On the 11^th of November 1967, a small group of craftspeople and educationalists gathered in the Friend's House, Euston Road, and London, to discuss a crisis. The crisis as they saw it concerned the future value and sustainability of the crafts. Muriel Rose, in her notes from the meeting said:

There is a present no permanent collection in Great Britain where the work of outstanding artist-craftsmen of our own century may be seen.

In order therefore that work of the highest quality may be freely accessible for enjoyment and study, it is proposed to bring together such a collection..It is therefore proposed to raise the essential funds to establish a gallery, which in order that continuity may be assured must necessarily be attached to an established institution such as a University.1

The group felt strongly that, if a totemic collection of modern and contemporary craft objects were not assembled for study and contemplation-both for makers and the general public-then a craft tradition was put at risk. How could you sustain craft skills and develop practice if you couldn't even look back to the near past, and reflect on the journey, nobly undertaken, by celebrated craft pioneers? Without this deference to tradition, without the symbolic value of consummately chosen objects, rich in hand-skill, and presented with quiet authority in the study room, how could the crafts survive let alone flourish?

At the time that this private debate was happening, of course, the presentation of contemporary craft in the public domain in England would have been patchier than it is today. There was no Crafts Council at the strategic centre (or at the strategic edge, as we might characterise it today). There was no fully developed network of specialist craft officers in regional and national agencies to nourish activity and practice. The cultural industries, with the crafts hanging on as a sub sector, had not been invented. There was no national lottery to drive investment in craft galleries and commissioning programmes. There were few specialist craft curators in the museum sector, and craft collecting would have been seen as an adjunct to the decorative arts, or as a branch of social or local history. The National Art Collections Fund had not focused on the purchase of craftwork. Research was mainly hidden away in University libraries.

So, for all its conservatism, the intrinsic grounding in the carefully collected and celebrated object, the founder Trustees of the Crafts Study Centre had hit upon a visionary idea. This idea was to establish the beginnings of a nationally significant, independent, museum collection of craft objects. It had no parallel. The vision was promoted by a board of trustees (including Henry Hammond, then Head of Ceramics at the West Surrey College of Art, Robin Tanner, etcher, teacher and 'ruralist', Muriel Rose, the writer and collector, and others). The Trustees eventually established an Acquisition Committee dominated by makers, to enable the fiercest scrutiny of the celebrated object, as it made its way into the pantheon of a collection. This collection was narrowly conceived in its subject range, emphatic in its support of makers' archives. These are a major source of research material in the collection today, and have underpinned a substantial number of writing projects. For example, Emmanuel Cooper's landmark biography of Bernard Leach was grounded in his reading of the Leach archive donated by Leach himself to the Crafts Study Centre.

Robin Tanner, perhaps the most influential founder-Trustee of the Crafts Study Centre, wrote about the Centre's tentative first steps in his autobiography 'Double Harness'. He noted: 'a group of friends, crafts men and educationalists, met from time to time, in the late 1960s, to discuss the possibility of founding not a museum of objects untouchable behind glass, but a living, expanding study centre. Painfully, slowly, and with a characteristic English altruism and amateurishness, the idea of a collection of the best work of the 20^th century was born'.2

So, some thirty-three years later after the establishment of the Crafts Study Centre, its vision of an independent public collection with its own independent public space, is finally being realised. After a formative partnership with the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath, supported by the University of Bath, the Centre has physically moved and joined in partnership with The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College. The Holburne connection sustained the Centre for over twenty years. It was not until 1977 that the Centre opened to the public, housed in a small series of rooms within the museum, an imposing Georgian building standing within its own grounds, and displaying a nationally important fine art and decorative art collection with a particular emphasis on the 18^th century. The arrangement gave the Crafts Study Centre the chance to develop and find its voice within the context of a supportive host organisation. The Holburne Trustees and the Centre's Trustees saw mutual advantage in the arrangement, but space was always at a premium, especially as the Centre was keen to add to its own collections. One enterprising solution to the juxtaposition of a heritage collection and a modern craft collection was grounded in the idea of making a virtue of the juxtaposition. Contemporary craft objects from the Crafts Councils museum collections were displayed throughout the Holburne, effectively demonstrating the technical and imaginative journey from the 18^th century decorative art object to the contemporary craft artefact.

Despite this enterprising approach to curatorship, the challenge of space and the mix of identity between two charitable collections, meant that the situation was seriously reviewed in the 1990s, driven in part by the advent of the UK National Lottery. The Lottery enabled many museums and galleries to reconsider their strategic objectives, especially in the light of the potential for growth and capital enhancement. For the Holburne and the Crafts Study Centre, the conclusion was a friendly parting of the ways. The Centre advertised its intention to relocate, subject to finding a new host organisation sensitive to the particular needs of the collection, and the furthering of the Centre's clearly stated charitable objectives. The Board also took Trustees the intentions of the founder seriously into account. There has always been a strong sense of continuity in the Craft Study Centre's Board (the current Chairman, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, has been chair for some thirty years) a high degree of loyalty to the original mission, and a powerful emphasis on development through partnership.

