This paper contributes to developing understandings of strong commitments to particular forms of work and how they are sustained against bleak, unstable, exploitative and self-exploitative conditions. It approaches this duality between feeling and structure within the temporal and relational qualities of hope as they are experienced by women jewellery designer-makers in Birmingham Jewellery Quarter. The paper locates these hopes in the Craftswoman's Imperative, a symbolic good and material practice that is concerned with upholding objective values of the truth and beauty of artisanship. The paper details how the hopes of these designer-makers become aligned with those of policy-actors for a reinvigoration of British craftsmanship. It then explores how hope is upheld, and challenged, through sensory experiences of engaging with the material world. Finally, the paper explores these designer-makers’ optimistic practices for achieving the value of the Craftswoman's Imperative.
