Jesse Adams Stein
San Diego: Palgrave Macmillan. Palgrave Studies in Oral History
€85.59 ebook; €99.99 hard cover
Jesse Stein’s study of industrial patternmakers in Melbourne and Sydney is an important one. It foregrounds individual pattern makers through the extensive and competent use of interviews. Stein’s research has revealed a story of adaptation and of continuing demand for patternmakers, albeit in a relatively small way.
The book is organised into eight chapters, including an introduction and a conclusion. Stein describes her study as ‘a reassertion of the significance of industrial craft, both in its historical and contemporary forms’, which is ‘about more than the rudimentary production of everyday objects’ (p3). Her central argument is that engineering patternmaking is a creative art as well as a skilled trade, but that because patternmaking has been designated as a trade, ‘the notion of the industrial artisan still remains relatively one-dimensional: often imagined as a lost, tragic male figure of the early to mid-twentieth century (p17).’
Stein challenges this stereotype, especially in chapter four, ‘Industrial Craft as Design Knowledge’. She quotes one of her interviewees, Serge Haidutschyk: ‘There’s a lot of work and art in understanding how things are actually moulded … it’s not just making a simple pattern’ (p95). Stein argues that ‘craft still tends to be more readily identified with the artisanal handcrafter’ (for example beer-brewing, surfboard-making), while the ‘unglamorous, grubbier, more apparently working-class industrial practices remain less recognised’ (p99). Ironically, one of Stein’s patternmakers later became a surfboard maker whilst others forged careers in art and sculpture. Yet, even those who have made this transition, such as Serge Haidutschyk, seem reluctant to adopt the tag of ‘artist’. ‘He would not call himself an artist (he reserves “artist” for his wife Elizabeth, who paints)’ (p201).
Stein’s interviews with twelve patternmakers (ten male, two female) form the backbone of her research. The interviews were each up to five hours long and structured to reflect the individual’s life experience, beginning with family backgrounds. Those who left the trade talked about their various forms of employment afterwards, including where these drew upon their patternmaking skills. The surveyed number was regrettably small and would have benefited by being broadened to include other parts of Australia; nevertheless, there were many resonances between Stein’s work and my own research on the WA Government Railway Workshops and the East Perth Power Station. Like me, Stein found that the artisans had vivid memories of their first day and first year, and even the whole of their apprenticeship (p21).
Chapter three describes the process of apprentices making their tools and toolboxes – another practice observed at the Midland Workshops. As Stein observes, the practice was widespread in Australian workplaces in the twentieth century until cheaper, Asian-made tools became available. The practice of tool and toolbox making was also killed off by standardising workplaces and reduced funding for technical and further education (TAFE) classes. As one interviewee, a trained patternmaker and TAFE teacher, explained: ‘I used to give my first-year apprentices a week, a solid week, to make their toolboxes’ (p85). Funding cuts shortened courses and prevented the ‘luxury’ of setting aside time for such creative activities. The toolboxes were intricate, cherished by their owners and retained after retirement or redundancy. The chapter also describes another practice common to Midland, the making of ‘foreigners’, objects made ‘on the side’ in workshops’ time and with workshop materials but for private use. When work was slack, this practice was acceptable and regarded as broadening an apprentice’s skills (p68-72).
Chapter five shows the decline of the patternmaker’s art most starkly. ‘Just Finishing’ describes the type of work done on computerised numerical control milling machines, which ‘essentially disrupted patternmakers’ control of their craft on the shopfloor’ (p123). Patternmakers ceased to make patterns using hand tools and manually controlled machine tools. Pattern planning became the work of ‘white-collar engineers and methods planners’ (p123). The interviewees seemed divided between those who saw computerisation as the death of the craft and those who recognised, albeit reluctantly, that this was the way forward if they were to survive. This recognition meant small patternmaking businesses investing in the machines and working artisans learning the skills to stay abreast of ‘progress’. Small business owners Greg and Deborah Tyrrell, did both. The Tyrrells were early adopters of the new technology, creating a working partnership in which Greg (a trained patternmaker) ‘sets up the timber or tooling board and undertakes the hand work’ while Deborah (not a trained patternmaker) ‘has become the software expert’ (p145).
The other of the two women whom Stein interviewed, Debra Schuckar, completed a patternmaking apprenticeship – she was the first woman to do so in Victoria. While generally positive about her work, Schuckar was realistic about the experience of women in ‘traditionally male’ trades. She said, ‘Women have to work twice as hard to be thought as good’. Her story demonstrates Stein’s observation that ‘the treatment of female apprentices is endemic to the system, not an isolated or individual experience of a few “bad apples”’ (p171). It is particularly topical at the time of writing this review, when the mining industry’s appalling treatment of female employees is in the spotlight in Western Australia.
Arguing that industrial craft has been neglected in academic analysis, despite ‘design history and modern craft studies [being] academic disciplines’ (p16), Stein uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining oral and labour history with design history and studies of craft training (p17). There is much to commend in Stein’s approach, but I found some passages awkward, interrupting the flow of the book. Chapter two, for example, discusses some of the ‘teething problems’ of a female researcher interviewing working-class and sometimes deeply suspicious industrial tradesmen. I am unsure how much this account of her experiences contributed to the overall work, although it does serve to make the point that an interview is a construction – by both the interviewer and interviewee. The second example, in chapter six, discusses ‘gendered’ oral history practice (p181-4). Perhaps these passages, if included, should have been in the introduction.
This excellent, well-written book will make a significant contribution to the literature on skilled trades and the future for skilled tradespeople. The chapters are enriched by a series of colour and black and white photos of the artisans and their products. It is a pity that the publisher has priced it out of the market for many potential purchasers – even in e-book format.
