Making Special

Elaboration = shared aesthetics = individuality/personality of the artisan = establishes a connection and origins = individuality and uniqueness.

"To the extent that the wearer is conscious of its unique quality, the buying of a sari might be thought of as the currency of intimacy between the maker and user, the mark of the maker’s hand representing almost a personal gesture for the owner."

"Design might be thought of as a two-stage process, the functional and the elaborated ... makers and users, (who) long for something more profound — an aesthetic “adjustment,” a deliberate attempt to make the functional object beautiful."

"In her book Art and Intimacy, ethologist Ellen Dissanayake calls it the process of “making special.” But as Dissanayake is careful to point out, making something special is not only making it beautiful. Positioning herself against conventional histories of humanity where the artistic impulse is considered to be a relatively late development, Dissanayake argues that, on the contrary, it was a primal impulse, located in the intimate reciprocity of the mother-child interaction. The “special” for Dissanayake thus arises equally from a transcultural desire for beauty and a basic human need for intimacy, both of which are fulfilled in the creative act of elaboration."

"One striking example of this is found in the unstitched garments of India, the sari and lunghi. The genius of these garments is in their simplicity; rectangles that wrap the body in a variety of ways, saris and lunghis defy changes in size and body shape. Because they are not elaborately shaped as western apparel is, they are endlessly adaptable, and certain classic textiles remain in style year after year ... Such applications would be impossible if the original design were not so ingeniously simple, so functionally pure ... The sari, therefore, in its simplicity represents a mode of design thinking grounded in adaptability, innovation and sustainability based in craft that is distinctively Indian."

"Embellishment, like adaptation, is an act of claiming agency that marks the agent as both an individual and part of a community."

Courtesy: The Subtle Technology of Indian Artisanship by Ken Botnick and Ira Raja,
http://www.designobserver.com/changeobserver/entry.html?entry=13748