34. Study of Creativity in Craft: A Case Study of Mysore Rosewood Inlay Artisans

Creativity plays a vital role in craft, allowing artisans to adapt to the changing scenario of craft practice. Creativity in craft exists within the social and cultural setting and develops with contextual practice and reflection. The resulting artefacts bear the individual artisan’s imprint signifying personal and social creativity. There is limited research on assessing the creativity of artisans involved in craft practice. Therefore, this research focuses on assessing creativity among Mysore Rosewood Inlay artisans in India. Mysore Rosewood Inlay craft entails setting different colours and types of wood in a specific pattern, which is embedded inside a wooden base to create artwork. Ethnographic research, Urban and Jellen’s Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing production (TCT-DP), Kaufmann and Beghetto’s 4C of Creativity (Mini-C, Little-C, Pro-C, Big-C) and Amabile’s Consensual Assessment Technique (CAT) are the tools used for this study. The ethnographic research was conducted from July 2019 to June 2022 in different clusters of Mysore Rosewood Inlay craft, Mysore, India, with artisans from varying levels of experience. The categorization of artisans in the 4C category is based on ethnographic research. Creativity scores from the Test of Creative Thinking-Pattern Production (TCT-PP), contextualized from TCT-DP, are validated by conducting the CAT on the products created by the artisans. The statistical analysis revealed consensus between the scores of TCT-PP and CAT. From the results, the artisans could be grouped under different levels of creativity for any future interventions based on the performance in CAT/TCT-PP. The results give an insight into the overall strengths and weaknesses of the artisans. The results also indicate the areas where strategic training can be given to the artisans.