‘Something to talk about’: notation and knowledge-making among Central Slovak lace-makers.

Notational systems are useful devices for recording the movements of craftspeople, dancers, and artists. Because of the predominantly haptic nature of their skills, these practitioners experience difficulty in verbalizing descriptions of their work and instructions to fellow artisans. For lace-makers, notation is an effective way of sharing information about the ways a given design is made across generations and community boundaries. But because notation separates procedure from practice and extricates craftwork from its geographical, social, and historical context, it has direct consequences for the ways lace-makers understand skill, proficiency, and design composition. By making craft practice the subject of conversation, notation implicates lace-making in a political economy of knowledge that assigns differential values to different stages of the production process, thereby elevating some ways of knowing above others. Indeed, notation and codification call into question the very agency of the craftswomen as professionals and carriers of local cultural tradition. Based on continuing ethnographic fieldwork among lace-makers in Central Slovakia, this paper analyses the impact of notational use on lace-makers' thinking about their craft knowledge and skill, and, by extension, issues of local style and cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]