Choosing Craft: The Artist's Viewpoint

Choosing Craft

Choosing Craft

THE ARTIST’S VIEWPOINT Edited by VICKI HALPER and

DIANE DOUGLAS

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Choosing craft : the artist’s viewpoint / edited by Vicki Halper and Diane Douglas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8078-3119-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Handicraft—United States—History. 2. Artisans—United States—Anecdotes. I. Halper, Vicki. II. Douglas, Diane, 1951– TT23.C56 2009 745.5—dc22

13 12 11 10 09

2008043772

5 4 3 2 1

Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xv

PA R T 1 : C HO O S I NG C R A F T 1 1 INTEGRATING ART AND LIFE 3 Anni Albers, 1944 5 George Nakashima, 1953 8 Marguerite Wildenhain, 1959 9 Mary Caroline (M. C.) Richards, 1962 11 Val Cushing, James McKinnell, Daniel Rhodes, and Robert Turner, 1966 13 Paul Manners, 1978 15 Miriam Schapiro, 1980 16 Arthur Espenet (Art) Carpenter, 1982 19 Scott Burton, 1987 21 Robert Kehlmann, 1988 23 Joyce Scott, 1995 24 Bruce Metcalf, 2002 26 Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, 2005 27 2 INHERITING A PATH 28 Darrell Adams, 1992 29 Nora Naranjo-Morse, 1994 32 Diego Romero, 1994 34 Mark Lindquist, 2001 36 Sonya Y. S. Clark, 2004 37 Robert Ebendorf, 2004 39 Mary Lee Bendolph, 2006 40 3 RESPONDING TO MATERIALS 43 George Nakashima, 1953, 1981 44 Albert Paley, 1982 46 Mary Lee Hu, 1985 48 Paul Marioni, 1985 50 Nick Cave, 1989 51 Ann Hamilton, 1990 53 Warren Seelig, 1992 54 Erika Ayala Stefanutti and Gary Griffin, 1994 56 Michael Lucero, 1996 58

Lesley Dill, 2000 60 Bruce Metcalf, 2000 63 Dorothy Gill Barnes, 2003 64 Sheila Hicks, 2004 66 Gerhardt Knodel, 2004 69

PART 2 : GETTI NG AN EDUCATION 71 4 TRAINING WITH MASTERS 73 Tage Frid, 1975 74 Paul Soldner, 1978 76 Warren MacKenzie, 1981 80 Richard Marquis, 1995 83 Fritz Dreisbach, 2004 86 Tom Joyce, 2004 89 5 STUDYING IN THE ACADEMY 93 Harvey Littleton, 1963 94 Marguerite Wildenhain, 1973 96 Wendell Castle, 1981 97 Lillian Elliott, 1989 98 Angela Fina, 1989–90 100 Stephen DeStaebler, 1994 102 Arline Fisch, 2001 103 Harvey Littleton, 2001 106 6 LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES 109 Dale Chihuly and Lewis (Buster) Simpson, 1972 110 Margret Craver, 1982 113 Albert Paley, 1982 118 Judy Kensley McKie, 1986 120 Richard Notkin, 1998 122 Gyöngy Laky, 1998–99 124 Arline Fisch, 2001 127 L. Brent Kington, 2001 129 Fritz Dreisbach, 2004 131 Gerry Williams, 2004 134 Sabrina Gschwandtner, 2007 136

PART 3 : MAKI NG A L I VI NG 139 7 STARTING A BUSINESS 143 Charles M. Harder, 1945 144 Edith Heath, 1957, 1990–92, 1994 149 Jack Lenor Larsen, 1971 154 John Lewis, 1978 157 Helena Hernmarck, 1987 159 Norma Minkowitz, 1987 161 Byron Temple, 1987 162 Margaret De Patta, 1989 163 Richard Marquis, 1989 166 Sheila Hicks, 2004 167 8 ENGAGING THE MARKET 170 Marguerite Wildenhain, 1957 171 Arline Fisch, 1981 173 Henry Halem, 1982–83 178 Alphonse Mattia, 1985 180 Francis Whitaker, 1986 180 Donald Friedlich, 1988 182 Nora Naranjo-Morse, 1992 184 Betty Woodman, 1998 187 Jun Kaneko, 2000 188 Fritz Dreisbach, 2004 190 9 WORKING FOR INDUSTRY 192 Dorothy Liebes, 1947, 1960 193 Charles Ormond Eames Jr., 1957 196 Jack Lenor Larsen, 1958 197 Kay Sekimachi, 1963 198 John Prip, 1964 201 Bill Brown, 1980 204 Ed Rossbach, 1982 207 Katherine Westphal, 1984 209 Daniel Owen (Dan) Dailey, 1989 212 Lillian Elliott, 1989 215 Arline Fisch, 2001 217 Robert Ebendorf, 2004 218

PART 4 : CON FRONTI NG C RAFT 221 10 TESTING TRADITION 225 Marguerite Wildenhain, 1953 226 Charles Ormond Eames Jr., 1957 227 Peter Voulkos, 1957 228 Richard Artschwager, 1965 231 Claes Oldenburg, 1965 235 Robert Arneson, 1974 238 James Krenov, 1975 240 John Mason, 1977 242 Howard Kottler, 1977, 1978 244 John McQueen, 1978 247 Ed Rossbach, undated 249 Wayne Higby, 1982 250 David Huchthausen, 1984 252 Wendell Castle, 1985 254 Stanley Lechtzin, 1988 256 Mike Kelley, 1991 260 Arline Fisch, 1994 261 Rosemary Apple Blossom Lonewolf, 1996 262 Richard Notkin, 1997 264 Betty Woodman, 1998 265 Mark Hewitt, 2000 267 Michael James, 2003 271 Josiah McElheny, 2004 273 11 CRITIQUING CULTURE 277 Ed Rossbach, 1973 278 Robert Kehlmann, 1979 279 Judy Chicago, 1979, 1980 280 James Melchert, 1980 282 Katherine Westphal, 1984 283 Susan Kingsley, 1987 284 Keith A. Lewis, 1991 288 Lou Cabeen, 1993 290 Garth Johnson, 2000 293 Tom Joyce, 2004 295 Liz Collins, Sabrina Gschwandtner, Cat Mazza, and Allison Smith, 2008 296 Index 301

Preface Choosing Craft is an assemblage of artists’ words describing their lives, work, ideas, and values as they relate to the history and practice of craft in the United States. It is an anecdotal narrative, thematically arranged, that examines the post–World War II development of modern craft, which came of age beside modernist painting and sculpture and was seminally influenced by them as well as by traditional and industrial practices. As an art discipline, craft has been poorly documented in academic and critical journals and texts and largely omitted from the art-historical canon. Reasons for this marginalization are many.1 The nature of craftwork—its historical associations with artisanal labor; folk, ethnic, and communal traditions; and the anonymous production, often by women, of items for domestic use—distanced it from many core values and protagonists of high modernism. Given the general disinterest of the mainstream art establishment, craft scholarship—historical documentation, critique, and theory— developed as a separate track in insular contexts driven primarily by practitioners themselves. Makers’ letters, reports from craft conferences, articles in mediumspecific periodicals, lecture notes, and oral histories constitute the primary documentary record of modern craft history. We targeted these materials as the foundation and research focus for this book. Our purpose is to present artists’ writings and recollections as vital and vivid data that deserve widespread study as a primary resource for craft scholarship. Following the lead of these artist-constructed sources, we listened as makers argued, theorized, wondered, and rhapsodized about craft. Our method was open-ended and inclusive in examining their motives, training, work habits, markets, and diverse networks of association. What emerged from this investigation to become the organizing structure of this anthology was a picture of craft as cultural labor drawn from individual artists’ experiences and opinions. This perspective differs from many other artists-on-art books, which often exclude matters of lifestyle and economics in favor of a narrower focus on aesthetics alone. HISTORICAL CONTEXT We concentrated on the post–World War II period because of the availability of printed materials and interviews and the huge growth of the studio craft movement in that era. The war sets the historical context for the anthology. It prompted the emigration to the United States of influenix

tial artists, particularly refugees from Nazi Germany, such as Anni Albers and Marguerite Wildenhain, whose education, employment, and lives were threatened by the Holocaust. American veterans returning from European and Asian fronts, such as Peter Voulkos, brought personal knowledge of other cultures and were able to enter university arts programs without concern about cost or parental disapproval thanks to tuition provided by the G.I. Bill. Conscientious objectors such as Paul Soldner and Robert Turner, who had refused to fight in the war, and Japanese American internees such as George Nakashima joined with others who were dismayed at the slaughter and opposed to the growing corporate influence in American economics. They swelled the ranks of makers who viewed a life in the crafts as an alternative to social conformity and traditional careers. Those who chose craft after World War II entered an international art world soon to be dominated for the first time by American artists rather than Parisians. Abstract expressionist, or New York school, painters, including Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, strongly influenced the aesthetics of Peter Voulkos and his followers. Energized by developments in the art world, Rose Slivka, the influential writer and editor in chief of Craft Horizons magazine from 1959 to 1979, promoted a shift away from traditional craft forms, skills, and techniques toward a vision of craft that emphasized innovation and individual expression. She championed Voulkos’s work with the same zeal and heroic claims that Clement Greenberg used in promoting the American abstract painters. Slivka’s view of craft as sculpture introduced a debate that would pervade teaching, criticism, and marketing for the remainder of the twentieth century. Makers, critics, and historians splintered into fractious subgroups over the questions “What is craft?” and “Is it art?” At the extremes, traditional practitioners opposed innovators, producers resented academics, professionals were split from hobbyists, and industrial designers were banned. The social ferment of the 1960s and 1970s, expressed in the civil rights movement, hippie counterculture, and Vietnam War protests, reinforced the post–World War II attraction of craft production as an antiestablishment activity. Choosing craft was a way of choosing to live “off the grid” in relation to the dominant capitalist culture. This identification of craft with the counterculture waned as the century progressed. Makers became more entrepreneurial about marketing, and commercial outlets (particularly galleries and craft fairs) proliferated. Craft was more frequently exhibited and collected in nonspecialized art museums, further diminishing the isolation of the field. The political and aesthetic alignments of craft and postmodern art bex

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came increasingly clear in the late twentieth century. The marginalization of craft outside the art establishment was illustrative of feminists’ critiques of the exclusion of women from the art-historical canon and disdain of the domestic as a valid subject for making art. So, too, craft’s roots in ethnic and traditional communities connected it to artists’ critiques arising from multiculturalism and their interrogation of labor practices and globalization. The twenty-first century heralded a rapprochement between the industrial design community and the craft establishment, which began again to embrace artist-designed, mass-produced objects. Important institutions that once featured the word “craft” in their titles changed their names to reflect openness to other arts and to industry—for example, the American Craft Museum in New York became the Museum of Arts and Design (2002) and the California College of Arts and Crafts became the California College of the Arts (2003). These movements toward hybridization signaled a reversal of the previous generation’s urge to separate craft from other art practices. Choosing Craft was compiled within this pluralistic context. METHODOLOGY We began our research with a targeted list of about 100 artists whom we deemed to be important and influential to the field. This list grew to more than 150 makers after consultation with other historians and through leads we encountered in our research. We attempted to locate writings and interviews for each of the targeted artists; we neither conducted interviews ourselves nor transcribed materials that existed solely on audio tape or film. Whenever possible, we tried to find sources contemporaneous with the events described. Choosing Craft does not offer a linear history recording the flow of people and events that shaped the field. Organized by cultural topics rather than chronology, it focuses instead on dominant themes—inspiration, educational opportunities, working conditions, and philosophical tensions—that shaped and continue to shape the field. A noteworthy finding of our research is that so many fundamental questions about craft are recurrent. Concerns about technique and technology, ornamentation and utility, tradition and innovation are not the proving ground or battleground for any single generation. Our approach highlights the emergence and resurgence of these central themes and tensions throughout the period without attempting to resolve conflicts or ambiguities about craft’s definition or disciplinary borders—for example, distinctions between craft, design, and fine art. Our editorial perspective, grounded in the field of cultural studies, identifies a web of networks rather than one essential character for craft. It P R E FA C E

