‘A Word to Start an Argument with’: Virginia Woolf’s Craftsmanship

Abstract

This paper explores Virginia Woolf’s 1937 radio broadcast (and later essay) ‘Craftsmanship’ in the context of craft culture. As Woolf considers the word judiciously and playfully throughout ‘Craftsmanship’, it becomes a nexus point for an entanglement of ideas around making, creating, and producing. This paper places Woolf’s understanding of craft practices in the context of contemporary debates regarding the legacy of the arts and crafts movement, Roger Fry’s work in the Omega Workshops, and her own experience in the Hogarth Press. While it is tempting to see the Hogarth Press as a model of craft culture, Woolf was sceptical about any nostalgia for craft practices, often rather sloppy with the craft of book making, and deeply ambivalent about any valorization of craft. Without dismissing the significant place of the Hogarth Press in discussions about craft culture, this paper is most interested in Woolf’s repeated use of ‘craft’ to talk about the work of the writer. It explores Woolf’s own ambivalent engagement with writing as ‘craft’ and questions what it might mean to see Woolf as a craftswoman. It pays attention to her suspicion of privileging ‘well made’ writing over imagination and emotion, her attitudes towards the professionalism of craft (particularly in the context of gender), as well as the often permeable boundaries between her ‘craft’ and her ‘art’. For Woolf, the troublesome word ‘craft’ leads to, associates with, and intersects with concepts central to her life and work, including art, imagination, inspiration, production, process, amateurism, professionalism, education, skill, and vocation.

Keywords:

• Virginia Woolf
• craftmanship
• storytelling
• modern craft
• Omega Workshop
• Hogarth Press

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Clemson University Press for permission to publish portions of a previous essay.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pye was loosely connected to Woolf’s social and artistic circle. His mother was the bookbinder Sybil Pye and his aunt was the painter, sculptor, and draughtsman Ethel Pye. His work on craft was also influenced by Roger Fry.

2 Henceforth CDML (Crowded Dance of Modern Life).

3 For further discussion see: Pye (1968) who explores various definitions of craft in The Nature and Craft of Workmanship and considers the value of skilled workmanship in an age of factory-made objects; Adamson, whose introduction to The Craft Reader delineates the intellectual history of craft; and Sennett (2008) who, in The Craftsman, traces the ‘enduring’ ‘human impulse’ that is craftsmanship (9) as well as the various forms it can take.

4 Jeffrey Petts (2008) in fact argues that there was ‘a formal split in the Arts and Crafts Movement in the early twentieth century’ between ‘handicraft purists’ and those who were more open to mass production’ (37).

5 Judy Little reveals that there were copies of Morris’s The Defence of Guinevere and The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs in Woolf’s library. Woolf requested a copy of ‘The Pilgrims of Hope’. She also, according to Elisa Kay Sparks, read J. W. Mackail’s biography of Morris in 1905 and, 35 years later in 1940, she read Morris’s ‘Chants for Socialists’ (Sparks 139). In Mrs Dalloway, Sally Seton gives Clarissa a book by Morris, wrapped in brown paper.

6 See Donna Rhein (1985) for more detail on the practicalities and physical demands of operating the press. She notes that the Woolfs first bought a small hand press in 1917 which they replaced with a larger Minerva machine with a treadle in 1921.

7 There is much debate about craft as a pride in amateurism or professional knowledge. See, for example, Richard Sennett (2008), Stephen Knott (2015), and Kyriaki Hadjiafxendi and Patricia Zakreski (2016).