Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This paper presents doctoral research in the design field, focusing on the Nisa quartz inlaid pottery craft technique, and the recognition of its risk of extinction, due to the few remaining producers advanced age, as well as the absence of new interest in learning the technique and the culture it represents. Nisa quartz inlaid pottery represents a secular heritage. The history and customs it carries have a strong social and community significance, which reinforces the need for an approach capable of guaranteeing the viability of its heritage for the future. By knowing a set of processes and transactions that characterize the object and the processes of its making, it is possible to recognize the shared culture of the society in which this heritage is inserted, and thus apprehend the diversity of singularities that constitute it. Addressing features such as techniques, types, forms genealogy, decoration, potters, their rituals of use and their symbolic values; and simultaneously appropriations, consumption, integration contexts; policies of value attribution and meaning, we believe it is possible to build a base that establishes the dialogue between crafts and design, crossing knowledge and practices of “know-how”, which we believe can nurture the construction and safeguarding of knowledge for contemporaneity and its subsequent future. In this engagement we can sense of how the designer’s view can contribute to the safeguarding and promotion of this craft technique, and thus build new paths for its practice in contemporary times.