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examines craft’s multiple roots in and ongoing relationships with painting and sculpture, design, industry, folk and ethnic traditions, hobby craft, and political and social movements.2 More than 100 different makers are represented in Choosing Craft, some with multiple entries. Our primary criterion for selection was pertinent content and vivid words, with wide allowances made for the difference between written texts, which are reviewed and edited, and transcribed interviews, which may have the hesitations, repetitions, and colloquialisms of informal conversation. We have attempted to do justice to the broad range of craft contexts and to represent a spectrum of artists whose training and cultures differ. Included are the words of teachers and students, masters and apprentices, designers and producers, Native Americans and immigrants, the status quo and the disaffected. Recognized leaders in the field are featured along with artists not traditionally associated with craft. Our choices of terminology support this philosophical perspective. The designators “artists” and “makers” are used generically and interchangeably to describe the variety of participants included in the text. We also use “potter” or “metalsmith,” for example, when applicable. We deliberately do not use the terms “artisan” and “craftsman” to avoid implying categorical distinctions between craft, design, and art. ORGANIZATION Choosing Craft is organized according to four seminal activities that ground a professional life in the crafts. Each is explored in depth as a part in the anthology. The first and most elemental activity is the commitment to pursue craft as a vocation, which is described in part 1, “Choosing Craft.” The chapters in this first part articulate the values, inspirations, and experiences that attract artists to their professions. “Getting an Education,” the second part, explores the varied ways artists learned their craft in the aftermath of World War II, when there were few prescribed paths to guide their efforts. The “find-it-yourself” and “doit-yourself” nature of training for the postwar generation profoundly influenced the character and structure of craft education in subsequent decades, resonating with the counterculture ethos of the 1960s and 1970s. The entrepreneurial spirit that initiated new academic institutions and programs also stimulated options in nonacademic training. These include artists’ support groups and communities of practice—for example, shared work sites, annual conferences, sales and marketing networks, and virtual communication exchanges—which have remained a distinctive and influential feature of craft education to this day. “Making a Living,” part 3, looks at the economics of craft, featuring artists xii

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who produce one-of-a-kind and limited-edition objects along with those who design mass-produced goods for others. They sell their art through fairs, galleries, department stores, and wholesalers. There is enormous diversity in their professional roles, with many artists supplementing their positions as sole practitioners in order to design or produce for industry. At play are considerations of income, creative vision, affiliation, tolerance (or, in some cases, hunger) for risk, and preference for working alone or with others. In “Confronting Craft,” the anthology’s final part, artists reflect on the definition and boundaries of craft as a discipline and its relationship with the culture as a whole. Here makers accept or reject traditional constraints and open themselves to new influences and challenges. Spirited philosophical, cultural, and political confrontations highlight artists as agents of change who make or break rules and as individuals confronting established networks of power. Choosing Craft demonstrates that the impulses to learn, make, and theorize about craft have always been, and remain, complicated and multifaceted.3 Craft absorbs and affects many art practices. Its history in modern America is intertwined with industrial, cultural, and intellectual history. That is why we believe it is best studied through an interdisciplinary approach. We hope that Choosing Craft promotes broader recognition and study of craft within the larger narrative of American art and cultural history. NOTES ON USING THIS BOOK All entries are chronological within each chapter; each chapter starts anew with the postwar years. However, because many entries are reminiscences, which are dated by the time of writing or recording rather than the years being referenced, the chronology is not always strict. In editing the entries, we use standard ellipses (three or four dots) to indicate where a phrase or sentence has been omitted or where an interviewer’s interjection or question was left out because of irrelevance to the flow of the artist’s thought. An entire line of dots is used to indicate longer excluded passages.

NOTES 1. See James H. Sanders, “Moving Beyond the Binary,” in Objects and Meaning: New Perspectives on Art and Craft, edited by M. Anna Fariello and Paula Owen (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2004), 88–103. 2. Many art critics and historians have recognized craft’s polyglot nature and argued for research and analysis of the field informed by material culture studies, P R E FA C E

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social history, and cultural studies. The following scholars and their ideas have been especially influential for us: John Michael Vlatch, The Afro-American Tradition in Decorative Arts (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978); Arthur Danto, “Furniture as Art,” Nation, April 23, 1990, 571–75; Cheryl White, “The Voices of Craft,” Artweek 27 (November 1996): 12–17; Paula Owen, “Labels, Lingo, and Legacy: Crafts at a Crossroads,” in Fariello and Owen, Objects and Meaning, 24–35; Glenn Adamson and Edward “Ned” Cooke Jr., “Conference Preview,” American Craft Council News and Views 1, no. 2 (2006): 8–11; and Edward S. Cooke Jr., “Modern Craft and the American Experience,” American Art 21, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 2–9. Glen Adamson’s excellent Thinking through Craft (Oxford: Berg, 2007) was published as this book went to press. 3. See Katy Kline, introduction to Subversive Crafts (Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology List Visual Arts Center, 1993); Paul Greenhalgh, “Craft and Modernity,” in Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory and Critical Writing, edited by Jean Johnson (Toronto: Coach House Books, 2002), 43, 118; and Lesley Jackson, “Craft Wars,” 16 Icon (October 2004), <www.iconye.com/index.php>.

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Acknowledgments Choosing Craft was conceived at a 2003 gathering of artists, curators, and academics at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Craft, Creativity and Design (CCCD). The purpose of the colloquium was to delineate the scope and contents of the first college textbook documenting the history of American studio craft and promoting its inclusion in the larger narrative of American art. The authors, who were present at this meeting, additionally proposed a complementary anthology, Choosing Craft, that would provide artists’ perspectives on craft history. The University of North Carolina Press agreed to publish the anthology and be the conduit for grants. The Windgate Foundation, whose support of scholarship in the crafts is unexcelled, provided funds for research, rights and reproductions, and manuscript preparation. Matching grants were given by the National Endowment for the Arts and the CCCD. In addition, the Smithsonian American Art Museum awarded a James Renwick Senior Fellowship to Vicki Halper for research at the Archives of American Art, the nation’s largest repository of artists’ papers. We are endlessly grateful to the funders and UNC Press for their support. We are deeply appreciative of those who have encouraged this project, given us advice, critiqued our results, located materials, and granted permissions. For the provision of essential support, we thank the participants of the 2003 gathering at the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design, which inspired Choosing Craft, and Dian Magie, the center’s remarkable director; Charles Grench, senior editor at the University of North Carolina Press, who shepherded this project to completion and oversaw its funding and the readers whose insightful suggestions improved our work; Jennifer Mills, our indispensable research associate; Petra Siemion, who transcribed entries and prepared the manuscript; and Peggy Weiss, who helped with artists’ biographies. For advice, recommendations, referrals, and criticism, we are indebted to Glenn Adamson, head of graduate studies, Victoria and Albert Museum Susan Tabor Avila, artist Jim Baker, director, Anderson Ranch Bruce Bernstein, assistant director for cultural resources, National Museum of the American Indian xv

Garth Clark, ceramics historian and former director, Garth Clark Gallery Stephen A. Clerico, administrative assistant, Furniture Society of America Edward S. Cooke Jr., Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts, Yale University Susan Cummins, director, Rotasa Foundation Andrew Glasgow, executive director, Furniture Society of America Amelia Goerlitz, fellowship program administrator, Smithsonian American Art Museum Tony Hepburn, former artist-in-residence and head of the Ceramics Department, Cranbrook Academy of Art Patricia Hickman, professor emeritus of art, University of Hawaii Jane Milosch, former curator, Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Liza Kirwin, curator of manuscripts, Archives of American Art Albert LeCoff, director, The Wood Turning Center Patricia Malarcher, editor, Surface Design Journal Rick Mastelli, artist, editor, and principal, Image & Word Lydia Matthews, associate dean of educational programs, associate professor, The New School Paula Owen, president, Southwest School of Art and Craft Bruce Pepich, director, Racine Art Museum Beth Sellars, independent curator Patterson Sims, director, Montclair Art Museum JoAnn Stabb, lecturer emerita of design, University of California, Davis Davira Taragin, director of exhibitions and programs, Racine Art Museum Karen Tsujimoto, senior curator of art, Oakland Museum of California Katherine Westphal, artist For stewardship of source materials and attentive help, we are beholden to librarians and archivists nationwide, in particular Columbia University, rare book and manuscript librarians Gail Bardhan and Elizabeth Hylen, Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass Elizabeth Gulacsy, Scholes Library, Alfred University Wendy Hurlock, Archives of American Art Amanda Jacobs, Archives of California Art Seattle Public Library, periodicals division staff

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gerald Stone, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley David Shuford, American Craft Council library For assistance in locating photographs, we thank Josh DeWeese, former resident director, Archie Bray Foundation Kate Elliott, Elliott Brown Gallery Arline Fisch, professor emerita of art, San Diego State University Michael James, professor, University of Nebraska, Lincoln Sam Jornlin, Voulkos & Co. Catalogue Project Ree Kaneko, cofounder, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art Robert Kehlmann, artist Stuart Kestenbaum, director, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts Susan Kingsley, artist Frank Lloyd and Paul Rand, Frank Lloyd Gallery John McQueen, artist Michele Rogers, director, Bartow History Center Peter Russo, program coordinator, Dieu Donné Papermill Holly Sabin, Perimeter Gallery Jay Stewart, trustee, Brian and Edith Heath Trust Katherine Westphal, artist For love and support, we treasure our families. Our heartfelt thanks to Gerry, Steve, David, and Ari. Above all, we thank the artists who are the inspiration for this book. Note: All attempts have been made to contact copyright holders to the materials reproduced in Choosing Craft. We apologize to any copyright holders we have been unable to locate or have inadvertently missed and ask that they contact the University of North Carolina Press.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Choosing Craft

Part 1 Choosing Craft Pursuing a career in crafts in the United States after World War II was a personal choice. Gender, family, or ethnic heritage might influence a maker’s profession but seldom mandated it. Instead Americans entered the crafts through diverse, sometimes unpredictable routes. In the chapters in part 1, three paths into the field are explored: a desire to have a career that is compatible with one’s values, particularly opposition to a militarist or consumerist society; the influence of childhood experience and ancestry; and the lure of one of the traditional craft materials—clay, metal, fiber, wood, and glass. These paths are not mutually exclusive.

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1 Integrating Art and Life The notion that making craft is an answer to society’s ills and a route to spiritual and moral health has been prominent since the British arts and crafts movement of the Victorian era. In reaction to the Industrial Revolution, which they linked to the degradation of the work force, English theorists John Ruskin, William Morris, and others advocated a return to handcraft. They believed such a return would promote the integrity and moral health of workers and the culture as a whole. After World War II, many who chose to pursue craft professionally reiterated notions that personal and societal well-being was only possible outside the military-industrial complex and the corporate world. Crafts became a vocation that reinforced an ideal vision of society without moral compromise. World War II looms over midcentury makers. Anni Albers and Marguerite Wildenhain, both refugees from Nazi Germany, see the discipline and selfdirection of craft as a source of social integrity and an antidote to cultural chaos. Robert Turner, a conscientious objector during that war, notes that he and his colleagues were more concerned with a simple, independent way of life than with the objects they produced. His use of the word “integration” to define a value-centered life can be compared with M. C. Richards’s term “centering,” which refers less to lifestyle than to a psychological state conducive to personal growth. In the 1960s and 1970s craft also became a way of affirming links to gender, class, and ethnicity. Still antiestablishment, makers whose intent was overtly political changed the language and content of craft by including implied or overt commentary on social issues in the objects they created. Miriam Schapiro and other feminists, for example, embraced craft as a way to identify with the history and culture of women. They associated craft with decorativeness, domesticity, small scale, and intensity of labor—characteristics rejected in abstract expressionist painting, among other movements acclaimed by the art world establishment of the era. In recent years, with the growth of identity politics initiated by the women’s movement, Joyce Scott links craft with her social class and Consuelo Underwood with her ethnic heritage. The discussion of craft as a political tool continues in more theoretical, less personal terms, in chapter 11, “Critiquing Culture.” 3

Anni Albers in her studio at Black Mountain College, 1941. (Photo by Alex [Bill] Reed, courtesy of The North Carolina State Archives, © 2006 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation /Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

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ANNI ALBERS (b. 1899 in Berlin; d. 1994 in Orange, Connecticut) was Bauhaustrained and director of its weaving workshop in Dessau and Berlin between 1930 and 1933. In 1933 Albers and her husband, the painter Josef Albers, left Nazi Germany to teach at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where she was an assistant professor of art from 1933 to 1949. Albers published this impassioned prescription for a renewed world in Design magazine in 1944, soon after the German surrender in World War II. She denigrates academic studies and proposes the creative arts, particularly craft, as the route to fostering courageous, antiauthoritarian, and disciplined individuals.

