Digital Handmade: Craftsmanship in the New Industrial Revolution

Description

Speed, regulation and mass production defined the first Industrial Revolution, but we have entered a new era. Today's revolution has been driven by digital technologies and tools, giving rise to entirely new working methods, skill sets and consumer products. Spearheading this movement is a new generation of creatives who fuse the precision and flexibility of computing and digital fabrication with the skill and tactility of the master artisan to create unexpected and desirable objects and products. For the first time on a global scale, Digital Handmade selects a group of 80 pioneering designers, artists and craftsmen who represent the best of this new trend. Profiles of each artisan's techniques are featured alongside the objects they produce, each conceived and made through a multifaceted process of hand and digital means and unique to its maker. Examples range from the affordable and obtainable to the extraordinary and priceless. Welcome to the next industrial revolution.

Lucy Johnston is an expert in historical dress and a former curator in the Department of Textiles and Dress at the V&A. She is now a freelance curator and museum consultant specializing in fashionable dress, shoes and rural workers' clothing. Her publications include 19th-Century Fashion in Detail.

'Beautiful and impossible-seeming ... it would be odd and unfair to describe these things as anything other than works of art' - Observer