vs. “need” territory- a territory so vast it makes you kind of wish you were back on the other side of that chasm, steeling up the nerve to jump. Given craft’s ubiquitous utilitarian roots, (a major separation point from art) once providing vital “needs” in all countries, what does it really say about our cultures now when we produce mainly out of “want?” That we have too much free time and money to sit around making what we could buy? That we’re so privileged we don’t even realize the irony in creating items by hand when most of us have relatives, maybe some still alive, for whom the boom of fabric mills was an incredible timesaver?

These are the questions that are right in front of me as I start to look into craft in countries where people earn as much in a day as we pay for our morning coffee. Maybe you’ll be interested in asking them along with me or maybe you’ll be bored learning about projects that happen continents away. But you do have to ask yourself, don’t those questions also point to a shift in our own approach to crafts? Or at the very least, wants vs. needs? I’m not saying I have the answer, only that I’ve begun to ask the question.

So, taking one tiny step today in that somewhat daunting aforementioned territory, I wanted to introduce you to the Mapula Embroidery Project. The photo directly above documents the Queen of England accepting a gift from the project on a 1999 visit to South Africa. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the words “Education Development” are embroidered at the top of the piece, as the women were not solely making gorgeous pieces, they were making gorgeous pieces with a message. The photo up at the top by Maggie Maepa is a 2005 piece titled Wedding Day and You Can Live a Long Time with AIDS. I think the title alone says it all, really, it embodies hope instead of accepting destruction.

Mapula (“Mother of Rain” in Tswana) is a project of Soroptimist International Pretoria, the local Soroptimist branch who wanted to aid local women who needed to earn a living. Their pieces tell the story of individual women and reflect their own hopes and dreams and concerns, elucidating the feelings of many other women who no doubt have the same feelings but feel voiceless. As with all craft, embedded inside the actual craft skills is the therapeutic nature of the needle and stitching, helping the women develop empowerment as they simultaneously earn a living.

Want more?

*Links for the Mapula Embroidery Project and the Soroptimists in Pretoria

*More info and photos of a Mapula exhibit at Gallery On The Square over here

*Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910-1994 by Shannen Hill

*Stitches as Sutures: Trauma and Recovery in Works by Women in Mapula Embroidery Project by Brenda Schmahmann in 2006 she released the book Embroidery and Empowerment in the Winterveld. I can’t find her online, but learned she also was the editor of Material Matters: Applique by the Weya Women of Zimbabwe and Needlework of South African Collectives in 2000!

*Wondering who the heck are the soroptimists? Go have a looksee here and learn about all the great things they’ve accomplished!

**I’m not saying that those are the only countries that speak English predominantly, just perhaps the biggest?