Our world goes to pieces, we have to rebuild our world. We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance and not through a defined deficiency. We have to find our strength rather than our weakness. Out of the chaos of collapse we can save the lasting: we still have our “right” or “wrong,” the absolute of our inner voice—we still know beauty, freedom, happiness . . . unexplained and unquestioned. Intuition saves us examination. We have to gather our constructive energies and concentrate on the little we know, the few remaining constants. But do we know how to build? Education meant to prepare us. But how much of education is concerned with doing and how much with recording? How much of it with productive speculation and how much with repeating? Research work and engineering work, when they are creative, are too specialized to give any general basis of constructive attitude. We neglect a training in experimenting and doing; we feel safer as spectators. We rather collect than construct. We have to learn to respond to conditions productively. We cannot master them but we can be guided by them. Limitation from the outside can stimulate our inventiveness rather than confine it. We need such flexibility of reaction in times of crisis. Too much of our education provides instead of prepares and thus loses its serving role and tends to become an end in itself. We are proud of knowledge and forget that facts only give reflected light. Education in general means to us academic education, which becomes synonymous with an unproductive one. If we want to learn to do, to form, we have to turn to art work, and more specifically to craft work as part of it. Here learning and teaching are directed toward the development of our general capacity to form. They are directed toward the training of our sense of organization, our constructive thinking, our inventiveness and imagination, our sense of balance in form—toward the apprehension of I N T E G R AT I N G A R T A N D L I F E

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principles such as tension and dynamic . . . the long list of faculties which finally culminate in a creative art, or, more specifically in a world of art. On the basis of a creative attitude we can then add necessary information, the specialized studies. Art work deals with the problem of a piece of art, but more, it teaches the process of all creating, the shaping out of the shapeless. We learn from it, that no picture exists before it is done, no form before it is shaped. The conception of a work gives only its temper, not its consistency. Things take shape in material and in the process of working it, and no imagination is great enough to know before they are done what they will be like. We come to know in art work that we do not clearly know where we will arrive in our work, although we set the compass, our vision; that we are led, in going along, by material and work process. We have plans and blueprints, a shorthand of material and its treatment, but the finished work is still a surprise. We learn to listen to voices: to the yes or no of our material, our tools, our time. We come to know that only when we feel guided by them our work takes on form and meaning, that we are misled when we follow only our will. All great deeds have been achieved under a sense of guidance. We learn courage from art work. We have to go where no one was before us. We are alone and we are responsible for our actions. Our solitariness takes on religious character. This is a matter of my conscience and me. We learn to dare to make a choice, to be independent; there is no authority to be questioned. In art work there is no established conception of work; any decision is our own, any judgment. Still, there is one right opinion as to quality of a work of art, spontaneous and indisputable—one of our absolutes. There is a final agreement upon it, of those initiated, no matter how much personal taste or trends of the time influence the judgment. In making our choice we develop a standpoint. How much of today’s confusion is brought about through not knowing where we stand, through the inability to relate experiences directly to us. In art work any experience is immediate. We have to apply what we absorb to our work of the moment. We cannot postpone the use of what we learn. Much of our education today prepares us for a later day, a day that never comes. Knowing for later is not knowing at all. We learn to trust our intuition. No explaining and no analyzing can help us recognize an art problem or solve it, if thinking is our only relation to it. We have to rely on inner awareness. We can develop awareness, and clear thoughts may help us cultivate it, but the essence of understanding art is more immediate than any thinking about it. Too much emphasis is given today in our general education to intellectual training. An overemphasis 6

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of intellectual work suggests an understanding on a ground which is not the ground of our own experiences. It transposes understanding into assumed experiences which can be right but may be wrong. Our valuation in school and university is almost entirely a valuation of intellectuality. The inarticulateness of the artistic person is interpreted easily as a lack of intelligence while it is rather an intelligence expressing itself in other means than words. Our intellectual training affects our analytic—art work our synthetic ability. We are used to thinking of art work as developing taste or a sense for beauty if not as training artists. We think more of its aesthetic qualities than its constructive ones. But the constructive forces are the ones we will need today and tomorrow. We will have to construct, not analyze or decorate. That field of art which is the least academic, the least fortified by authority, will be best fitted to prepare for constructive process. The fine arts have accumulated much dignity. The crafts? They have had a long rest. Industry overran them. We need too much too quickly for any handwork to keep up with. The crafts retreated, a defeated minority. We do not depend on their products now, but we need again their contact with material and their slow process of forming. The fine arts have specialized on a few materials today, oilpaints, watercolors, clay, bronze—mostly obedient materials. But any material is good enough for art work. The crafts, too, limited themselves; they kept to woodwork, weaving, etc. But their materials are less easily subordinated. The struggle with a rugged material teaches us best a constructive discipline. Resistance is one of the factors necessary to make us realize the characteristics of our medium and make us question our work procedure. We have to parry the material and adjust our plans to those of this opponent. When experimenting, we are forced into flexibility of reaction to it—we have to use imagination and be inventive. We learn patience and endurance in following through a piece of work. We learn to respect material in working it. Formed things and thoughts live a life of their own, they radiate a meaning. They need a clear form to give a clear meaning. Making something become real and take its place in actuality adds to our feeling of usefulness and security. Learning to form makes us understand all forming. This is not the understanding or misunderstanding we arrive at through the amateur explaining to the amateur—appreciating—this is the fundamental knowing. The difficult problems are the fundamental problems; simplicity stands at the end, not at the beginning of a work. If education can lead us to elementary seeing, away from too much and too complex information, to the I N T E G R AT I N G A R T A N D L I F E

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quietness of vision, and discipline of forming, it again may prepare us for the task ahead, working for today and tomorrow. Source: Anni Albers, “One Aspect of Art Work,” Design 46, no. 4 (December 1944): 21–22, reprinted in Selected Writings on Design (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2001). © 2001 Anni Albers. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

GEORGE NAKASHIMA (b. 1905 in Spokane, Washington; d. 1990 in New Hope, Pennsylvania), an architect by training, learned fine cabinetry while interned during World War II. After his release in 1943, Nakashima settled in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where he established a workshop aimed at restoring a standard of excellence that he felt had been sacrificed in the drive toward commercial production of furniture. Greatly influenced by Asian philosophy, Nakashima became a lifelong advocate for peace. In opposition to a society he views as materialistic, egoistic, and warmongering, he posits, in the typescript of a public lecture delivered in 1953, a decentralized culture in which design and handwork are integral to quiet, communal spirituality. (See also page 44.)

It seems to me that one of the most important aspects of design is integration: not only the relationship of design to the processes of manufacture, but to life itself and the creation of an environment. Design is not a free-wheeling object in space but must relate to its conditions. In a deeper sense, it is a question of the spirit and the aspirations and inspirations that are the avenue to spiritual expression. This again tempers the environment as men must, and civilizations must express themselves. One of the greatest pitfalls at the present is the precious attitude of design for its own sake—really only a modernized version of that nineteenth century frivolity “art for art’s sake.” The trivial and sensation-seeking search for novelty without sufficient relationship to its purpose . . . is the selfish expression of the ego. Such design cannot help man toward a better life through ordering our world and its activities. In relationship to the environment we seek, there seems to be a choice we must make: the search for the still waters or riding the main currents of our times. Peace, tranquility, quiet—or stimulation, excitements, trivial and restless activity. This choice is perhaps final. The first and obvious one is the expression of our age, the urban, the intellectual, the proud, the beast of prey. The second, in juxtaposition, represents decentralization, the humble and poor in spirit, the worker, the legions who mope the streets, those who find the quiet monastic pools. . . . For me there was but one choice: to protest against much that is of our 8

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age, accepting some of it, and to live creatively to that end. We must render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and today, Caesar is face to face with us on our doorstep. Once the decision is made, the forms take shape. Truth is difficult to place in form. It is much easier to be clever, but we must have honesty to have a truly satisfactory environment. As a short personal history, I would like to mention an education in this country and in France in architecture, which led to work in various parts of the world, including several years in Pondicherry, India. The years there were in the services of Sri Aurobindo Asram, designing and superintending the construction of a dormitory for the disciples. This experience brought me an appreciation of the great necessity of integration of design and construction, and the importance of a proper aspiration. It also brought me the vision of a new type of culture, a culture I believe will come from small remote beginnings. The seeds now exist. They are a negation of our times, but express a fullness of spirit which is probably greatest in the asrams and monasteries of today. The market place has little to offer. After returning to this country and reviewing the so-called best “modern” domestic design, I was struck and startled by the poor quality and the lack of real feeling, especially for material, that design divorced from construction can produce. To me there seemed no other recourse but to start again from the very beginning as a woodworker. Source: George Nakashima, “Presentation at the New York Herald Tribune Forum,” typescript, October 19, 1953, George Nakashima Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

MARGUERITE WILDENHAIN (b. 1896 in Lyons, France; d. 1985 in Guerneville, California) was an articulate and forceful proponent of functional ceramics. Bauhaustrained, Wildenhain left Germany with the Nazis’ rise to power. In 1942 she established Pond Farm, her home and workshop in Guerneville, California, where she lived and taught rigorous workshops until her death. Speaking at a 1959 conference sponsored by the American Craft Council, Wildenhain proclaims that only a good, moral person can create a good, strong pot. Innovation and technical prowess will not, on their own, lead to exceptional art. (See also pages 96, 171, 226.)

The important thing is the standard of quality, not only of the pot and not only of the technique, because it could be beautifully made and be I N T E G R AT I N G A R T A N D L I F E

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Marguerite Wildenhain, ca. 1940. (Photo by Otto Hagel, courtesy of the Marguerite Wildenhain Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; Collection of the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © 1998 The University of Arizona Foundation)

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deadly boring without that standard of quality. It also has to have a sort of—I don’t know how to explain this—ethical or moral content. The pot is absolutely the image of the man who makes it, and if that man is nothing, to put it bluntly, that pot thrown with all the skill and all the technique in the world will also be nothing. For the secret of making a good pot lies, to a certain degree, in an honest and decent and ethically convinced man—a man convinced of the validity of what he is working for, the values he is trying for. Little by little, without consciously trying to be original, his pot will be original. It will also be his and it will be a good pot. Source: Marguerite Wildenhain, “Media Needs,” The Craftsman’s World (American Craftsmen’s Council), June 1959, 167.

MARY CAROLINE (M. C.) RICHARDS (b. 1916 in Wieser, Idaho; d. 1999 in Kimberton, Pennsylvania) deserted a rising academic career in the humanities for the experimental artistic community at Black Mountain College, North Carolina, where she taught English from 1945 to 1951. Her influential book Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (1962) advocated self-discovery through a melding of mind, hand, and spirit. For Richards, making a pot is a psychic voyage of self-discovery. The final ceramic object is a relatively minor by-product of personal growth, a widespread objective of participants in the 1960s counterculture, who turned her book, excerpted here, into an underground classic.

I took up pottery also, in a sense, by chance. Unforeseen opportunity joined with interest and readiness. Like teaching, not a consciously sought but surely a destined union. For the materials and processes of pottery spoke to me of cosmic presences and transformations quite as surely as the pots themselves enchanted me. Experiences of the plastic clay and the firing of the ware carried more than commonplace values. Joy resonated deep within me, and it has stirred these thoughts only slowly to the surface. I have come to feel that we live in a universe of spirit, which materializes and de-materializes grandly; all things seem to me to live, and all acts to contain meaning deeper than matter-of-fact; and the things we do with deepest love and interest compel us by the spiritual forces which dwell in them. This seems to me to be a dialogue of the visible and the invisible to which our ears are attuned. There was, first of all, something in the nature of the clay itself. You can do very many things with it, push this way and pull that, squeeze and roll and attach and pinch and hollow and pile. But you can’t do everything with it.

