Amateur Craft as a Differential Practice


Hermann Fugger is an industrialist and amateur cook in Georges Perec’s novel Life: A User’s Manual. A peripheral character, he arrives early at a party to prepare his boar stew – ‘the most delectable thing on earth’ – much to the annoyance of the hosts who, despite Fugger’s love of cooking, turn him away. Amateur craft practice is the freest temporality available within limiting structures: individuals can make without external pressure. Nevertheless, like Fugger, the output, space and experience of amateur practice is routinely marginalised and set against valorised professional standards.


My PhD thesis argues that amateur craft practice is differential within capitalism: inherently dependent on its structures, while simultaneously stretching, refracting and quietly subverting them. I adopt interdisciplinary methods to conceptualise the motivations that drive amateur practice, with historical case studies serving to substantiate the theoretical claims made. These voluntarily chosen activities provide a vital reprieve or supplement to an individual’s primary occupation, a temporary moment of control over labour-power in which the world can be shaped anew.


Supported by: AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, joint with History of Design programme