Crafts tax appals visitor

Press, 30 August 1979, Page 21

Crafts tax appals visitor

The sales tax on handcrafted goods appals an expert designer and weaver from Britain, Miss Marianne Straub. "I think it is atrocious,’’ she said in Christchurch. “If people are enterprising enough to set up a small workshop to make any kind of craft for sale, they should not be handicapped by, as I see it, a completely unjustified tax. It will kill initiative.” Miss Straub, one of only 70 living holders of the award, Royal Designer for Industry, was in Christchurch to run a course at the Arts Centre for the Canterbury Guild of Spinners and Weavers. She believes good weavers should be able to make a living from the craft.

“This should be encouraged in times of growing unemployment,” she said. The Swiss-born Miss Straub attributed the growing interest in spinning and weaving to increased leisure time and to the satisfaction gained from making rugs, furnishings, and clothing to personal designs. Manufacturers were becoming so big and so competitive that they made textiles to meet a common denominator in taste, with less and less variety. “People who can make their own things now want to do so to express individual ideas,” she said. Miss Straub, who won

he first medal awarded by the Textile Institute and received a Jubilee Medal in 1977 for her'services to weaving, was an industrial designer of woven textiles for many years. She said she had produced millions of yards of weaving, mainly in furnishing fabrics. Now living in retirement in Cambridge, she still spends all her time designing, weaving, and running courses. The Australian Guild of Spinners and Weavers recently invited her to give courses in several cities, after which the Wool Board brought her to New Zealand to hold classes in main centres. After only a few

hours instructing in Christchurch Miss Straub said it was much too soon to comment on work done by Canterbury guild members. But she had seen some beautiful spinning and well-designed woven rugs, hand-knitted and woven jackets, ponchos, and coats in Auckland. New Zealanders were a little shy of using colours with gusto, she said. “And I do love bright colours.” Miss Straub regards knitting as a “full sister” to weaving, and though she has. seen plenty of hand-knitted garments in New Zealand she is surpised not to find more machine. knitting done domestically.