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You can go only so far, and then the clay resists. To know ourselves by our resistances—this is a thought first expressed to me by the poet Charles Olson. And so it is with persons. You can do very many things with us: push us together and pull us apart and squeeze us and roll us flat, empty us out and fill us up. You can surround us with influences, but there comes a point when you can do no more. The person resists, in one way or another (if it is only by collapsing, like the clay). His own will becomes active. This is a wonderful moment, when one feels his will become active, come as a force into the total assemblage and dynamic intercourse and interpenetration of will impulses. When one stands like a natural substance, plastic but with one’s own character written into the formula, ah then one feels oneself part of the world, taking one’s shape with its help— but a shape only one’s own freedom can create. And the centering of the clay, of which I have spoken. The opening of the form. And the firing of the pot. This experience has deep psychic reverberations: how the pot, which was originally plastic, sets into dry clay, brittle and fragile, and then by being heated to a certain temperature hardens into stone. By natural law as it were, it takes its final form. Ordeal by fire. Then, the form once taken, the pot may not last, the body may perish; but the inner form has been taken, and it cannot break in the same sense. I, like everyone I know, am instinctively motivated toward symbols of wholeness. What is a simpler, more natural one than the pot fired? Wholeness may be thought of as a kind of inner equilibrium, in which all our capacities have been brought into functioning as an organism. The potencies of the whole organism flow into the gestures of any part. And the sensation in any part reverberates throughout the soul. The unconscious and conscious levels of being can work together at the tasks of life, conveying messages to each other, assimilating one another. In wholeness I sense an integration of those characteristics which are uniquely ME and those interests which I share with the rest of mankind. As for example any bowl is symbolic of an archetypal circular form, which I share with all, but which I make and which therefore contains those very qualities of myself which are active in the making. I believe that pots have the smell of the person who makes them: a certainty, callousness, fussiness, playfulness, solemnity, exuberance, absent-mindedness. The pot gives off something. It gives off its innerness, that which it holds but which cannot be seen. In pottery, by developing sensitivity in manipulating natural materials by hand, I found a wisdom which had died out of the concepts I learned in the university: abstractions, mineralized and dead; while the minerals themselves were alive with energy and meaning. The life I found in the craft helped to bring to a new birth my ideals in education. Some secret 12

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center became vitalized in those hours of silent practice in the arts of transformation. The experience of centering was one I particularly sought because I thought of myself as dispersed, interested in too many things. I envied people who were “single-minded,” who had one powerful talent and who knew when they got up in the morning what it was they had to do. Whereas I, wherever I turned, felt the enchantment: to the window for the sweetness of the air; to the door for the passing figures; to the teapot, the typewriter, the knitting needles, the pets, the pottery, the newspaper, the telephone. Wherever I looked, I could have lived. It took me half my life to come to believe I was OK even if I did love experience in a loose and undiscriminating way and did not know for sure the difference between good and bad. My struggles to accept my nature were the struggles of centering. I found myself at odds with the propaganda of our times. One is supposed to be either an artist or a homemaker, by one popular superstition. Either a teacher or a poet, by a theory which says that poetry must not sermonize. Either a craftsman or an intellectual, by a snobbism which claims either hand or head as the seat of true power. One is supposed to concentrate and not to spread oneself thin, as the jargon goes. And this is a jargon spoken by a cultural leadership from which it takes time to win one’s freedom, if one is not lucky enough to have been born free. Finally, I hit upon an image: a seed-sower. Not to worry about which seeds sprout. But to give them as my gift in good faith. But in spite of my self-acceptance, I still clung to a concept of purity which was chaste and aloof from the fellowship of man, and had yet to center the image of a pure heart in whose bright warm streams the world is invited to bathe. A heart who can be touched and who stirs in response, bringing the whole body into an act of greeting. Source: M. C. Richards, Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1962, revised 1989), 19–21. © 1989 M. C. Richards. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

Recorded in Craft Horizons magazine in 1966, the reminiscences of Val Cushing, James McKinnell, Daniel Rhodes, and Robert Turner, a noted group of potters associated with Alfred University, begin with World War II. They mention the poor state of technical knowledge in their craft in the 1940s, then quickly move on to their postwar desires for independence, control, and meaning in life, which they feel a life making craft can provide.

VAL CUSHING (b. 1931 in Rochester, New York), a firm adherent of the wheelthrown utilitarian vessel, received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. from the New York State ColI N T E G R AT I N G A R T A N D L I F E

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lege of Ceramics at Alfred University and taught there from 1957 until 1997. JAMES

M C KINNELL (b. 1919 in Nitro, West Virginia; d. 2005 in Ft. Collins, Colorado) created functional pottery for more than fifty years, frequently collaborating with his wife, Nan McKinnell. The couple traveled extensively after World War II, teaching ceramics workshops throughout the western United States. DANIEL RHODES (b. 1911 in Fort Dodge, Iowa; d. 1989 in Reno, Nevada) was the first student to graduate from Alfred University under Charles Harder in 1942. As a distinguished professor of ceramics there between 1947 and 1973, he wrote seminal books on clay, glazes, and kiln construction, which influenced generations of ceramic artists. ROBERT TURNER (b. 1913 in Brooklyn, New York; d. 2006 in Alfred, New York), a Quaker, was a conscientious objector in World War II. He developed the ceramics program at Black Mountain College (1949– 51) and was a professor of ceramics at Alfred University from 1958 to 1979.

Daniel Rhodes: Well, I began around 1941, and the one big change since then, as I see it, is that there is a stronger image now of the idea of pottery. Thinking back, we didn’t have much of a picture of the thing. Val, how did it look to you as a student? Val Cushing: There was a great deal of mystery. We’d read Bernard Leach [A Potter’s Book, 1940] at that point, and we’d seen a couple of exhibitions— mostly of stoneware. There weren’t the notebooks full of slips and glazes and textures, so there was an interest in finding things out. We didn’t have it all on our bookshelf. Rhodes: We had no way of knowing what other people were doing, because lines of communication weren’t very good. We didn’t know who was involved or where the whole thing was going. Now, it’s so much more lively. One knows almost instantly when somebody does something—in California, Michigan, or wherever. Robert Turner: When I got involved, we weren’t so much concerned with the object as with a way of life—a result, I think, of the war period. We were looking for—the word used then was—integration. Rhodes: Also independence through work. Turner: And there was a strong movement toward decentralization. I know that in the conscientious objector camps during the war Hal Riegger was a strong influence on a number of individuals. Many who had never been in art saw this as a simple, humble approach to finding a way of life which had meaning. Rhodes: The young people today might have a hard time understanding that. James McKinnell: Definitely. Rhodes: I know that at Colorado Springs, where I got started, the people involved in the fine arts felt a little cut off—no meaningful connection with 14

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society. Those of us working with pots, on the other hand, felt a real connection. And it didn’t have anything to do with making functional things, either. Cushing: This thing you’re talking about had its effects on me. Bob [Robert Turner] and Dan [Daniel Rhodes] and Jim [James McKinnell] and, at that point, Ted Randall, and others were established potters. I was influenced by seeing what you believed and what you stood for. This had a great appeal to me and to other students. McKinnell: What we’re actually speaking of is the sense of control over one’s own destiny that can be felt all through the crafts. Rhodes: Right, the possibility of independence. Source: Val Cushing, James McKinnell, Daniel Rhodes, and Robert Turner, “The New American Craftsman: The First Generation,” Craft Horizons 26, no. 3 (June 1966): 20–24.

PAUL MANNERS (b. 1946 in New York) graduated from Harvard College in 1967, then studied ceramics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was introduced to glassblowing by Robert Fritz at San Jose State and adopted it as his career. In a 1978 slide lecture transcribed in the Glass Art Society Newsletter, Manners notes how an independent artist’s work and life are intertwined. Conference lectures in the 1970s often included slide images of artists’ studios, dogs, and, as noted here, hot tubs as a way of indicating that lifestyle held as much importance as product.

I always understood that some day I was supposed to grow out of doing craft fairs, and get beyond that stage and it still hasn’t happened that way and I do often ask myself, how much longer I want to be taking glass around to crafts fairs. The answer depends on how it is going. You know, if it is a beautiful sunny weekend and I can sell all the glass—great! But, if it rains I don’t want to be doing it ever again. So, this shot was taken last month, at the Los Olas Art Festival in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and there is an aspect to doing crafts fairs that I like. I enjoy traveling to Florida for a month in the winter and making money. Most of my business is wholesale to galleries, but I make most of my gallery contacts through fairs. . . . You have to bear in mind that everything I say relates to the one man shop. It would make no sense whatsoever for a larger studio to pack a bunch of glass in a van and go driving across the country. They have a much larger output of glass and so they can’t sell it themselves, and of course agents have advantages and disadvantages too. But, my production is small enough and I sell everything I make without a sales rep. . . . This [photo] is inside the studio at 3:00 in the morning. I was melting silver glass in the small tank on the left and the main crystal tank is on the I N T E G R AT I N G A R T A N D L I F E

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right. If you wonder what I was doing at my studio at 3:00 in the morning, you have to realize that I live here too. People often ask me how many hours a day or how many days a week do I work, and I have no idea. It is the kind of thing where I blow a piece of glass, hang out the laundry, blow a piece of glass, write a letter, blow a piece of glass, fix the lawn mower. If I don’t do it that way I generally find that I get up at 6:00 in the morning and don’t get in the studio until afternoon. How anybody else does it, I don’t know. It just seems that it’s hard to keep everything going at once, especially on an old farm. People often ask me the question whether or not I make my living at glass by saying “Do you do anything else?” And I do a lot of other things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This is a very important part of my studio. This is my hot tub. Actually this is a shot of my first hot tub that I made about five years ago when I lived in Davenport. I wanted to take a shot of my current one with a bunch of happy naked people in it but no one wanted to get out and hold the camera. It is heated by waste heat from the furnace. You know you are already paying for it. I have a copper coil sitting up over the furnace, and a small pump circulates the water through there. I have a diatomaceous earth filter. You can come up to my studio and see how it works. The main problem is keeping it from getting too hot. One of the questions on the sheet that was handed out was “What is your definition of success in business?” I am frequently broke, but when I have a nice soak in the hot tub I feel successful anyway. After all, people get a paycheck every two weeks whether they need it or not and are frequently broke too, and they don’t have free hot water. I am really surprised that more glass blowers don’t have hot tubs. It is very easy. Source: Paul Manners, “Small Studio Panel,” Glass Art Society Newsletter 3, no. 1 (1978): 6–12.

MIRIAM SCHAPIRO (b. 1923 in Toronto) was a leader in the feminist art movement of the 1970s. With Judy Chicago, she helped to create Womanhouse (1972), one of the first female-centered art installations to explore gender and domestic space. She has taught in universities worldwide and has written and published extensively. In an interview recorded in her retrospective exhibition catalog in 1980, Schapiro connects her life and her art by reclaiming symbols of female domesticity, such as handkerchiefs and fans. Her conscious choice to use fabric and decorative arts in her work is an embrace of the culture of her female forebears. She proclaims it as an alternative aesthetic to the reductionism and gigantism of sculptors such as Richard Serra (“Cor-Ten steel pieces which go seventy feet in the air”).

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Miriam Schapiro, My Heart Is in the Highlands, 1979. Fabric and acrylic, 34 × 37 inches. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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Miriam Schapiro: A fellow who does Cor-Ten steel pieces which go seventy feet in the air will not appreciate a little soft sculpture which is made in the shape of a heart and has sequins all over. It’s a matter of taste. I think that it is very important in absolute standards. There are recognizable sign posts on the road, and those have to do with formalism. But there are women who are bypassing formalism. The new set of artistic standards are now being formed. They are flexible and expand as content directs. Ruth Appelhof: Can you explain what you mean when you say that domesticity is the locus of feminist art? Schapiro: I do not mean that domesticity is so great. Despite the stench of slavery and despite the need to do so many chores, women still made art. So the historical fact remains that they made the art in the home and not in a studio down the road. Appelhof: Would you comment on your own . . . feminist sensibility and where it came from? Schapiro: Philosophically, it comes as does all good and important women’s talk from a better awareness of my mother, my aunt and my grandmother. I obliterated my mother’s influence for the first part of my life, and only when I was reawakened to myself as a woman in the broad sense of the word did I then look back on the three women in my life. I had repressed a good deal of the cultural information that they had given me and had to bring it all back. Appelhof: Can you elaborate a little bit on what those things would be? Schapiro: Well, for one thing I had downplayed my mother’s importance because she didn’t go out in the world and I thought what was important was that my father went out in the world and did things. I wanted to go out in the world and do things and so I thought that what my mother did at home was basically unimportant and yet I was fascinated by her ways. My mother was an extremely ordered woman and kept a very fine house and was attentive to all the details in the house. Because we were poor, my mother washed and ironed her linens and cared for her floors, which I remember appreciating for their scrubbed look. My mother loved beautiful things. She loved to put flowers in vases and arranged them on the piano and she loved cleaning the carpet because even though it was an imitation Oriental carpet she loved the pattern in the carpet. And she made afghans and she exercised her own sense of color. She was interested in the chemistry of food and read books on it. She read books on raising me, her only child, and she was concerned with my welfare and my vitamin intake and with every aspect of taking care of her household. She was extremely thorough. So if my mother had been out in the world and if she had been a

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doctor or if she had been in an office somewhere, whatever she would have done she would have done well. Appelhof: How does all this translate into your own forms of sensibility? Schapiro: My sensibility has to do with my own sense of discipline and order. It has to do with every aspect of my physical life. As part of my ethos, I’ve chosen the archetypal form of a fan or a house, or a theater or a handkerchief. I’m drawn to the way women embellished handkerchiefs with lace. Besides being interested in their esthetics, handkerchiefs were also the repository of oceans of tears and curiously enough messages from the body. When you blow your nose into a handkerchief, you’re leaving a message from the body. But I’m most interested in the handkerchief because it’s patently a sentimental carrier. Part of my ethos is to test sentimentality. I want to know how far I can go with it because it’s so taboo in terms of high art. I’ve chosen to use fabric and the decorative arts as tangible symbols for my connection to domesticity and to express my belief that art resides in domesticity. For me, the fabric of my art and the fabric of my life neatly equate each other. The vessel is a fan, and the fan is a trivial, insignificant aspect of women’s culture. I heroicize it. I make the fan twelve feet long. That’s a big piece of art. Source: Miriam Schapiro, “Excerpts from Interviews with Miriam Schapiro,” interview by Paula Bradley and Ruth A. Appelhof, in Miriam Schapiro: A Retrospective, 1953–1980, edited by Thalia Gouma-Peterson (Wooster, Ohio: College of Wooster, 1980), 47–48.

