Mingei partners worked widely with diverse stakeholders in heritage crafts communities over the course of the project, through co-creation, research, documentation, digitalisation and much much more. Here we share good practice guidelines we have developed to guide engagement with heritage crafts communities in digital projects. This guidance is published in tandem with our ten safe-guarding steps.

1. Do your homework

Before engaging with a Heritage  Craft Community, do your homework. Gathering as much information as possible about who they are, what their background is, and what the cultural and socio-economical context in which they operate is. This information will not only save time and help in the preparation of the appropriate material for the activity but also may prevent possible awkward social interactions or even faux pas from happening (i.e., doing something that is against local traditions and customs or asking an inappropriate question). This aligns with the ‘Introspection’ section presented in the ten safe-guarding steps. 

2. Communicate clearly

Clear communication of activity goals, processes, and expectations is an important factor for a successful activity outcome. All parties involved should be on the same page as to who, why, how, and where the activity is going to be executed. Share this information well ahead of time so that enough time is allowed for the parties involved to ask for clarifications or express any concerns.

3. Be empathetic

Heritage Craft practitioners are highly skilled and understand their craft in a holistic, sometimes visceral way. However, the world of digitisation might be new to them and an engineer’s or programmer’s approach to their craft might be very different from how they view it themselves. Also, their age or (cultural) background might mean certain requirements need to be met that might not be commonly encountered by technologists. Sessions should be adapted to participants’ requirements and not the other way around. 

4. Be flexible

This refers to all aspects of planning and executing any collaborative activity with Heritage Crafts Communities or individual members. It means to be prepared to face unforeseen challenges and react accordingly. No matter how well prepared for the activity the team is, things can go different than expected. It is important to deal with such challenges promptly and accommodate changes to the original plans without compromising the value of the activity. 

5. Ease the fear of technology

In digital cultural heritage projects, not all partners involved are familiar with state-of-the-art technologies and applications. Terms like Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Avatars, etc., may be foreign to most people involved.  Moreover, their lack of technical expertise may make them reluctant to get involved in any technology-related decision making from fear that they have nothing of value to contribute to this aspect. To avoid such a situation from happening and encourage cultural heritage partners to engage fully in all stages of the project, the technical partners need to ease their fear of technology. Some of the ways to do that are to build technology or application demonstrators, build working or non-working prototypes that showcase the possibilities available, and to showcase existing examples of technologies that have been used in similar situations.

6. Establish a widely understood reporting medium

Craft understanding is an iterative process and alignment of all participants should take place prior to each new technology development iteration. A commonly understood reporting medium will provide insights on the outcomes of an iteration and allow further elaboration. For example, storyboards are useful for (a) illustrated scripts that decompose actions into simpler ones and (b) validating this transmitted information with the craft community, collecting feedback, and identifying parts of the process that may be underrepresented. 

7. Be considerate towards the needs of older participants

It is often the case that craft practitioners who represent an endangered craft are older people. When involving them in any type of project-related activity such as interviews, demonstrations, or co-creation workshops, there are a few points that the team needs to take into consideration to ensure a positive experience for them. These are:

• Duration of activity: keep the duration of the activity as short as possible and provide frequent breaks for refreshments, use of bathroom facilities, etc.
• Pace: people learn and think at different paces. Keep that in mind when planning and scheduling the activity and always include some buffer time to avoid rushing through the activity or running out of time.
• Envisioning abstract concepts: bear in mind that some people have no or limited prior experience in modern technologies. For example, it would be unrealistic to ask a group of people unfamiliar with digital technology to design or sketch an application/system from scratch without having a point of reference. We have found that it works best to start such activities by showing prototypes or other examples of technologies in similar contexts of use before asking for any type of input from them. Once people understand how a type of technology works and see examples of it in use, then they can then start envisioning how they can be of use for presenting the storyline of the craft they represent.

About the Centre des Arts et Métiers

The Centre des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), Paris, France, hosts a museum of technological innovation and contains objects related to both the artistic and more industrial production of glass. Furthermore, it holds historic archives regarding the artefacts and techniques under study. All of these perspectives were harnessed in the Mingei pilot installation, which was open until the beginning of April 2022.

The pilot installation: training the public in glass blowing processes through re-enactment

The installation targeted craft presentation through an exploration of the workspace, as well as craft training through an interactive experience where users re-enact gestures of a glass master holding a tool and receiving audiovisual feedback on the accuracy of their performance. Preliminary evaluation results show high acceptance of the installation and good user interest.

Glasswork is a traditional craft that combines hand and body gestures and a thorough understanding of the material. It is a challenging craft because the material changes states from liquid to solid during production. While this complexity was not presented in the visitor-facing installation, in Mingei more broadly we pushed forward the technical means for capturing and conveying these sensory aspects of glasswork, that is to say, the requirements of dexterous aspects and tool manipulation in craft presentation and preservation. 

