Reconceptualising Design Authorship in Nigerian Collaborative Craft-Design Practice

The concept of design authorship, central to intellectual property law, professional design ethics, and design historical canon formation, is premised on assumptions of individual creative agency that are fundamentally at odds with the collaborative, communal, and iteratively traditional authorship structures governing craft-based design practice in many Nigerian cultural contexts. This doctoral study reconceptualises design authorship through a sustained theoretical and empirical investigation of collaborative craft-design practice across five Nigerian craft traditions, including Kente-derivative weaving in Kogi, bronze casting in Benin City, woodcarving in Awka, calabash decoration in Sokoto, and adire resist-dyeing in Abeokuta. Drawing on social theories of creativity, distributed cognition, practice theory, and African philosophy of communal being, the research employs a comparative ethnographic methodology combining extended observation of craft production processes, biographical interviews with sixty-two practitioners across the five traditions, and archival analysis of attribution practices and knowledge ownership disputes. Analysis reveals four distinct collaborative authorship models operating across the traditions: genealogical authorship, guild authorship, community heritage authorship, and contemporary design-craft hybrid authorship, each with distinct intellectual property implications and ethical demands. The study develops a Communal Design Authorship Theory that provides both a theoretical critique of individualist intellectual property frameworks and a positive account of collective creative agency compatible with Nigerian legal and cultural norms. Contributions advance design ethics, intellectual property theory, and African creative economy scholarship. Keywords: design authorship, collaborative practice, craft design, communal creativity, Nigeria.