ARTHUR ESPENET (ART) CARPENTER (b. 1920 in New York; d. 2006 in Bolinas, California) was a self-taught maker and influential educator who inspired the spare, sensual, and utilitarian West Coast furniture style. In 1972 Carpenter cofounded the Baulines Craftsman’s Guild, a cooperative of Bay Area furniture makers, where he promoted experimentation and a free-spirited approach to design and technique. He taught at San Francisco State University (1975–79). In a 1982 article for Fine Woodworking magazine, Art Carpenter comments on the origins of the Baulines Guild. The generational switch from post–World War II angst (see, for example, Anni Albers and Val Cushing et al.) to counterculture rebellion is evident in this excerpt, yet both generations champion independence and freedom from corporate life.

It wasn’t me that started the teaching trip, . . . it was the Sixties. It was that big group of dislocated flower children who eventually figured out that they needed to do something, and they didn’t want to do it with IBM.

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Baulines Guild gathering in front of a macramé playpen (1974) by Alexandra Jacopetti Hart, ca. 1975. (Photo courtesy of Glenn Adamson)

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I’m very sympathetic to that. I was a flower child before there were flower children. Which is why I try to be helpful. I have a fundamental belief— the more independent people there are, who are not connected with any organization, the better society is. . . . The idea that there are so many more designer-craftsmen today than there were ten years ago just turns me on. I want in every possible way to see them survive. Independence of thought requires independence of economics. Source: Rick Mastelli, “Art Carpenter: The Independent Spirit of the Baulines Craftsmen’s Guild,” Fine Woodworking 37 (December 1982): 65. © 1982 The Taunton Press.

SCOTT BURTON (b. 1939 in Greensboro, Alabama; d. 1989 in New York) was an art critic, stage designer, and assemblage sculptor before devoting himself exclusively to the production of functional objects in about 1979. He is best known for seating that he designed for public spaces such as parks and lobbies. Burton, in a 1987 oral history, identifies function as a means of justifying sculpture, which, in his view, had become moribund around 1970. His granite chairs are an attempt to merge art and life by making objects that are functional and poetic.

The idea of using furniture came into my mind one day seventeen or eighteen years ago. The use of it has varied. From around 1970 to about 1975, with the first gallery show, which was at Artists’ Space, I dealt with furniture with found objects and in a pictorial way and what I call tableauvarious way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I used to be very anxious to tear down the art part. Now I realize that it’s very deeply part of it. But I’m still skeptical of the art for art’s sake part. In the individual pieces, in those days, I was very concerned to establish it against art, as functional furniture stuff. Actually, now that I’ve really been successful . . . people still treat [the chairs] as precious objects, of course, in the plazas and in the parks. And some day industrially produced individual objects will really break down that distinction. In a way, I admit that some kind of aura is necessary so it isn’t just some commonplace landscape designer’s thing for people. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I still believe in furniture and designing things as a rebuke to dying or dead traditions of contemporary art. I really think that there have been so many mini-generations and so many bad schools and failed artists teaching the wrong things and ruining generations of students dumb enough

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Scott Burton, Viewpoint, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, Seattle, 1983. (© 2006 Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York; photo by Robert Baldridge.com)

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to believe it. Art is just in a horrible way. Painting and sculpture. I mean, painting is just hopeless, as far as I’m concerned. This is theoretic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The act of designing it myself is very important, but also the idea that art would justify itself with the functional element was very important. And misguided but very important. Partly as a reaction against the academicness of art at that time—it started around that time, around 1970 or late 1960s. I don’t know. After the minimal and conceptual and pop generation, it all kind of seemed to end. . . . I think not only myself, but other artists of the 70s are picking up the pieces. Unfortunately, the 80s are all back in gear again. There’s this media star system back. The 1970s were very different. I see this art as furniture or as design has a lot to do with the frustration of the loss of the 60s. It’s not our kind of artists. I’m older. I realize the contradictions and the limitations. But still, I feel somewhat identified with the idea of being progressive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I still expect art to be significantly different from life, but I also want to make it exactly the same as life. There’s an ambivalence and a contradiction. For many years, I talked only about wanting to reduce it to life. Now, I understand that art is art and I’m an artist and I would like to be a great artist and a profound artist and [create] emotionally rich works and things, and not just do deck chairs that are only deck chairs, but to somehow do deck chairs that are poetic or that reverberate, but are also accessible in their language because it’s functional, because it’s a chair—or a fountain. Source: Scott Burton, oral history interview by Lewis Kachur, 1987, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

ROBERT KEHLMANN (b. 1942 in New York) makes glass sculpture and is a widely published critic and historian. His books include Twentieth Century Stained Glass: A New Definition (1992) and The Inner Light: Sculpture by Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová (2002). The humble beginnings of the Glass Art Society as described by Fritz Dreisbach (page 131) contrast sharply with Kehlmann’s concerns about its evolution and priorities as described eighteen years later in the Glass Art Society Journal. Kehlmann questions the prevalence of collectors and museum personnel within this artists’ organization, wondering whether the benefits of their presence outweigh the risk of alienated artist members and potential conflicts of interest between selling and selling out. He maps a central tension between the formative ideals of many entering the field and opportunistic career advancement. (See also page 279.)

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Nobody in Ohio can throw a party the way Ted Evans can. An open bar, fresh lobster and shrimp flown in from the East Coast, mounds of caviar, and cakes with chocolate layered over raspberry confections served at midnight were all hospitably offered to the approximately three hundred people attending the Glass Art Society’s eighteenth annual conference at Kent State University. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The conference theme, “Universe/University,” might have had as a subtitle the name of Thomas Wolfe’s epic novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. Or can you? If you can go home again it’s sure difficult to regain the innocence of an earlier era by mixing caviar and cognac with roast pig and beer. Surrounded by collectors like Ted Evans who are buying glass objects for five figures as if they were teddy bears, and gallery owners promoting these sales, it’s hard to resurrect those good old days when politics meant protesting Nixon’s war in Cambodia rather than hobnobbing with curators, dealers and collectors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . At various stages in its development, the Glass Art Society has found itself at critical crossroads. This conference’s ironic juxtaposition of the wealthy collector of the eighties playing host to a group of increasingly affluent artists seeking to return to their sixties roots points to just one of the difficult issues currently facing the organization. Is it the duty of GAS to surge forward boldly in developing the organizational size, polish and refinement needed to keep abreast of and nurture a rapidly broadening marketplace? Or should its role be to provide a safe haven for students, teachers and artists in which they can share ideas and learn from one another in a context relatively free of the politics of art and money? Both approaches fulfill GAS’s stated aim of promoting the glass arts, yet the road taken will no doubt have a profound effect upon the future of American glass. Source: Robert Kehlmann, “Coming Home to Kent,” Glass Art Society Journal (1988): 103–4.

JOYCE SCOTT (b. 1948 in Baltimore) is a sculptor, printmaker, jeweler, and performance artist. She received a B.F.A. in art education from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, and her M.F.A. in craft from the Institute Allende in Mexico. Scott’s beaded sculptures and neckpieces often address social issues such as violence, poverty, injustice, and racial bias. In her work, Scott honors her African ancestry and prior generations of family storytellers and artisans, a quilt-making mother among them. As her 1995 statement in the Glass Art Society Journal makes clear, Scott uses glass beads to create sculp24

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Joyce Scott, Three Graces Oblivious While L.A. Burns, 1992. Blown, cased, moldblown, tooled glass, 22 3⁄4 × 9 3⁄4 × 8 7⁄8 inches. (Collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, N.Y. [97.4.216]; photo by Nicholas Williams)

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tures with political content, connecting her art with issues important to the workingclass community of her youth, including racism and violence.

For many years I was a weaver, but then I started to feel trapped in the loom. The right-angle way of working was not my way of thinking. In 1976, I went to Haystack School of Crafts [Deer Isles, Maine], which, in that bicentennial year, meant that a lot of Native American weavers were invited to the school, and so I learned peyote stitchery and diagonal weaving. With the peyote stitch, I could extend my family’s ideas about needle and thread. It became a useful improvisational stitch for me and created my fearless beadwork. The diagonal weaving has allowed me to be incredibly spontaneous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I do works today that are considered to be politically or socially oriented. I am forty-six years old, so that means when I was younger I was a “flower child”—peace and love and let’s all get together. I traveled around the world looking for myself in everyone, looking for African influence in every place, and searching for any knowledge I could get about extending my family’s involvement with needle and thread. I like making messages. I like doing things that are politically or socially oriented because I feel that I am a citizen of the world. I wasn’t raised in an art house, in an art neighborhood, only going to art school. I was raised around plumbers and people who pick cotton, so I have the same issues that they have to talk about. And, being that citizen, to me means to make the best art that I can make. Source: Joyce Scott, “Fearless Beadwork,” Glass Art Society Journal (1995): 67–68.

BRUCE METCALF (b. 1949 in Amherst, Massachusetts), a jeweler, sculptor, teacher, and critic, received a B.F.A. from Syracuse University in 1972 and an M.F.A. from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 1977. He taught at Kent State University in Ohio from 1981 to 1991. Metcalf is coauthor of the forthcoming Makers: A History of American Studio Craft, the first textbook in the field. Metcalf calls his narrative jewelry “tiny secular passion plays.” His interest in psychology, morality, and history is also expressed in his critical and historical writings on craft. In the excerpt below, taken from a 2002 anthology of writings on the crafts, Metcalf neatly sums up some widely held values of craft practitioners since the midnineteenth-century reaction to the industrial age. (See also page 63.)

I think it’s important to remember that craft is still an opposition, just as it was more than a century ago [during the arts and crafts movement]. Craft still stands against the anonymity of mass-production and for the personalized object. 26

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Craft still stands against ugliness and, on occasion, for beauty. Craft still stands against big-money capitalism and for small-scale entrepreneurship. Craft stands against corporate labour, where most workers are replaceable parts in a bureaucracy, and for individual self-determination. Craft stands for the rich potential [of] the human body at work and against disembodiment in all its forms. Craft continues to be a social movement, often intuitive and without leadership. I see craft as a collective attempt to relocate personal meaning in a largely indifferent world. As a teacher and observer, I constantly see how craft functions as a vehicle to construct meaning and how it gives substance and dignity and grace to individuals’ lives. Source: Bruce Metcalf, “Contemporary Craft: A Brief Overview,” in Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory, and Critical Writing, edited by Jean Johnson (Toronto: Coach House Books and Harbourfront Centre, 2002), 16–17.

CONSUELO JIMENEZ UNDERWOOD (b. 1949 in Sacramento, California) received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from San Diego State University. In 1987 she received an M.F.A. from San Jose State University, California, where she served as professor of art from 1989 to 1995. Underwood’s roots as a daughter of migrant agricultural workers are an important source for her pictorial wall hangings exploring the relationships between place, culture, and identity. Like feminist artists who celebrate the link between fiber arts and domesticity, Underwood celebrates their link with her Mexican American heritage by fusing traditional fiber techniques with political imagery. The unpublished artist’s statement from 2005, provided by Underwood, opens with a question to her graduate committee during a 1985 thesis review.

“As an artist, aren’t I allowed to decide if I weave or purchase my canvas?” My art is inspired by beauty, politics, and spirit. In the late seventies, I put aside the palette and paintbrush, and learned the ways of the needle and shuttle. My early work expressed the quiet rage that has permeated the Americas for over five hundred years. The “thread” arts were the artistic voice of choice among my maternal ancestors. Historical references to land and politics were revisited with traditional fiber art methods, such as dyeing, weaving, and embellishment. Traditional materials and methodology empowered and validated American indigenous issues of identity and border homelands. Source: Consuelo Jimenez Underwood, unpublished artist’s statement, summer 2005, courtesy of the artist.

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2 Inheriting a Path In post–World War II America, families and cultures with unbroken craft traditions are rare but still exist. Mary Lee Bendolph of Gee’s Bend, for example, learned about quilting at a young age and focused exclusively on this form of craft expression. Unlike others in the book, Bendolph was (at least until Gee’s Bend quilts were popularized by museum curators) unaffected by academics, critical theory, or professional associations. She represents the nonprofessional makers whose histories have rarely been discussed in the context of studio craft. Even when previous generations point the way, however, an indirect route into craft is more common for makers. Darrell Adams and Nora Naranjo-Morse are both from long lines of traditional potters. They left their communities, received academic training, worked in other fields, and then turned to craft because of the tug of culture as well as medium. It was their choice to do so. Robert Ebendorf reflects upon a connection between his work and that of his grandparents, who were tailors. Whether he unconsciously absorbed their influence as a child or creates a poetic association as an adult, he expresses an affirming link with the past.