Learning and iterating: what we learned from user-experience evaluations

After the technical validation of the installation, we conducted a short preliminary evaluation with museum personnel. The first part of the preliminary evaluation was conducted with users from the education department of the museum who were invited to experience the installation and mimic the craftsperson actions using the bench and tools provided. What was learned led to changes to the user-interact (UI) to (a) provide real-time help to users to guide them through the training process and (b) enhance the feedback users get while using the app to better understand whether they are copying the movements right or wrongly. We fixed a glitch that meant that users sometimes thought they were doing it wrong because the feedback came too slowly. stopped with the application because they didn’t receive fast enough, and instead thought they were doing it wrong. 

A wider evaluation with visitors was conducted later. We asked a user-experience evaluator to monitor how users interacted with the installation. Minor issues with the UI were improved, including the addition of introductory screens to assist users to know when the presentation element had finished and when the training session was beginning (and when they were expected to get active). 

Responses from museum visitors

There were regular visitors to the installation, located as it was in part of the impressive church in the museum building, Saint-Martin-des-Champs. An audio component meant that the installation piqued the interest of those outside. 

Feedback collected via our post-interaction questionnaire showed that what seemed to impress visitors the most was the whole concept of being able to mimic the gestures, or as one of the visitors characteristically wrote “being in the shoes of the glassmaker” and receive feedback on the accuracy of the movement in real-time. Using a real-life workbench and glass blowpipe only added to the authenticity of the represented scene and further enhanced the whole user experience.

Find out more for yourself in the video below and explore the digital presentation of glass-blowing on the Mingei Open Platform.

When Thibaut Nussbaumer fell from a horse in his teenage years, he had no idea at the time that it would set him on a path to becoming a distinguished member of an exciting new wave of artists working in one of the more elusive craft-making niches: glassblowing. His arm broken from the fall, Thibaut received doctor’s orders to employ his hands with some tactile tasks in the service of regaining his dexterity. As well as practising piano, one of his tasks was learning to work with clay, which instilled the spark of a love in him of working with tangible crafts. Waag’s Harry Reddick spoke to Nussbaumer, founder of glass atelier TiPii in Toulouse, about his love for crafts and the importance of passing on his knowledge and skills.

The magic of glass

After his fall from a horse, during the end of his schooling years, Nussbaumer’s class was taken to a one-week glass workshop at CIAV. This is where the spark for crafts blossomed into a more consuming passion. “We were playing little designers,” he tells. “We were making sketches, which the craftsmen realised. They were bringing our sketches to life. This was extremely exciting [to me] because I got bored with the theoretical stuff we were doing before that point. I was missing something real. And glassblowing was pretty real.”

Having reached a crossroads upon finishing his secondary education, Thibaut pursued that creation of something real in glassblowing. He signed up at CERFAV, in Vannes-le-Châtel; one of the three glassblowing educational institutions that exist in France. His four-year learning there was buttressed with a practical and theoretical internship at the Baccarat crystal factory near Nancy.

In these educational vocations, he managed to tap into a rich vein of knowledge and tradition of glass-blowing in France, which in itself is a singular strand of a much more ancient and globally-utilised craft, with evidence abounding of decorative glass from millennia past. For Thibaut, the way that this tradition has evolved and adapted to different historical and locational contexts is part of its magic.

“There are a few different aesthetic ways to work with glass. There is a Scandinavian wave, a Venetian style, and different aesthetic in the Czech Republic too. I travelled and grabbed a lot of details of how they are working, how they are using tools and how they are creating and working with their inspirations. Glassblowing is extremely playful and really sensual, with soft curves… it’s really subtle and soft.”

Learning curve

Glassblowing itself requires a furnace in order to melt glass, with which the glassblower uses a blowpipe to shape the molten glass. Thibaut spoke of some of the perceived barriers to entry into the field of glassblowing being the cost, including the cost of the furnace and the natural gas to continually heat it. However, the craft in itself can be enjoyed by people completely new to it, in much the same way as Thibaut first experienced in his youth, provided there is an expert and the materials to facilitate the process.

Past this initial entry point however, the craft requires a much more sustained and detailed approach to both learning technique and practising that dexterity. Thibaut said he wasn’t happy with what he’d made for his first five years of learning. Having put in the years working on his technical prowess, Thibaut is now able to spend more time on the ‘poetry and the soul’ inherent in the pieces rendered from the glassblowing process.

