054. Louis Elton: Anglofuturist aesthetics beyond podcræft

About this episode

The episode discusses the evolution of the British Cræft Prize and the competing aesthetic frameworks within British culture.

Part two begins, as promised, with Louis pulling down his trousers. The underpants in question — a toile de joie printed with pastoral scenes labelled Seductio, Commiditas, Protectio — turn out to be the origin story of the entire British Cræft Prize. What started as a quest to produce bespoke boxer shorts from Northern Irish linen eventually mutated into a £60,000 national prize for maverick craftsmen. The conversation then turns to whether cræft can serve as a binding agent for a country that no longer shares an informational commons. Louis presents his framework of 16 Dreams of Britain — from Royal Britain and Workshop Britain through to Silly Britain (Mr Blobby, cheese rolling, Paddington Bear as psychopomp) and New Britain (Stormzy’s stab vest, Oswald Boateng’s BA uniforms). His claim is that excellence in making — the deep hand-eye-mind entanglement of cræft — cuts across all of them. Calum pushes back hard: these are competing aesthetic and moral universes, not fragments of a whole. Submit to the British Cræft Prize. £60,000. Deadline: 31 August 2026. [link] The episode explores: * The boxer shorts to national prize pipeline, via Saint Pantalone * Why Irish linen is grown…

People in this episode

Host: Calum Drysdale

Guest: Louis Elton

Topics covered

• British Cræft Prize
• aesthetics
• craftsmanship
• cultural identity
• competing moral universes
• 16 Dreams of Britain

Keywords

• British Cræft Prize
• Louis Elton
• Calum Drysdale
• craftsmanship
• aesthetics
• cultural identity
• 16 Dreams of Britain
• Mr Blobby
• Stormzy
• Oswald Boateng

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: British Cræft Prize, Saint Pantalone, Kenneth Frampton, Paul Ricœur, Hiroki Azuma

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