Deconstructing and reconstructing the design/craft divide: Insights from teaching women's needlecraft in design education

Abstract This article examines how the design/craft divide is reproduced in design education, even in pedagogical settings intended to challenge it. The study investigates how undergraduate students of industrial design, communication design, and architecture in Istanbul engage with, perceive, and position women’s needlecraft practices, specifically knitting and sewing, through two workshops facilitated by craftswomen without formal design training. Drawing on ethnographic observations, focus group interviews, and participant drawings, the findings reveal that while the workshops purposefully inverted hierarchies by positioning craftswomen as instructors and students as learners, participants ultimately reconstructed the design/craft divide. Participants framed design as original, conceptual, and supervisory, and women’s needlecraft as manual, repetitive, decorative, and amateur. The article argues for a critical rethinking of design pedagogy that recognizes making as a form of knowledge production and values the epistemic contributions of ordinary craft.