Blow It Yourself

In an attempt to bring both the romantic inspiration of glass and its technical tradition to a wider audience beyond the niche of the academic, Thibaut has founded TiPii Atelier, a glass workshop in Toulouse, together with Patricia Motte, a friend from CERFAV. One of the unusual features of the TiPii Atelier is this focus on making the craft more accessible. He even runs BIY (Blow It Yourself) sessions offering basic glassblowing lessons where their expertise helps the attendees (both children and adults) create simple blown glass items. In this way, Thibaut hopes to address the lack of knowledge about glassblowing in France, both in terms of the required resources and the methodology underpinning it, with the latter being something that teaching allowed him to personally understand on a ‘deeper level’.

“Glassblowing is extremely rare, and I felt I had to save and pass on this precious knowledge,” Thibaut explains. “This workshop at TiPii is the only one in 100 kilometers around, so my idea was to bring glasswork into an urban frame. That’s something that is really new, as small workshops involve people and help show people how it’s made. Quite a lot of people were searching to find out how to get involved in glasswork, and this is something we can now show them how to do together. There is a soul in such things, and everybody can feel it, you just have to offer them the opportunity to understand it and to see it. This is my job, to share it with as many people as I can.”

Many of the children who came along to these workshops ended up returning on a monthly basis, and have since become familiar with the names of the tools and techniques, and have ended up passing on word of their experience to other children in school or in their social life. In such a way, the same spark that encouraged Thibaut to return to the life of craft as a youth is being spread to a new generation, simultaneously returning the craft of glassblowing to the wider community.

Thibaut found that he took the art of working glass into his identity. “It is part of me, glass belongs to my life now.” Perhaps some of these children who were given their first taste of the beauty and the intricacies of glassblowing will take it with them into their life, becoming part of the world of heritage that glass represents.

Written by Harry Reddick (Waag)

The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (le Cnam) in Paris is established in 1794 by the National Convention during the revolutionary era. The goal of this revolutionary institution is to teach by the means of a collection of artefacts and machinery, to spread innovative ideas through a public of craftsmen, industrialists, and workers.

Building upon ages of knowledge, skill and expertise, this is where the Mingei pilot on glass blowing takes place. What is the history of glass manufacturing at the Conservatoire? And what is the value of the Musée des Arts et Métiers, still showcasing objects relating to glass craft today? Let’s explore the history of the museum and its links with teaching and research through the personalities of various professors in the first half of the 19th Century.

First lessons, first collections?

At the founding of the Conservatoire by Henri Grégoire in 1794, glass technology was not yet part of the curriculum. Chemistry was one of the three chairs established in 1819, yet glass technology had a limited place in the lessons of Nicolas Clement-Desormes (1778-1841), the first appointed professor. The library of the Conservatoire keeps an important manuscript journal recording the chemistry lessons from 1825-1826, which shows that only two lessons were devoted to glass manufacturing. Clément-Désormes insisted much more on the economical side, especially the cost of qualified labour, rather than on technological processes. There is no clue of any objects or collections being shown. The 1818 catalogue of the ‘Royal Museum of Arts et Métiers’ lists no glass objects or models relating to the technology.

Early interests in glassmaking: Eugène Péligot

After the death of Clément-Désormes in 1841, the next professor appointed was his assistant Eugène Péligot (1811-1890). Péligot would have a long career at the Conservatoire from 1841 till 1889 and various other occupations, both researching and teaching.

Péligot had been one of the many students of Jean-Baptiste Dumas (1800-1884), a prominent chemist and a powerful member of the scientific cream of his period. Among the numerous scientific papers written by Eugène Péligot are two books on glass manufacturing. The first is a published version of his lessons on glass at the Conservatoire, selected from the general program of his chair: Douze leçons sur l’art de la verrerie (1862). The second book is a revised and enriched version: Le verre, son histoire, sa fabrication (1877).

Péligot was also member of the jury of the London Universal Exhibition of 1862 and of the Paris Universal exhibition of 1867. Therefore, it is not a surprise that a number of glass pieces were acquired at the professors’ request for the collection of the museum. Among the first objects relating to glassmaking is a large selection from the Choisy-le-Roy glass factory. It comprises more than fifty tools, pots, molds, fabrication steps and finished pieces, among which stands the glass carafe that is being reproduced as part of the Mingei project. This glass carafe is made by Georges Bontemps (1799-1883), who was the director of the Choisy-le-Roy glass factory. He was certainly interested in the lessons at the Conservatoire and the prospect of technical education it gave to his workers.

In 1845, Eugène Péligot was sent to Austria on behalf on the Parisian chamber of commerce to review the exhibition of national products in Vienna, and to visit different factories. His report was mostly devoted to Bohemian colored glass, fashionable and very superior to the French similar products of the time. But he also recorded seeing French products being copied in the Bohemian workshops, alleging the fierce international competition on glassware. Forty pieces of Bohemian glass are noted in the inventory of the museum for that same year 1845, and it is tempting to think that they were probably brought back by Péligot. Thirty-one are still remaining today in the collection of the Musée des Arts et Métiers.

