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pan>15 participants took part in the questionnaire and the results were quite revealing about people’s perception and attitudes towards knitting. The first question, ‘What do you consider to be traditional crafts?’ was intended for participants to define craft but only a handful interpreted the question in this way. Most of the participants gave an example of a process they considered to be traditional crafts instead. These results could show evidence of how hard it is to define traditional crafts because people chose to answer it with an example of craft rather than to describe it. The 5 participants that did describe it described

 

it in the same way as each other by saying different variations of, ‘Making something with your hands’. This description of traditional crafts is a much more simplified definition then the before mentioned definitions the leading craftspeople of the world today gave in the Victoria and Albert Museum interview. None of the sample responses mentioned the technology vs. traditional crafts debate other than one stating that traditional crafts was an ‘Old way of making things without machines’. Again only one participant mentioned whether traditional crafts could be aesthetically pleasing saying, ‘like woodwork, making something beautiful using hand tools’, so within their definition crafting is about making something beautiful, a far cry from Paul Greenhalgh’s explanation of craft. The results of the questionnaire show that traditional crafts are hard to define and when defined by the sample, the results show a far too simplified explanation of traditional craft that most craftspeople would not be satisfied with.         Question 2.a) asked, ‘Do you practice any traditional crafts?’ surprisingly 11 people said ‘yes’ they do practise traditional crafts leaving only 4 people that said they did not practise traditional crafts. This large number of people practising craft comes as a surprise because the number of craftspeople working today is supposed to be at an all-time low. ‘Crafts in the English Countryside: Towards a Future’ by E.J.T. Collins states, ‘From nearly 2/3 of the working population in 1911, numbers of skilled and semi-skilled manual workers fell to about 40% in the 1970’s, to less than 20% currently’ (2004, pg.17). So the results of so many people practising a traditional craft is unusual, however if by practising a tradition craft they mean as a ‘hobby’ than it is not as uncommon as once thought. In fact only 1 participant stated that they practised traditional crafts as a career by answering the question with, ‘I’m a blacksmith’.

 

Question 2 asked, ‘Which traditional craft do you practice?’ The most common traditional crafts practised were knitting and sewing, interestingly 3 of the 4 knitters also mentioned sewing as a traditional craft they could do. Weaving, printmaking and basketry was also mentioned as traditional crafts. Card-making was also mentioned as a traditional craft, personally I would not consider it a traditional craft and after thorough research neither does other people, card-making is considered a craft but not a traditional craft. This shows how confusing it is for people to separate traditional crafts from no本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。