At Gefn, concern for craft is vital link

Press, 30 August 1985, Page 14

At Gefn, concern for craft is vital link

By

MAVIS AIREY

“Most craftspeople aren’t really business people,” admits a Christchurch weaver, Jill Dando. “But we’re learning.” Jill is a founder member of Gefn, one of New Zealand’s longest-running craft co-operatives. The name comes from a Scandinavian goddess of beauty and art. Eight years ago the original group of four opened a tiny shop in The Shades shopping precinct. Finding it difficult to combine running the shop and carrying on their craft, they sought more members. Not surprisingly, they soon ran out of space. Early last year they took the plunge and moved to a bigger site. “The move to Cashel Street was an act of faith,” remembers Jill. “We have four times the space, and a membership of 18. We had grown very rapidly and had to cope with all sorts of things that didn’t occur in a small venue.” The main problem has been finances. “We’ve got to accept that we are in business. It’s always a problem with craft to balance the creative with the business

and marketing sides. “But because we’re a group, we keep on trying.” One advantage is that they can draw on the contacts various members of the group have for advice. “We’ve found that professional people are interested in helping us because we’re unusual. People like lawyers and accountants have been very generous. It’s fun for them, and we’re really quite a big business concern.” The reasons for Gefn’s existence are not purely financial. “Many people who create art and craft find it difficult taking it to a retail store and just handing it over,” explains Jill. “Here we have control over how it is marketed. All work is sold on commission, so all the profits go back to the makers. “This puts the onus on the maker — and that brings added responsibility as well as advantages.” One of the biggest advantages Jill finds is the sense of community with the group. “There is a tremendous; spin-off from working

with other crafts. It’s enriching: I’ve learnt a lot about other crafts. “Our common bond is craft. We’re very diverse, and would never have come together otherwise.” The group now represents pottery, woodturning, weaving, silver jewellery, batik, cane, patchwork, and stained glass.

There are other practical advantages, says Jill. All members work in the shop, but the hours of work can be flexible. Each member puts in an average of half a day a week, but can choose when it is, or arrange to swap with others. The members’ other duties include taking turns to organise the window dis-

play or the layout of goods in the shop; acting as treasurer or facilitator; handling publicity or legal aspects. The craftspeople like having control over how their work is displayed, and enjoy the feedback they get from customers by being on the spot.

“You often overhear a customer say something like ‘I love that casserole, but I wish the handle was bigger,” comments Jill.

Her enthusiasm for Gefn does not blind her to the disadvantages of a craft cooperative. “From a purely business point of view, it’s shockingly inefficient with so many people. We can’t make quick decisions; we have to wait for meetings. “As we’ve got bigger perhaps it’s time to rethink our way of organising ourselves. It can get to the point where things get a bit unwieldly.” Twenty is felt to be the maximum the co-operative should be allowed to grow to.

When a person wants to join the Gefn he or she submits a representative selection of work for the group to consider. If the work is up to standard, and is not going to hurt anyone else in the group, the person is invited to a meeting of the co-operative to have an opportunity to assess the others and be assessed in turn. After three months trial, the person becomes a member.

The selection process may sound rigorous, “but we’ve never had to throw anyone out,” says Jill. The quality of the cooperative’s products is undeniably high. The shop is a delight to the eye: somewhere between an exhibition and a treasure trove, with a great diversity of

colour, shape, and texture. Jill Dando specialises in mohair and wool, doing all her own dyeing to produce distinctive colour combinations on soft furnishings, travel rugs, and scarves.

The work of the other weaver, Janet Riddle, is quite different — chunky fleece rugs, table runners, and wall hangings in the unusual Theo Moorman technique. Lynn Taylor’s silk batik — mainly cushions — is notable for its intricate designs, often inspired by native flowers.

Sue Spigel is an expert in contemporary American patchwork: meticulous work, drawing on a library of 400 fabrics. She produces striking clothing and enormous bedspreads. Of the six potters, Averil Cave and Denise Meyrick specialise in domestic stoneware, each in her distinctive style, while Gaynor Thacker might be three people rolled into one, her porcelain, domestic stoneware, and pit-fired work are in such different styles. Mary Forrest’s pottery is all hand-built, often in clays coloured with oxides rather than glazes. She uses dental tools to carve graphic and pictorial designs, and give different textures to the clay.

Roger Chaplin specialises in decorative pit-fired pottery, in which the colouring is produced by sprinkling metal oxides on to sawdust. Copper produces red flashes, iron yellow flashes. One of the charms of thi c type of work is its unpredictability.

Robyn Hetherington follows the .Japanese Anagama method, selecting different clays to get different colourings, and getting different effects from burning different kinds of wood, or

the position of the pot in the kiln. The pottery has to be fired in a huge kiln (she uses a communal one in Darfield).

The three woodturners also produce contrasting work: Mary Bartos’s is robust, using strong forms; Mark Piercey specialises in very fine work, such as fluted bowls, often with the bark left on; Stuart WrightStow makes wooden toys — the designs all “consumer tested” by his four young children.

Jocelyn Mitchell makes stained glass trinket boxes and whimsical light-catch-ers to hang in the window. Jeweller Betty Loopeker trained in the Netherlands, and shows the continental influence in her silver earrings and necklaces. Britishtrained Penny Hughes’ jewellery is more flamboyant: hair-clips featuring dyed feathers, for example. Biff McDermott makes a great variety of canework, anything from garlic holders to laundry baskets, using natural, painted, and varnished cane.

Gefn holds regular exhibitions to give members a focal point to work toward, and an incentive to produce something “a little different.”

They choose a theme that will tie all their diverse crafts loosely together, and make sure they are all working in roughly the same direction. The last exhibition was “Boxes, bowls, and balls.” The next one, which starts on Monday, September 2, is called “From the ocean to the Snow,” and will be about Canterbury.

The exhibition runs until September 14 at the Gefn Gallery, 79 Cashel Street, and is open from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m.