A small note in the inventory indicates that some pieces were broken during the lesson of chemistry applied to the arts. This confirms the effective use of artefacts and the improper handling of some of them. Because there is no mention of a gallery for the glass collection at the time, the pieces seemed to have been stored in the professor’ cabinet or in his laboratory premises.

The first chair of ceramics: Jacques Ebelmen

In 1848, a special chair for ceramics and glass was opened. Jacques Ebelmen (1814-1852), a chemist and mining engineer, was chosen. He taught between 1848 and his premature death in 1852, but his main function was administrator of the Sèvres Manufacture, the renowned national porcelain manufacturer. He was also keen to acquire pieces for pedagogical use and even organized a transfer between the Sèvres museum (part of Manufacture) and the Conservatoire.

The revolution in 1848 brought down the Louis-Philippe regime of France, which caused changes in the Conservatoire. Jean-Baptiste Dumas was briefly Minister of Commerce and Agriculture in Louis Napoléon Bonaparte’s government. With the aim of renovating technical higher education, he chose the new administrator of the Conservatoire: Arthur Morin. Morin shared his views and was also close to the future Emperor, Napoleon III.

Under Morin’s guidance, administrative practices were renewed and new qualified staff was brought in for the administration and the library. Morin also turned his attention to the galleries, to set up an industrial museum in place of the old exhibition. A precise inventory of all collections assembled since the creation of the Conservatoire was issued and the private use of collections in the cabinet was forbidden.

The 1851 catalogue

The inventory was the basis for the publication of a new catalogue of collection, systematically and thematically set up, each professor being in charge of the relevant sections. Glass collections were described in the section O, listing a total of 316 items, with sometimes a large collection of artefacts assembled under a single item number. The catalogue is available online.

Towards a new chair

When Jacques Ebelmen died prematurely in 1852, his successor at the Manufacture, Henri Regnault, refused to be appointed at the Conservatoire. As such, Eugène Péligot started his glassmaking lessons again in the program of applied chemistry.

However successful Peligot’s lessons were, the Chamber of Commerce insisted on the re-creation of a specific chair devoted to ceramics and glass, probably under the pressure of local manufacturers who were numerous in the Parisian neighborhood.

In 1868, the chemist Victor de Luynes (1828-1904) was appointed to hold both the glass and ceramics chair and the dyes and printing chair. He chose to alternate from one year to another on these two very different subjects. Under his guidance, until 1905, a new era for research and collection started.

Galleries to enlighten ignorance

The collections assembled or catalogued by the professors in the first half of the 19th century have a lot to tell about the interests of the manufacturers and the taste of an era, as they were strongly engaged in the scientific and economic societies of their time.

The Conservatoire was able to shine in many directions despite the fact that it didn’t deliver diplomas until the next century. Through its role in education and innovation, as a laboratory, as a learned society of professors with links with the scientific and industrial world, it made an impact.

The galleries of the industrial museum should rightly be considered as an instrument in the design set for the Conservatoire in 1794, by its founder Henri Grégoire: “(to) enlighten ignorance that knows not and poverty that has no means of acquiring knowledge”.

Written by Anne-Laure Carré (CNAM)

References

The Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM) is a French higher education institution dedicated to vocational training throughout life. Founded in 1794, it now offers training courses in the fields of exact, technical and tertiary sciences and delivers more than 13,000 diplomas per year. The Musée des Arts et Métiers, a component of the CNAM, retains an exceptional collection of more than 80,000 pieces and 15,000 drawings that reflect the evolution of science and technology.

As part of the Mingei project, the Musée des Arts et Métiers makes a copy of a carafe dated 1842, made by the crystal factory of Choisy-le-Roi (France). This work is in parallel documented by a researcher anthropologist of the Laboratory “Histoire des Techno-Sciences en Société” (HT2S) of CNAM. The recording of the glass master’s gestures using a sensor suit is done by ARMINES Research Centre, in partnership with the École des MINES ParisTech, Paris.

Image courtesy Arnaud Dubois for the Musée des Arts et Métiers.

Last May, the Centre Européen de Recherches et de Formation aux Arts Verriers (CERFAV) began the process of reproduction by taking measurements of the carafe  and making a drawing of its profile. The first step was to reproduce the body of the carafe. The master glassmaker donned the capture suit  and made a first test to better assess the shaping process. After calibration of the suit, seven recordings were made: for, the picking up of the molten glass in the oven with the blowpipe, the blowing of the gather, and the shaping of the bubble with jacks.

The next step, scheduled for September, will be a longer working session in CERFAV’s workshops to replicate the whole carafe. The engineers of ARMINES will also be present for the capture the glass master’s gestures. This information will be used to explore ways to preserve intangible heritage (know-how and skilful use of tools) by digitizing gestures for Virtual Reality rendering.