Man made: between hands and the industry

How can design keep the soul of craft alive in a fast-paced, industrial world? Stephen Burks, known for bridging handcraft with contemporary design, is driven by a vision of inclusive, culturally rich design that respects tradition while embracing change. Here, Burks shares how he navigates this delicate balance, drawing from collaborations across continents to create pieces that tell stories of resilience, artistry, and unity.

hube: Your work brilliantly bridges traditional craft with the possibilities of modern industrial production. How do you manage to stay true to the authenticity of handmade practices while scaling up for a global market? Do you ever find yourself having to make compromises? 

Stephen Burks: I’ve always approached design as a tool for transformation – artistically, politically, socially, even ecologically. I’m less interested in style or the pursuit of the perfect form. What excites me is the potential for innovation that design offers at the material scale, the product scale, and the community scale. I believe the closer the hand gets to the act of making the more room there is for innovation. Contemporary design, like all cultural production – film, fashion, literature – is much greater than the sum of its parts. The best way I’ve found to maintain authenticity is to give equal value to each individual part. 

h: The Shelter in Place series is such a timely reflection on how our homes have become central to our lives. How did your personal experience during the pandemic influence the creation of these pieces, and what do you hope they communicate to those who live with them? 

SB: When we received the official order to Shelter in Place, my partner Malika and I had just moved into a Brooklyn loft with my 14-year-old son. We were all living together and getting to know one another in this awkward, uncertain, transgenerational moment. Two months into the pandemic, my son lost both of his maternal grandparents. Without the ability to grieve collectively, we wondered: What more can design do? How could we move beyond a typical commercial design brief and address greater social concerns such as the need to consider spirituality in the contemporary home? This led to a prototype called Spirit House, derived from the daily practice in Southeast Asia of publicly honouring the deceased with offerings on the altar of a symbolic miniature house. 

Another prototype was Private Seat, a micro-architectural screen that offered a moment of respite and privacy from our domestic partners. Or Ancestors, which was our attempt to give form to the struggle for racial equity. Eventually, these radical domestic explorations led to a museum commission and travelling solo exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, which opened us up to a more speculative and conceptual approach to design.

h: You’ve always been a vocal advocate for inclusive design that honours diverse cultural perspectives. In your collaborations with artisans across the world, how do you ensure that the relationship is truly mutual, rather than just a one-sided exchange? 

SB: Everyone is capable of design. We all dream. We all communicate. We all give form to our built environment regardless of our level of education or cultural background. Since the George Floyd Protests, the worlds of contemporary design, art, and fashion are finally making a more sincere effort to address the Eurocentric origins of each of these fields. But there are two important distinctions we try to make in our work; we lead with empathy, not sympathy; and we believe in trade, not aid. If design is a box left closed and an attempt at the insurance of industrial production by defining the object down to the micron, then art is a box left open to the imagination. Although we work through design mediums, our goal is always a more imaginative response, less about insurance and more about possibilities. 

h: You often push back against the constraints of Modernist Orthodoxies in your work. What do you see as the main limitations of modernist design, and how does your approach offer a new direction for contemporary design? 

SB: Funny you should say that. Having grown up in Chicago, I’ve been a closet modernist my whole life. Closeted because the modernist influence in my work possibly resides in the background. If I had to distil modernism, I think it’s about a search for freedom. That said, I don’t believe in leaving our history behind us. Modernism is as much an influence on our work as the myriad of craft traditions I’ve encountered around the world. I’ve tried to avoid the supremacy of Western thinking. Design with a capital ‘D’ is a Western concept. The 20th-century model of design was built around the designer as a singular, signature auteur, less interested in having a dialogue with society and more interested in their individual voice. Our approach is inherently collaborative. In other places, people have also been making things for generations. We look to these craft traditions not only for inspiration but for collaborators, through which we believe it’s possible to build bridges from Majority World wisdom to Minority World distribution. 

h: The idea of weaving as a metaphor runs deep in your work. How do you see the act of weaving – not just as a technique, but as a broader symbol – playing into the way you design spaces and objects?

SB: Baskets are universal objects that connect all cultures around the world. My first solo exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem was a collaboration with Senegalese coil basket weavers in the second city of Thies. I remember watching the artisans making these baskets and being awe-struck by their ability to simultaneously consider form, pattern, and structure – all without any drawings. Having studied architecture in grad school, basket weaving also fascinates me because of its microarchitectural possibilities. I read the work of Shigeru Ban, for example, as big baskets at the urban scale.

The last basket I saw that I can’t stop thinking about it by the contemporary artist Yufu Shohaku. It was so masterfully messy and irregular. It’s actually very hard for the human mind to achieve randomness. I’m attracted to crafted objects that appear to break free from order. In our work, we seek similar ways to integrate complexity with systems of order as a means of giving the weaving artisans we work with more agency over their work. 

h: Given your strong connection to materiality and the tactile nature of your work, how do you think about the challenge of designing for virtual or digital environments? Can the soul of art survive in a digital world? 

SB: I don’t see what’s challenging about designing purely for the virtual or digital world. Each one of us inhabits a body that exists in the physical world first. The tension for me lies in how we mediate between our physical and digital selves. I see so much potential for that space in between. How we mediate this divide is the work. This is where the soul of art resides, in that work of translation. 

h: You’ve always been at the forefront of merging art with contemporary design. As we move deeper into the digital age, what do you see as the future for traditional craftsmanship? How can we ensure that these skills and traditions aren’t lost? 

SB: I’m challenged by the word ‘tradition’. As a general rule, I try to avoid nostalgia or the idea of keeping things fixed in time. As Kamala Harris says: ‘We’re not going back!’ I believe each culture has the right to progress and to define what progress looks like on its own terms. Postwar Italy is a good example of how artisanal practices can scale up into global luxury brands. However, this was only possible through foreign investment and the embrace of industrial technologies. Even today, some of the most advanced factories I’ve stepped foot into are family-owned companies outside of Milan. At the same time, I can see a future where app-based entrepreneurial technologies like Etsy could empower artisans in the Majority World.

The challenge always lies in designing open collaborative systems that inherently value all parties equally. Only by designing the future with generosity can we ensure progress for all.

h: What’s next for you? Is there a material you’ve been itching to experiment with, a new community you want to work with, or a concept that’s been brewing in your mind? Where do you see your journey taking you next? 

SB: Malika and I recently started working in ceramics. We’re building upon our Ancestors project and using clay at a sculptural furniture scale in combination with other industrial materials and processes. Clay can be an unforgiving material. It cracks, it shatters, and warps. We’ve learned a lot through our mistakes. But, it’s not our intention to be ceramicists. In fact, we’d like to remain naive and are embracing the idea of being beginners again. It’s important to remember that wherever you are in life, you can always begin again.