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DARRELL ADAMS (b. 1963 in Gainesville, Florida) comes from six generations of a pottery-making family in the South. In 1985, after academic training in fine arts at the University of Georgia, he moved to Cartersville, Georgia, to apprentice with his grandfather W. J. “Bill” Gordy (1910–1993). He later opened his own pottery. He spoke of his history in a 1992 interview published in a monograph honoring Gordy.

Darrell Adams: My family has always come up [to visit my grandfather, Bill Gordy] just about every Christmas and we’d come up usually like spring break and during the summer sometime. So I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with him; but probably, in a way, that might be good, because it was just enough that it always drew my curiosity. I really didn’t focus on pottery as what I wanted to do as art until I started college. But I must say, though, the more I got into it the more it wasn’t just something that I thought I’d like to do. To me now, it’s a calling. . . . I grew up in Gainesville, Florida; a lot of people were surprised I didn’t go to the University of Florida, but I wanted to go away. I thought that the best thing would be if I could start spending more time with my grandfather. So probably once or twice every quarter I would come over on a weekend, even while I was in the art department, and get little ideas and discuss things that I was learning. My grandfather and [great uncle] D. X. both encouraged me that they were glad that I was majoring in art. But I think that my grandfather, he wasn’t skeptical, but he knew that . . . I could get that degree and then I could just go get a [different] job somewhere and not do anything with it. So, even during the year that I spent with him [after college], he still wanted me to know just what it was going to take to be a potter. I really didn’t know what he thought about me being a potter. . . . In the year that I spent with him, we talked a lot about different materials and qualities of clay and lots of different technical things, but he never sat down and said, “This is a glaze formula I use.” But he always told me when I was ready to start working on my own that he would help me with some glazes. So I had gotten my kiln completely built, which took me two-and-a-half months to do that and have my equipment all ready. So I went over to his house and I said, “I’m ready to go and I’m going to go pick up some materials; you know, we had talked about some different glazes, maybe, to start doing some work with.” And he said, “Well, do you want to work with my glazes or do you want to do something on your own?”

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Bill Gordy showing pottery to his grandson, Darrell Adams, late 1960s. (Photo courtesy of the W. J. Gordy family and the Bartow History Center, Cartersville, Ga.)

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I said, “I’d be thrilled to work with them.” And so I think, really, he wanted me to earn that, make sure of the commitment. Because I know that’s a thing that’s dying today. In colleges, the glazes are all in the book; and there are a lot of great books on glazes. It’s wide open to potters getting into that now. You don’t have that tradition of a family [where] a potter, or even a carpenter, what have you, has a certain type of wood, maybe, that they use, or certain materials that they use that sort of makes theirs unique. That’s the thing that my grandfather always said, that—for instance, Mountain Gold—“It’s not that it’s better than some other glaze, but it’s mine. It’s uniquely mine.” So, I took a lot of pride in that. That, for one thing, he trusted me with something that he had kept to himself. Lindsey King Laub: Would you say that the year that you spent with him was a form of apprenticeship, then? Adams: In most respects it was because—of course, you don’t have an apprenticeship like you once did. It’s probably good, because I guess the old apprenticeship you take five years and take one year sweeping the floor. But, I had certain basic throwing skills when I went to work with him. Laub: You worked there at his studio? Adams: Right. He has the treadle wheel there in the corner. I always worked on it. In fact, I’ve only worked on a treadle wheel since I was at the University of Georgia. They had probably a dozen treadle wheels, and all the other students waited to take turns on the electric wheel. I thought that was great; I just used those. When I came to work with him, I was mainly limited in size and how fast I could make a piece. I could only make a certain size piece or it was just too heavy. At the university, though—and this is a good thing—you have such a broad curriculum, that I had to take photography and drawing and what have you. So I wasn’t able to spend hours every day throwing pots. The real emphasis with them is creativity: what art is. Their purpose was not to teach people to go out and become potters. In fact, there was very little emphasis on what specific materials do or what really makes the best kind of clay body or even how to fire a kiln. They taught us certain basic things; but aside from all else, the biggest difference was, when I came to work for my grandfather it was learning from a real potter. He taught me directly as a teacher, but he mainly taught by example. As soon as the weather warmed up enough that we could start making, the year I was there, that’s what we did. We just jumped in and he said, “There’s the clay.” I’d make a certain amount and he’d make ninety-five percent of it; that is, of course, his own work. So, I spent a lot of time just watching him throw. When I say he taught me some things directly, some things he would show me, and some things on the wheel. If I was making, say, a I N H E R I T I N G A PAT H

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pitcher and it started to wobble or something about it wasn’t right, usually he wouldn’t say anything. Usually he just let me work the problems out on my own. But a lot of times he’d say, “Let me show you how you straighten that out.” Usually he could just take one hand and he’d just sort of touch the piece and I’d stand back. But the neat thing is, I have a friend now who is an intermediate type of potter, and I see that I can do the same [with him] today. He gets a piece and thinks it’s got to be scrapped; and you just need to touch it just right. So, things like that really helped me on the wheel. Sometimes, I’d get the piece just right enough that I could feel how it was supposed to be. Even today sometimes, making a certain shape, I’m not even aware that I’m thinking, “How is the best way to hold your hands?” Suddenly I find myself—it’s almost an intuitive thing that I subconsciously am remembering. And if I go over to his shop now and he’s throwing, sometimes I will sort of rekindle a memory that I think, “Yeah, that’s right; I had forgotten the way that was done.” It’s not that I necessarily take that back and do the same thing, but it teaches you a way to manipulate the clay. Also, he talked a lot about real specific things like firing his kilns, when he would add more air to it or more fuel to it. A lot of things about the thickness of a glaze, what different materials do. Things that I learned watching him and working with him, but then when I actually put them more into practice myself I would recall. So there was the real direct sort of teaching, and that you might call more along the lines of an apprenticeship. People talk about, “It’s neat you are following in your grandfather’s footsteps”; but if I didn’t really try to see things through his eyes, then I really couldn’t. It’s given me a point of origin; maybe there’s something about a shape that I don’t make it exactly like his, but it’s got that same feeling. I think that’s the thing about the Gordy family: you wouldn’t say that D. X. and my grandfather make things just alike, but there are a lot of things in common. Maybe it’s the way a handle is pulled or maybe it’s just the weight of a certain piece or the thickness of a rim or the line or shape. Those are all things that I have studied on an analytical level and said, “This is a shape that’s really pleasing to me.” But it’s also very much an intuitive thing. Source: Darrell Adams, interview by Lindsey King Laub in Evolution of a Potter: Conversations with Bill Gordy, edited by John A. Burrison (Cartersville, Ga.: Bartow History Center, 1992), 94–96.

NORA NARANJO-MORSE (b. 1953 in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico) is a member of a pottery-making family of the Tewa tribe. A poet, video producer, and ceramic sculptor, Naranjo-Morse is best known for her clay figures, particularly her numerous representations of Pearlene, a Pueblo character she invented. 32

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In a book published in 1994, the artist writes of the ever-present strength of her childhood experiences in the Tewa tribe, which continue to inform her art and its intimate link to her lifestyle. The appeal of this connection between art and life, discussed in chapter 1, has resonance with post–World War II counterculture lifestyles. (See also page 184.)

Every spring my mother, sometimes my sisters, the children, cousins, we put our picks and shovels in the truck and go out to get clay. From the moment we make the decision to do this it becomes the start of a coil; digging the clay out of the earth becomes an involvement in a real powerful thing. In the larger society everything is fast-moving, but what clay does for me is slow everything down. The whole process is long and can be difficult, especially if you’re carrying out wet mud from the side of a mountain and dragging it to the truck. You’re giving yourself. It’s a commitment and I really love that; it nurtures me, does something to me, it does something to my mother. And that’s why I say it probably comes from a traditional base. And once I start on this process, all that I am, Indian woman, wife, mother, and all the things I do, like baking cookies, making chili, eating sushi, visiting Hawaii, everything I am or have done, gets released into this clay, this material, because I feel very close to it and I allow myself to be comfortable with it. I build a rapport and commit myself to it. That creative channel is opened and there’s a feeling of tremendous freedom. And if you work with clay on a daily basis you appreciate it more, it becomes more symbolic. I believe in my heart that the Indian people where I’m from feel that, too, because they have the connection to the earth. Many talk about their connection to the earth, and this is how I get it for myself. Clay teaches me the wild, wonderful, precious things that come from creating, but also all kinds of other things about life. That’s why it’s such a powerful thing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A hundred years ago there wasn’t that separation or labeling. People were farmers, potters, builders, herbalists, medicine women, all sorts of things. Lives just flowed; there wasn’t compartmentalization. That’s happening with me. My husband and I built our own home, we have children, I cook, bake, can food, read, build coyote fences, not just work with clay. What’s wonderful about that is, when I’m with my children, they feed me on many levels, so when I come to the studio I’ve been nurtured. When I’m here working, I’m here, then I’m ready to be a good mother. There’s no breaking off—it’s a continuous flow, like the flow in making a pot; it’s seamless. That’s why I like clay, because it reflects what I’m doing, and I like that. I N H E R I T I N G A PAT H

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Source: Nora Naranjo-Morse, I Stand in the Center of the Good, edited by Lawrence Abbott (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 202–5. © 1994 University of Nebraska Press.

DIEGO ROMERO (b. 1964 in Berkeley, California) draws on his heritage as a Native American (Cochiti Pueblo) from an artistic family in his pottery and printmaking. In a 1994 interview in Studio Potter magazine, Romero notes that when he became attentive to the bowls made by the ancient Mimbres people of the Southwest, ancestors to his Pueblo tribe, he began to resolve the tensions between painting, craft, and his heritage that had dogged him through his years of formal training at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Parsons School of Design, and University of California, Los Angeles (M.F.A. 1993). He now combines ancient art forms with imagery that is contemporary, urban, and political.

I first began studying Mimbres pottery in grad school. All through art school at Parsons, and even in UCLA, there were debates on whether craft is art and whether Indian art is outside mainstream culture. I was being driven into my shell. But I became determined to be Indian and to do Indian art. I decided to show people that Indian art is a high craft, and that it can also be intellectual. At first I approached it through the vessel. I began doing decorative vessels, putting all sorts of stuff on them such as handles, curlicues, gold and so forth. It just wasn’t working. Finally in my last year of grad school I began studying the work of the Mimbres people in the southwest. I had always been aware of them and their work in pottery, but now it just hit me. Like wow! These people had it going on! This stuff was so powerful! It was as if they had taken the universe apart and identified and coded it. I said to myself, I can do this for the Indian culture today. I felt I was heir to the Mimbres tradition, being a Pueblo Indian myself. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My pottery is probably the most Indian thing about me. I dance for the Cochiti feast on July 14th and practice my Indian ways by doing prayer, but my pottery is what is most Indian. My pots are my prayers: I pray when I make clay and I pray when I fire pots. I’m careful about the designs I use. I think it’s ok to give parts of the Indian designs to another culture (such as the Anglos), but there’s a point at which those designs become sacred and are not a commodity for sale. Some Indians argue that I’m selling my culture. I say I’m not selling my religion. My pots are spiritual to me, but there’s a point beyond which I’ll not go. In this consumer society, however, Indian things are a commodity, and I must admit I capitalize on it. This is something I think about all the time. 34

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Diego Romero, Rio Grande Purging, 2005. Burnished clay and slip, 15 × 15 1⁄4 × 6 inches. (Photo by Robert Nichols, courtesy of Robert Nichols Gallery)

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But I believe that if what I am doing is not right, my pots would crack or something, and a voice inside of me would say “You’re going too far!” I do sell my culture but I don’t sell my spirit. That’s why I can sleep at night. My grandma was a spiritual woman, a true Indian and a “Language Speaker.” My dad told me she used to collect potsherds and crush them to temper her pots. The presence of the Anasazi shards made her work more powerful. I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. Some day, maybe, that time will come. I don’t see myself as a traditional Cochiti potter or even as a traditional Indian. I’m very contemporary because in addition to my imagery, I use untraditional methods and materials such as Duncan underglazes and gold lustres, and I fire in an electric kiln. What is contemporary today is traditional tomorrow, so maybe in a hundred years I’ll be a traditional Cochiti potter. Source: Diego Romero, “Coding the Universe: An Interview with Diego Romero, Cochiti Potter,” Studio Potter 23, no. 1 (December 1994): 69–76.

MARK LINDQUIST (b. 1949 in Oakland, California), in the late 1960s, developed many of the techniques and aesthetic concepts that underlie the current studio wood-turning movement, including the use of flawed materials and the adaptation of Japanese ceramic sensibilities. His father, Melvin Lindquist (1911–2000), was both the model for his son’s career as an innovative wood turner and a frequent collaborator. Together they popularized the use of spalted (partially decomposed) wood, which creates complex patterns of dark lines on finished pieces. This homage to his father is from the artist’s statement Lindquist wrote for a 2001 exhibition of turned wood.

