This volume brings together a cross-disciplinary group of anthropologists, researchers of craft, and designer-makers to enumerate and explore the diversity and complexity of problem-solving tactics and strategies employed by craftspeople, together with the key social, cultural, and environmental factors that give rise to particular ways of problem solving. Presenting rich, textured ethnographic studies of craftspeople at work around the world, Craftwork as Problem Solving examines the intelligent practices involved in solving a variety of problems and the ways in which these are perceived and evaluated both by makers and creators themselves, and by the societies in which they work. With attention to local factors such as training regimes and formal education, access to tools, socialisation and cultural understanding, budgetary constraints and market demands, changing technologies and materials, and political and economic regimes, this book sheds fresh light on the multifarious forms of intelligence involved in design and making, inventing and manufacturing, and cultivating and producing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, sociology, and cultural geography, as well as to craftspeople with interests in creativity, skilful practice, perception and ethnography.

This text on mathematical problem solving provides a comprehensive outline of "problemsolving-ology," concentrating on strategy and tactics. It discusses a number of standard mathematical subjects such as combinatorics and calculus from a problem solver's perspective.

Against the backdrop of an alienating, technologizing and ever-accelerating world of material production, this book tells an intimate story: one about a community of woodworkers training at an historic institution in London’s East End during the present ‘renaissance of craftsmanship’. The animated and scholarly accounts of learning, achievement and challenges reveal the deep human desire to create with our hands, the persistent longing to find meaningful work, and the struggle to realise dreams. In its penetrating explorations of the nature of embodied skill, the book champions greater appreciation for the dexterity, ingenuity and intelligence that lie at the heart of craftwork.

Arts and crafts were one of the very first therapies employed by occupational therapists. Today, crafts are still employed as effective interventions for clients with mental health disorders, physical dysfunctions, cognitive issues, and sensory concerns in hospitals, outpatient clinics, veterans’ centers, schools, skilled nursing facilities, or community settings. Step by step, the authors show you how to use a wide-range of novel, and highly engaging crafts. They explain how to connect the key tasks associated with an activity to functional outcomes, and how to modify them to meet the specific needs of individual patients. They also address the issues of documentation, and reimbursement.

This book explores the broad territory of design anthropology, covering key approaches, ways of working and areas of debate and tension. It understands design as fundamentally human centred and argues for a design anthropology based primarily on collaboration and communication. Adam Drazin suggests the most important collaborative knowledges which design anthropology develops are heuristic, emerging as engagements between fieldwork sites and design studios. The chapters draw on material culture literature and include a wide range of examples of different projects and outputs. Highlighting the importance of design as a topic in the study of contemporary culture, this is valuable reading for students and scholars of anthropology and design as well as practitioners.

Part of your job as the costume designer is to be creative and use what materials are available to you to execute the design elements in a production. This book will show you how to use inexpensive materials to create durable products in a short amount of time that are practical and technical. It is written in an easy-to-follow manner and each step is shown with a wide array of illustrations and photographs. From creating armour out of laundry baskets, to detailed tricks to create a prosthetic nose for a witch, this book will show the techniques needed for you to produce end results that are beautiful, economical, and fast to make.

John Ruskin's critical commentary on culture and society, transformative in his own time, established him as a leading critic of the 19th century. His prescient thinking resonates powerfully with today’s issues in cultural heritage conservation. This volume presents his ideas in context, key extracts from his works and future directions for his foundational ideas. Ruskin’s passionate responses to the environmental and social changes of his day chime with contemporary ideas on themes like sustainability, ethical production and environmentalism. Though widely recognised as a key figure in preservation history, his heritage work is rarely appreciated in full context and breadth. This volume presents six stimulating essays on Ruskin’s readership and reception, his transformative perceptions of heritage futures and provocative writing on cultural landscapes and the arts and crafts. Extracts from both well-known and lesser-known works accompany each chapter to reflect the distinctive vocality of his texts, from his writing on architecture and buildings, to landscape and cultural heritage. The volume offers a richer description of cultural context and meaning than usually afforded to Ruskin’s work in conservation and critical heritage studies finding its resonance and relevance. Written for an academic and professional audience in heritage studies and historic building conservation and particularly relevant for cultural heritage management, this is a core text and reference work for undergraduate and postgraduate students in history of art and architecture, heritage studies and architectural/building conservation, also central to interests of cultural historians and scholars of nineteenth-century/Victorian history and literature.