Telling Tales With Technology

In a wide ranging slide talk Tanya Harrod indicated the ways in which interviews with craftspeople made by others, for example, from the National Electronic Video Archive of the Crafts (NEVAC) can provide the researcher with unexpected insights and information which would not necssarily be available elsewhere and which can prepare the researcher with questions for their own interviews. In her own interviews with William Newland and his contemporaries she had found that Gerda Flockinger, for example, was influenced, like many others, by high speed and micro photography which revealed cell structures apparent in much 1950s work from wallpapers to sculpture, but insisted on not having seen or been influenced by the 'Growth in Form' exhibition of 1951. Dr.Harrod used this example to show how writers and historians all too easily look at exhibition catalogues, magazine articles etc. as influencing the individual artist, when direct interview can sometimes reveal alternative influences. Personal contact with the makers also provides the opportunity for the reseacher to gain access to photographs of works which could have been destroyed (as with 1950s cafe decoration by William Newland and Margaret Hyne), or sold abroad, or for some reason rejected.