SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

Name:

Ms Niamh Jane Clifford Collard

Email address:

211318@soas.ac.uk

Thesis title:

Weaving Experience, Intelligent Hands: A Cross-Cultural Study Of Apprenticeship And Skilled Work

Internal Supervisors

• Trevor H J Marchand

PhD Research

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach which draws on art historical, fine art practice, education and anthropological perspectives, this project will address the apprenticeship of narrow strip weaver’s in Ghana’s Eastern Ewe speaking regions as a crafted process in and of itself.  Employing apprenticeship as a fieldwork method, an interrogation of the key terms of inquiry- craft, skill and apprenticeship- will be brought to bear on a study of Ewe weaving as a series of highly relational and dynamic processes, rather than a fixed material entity. In this, the work seeks to address a silence in the existing literature which hitherto has focused primarily on Ewe textiles as artefacts of design history. Indeed, the proliferation of innovative designs, materials and techniques at play in woven Ewe cloths was what initially piqued my interest. As such, it is hoped that an approach which accounts both for the fluid and transient social dynamics which engender novelty and the limitations which inhere in crafted materiality can bring something new to the anthropology of apprenticeship and the art history of Ewe textiles.