Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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10 to reproduce some of the indications about handwork given by Steiner in his lectures on education, and to show how they were applied while he was directing the Waldorf School in Stuttgart towards the end of his life. He showed the teachers how handwork provides the balancing element which the more intellectual activities require if the development of the child is to be a harmonious one. Classes in handwork, as well as in crafts, are compulsory for both girls and boys. Children are guided in the Waldorf schools so that they are able to develop not only an open mind for the things of practical life but also a deep understanding for art as a whole, quite apart from those abilities that are founded more upon the intellect. Creative powers are awakened which can find fruitful application in the most varied fields in later life. Steiner considered it desirable that handwork in the Waldorf schools should lead over into the crafts, and on his visits to the classrooms and in lectures and meetings, he gave examples showing how this can be achieved. Much of this has already been made available. Our primary aim here is to reproduce what has not yet been published. But we have also endeavored to make a kind of compendium of statements that are scattered throughout a large number of his books and lectures. The spoken remarks made by Steiner at the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which have lived on in the memory of a number of teachers, and which we now wish to make accessible to a wider public, have been quoted as faithfully as possible—in spite of the fact that some things may strike the reader as obvious or as too elementary to deserve inclusion in the book. But it was a feature of all Steiner’s indications that, through the loving attention with which he took them into consideration, even the apparently most insignificant things proved later to be living seeds from which quite new points of view could be grown, and which supplied the basis for an extension or even a complete revision of our methods.
11 CHAPTER I Indications Concerning Color and Painting One of the most important elements in handwork is color. Let us therefore quote something of what Steiner had to say about the introduction and handling of color in the art lesson. In an educational lecture given in Oxford he said: You will observe that the aim is to build up the handwork and needlework lessons in connection with what is learned in the painting lessons. In the painting lessons the children are not taught to draw (with a brush) or make patterns (sticken), but learn to deal freely and spontaneously with the element of color itself. Thus it is immensely important that the children should have come to a right experience of color … they must not paint from a palette or block, but from a jar or mug with liquid color in it, color dissolved in water. Then the child will come to feel how one color goes with another, he will feel the inner harmony of colors, he will experience them inwardly. 1 Steiner has shown in another lecture what a lively experience it can be for children if colors are introduced to them in this way: The main point is that the children should develop a feeling for the building up of color values and have an experience of the life of the color world in fairy tales. As soon as you allow fantasy to play its part, forms will come of themselves. The forms must grow out of color. 2 Think how stimulating it could be to give them an understanding of the following: Here is this coquettish lilac color and directly on top of it sits a cheeky piece of red and all this stands against a devotional blue. You must make the colors behave like objects and do things, for this has a soul-building quality. There are many different methods we can adopt to make color active so that a child is helped to live in color. For instance, let the red look through the blue—this must be done by the child itself. Much more life must flow into the teaching, for you have to help children to lose their sluggishness. They must have fire! It is important that our feeling for color, which we have lost more than our feeling for music, is reawakened in us. This will then have a stimulating effect on music too. 3 Steiner spoke of what will come about if we fail to develop a full experience of the world of color in our children: If a real experience of color is not cultivated in our time, and if mechanistic theories of the nature of color persist, then children will be born who no longer possess any organ for the perception of color. Life reveals itself through
Page 3 and 4: HANDWORK and HANDICRAFTS From Indic
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Page 7: CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . . . . . . .
Page 12 and 13: 12 color, but human beings will not
Page 14 and 15: 14 social life—the human being wo
Page 16 and 17: 16 CHAPTER III Handwork in the Kind
Page 18 and 19: 18 of the children. Each child is a
Page 20 and 21: 20 He then drew on the blackboard a
Page 22 and 23: 22 CHAPTER IV Phases of Development
Page 24 and 25: 24 so forth, should be done in a ve
Page 26 and 27: 26 relationship can often bring us
Page 28 and 29: 28 CHAPTER V The Line in Painting a
Page 30 and 31: 30 CHAPTER VI Handwork for Children
Page 32 and 33: 32 better to make a herd of chargin
Page 34 and 35: 34 CHAPTER VII After the Lower Scho
Page 36 and 37: 36 Steiner also set such tasks as t
Page 38 and 39: 38 Plate 3 Fig. 20 (wrong) Fig. 21
Page 40 and 41: 40 The working together of art and
Page 42 and 43: 42 He made sketches of costumes and
Page 44 and 45: 44 remarked: “The place where we
Page 46 and 47: 46 Figure 12: Publisher’s sign dr
Page 48 and 49: 48 Figure 23: “Anthroposophie, Oe
Page 50 and 51: 50 Figure 34: Folder (cloth) for th
Page 52 and 53: 52 END-VIGNETTES Drawn by Rudolf St
Page 54 and 55: 54 CHAPTER X Indications Concerning
Page 56 and 57: 56 In Torquay he discussed the matt
Page 58 and 59: 58 CHAPTER XI Color in Clothing and
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60 In a similar way he indicated, a
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62 made it necessary, he would occa
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64 CHAPTER XII The History of the A
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66 a materialistic point of view, b
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68 If one looks at the costumes rep
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70 Under the influence of Augustus
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72 is to come, point the way that m
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74 Index to Plate 10 1. Part of an
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76 Through anthroposophy the road t
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78 APPENDIX I The Pedagogical Value
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80 placed before him, through the a
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82 Dr. Steiner: “The way a child
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84 organization to write in this wa
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86 but do not take individuals out
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88 Dr. Steiner: “Where it is not
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90 Dr. Steiner: “Spinning is part
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92 school. [The upper classes did n
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94 18. Teachers’ Conference, Sept
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96 children should learn to disting
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98 In a Berlin lecture, Dr. Steiner
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100 One should mention here that Dr
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102 most it could be decorated plas
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104 Displays of Work Done by Studen
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106 reproduced by means of photogra
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Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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