I remember watching my father use the lathe in his workshop in San Jose, California, in the early fifties. Apparently, the reason for remembering this at such an early age is, as my father tells me, he used to set me in a chair near him while he worked while he was “watching me.” Since my mother was ill during much of my childhood, my father was responsible for watching me most of the time and we spent a lot of time together in the workshop while he was at the lathe. As I grew older, I continued to hang around my father when he was working at the lathe and he began letting me help sand, etc., when I was very young. We moved to New York state from California in 1954. By 1959, when I was ten, my father had built me a separate shop (mainly to keep me away from his tools), and he gave me a Shopsmith model 10-ER when I was ten. (I still have it and use it today.) We used to go to our land in the upstate New York Adirondacks where I

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Mark and Melvin Lindquist turning in Henniker, New Hampshire, late 1970s. (Photo by Robert Aude, courtesy of Lindquist Studios)

helped my father with harvesting spalted wood, which we brought back to Schenectady and turned on a regular basis. During shop classes in junior high school I worked continually at bowl turning and brought my projects back and forth from my shop at home to the school industrial arts shop. I’d say the main influence was working with my father, however. Source: Mark Lindquist, unpublished artist’s statement for Wood Turning Center exhibition, “Wood Turning in North America since 1930,” Philadelphia, 2001.

SONYA Y. S. CLARK (b. 1967 in Washington, D.C.) received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Amherst College in 1989, a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993, and an M.F.A. in fiber from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1995. She is best known for her intricate beading and sculptural headdresses inspired by her Afro-Caribbean heritage. As a professor of environment, textiles, and design at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1997–2005), she taught courses in nontraditional

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techniques for textiles and the history and techniques of beadwork. Clark is currently the professor and chair of the Craft/Material Studies Department at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Richmond, Virginia. Clark asks in an essay published in 2004 by the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, “Don’t we all at some unspoken level tend to trust demonstrated wisdom rather than talk?” For the artist this demonstrated wisdom is exemplified by the handworking skills brought from Africa by her forebears and transmitted through her grandmother to her.

My grandfather and uncle were both woodworkers and the furniture they made has already outlived them. The sensuality of their pieces recreates moments and celebrates shared experiences. A child’s chair comes to life with the smell of the wood, the smoothness of the finish, and the memory of your own tiny hands cupping the ends of the armrests. Now, add to that your grandfather made it with his own hands—hands informed by all the chairs he had experienced and wood he had crafted previously. Add again that your mother’s body, as small as you once were, inhabited the same space and smoothed the finish with sweaty child-palms. This chair holds the presence of those who have used it, witnessed it, wondered about it, and even forgotten it. I contend that it is the memory, the story, and the connection that we value most in objects. The patina so coveted by the antiques dealers and collectors is the by-product of our hand-me-down tales. That same patina is the residue of our existence and sense of place within history. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I recently attended a family reunion in Jamaica, in which my Scottish ancestry was traced back quite far. However, there is a part of my heritage that was disrupted—a lineage torn from the fabric of West African coastland left to be patchworked and reconfigured in a strange land and new context. We Africans were brought, as they say, “empty-handed, but not empty-headed.” That is to say, we came with the memories and stories of a rich culture, but without the physical objects and their imbued meaning. And although we came “empty-handed,” many of us came with knowing hands—hands filled with the skills to remake those cultural objects. The Cashinahua of Peru believe the more active a part of the body is, the wiser it is. According to them, the brain, as such, is not very smart since it doesn’t do much. The hands, by contrast, are brilliant. This is something I know from my own cultural history. While at the time of the Middle Passage the humanity of the African people was not valued, the skilled African hands of the basketmaker, potter, weaver, stitcher, and blacksmith were. Moreover,

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through those skilled hands, a legacy was maintained. A path for historians to trace between the Americas and Africa has been laid through objects. The quilting aesthetics, sea grass baskets, and shotgun houses of African Americans are but a few examples of generational connections retained and revealed in wise and talented hands. Immanuel Kant said, “The hand is the visible part of the brain.” Dr. Seuss illustrated it in Hunches in Bunches. And, a child once said, “Art is drawing a line around my thinks.” Don’t we all at some unspoken level tend to trust demonstrated wisdom rather than talk? It is to this notion and legacy that I dedicate my own making: the hands that preceded me, those of my ancestors known and unknown, wise and knowledgeable hands, the hands that imbued objects with their stories. Sometimes the tools used to make the object hold the potency of our story. My grandmother, among her many attributes, was a talented tailor. She also was a world traveler and routinely visited each of her children and grandchildren throughout Europe, Jamaica, Ghana, and America. Though she died when I was ten, she taught me to sew. More importantly, she taught me to thread a needle in a way that still seems like magic. (My friend Mandayam Srinivasan of the Touch Lab at MIT deconstructs this magic in scientific terms as having to do with “degrees of freedom of the thread in relation to the needle.”) As we stitched together, my grandmother would share stories of her excursions to faraway places. Few of those embroideries and doll clothes that we made together remain. Yet every time I thread a needle, the memory of her is conjured. For a moment, I am ten again, at her knee, hearing her voice. Once the medium is engaged, the stories rush in and her presence is felt. Degrees of freedom, indeed. Source: Sonya Clark, “Hand-Me-Downs: Our Stories Held in Objects, Materials, and Processes,” in Craft and Design: Hand, Mind, and the Creative Process, edited by Annaliese Jakimides, Monograph Series no. 17 (Deer Isles, Maine: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 2004), 4–8.

ROBERT EBENDORF (b. 1938 in Topeka, Kansas) received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art from the University of Kansas before traveling abroad in 1963 to study jewelry at Norway Silver Designs, Fredikstad. Ebendorf founded the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) in 1969, has lectured and taught widely, and has been on the faculty of East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, since 1999. In his jewelry, Ebendorf combines precious materials with life’s flotsam and jetsam, such as rusty nails and crab claws. Looking back on his childhood in a 2004 oral history, he makes an interesting connection between his grandparents’ work and his own. (See also page 218.)

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When I spoke about [being part] of a family and of the craft being handed down, I oftentimes think about growing up as a young man—as a young person and as a child in Topeka, Kansas, and on Saturdays my father would take me down to, believe it or not, my grandmother and grandfather’s tailors’ shop, and the connection—let’s put the dots together. Here are two people, a husband and wife, a team, a collaborative team in Topeka, Kansas—Swiss woman, German man. What are they doing? They’re cutting cloth. What is she doing? She’s . . . sewing button holes, doing detailing on the clothing that my grandfather is putting together, this new pair of pants or a formal three-piece suit. I can remember as a small boy being put up on the cutting board in the tailor shop and big bolts of fabric my grandfather would pull down. I can still hear—[makes noise]—coming down and showing me, well, this is the new—the new tweed, or, this is the new flannel that’s coming this fall, and the cardboard maquettes. But behind . . . the table there was my grandmother sitting there with a hot iron and pressing and pinning the patterns down and cutting with these big, long shears. So connect the dots here. So here all of a sudden I think about that journey, and here are two craftsmen, making love to the materials, . . . objects that end up on the body, that end up adorning the body, and here I am at 65 adorning the body, or making objects that speak about my passions, speak about the craft. Source: Robert Ebendorf, oral history interview by Tacey Rosolowski, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

MARY LEE BENDOLPH (b. 1935 in Gee’s Bend, Alabama) is part of a rural community of women whose utilitarian quilts were first exhibited to critical acclaim at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 2002. This avid, and now famed, community of quilters included her mother. In a 2006 interview recorded for a monograph on Gee’s Bend quilts, Bendolph recounts that clotheslines created an outdoor gallery for the quilts and enabled the mutual influences and critiques that were part of the community.

I always loved Martha Jane’s quilts. They were so pretty to me. I remember when I was about eight years old, Martha Jane had a quilt up in the frame, and they were together quilting it. Martha Jane, Mama, Virginia, Annie Bendolph, and one other lady were quilting together. Mama took me there with her. We were sitting up under the quilt, playing. Me and some of the other children were sitting up under the quilt and seeing how they was 40

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quilting it. It was a “Nine Patch” quilt. It was made out of red, blue, white, and yellow cloth. That was my first memory of them getting together quilting. I can remember Mama piecing her quilts, alone, late at night, but that’s my first real memory of them quilting together. We didn’t have nowhere to quilt in the old house. Back then they had to lay the quilt across the bed or put it in their laps to quilt. Now they could put the quilt up on a frame and hang it up in the loft and sit down together and quilt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I didn’t know nothing about art. I ain’t never heard her say nothing about art. Never as I know did she ever say anything about art. If she knew anything, she didn’t tell me. But she didn’t tell me everything she knew. But I doubt she knew anything about art. All they would do was make quilts to keep us warm. I see other people’s quilts like when the spring of the year come. The women would hang their quilts out, and we would just go from house to house looking at the people’s quilts. And I would take a pattern from looking at their quilt and try to make one like it. But it don’t never be just like the quilt I see hanging on the wire. When people go around looking at the quilts, we wanted them to be pretty and make them look better than the next one. We didn’t have no museum in Gee’s Bend, but we would go from house to house looking at quilts and getting ideas about how I would like to lay mine out. People go from museum to museum checking out other people’s work. Sometimes they like it, sometimes they don’t. They go home and try to make it, too. I think that was the same thing we was doing back then. They have a name for it—and—and we didn’t. And ours was hanging on the outside. When people would go to your house, they want to see your quilts. And they look at the quilts on the bed. They’d tell you if it looked pretty. That would make me feel good about my quilt. I would go and make more by them looking at my quilts and saying they was pretty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Old clothes have spirit in them. They also have love. When I make a quilt, that’s what I want it to have, too, the love and spirit of the clothes and the people who wore it. When I make the quilt, it has that love and spirit in it. When I make a quilt, I be praying and asking the Lord to help me to do the work I do. I sing, I pray, I read the Word. I can’t do nothing without the Lord’s help. I think I get my singing and praying from Mama. She always would be praying and singing around a quilt, moaning a moan. I couldn’t know exactly what she was saying, but I know tears be dropping from her eyes. And then after a while she would lead a moan, “Oh please, oh please, Lord, have mercy.” I know that be what she be moaning. And then she would be singing another moan, “The Days Have Passed and Gone.” Don’t nobody I N H E R I T I N G A PAT H

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moan that moan like she moaned. It just do something to me. I can hear that voice in my spirit. It’ll always be in my spirit because I love my Mama. She did things for me that I couldn’t do for myself. I told her that I would always be there for her, because she didn’t have to do it. But I thank her for the love she showed me and for teaching me to love and to care about people. All of my quilts I make, it be kind of like her quilts. Source: Mary Lee Bendolph, “Mama’s Song,” interview by Matt Arnett, in Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt, edited by Paul Arnett, Joanne Cubbs, and Eugene W. Metcalf Jr. (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2006), 174–75.

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3 Responding to Materials In addition to lifestyle and heritage, materials—charged with tactile qualities and metaphoric referents—can captivate artists and inspire them to enter the field of craft. Warren Seelig writes that materials themselves are the source of ideas in the crafts, in opposition to the modernist notion that ideas come first and dictate the choice of medium. Visceral responses to materials are expressed by furniture maker George Nakashima, who links wood to the animistic belief that trees have souls, and sculptor Lesley Dill, who describes falling in love with paper. For others, the process of working is as compelling as the materials themselves. In the conclusion of his seminal book, Baskets as Textile Art (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1973), Ed Rossbach notes the kinesthetic pleasures of making baskets and the musical experience of time associated with repetitive technique: “Basketmaking might be a sort of clock, not a measuring device, but something devised by man to enforce an awareness, a savoring, of time through its arbitrary division into rhythmic units.” Rossbach wonders whether “a basketmaker wants a basket primarily or the involvement in the process primarily,” a relevant question for contemporary installation artist Ann Hamilton, who discusses the value of labor and the primacy of touch, which can only be accessed through time and intimacy with materials. Such values have long been associated with craft and are a continuing attraction to those like Hamilton who might not otherwise be identified with the field but are concerned with the relationship between art and labor.

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In the mid-1980s, GEORGE NAKASHIMA (1905–1990) purchased a magnificent walnut log and began making a series of Altars for Peace to be placed on each continent as a location for meditation and gathering. These altars reflect his long-held belief that nature is divine and that objects handmade from natural materials are divinely inspired. In a 1953 public lecture and his influential 1981 book, The Soul of a Tree, Nakashima extols natural materials and attributes nobility and emotions to trees. He sees the artist’s use of wood as a rebirth for a tree that would soon die naturally. (See also page 8.)

