There is a lot of innovation around us: networks, surfing ... everything is compact and single-use; we produce closed systems or kits. Just like as if there existed only the service, consumption, administration, business, advertisement – almost everything is applied, nothing is made. And we can ask: “Where is the place for crafts?” Maybe the maintenance and adjustment of what works somehow, and the odd jobs which nobody wants to do and therefore we import workers from foreign countries.

It was only several years ago that there were somebody in every village who knew how to weld properly a piece of metal, to repair a car, a radio, to sharpen a knife. But modern knives cannot be sharpened; they would be destroyed then, a car cannot be opened and an ordinary mortal can’t even change the bulb in the lamp. What is actually the use of craft? Is it a matter of open-air museums and attractions in tourist industry? Or is it something more? Of course it is, but it’s not so easy to tell what. Craft is based on experience and experience is something we attain gradually, laboriously and many of us think they don’t even need it. This is nothing new, but at the same time there are big changes in the way of living and if we aren’t able to keep the understanding of the tradition, we will lose something without compensation, in the same way as we lost some craft and manufacture procedures when the organized industry took place.  

Tradition and craft are our means to define ourselves against the influence of “invisible technology”, everything which works somewhere under the surface, which cannot be understood, which we cannot touch. If we don’t want to live in the world of “black boxes” which ensure that we can see everything we should see and hear everything that is programmed in the same way, then it is necessary to touch a hand tool and a material which gives in to it – and not easily.  Through craft, we can feel the reality of haptical world, the world of touching, which is different from the virtual world, the world of dreams. We can touch and vicariously, by the material, feel what connects us with our ancestors.