Unboxing the Collection: How vessels carry culture and hold humanity

From cup to pot, basket to bottle, vessels of every kind are at their fullest when empty. They represent holding space for something: sustenance, humans, toys, building materials, things to be transported, or hidden, or put to rest, gifted, discarded, stored. The materials and design processes used are the sum of many stories. The patina, glaze or weft of any vessel cared for within Crafts Council Collection today might contain the hidden stories and lessons of countless unnamed craftspersons, cultures, traditions and practices across generations. In a transformational project over three years, Crafts Council’s collections team is working to bring this full richness to light – to unearth the full story of craft as a human practice.

To start sharing this work, Crafts Council’s collections team commissioned curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert to create Unboxing the Collection, an exhibition and programme that took place in October 2024, using the vessel to explore the interconnectedness of creativity. Selecting 34 objects from the collection to focus on and display, Dalton sought to speak to themes of examining and reimagining narratives told through craft objects, inviting discussion around how collections contribute to narratives while providing a platform to explore materials, styles, and techniques that transcend geographical and temporal boundaries. The programme sparked meaningful conversation about craft practice and culture, revealing how craft techniques are shared by makers across different times, cultures and contexts.

Craft objects, vessels in particular, continue traditions that are thousands of years old, laboured and sincere. The exhibitions presentation of 34 objects from the Craft Council’s collection and supporting selection of 13 objects from the handling collection were a testament to shared making techniques, the indelible skills of which transcend geographical and temporal boundaries. As they exist today, whether as historic artefacts or modern creations, vessels are significant examples of our shared human heritage. Accordingly, the display of works from  Crafts Council Collection – including Magdalene Odundo’s Asymmetrical Reduced Black Piece and Darren Appiagyei’s Banksia Vessel, also addressed parallel concerns with history, objecthood and the, relationship between past and present cultural realities.

Launching the programme, the session Making the Connection: Craft Across Cultures’ held in Crafts Council Gallery, set up the transcultural nature of discussions. Ceramics artist Rosa Nguyen, whose works are also part of Crafts Council Collection, led a hands-on workshop making clay forms, talking with guests about methods of clay manipulation alongside associations of organ systems in the human body and their linked emotions as understood within traditional Chinese medicine. The variety of natural hand-formed vessels made in the session were then combined with dried plants to make an array of arrangements inspired by ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. Nguyen drew on her experience studying ikebana in Japan, which arose from funding she had received from Crafts Council early in her career.

The second event, Reimagining Narratives, drew inspiration and intention from the theme for 2024’s Black History Month and focused on the stories of Black craftspersons. Here the act of ‘reimaging’ was key, uncovering of stories of Black makers who have been historically underrepresented in Crafts Council Collection, as with much British and Eurocentric collecting. Focusing on Odundo’s piece from the collection as well as the more recently acquired vessel by Shawanda Corbett, What's taking you so long (from 'Neighbourhood Garden') - as well as noting the influence of renowned potter, Ladi Kwali - curator and art historian Alayo Akingugbe unpacked the stories embedded within the craft vessels and the inequality baked into collections, delving into disparate perspectives towards craft within Black communities. Following the talk, participants took part in a workshop led by wood artist Darren Appiagyei. Using paper, string, natural ephemera, clips, cork, and wire to create spontaneous, free-form making, Appiagyei placed just one limitation on the group: to use glue and scissors, leading guests to fashion their own vessels as intuitively as possible, using Craft Council’s Make First craft education pedagogy, prioritising an instinctual approach to exploring materials and embracing ‘failure’ as a natural part of developing ideas.

Replete with a variety of unique vessel forms – cups, pots, urns, trays, baskets and and bottles – Unboxing the Collection was an opportunity to reflect on how we understand the vessel as a familiar everyday object providing extraordinary insights into creative interconnectedness, what brings humans closer in common whatever their own time or context. Although vessels were at the forefront of the show, the exhibition Exploring the Vessel also marked an important moment to reflect on Crafts Council Collection more broadly. It is vital that this national collection for contemporary craft is representative of the true breadth of makers contributing to it, materials, techniques, and objects that inform how we see ourselves. It provided a moment in time, a holding space, to reckon with both the tangible and intangible beauty and materiality of craft through something every human has contact with – vessels of all kinds. “The sentimental value that everyday objects hold is definitely something that I’ve become more conscious of through working on this project,” says Dalton. “It’s not necessarily what they hold practically, but emotionally.”

Noah Mclean is a member of Crafts Council’s Young Craft Citizens. Noah supported Crafts Council’s collections team and curator Lewis Dalton Gilbert to present Unboxing the Collection in October 2024.