Making Culture

Artisans and crafters have been #craftingheritage by shaping and remaking culture through the ages, passing down legacies of skill, knowledge and manufacture.

Education Manual

Find innovative educational resources to use crafts heritage in your classroom

Download the Education manual (opens in new window)

Humans of Crafts

A world of artisans and artists

Exhibition

This chapter highlights the broad range of crafts that have evolved in Europe from the Middle Ages to today

Exhibition

An artisan’s work can take place in all sorts of environments

Exhibition

This chapter explores craft from an artistic and contemporary angle through portraits of contemporary visual artists.

Exhibition

This chapter explores craft from an artistic and contemporary angle through portraits of contemporary visual artists.

Read the whole Humans of Crafts exhibition

Crafting fashion

Knitting, sewing, embroidering, designing... Creating clothing and fashion is a world of tradition and intergenerational artisanship.

The Arts and Craft of 3D Printing

The depot of MoMu houses many fashionable gems, which we discover with Frieda Sorber, curator and expert on lace.

Bruges’ long and illustrious tradition of lace-making becomes the key to show kids how to embed craft in their future

a close up picture of spools of lace bunched together, in the process of being made into a lace work.
Blog post

Antwerp and the making of European history

a sepia studio picture of a woman in fine clothing with a decorated hat, putting on a delicate white glove
Blog post

Over a century of Croatian fashion history

a woman with white hair and black clothing sits in front of old wooden looms and colourful tapestry slung over wooden beams.
Blog post

Four videos showing how Greek identities are embodied by the craft of weaving, weaving together past, present and future

Hands, minds, souls and stories: craft has the ability to form bridges through time and strengthen community ties.

Teaching the archaeology of weaving in Greece

a woman dressed in a pink top and ochre-coloured apron carries an unfired clay sculpture to a workbench in a quaint workshop, light filtering in through windows on the left.
Blog post

an interview with critic and curator Filep Motwary on craft and fashion

Comb in the form of two dragonflies
Exhibition

Explore the relationship between fashion, nature and craft

What is a Kilim, what it represented and what does it stand for now?

Ioanna Papantoniou talks about weaving the #plafi, a tradition whose cultural significance extends even beyond Greece

Brankica Zilovic is wearing sneakers, black socks, wide white pants and a teal sweater and lounges casually in a chair. Behind her on the wall is an artwork made by her made up of multicoloured threads woven together into patterns.
Blog post

In conversation with contemporary artist and professor Brankica Zilovic

a person pulling a piece of fabric off of a roller in a velvet factory
Blog post

Where craft means tradition, modernity and passion

Beaded art from the Cameroon Grasslands

a painting of a woman wearing a white bonnet sitting next to a window, a large lace pin cushion in front of her.
Blog post

Follow the evolution of lace craft, from myth to machine

a strip of lace

Tools and hands work together to braid and twist lengths of threads and create complex and beautiful motifs

a piece of needle lace in an oval shape showing a woman in long dress holding a parrot on her hand.

Skilled hands can create graceful designs using just one thread. A remarkable technique admired over centuries

Blog post

Symbol of patriarchy, or totem of female creativity?

Life in Motion

A history of amateur film

Exhibition

The first experiments with moving images

Exhibition

how moviemaking and showing entered the home

Exhibition

the evolution of standards, hardware and practices of home movie making

Exhibition

from silent black and white images to vivid colour and vibrant sound

Explore the full exhibition

Contemporary artists, artisans and their workshops

Open the door to the private workshop of artisans and contemporary artists and marvel at their skill, knowledge and expert craftsmanship.

Blog post

Learn how to make an easter palm

two men hold colourful nativity scenes on the main square of Krakow
Blog post

In Krakow, Poland, making nativity scenes is seen as a cultural tradition going back centuries.

Gallery

between craftsmanship and design

A wooden rack with bundles of wool dyed in different colours hanging and drying.
Blog post

Navigating between contemporary creation, traditional know-how and conservation

water carrier
Gallery

Enjoy an interesting selection of water containers and several illustrations of water carriers.

Full-bodied, long-necked vessel with basketry stopper.
Gallery

Basket making is one of the oldest handicraft activities in the world.

when textile becomes a committed artistic language

Brankica Zilovic holds threads that are part of one of her works hanging on the wall

Come and meet Brankica Zilovic, a contemporary textile artist, who showed us around her studio.

a black and white picture of a smiling man standing in a small store that is filled with paper-mache animal silhouettes, sticking out of the walls and standing on shelves above his head.
Blog post

Meet Roberto Capone, a paper-mâché craftsman creating a zoo of animals out of paper

Join expert jewelry craftsman Mario Nokaj to see how he creates stunning pieces of jewelry step by step.

Jackek Kaminski, a Polish present-day shoe artisan, stand in a grey suit among shelves on either side and above him, all filled with brown wooden shoe molds.
Blog post

Step into the workshop of a master shoe craftsman

a black and white photograph of a man sitting behind a loom-like device that has multiple threads coming down into the spine of a book. The man is in the process of threading a new page through the threads to add to the book.

Whether it's for letterpress binding or stationery binding, bookbinding is a fascinating process.

a large church bell with intricate carvings sits on a white background

In the Museum of Arts and Crafts, Zagreb, there is a collection of 40 church bells saved in WWI from being melted down.

Blog post

The craft of jewellery-making in Byzantium

Blog post

A chat with the basket maker Nicola Solimano

a photograph of a wooden bas-relief on a wall of an old Cuban woman with a cigar in her mouth, wearing a head scarf and a colourful collared shirt.
Blog post

An interview with Maïté Mazel

an arm is outstretched towards the sky with a closed fist, holding an explosion of blown glass streaked with red. The glass spiders out and clutches several stones in an array around the fist.
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Julie Legrand's glass craft

between craftsmanship and augmented reality

Analogue film and radio

Discover the distinct craft of analogue photography, the early history of radio, and the birth of videography

colour image of a black-and-white image seen through a Kinora motion picture viewer
Blog post

the first home cinema technology

Gallery

A historical overview of technological objects used to view and screen movies at home

Gallery

A historical overview of technological objects used to record amateur films and home movies during the 20th century

Gallery

A historical overview of technological objects used to record and reproduce sound during the 20th century

Blog post

Through the looking glass: the birth of analogue photography and animation.

Blog post

On air and on the move: radio stories

Explore how camera operators have the freedom and often the task to take their equipment outdoors.

Analogue Photography: the iconic world of magazines and the work of Dana Lixenberg

Acoustics

‘Heritage acoustics’ and the preservation and presentation of historic acoustic environments is a growing field of research within cultural heritage.

starting with historic recording studios in Nashville’s Music Row

EuropeanaTech Community Manager Greg Markus introduces us to the importance of heritage acoustics.

This webinar highlights acoustics and the preservation and presentation of historic acoustic spaces.

Crafty GIFs

Celebrate artisan heritage with these crafty GIFs from the 2022 GIF IT UP competition!