It took the Trustees seven years to realise the physical ambitions of the intended move. The Centre went in search of a new home in 1997, and reviewed a final shortlist of three destinations, mindful of the need to create better access to the collections, as well as the need to encourage contemplation and study of the Centre's rich research collections. A new partner was found in The Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College. The Institute had impeccable qualifications. As a specialist College of Art and Design, it could offer a student and academic body grounded in the whole process of teaching craft skills. The Institute's Faculty of Design runs highly regarded degrees in contemporary crafts, including textiles and ceramics, and these related closely to the great strengths of the Centre's collections of 5000 objects. The archive collections (some 40,000 individual items spread across 30 practitioner archives) were also prime material for original research. This attracted both parties: the Centre, because it could build on its small portfolio of craft publications; the institute, because it could offer a unique resource in the context of developing its own research culture.3

New, purpose-built accommodation for the Crafts Study Centre is currently under construction, the first museum project for the architectural practice A & Q Partnership. The total capital cost of the building is around £1.5 million. The Institute has covered the cost of the building's shell and infrastructure, and a fund raising campaign to cover the costs on the interior fit out has been in progress for a year. To date funds (in a difficult climate for trusts and foundations) have been raised from a variety of sources including major awards from the Rayne Foundation and the Foyle Foundation. A significant award has also been announced from the Arts Council's Regional Arts Lottery Programme, and these funds will be directed to a craft-commissioning programme for the building. A team of makers has been drawn together to produce functional and decorative works specific to the new building and its street frontage. The team balances makers at the outset of their professional careers (Laura Thomas, textile artist and Oliver Russell, metalwork) with highly experienced makers such as Matthew Burt, furniture, and Tom Perkins, letter carving. Katie Walker has been commissioned to work on the reception desk, and Caroline Sharp to consider an external 'willow woven' exterior piece. The commissioning programme will be underpinned by an educational project with two local schools, and a national conference on commissioning will celebrate the conclusion of the whole process.

The new Crafts Study Centre aims to be a special sort of venue, attracting a variety of audiences. It will serve, at one level, as a new museum of the crafts, a rarity in England. Indeed, one can claim that the Centre will be unique as the only purpose-built museum for a generalist craft collection in England. The Centre will focus one of its two exhibition galleries on a display from the core collections, and the second on a more experimental space for a changing programme of work by contemporary practitioners. The first year in this programme will be devoted to ceramics, and the opening exhibition will be of new work by Magdalene Odundo, who holds the post of Professor of Ceramics at the Institute, in addition to her renowned role as a maker. The second feature of the Centre will be the ability to provide managed personal access to the study collections for research. The third element is access to the crafts by digital means. A three-year project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and the Headley Trust, has just concluded. Its outcome is a digital catalogue of some 4000 images from the Centre's object and archive collections, supported by six learning and teaching modules addressing the core subject areas of the collection. This will become early in 2004, an online resource available through the Visual Arts Data Service and the Crafts Study Centre's websites4 The Centre has the status of a research centre within the Institute, and is developing this role through the opportunity for research activity on the collections, and by means of the enquiry, currently under discussion, into the possibility of creating a new MA degree in contemporary craft curatorship, as part of the Institute's developing portfolio of taught MA degrees..

The Centre aims to open to the public in the summer, 2004. It will be England's new museum of the crafts. Its equivalent in the visual arts is perhaps, the Study Gallery, Poole. The Gallery is also part of an educational organisation, the Bournemouth and Poole College of Further Education. The naming of the Study Centre and the Study Gallery puts an uncompromising status on the value of study (implying personal and collective research, learning and teaching) and the value of presentation (gallery is differently focused than centre, but both suggest the exhibition of work to and for the public). Both titles combine terms that might seem to be mutually exclusive but have become mutually interdependent.

The Study Gallery was an Arts Council Lottery project. Its focus is one the visual arts, though it has also been the location for craft fairs. The Lottery has funded a relatively small number of craft specific building projects. They are beginning to come on stream now, adding to the sense of vitality and progress in England's vulnerable and fragmented crafts infrastructure. Schemes such as the Hub at Sleaford ('the centre for craft design and making), the upgrading of the headquarters for the Devon Guild of Craftsmen at Bovey Tracey, and the aspirations in Hampshire for a major craft gallery, education space and retail outlet ('MOMC') offer a convincing demonstration that often modest-sized organisations can lead trends in the presentation of the crafts. The Crafts Study Centre will fit in to this new family of provision. Though 'middle-aged' in its derivation, the new building offers a contemporary approach to the display of, and access to, a nationally regarded collection. The collection has waited for a museum-home for nearly forty years. The Surrey Institute accepted a major strategic challenge in hosting the collection, and has had the foresight and the resolve to commit substantial and scarce resources to opening the Crafts Study Centre in its own premises for the first time. The vision of the founder Trustees is close to realisation.

13 October 2003

Copyright Simon Olding