Wickery can be understood as a blending of "wicker" and basketry – and in multiple cultural paradigms. "Wicker" tends to reflect Eurocentric cum Anglocentric utilitarian sensibilities, thus the term "wickery' aims to be more expansive, and more inclusive, culturally. Also, wickery and the exploration of other aesthetic qualities and indeed kinds of perfection is somewhat confronting. In wabi-sabi there is no exact definition that non Japanese speakers can rely upon due to the Japanese fondness for ambiguity. Wabi is derived from the root wa, which refers to 'harmony, peace, tranquility and balance'. All quite desirable but none are unambiguously anything much to do with 'perfection'.
LINKS .., ROSALIE GASCOIGNE .... WABI-SABI PRINTS
The Zen spirit is personified in a Wabi person, that is, they're content with very little, they're free of greed, indolence, anger, and they understand the wisdom to be found in nature. Things happen because they must. New Zealand born Australian artist Rosalie Gascoigne invoked a 'Zenness' of a kind, an ikebana of a kind, in her work and likewise a 'placedness'. She did so by insisting that 'material' that she used had "been somewhere and done something" – in place ... typically her 'place' the Monaro/Canberra. In this she was at one with 'wicker makers' where ever they are.
The industrial era sold and sells the concept of measurable flawlessness, excellence, superbness, sublimity, exquisiteness, magnificence, perfectness, faultlessness, impeccability, immaculateness, exemplariness – and its measurability. The 'handmade' fails most of the 'perfection tests' especially the unambiguously measurable ones.
Yet Japanese culture celebrates ambiguity of and a kind of perfect imperfection. Wabi-sabi, Ikebana (生け花, "living flowers") , also known as Kadō (華道, "way of flowers") is the Japanese art of flower arrangement. The making of wickery is very often not so far from the Japanese sensibilities found in wabi-sabi, ikebana and Kintsugi (金継ぎ, きんつぎ, "golden joinery"), and/or Kintsukuroi (金繕い, きんつくろい, "golden repair").
Almost every primary culture has a 'wickery culture' of a kind that predates almost all 'cultural technologies' such as ceramics and metalsmithing. Wickery exists in context with, and relative to, cultural landscapes, different plant life, distinct ecologies and social cum political structures plus the different and distinct 'cultural cargo' that's carried in all this and that carries on into the wickery – the cultural production of 'place'. Quite often wickery is taken for granted and uncelebrated and very often its making was done at the 'social periphery' - the underclass, peasants, Romanies, invalids et al. In a postindustrial cum cyber cum technological era the 'rustic and organic' offers a kind of cultural refuge within which to contemplate the luxuries that cost nothing.
The German goldsmith, teacher and cultural commentator, Herman Jünger, working in Germany in the post WW2 era was an advocate for . an 'old German' concept of "vollkommenheit". The translation being to do with completedness and wholesomeness – a 'perfect' state when all pieces/things come together. "Perfection", he intimated was an 'industrial ideal', and it is what the dictionary says it is but vollkommenheit is somewhat different in regard to 'cultural sensibilities/sensitivities'.
Jünger when teaching used the metaphor of the "quail's egg and the ball bearing". "Vollkommenheit" being the perfection that exceeds 'measurability' and 'perfection' being definitively measurable and constraining – absolute and black and white, unambiguous. Culturally, vollkommenheit exceeds perfection. Natural materials, the stuff of wickery, become more 'durable' in a vollkommenheit kind of way with their 'imperfections' contributing to the completeness and wholesomeness and adding to their durability and all the narratives that they carry – overtly and subliminally.
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| 'Completeness is better than perfection' |
Ray Norman Jan 2018
Wabi Sabi is a wonderful concept.
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