Fundamentally, I have a primary interest in natural materials. They tell me of the deep wearing of centuries of weather on the timbers of Horiuji. In them I see the clean freshly hand-planed surfaces of Ninoki or Port Orford cedar, the burls of English oak. I find the textures, colors and the sheer art and craftsmanship of a good fieldstone wall, the stripped beauty of highstrength concrete, the character and history of a wide plank of walnut, the life and death of two hundred years, the story of bitter winters and the searing desert summers of at least a human lifetime that show in the twisted, tortured forms of bitter brush, the story of beautiful wide unvarnished boards of a teahouse ceiling. In such experiences I see the fine relationships of man with nature, the relationship of man with a higher being; his universality with his environment, the possibility to embrace it instead of conquering it. Measured by such values, what can plastic offer, or fiberglass? In these uncertain times, these values are important. These pools of tranquility when man stands almost alone, this creation of an environment or a creation of a state of mind which physically means an embracing of nature can have a real meaning. Source: George Nakashima, “Presentation at the New York Herald Tribune Forum,” typescript, October 19, 1953, George Nakashima Papers, Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C.

We are left in awe by the nobility of a tree, its eternal patience, its suffering caused by man and sometimes nature, its witness to thousands of years of earth’s history, its creations of fabulous beauty. It does nothing but good, with its prodigious ability to serve, it gives off its bounty of oxygen while absorbing gases harmful to other living things. The tree and its pith live on. Its fruits feed us. Its branches shade and protect us. And, finally, when time and weather bring it down, its body offers timber for our houses and boards for our furniture. The tree lives on. 44

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George Nakashima by John Leongard. Gelatin silver print, 1969 (printed 2004). Image: 12 1⁄16 × 7 15⁄16 inches. (Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, NPG.2004.140; photo © John Loengard/Time Life Pictures/ Getty Images)

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When trees mature, it is fair and moral that they are cut for man’s use, as they would soon decay and return to the earth. Trees have a yearning to live again, perhaps to provide the beauty, strength and utility to serve man, even to become an object of great artistic worth. Each tree, every part of each tree, has only one perfect use. The long, taut grains of the true cypress, so well adapted to the making of elegant thin grilles, the joyous dance of the figuring in certain species, the richness of graining where two large branches reach out—these can all be released and fulfilled in a worthy object for man’s use. Source: George Nakashima, The Soul of a Tree: A Woodworker’s Reflections (New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1981), 81, 93.

ALBERT PALEY (b. 1944 in Philadelphia) received undergraduate and graduate degrees in jewelry making from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (M.F.A. 1969). He joined the faculty of the Rochester Institute of Technology as a master goldsmith in 1969. There he began forging iron and quickly became a central figure in the revival of blacksmithing as an art form. Paley has created more than fifty monumental, site-specific works for public institutions and private corporations, starting with the gates he designed for the Renwick Gallery in 1972. As recorded in a 1982 oral history, Paley remembers his surprised delight with the ornamental architectural metalwork he saw in Spain and Portugal. As a result of his travels, he abandoned the modernist aesthetic exemplified by Adolf Loos, who in an influential 1908 essay, “Ornament and Crime,” proposed that all ornament be eliminated from functional objects. Paley instead turned to the curvilinear, naturalistic art nouveau style for inspiration. (See also page 118.)

I try to understand my own design sensibilities—why did I respond to something when I didn’t respond to something else. It wasn’t a philosophy and it [wasn’t] a value judgment; it was just an emotional response. Why did that happen? And I tried to find that there are systems or patterns of this kind of response because when I sit there and I draw something I do a bunch of designs and I like one drawing over another and why. And it was very—it bothered me that I didn’t have those answers. I mean, I knew I liked it but that wasn’t enough. So I tried to psych myself out to find patterns of thought and so on and so forth. Well, anyhow, [in 1973] I realized that in fact what I was dealing with was ornamentation, which was kind of shocking because that’s always a very negative—detrimental word. But I realized that and I realized prob-

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Albert Paley, Portal Gates, 1974. Forged and fabricated steel, brass, copper, and bronze, 90 3⁄4 × 72 × 4 inches. (Collection of Smithsonian American Art Museum, courtesy of Paley Studios; photo by Bruce Miller)

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ably what I was doing was a real reaction against modernism . . . [I realized] if that was my inherent nature then I should find out more about it. So if there is any place to find ornamentation—and especially with iron—[it’s] in Southern Europe—Spain, Portugal have an incredibly rich heritage of ornamentation and cross-fertilization of the various cultures and so forth. So I went there and the first place we stopped was Lisbon and I went to like a [Calouste] Gulbenkian Foundation and saw the Lalique work. . . . I had started reading about Art Nouveau because I really liked the sensibilities and . . . creating a functional object far beyond its needs into an aesthetic display. And I had read about it and I had seen some things in that but I saw the Lalique exhibition . . . and I felt an . . . incredible empathy [with] the romanticism and the poetic aspect of it. And then we went to Spain and just walking down the streets—just huge ornamentation and big clusters of flowers and fruit out of stucco and stuff just hanging off the walls. It was like a Disney Land. It just blew my mind. . . . All of the ornamentation we have is very conservative and if anything it’s in a neoclassical condition—it is like stuck in an arch or in a capital, but here you have the façade of a building and there would be this huge cornucopia or this huge lion and these things would just be just abundant and ornament for its own sake. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I think that the response to ornament—the response is not through the intellect but it’s through the senses and through the emotion, and I think that it’s just something that you inherently align with because of your physical, emotional, sensual self. If you see beautiful colors—that whatever the color is you respond emotionally. . . . I kind of see it as a basic humanism rather than a kind of a logical rational kind of victim of things. Source: Albert Paley, oral history interview by Robert F. Brown, 1982, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

MARY LEE HU (b. 1943 in Lakewood, Ohio) received a B.F.A. in metalsmithing from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1965, and an M.F.A. in metalsmithing from Southern Illinois University in 1967. She was a professor in the metals program at the University of Washington between 1980 and 2006 and is noted for her application of traditional textile techniques (wrapping, coiling, winding, and braiding) to gold wire in her elegant jewelry. Hu’s attraction to ethnic jewelry made of nonprecious materials and to the evidence of wear in handmade objects in general is a response to materials as they age and change. Although this may seem incongruent with her highly refined aesthetic, the common ground is an emphasis on tactility and texture. In a 1985 oral history, Hu 48

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Mary Lee Hu at home, 1990. (Photo by Kim Zumwalt)

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wonders if some of the jewelry she has made will be cherished through generations in the way that objects in her collection, particularly her rocking chair, have been.

I happen to delight . . . in the confines of making a thing so it can be worn. I like things that are useful. Furniture or ceramics or rugs or whatever. The things I do collect, a lot of them I do use. And they, in effect, do get used up. The rug that gets used keeps getting bigger holes in it all the time—the old Caucasian rug I have in front of the fireplace. But it was made to be used. I like using these wonderful things. But once the maker makes this thing, sends it out to this person who falls in love with it, that person using it becomes somehow closer to the thing, because of this association. Passes it on then to the children, whatever, through the family. However, this thing comes down. It has a form to it that I made, the marks of the marker, that gets overlain with a patina of wear. The thing gets a little mooshed out of shape or rubbed down or whatever. And the piece really takes on a nice character. I love fine old pieces. And what I tell my students—I’ve got a rocking chair out there in the other room with wooden handles. And the wood has gotten a smoothness to it that you can only really find in handles, tool handles or something that’s been rubbed by hands many, many times. I know that that chair came down through my family. So all those hands rubbing it were my ancestors, and that chair tells me a little bit who I am. There’s a comfort there. I like that piece. I don’t care if it is valuable. I don’t care who it was made by. I don’t know. It may have been made by someone in the family far back. That’s not its value, intrinsic or historical. It’s just personal to me. It would be nice if some of my pieces become that, but there’s no way I can give them that. Somebody else has to. Source: Mary Lee Hu, “Reminiscences of Mary Lee Hu,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1985, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:32–33.

PAUL MARIONI (b. 1941 in Cincinnati) is a member of a distinguished art-making family that includes brothers Tom and Joseph and son Dante. He received a B.A. in English and philosophy from the University of Cincinnati (1967). Marioni recalls in a 1985 oral history that as an iconoclastic artist in the Bay Area, he was drawn to glass when he encountered a nontraditional leaded glass window that delivered a harsh contemporary message rather than a decorative flourish or biblical narrative. Instead of being attracted by the sensuality of the material, he is compelled by the clash between message and medium.

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one,” or “Whose is that?” And he explained this story to me of this junkie friend of his [John] who had given his wife an overdose of heroin and had very nearly killed his wife by giving her an overdose. So this [artist], Judy Raphael, had made this stained glass window of a giant teaspoon that was called “John’s Big Spoon.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I looked at it and it was the first time glass had ever caught my eye. I had been to Europe and had been through Chartres and been to Murano, but it had gone in one eye and out the other. I wasn’t interested. I went to Chartres because everyone had said, “You’ve got to go there to see the stained glass.” So I went and looked and said, “Big deal. See you later. I’m going to go get a bottle of wine or something.” But then I saw “John’s Big Spoon” and it caught my eye and the explanation appealed to me, that she would make this for a guy who had given his wife an overdose, as a daily reminder, so he would have to live with what he had done. And that notion struck me, that there was some meaning or something to that. In stained glass, which I had never seen before in glass. And so a month later this woman comes up to me and says, “Didn’t you tear a car in half?” And I said, “Yeah,” and we talked for about an hour, and I said, “By the way, what’s your name?” And she said, “Judy Raphael,” and I said, “Are you the Judy Raphael who made ‘John’s Big Spoon’?” And she said, “Yeah, I am,” and it was kind of like crossing paths. So I started looking at her glass, and my interest in her and what she was . . . doing, and so I started working with glass. Source: Paul Marioni, “Reminiscences of Paul Marioni,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1985, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:49–50.

NICK CAVE (b. 1959 in Jefferson City, Missouri)—dancer, clothing designer, educator, and artist—teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He achieved recognition with his ceremonial, multimedia garments called “Soundsuits,” which are often part of performances that refer to the position of black males in American society. Cave received his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1989. In his master’s statement that year, he writes that by using seductive materials he can make difficult subject matter, like sexuality or social ostracism, approachable. Cave’s recent costumes are inspired by African ritual dress, which is best appreciated through the movements of the wearer.

I want to help the observer step out of themselves and into my art. I desire to help them understand what my view of sexuality is all about—a warm secure thing that expresses the need to feel or accept feelings. But R E S P O N D I N G T O M AT E R I A L S

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rather than slapping the viewer in the face with my art I seek to draw them into it through the sensuality of the media, the stroking of the surfaces, the mute provocativeness of the presentation. Perhaps I seek a fashionability for my work. By rendering the subjects fashionable, I also make them acceptable—not so difficult to digest, not so terrifyingly controversial. Source: Nickey Cave, “Erotic Symbols as Physical Sensations through Art,” M.F.A. master’s statement, Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1989.

ANN HAMILTON (b. 1956 in Lima, Ohio) received a B.F.A. in textile design in 1979 from the University of Kansas and an M.F.A. in sculpture from Yale University in 1985. She is known for her huge site-specific, labor-intensive art installations. Among Hamilton’s many honors is a 1993 MacArthur Foundation “genius” award and her representation of the United States at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. She teaches at Ohio State University. Hamilton’s concern with process, touch, and handwork is recorded in a 1990 article in the journal Artweek and echoes feelings voiced by many artists making craft.

Behind my work is a belief in the importance of the information that comes through our skin. We live in a world where we don’t acknowledge the way things feel. We don’t stop and pay attention. Everything is so much about information, yet there’s all this validity and all this wisdom in what comes through the skin. There’s a language in that. My work is an attempt to articulate that, to trust it, to create a place for it to be experienced. A second value that is part of my work is a strong belief in the value of hand labor and of laboring together. There’s a way that you know somebody when you sit and chop onions and cry together, or when you—as we’ve been doing recently—scrub teeth or put paprika on the walls, or lay linotype, or any of the kind of numerous processes that are involved in doing the installation work that I do. There’s a kind of conversation and a kind of community that evolves out of that, a satisfaction in touching things. Anni Albers wrote in her book on designing that she thought there was so much schizophrenic behavior in the world because people didn’t have contact with materials from their raw state. We’re mid-slot in so many ways. When I work, I get to go through that whole process and it establishes a

(opposite) Nick Cave, Soundsuit, 2006. Human hair, bugle beads, fencing mask, wire, 74 × 43 × 36 inches. (Photo by James Prinz Photography, courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery)

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living relationship with the thing that’s being touched. It’s not something that we make a lot of space for. Source: Ann Hamilton, “On Being Grounded,” Artweek 21 (April 5, 1990): 20.

WARREN SEELIG (b. 1946 in Abington, Pennsylvania) creates architecturally scaled, abstract weavings. He received a B.S. from the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science (1972) and an M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art (1974). He has been Distinguished Visiting Professor in Craft/Fibers at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, and has served on the executive board of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. Art and art criticism in the mid- to late twentieth century often granted primacy to ideas and considered materials to be merely a means toward a conceptual end. In a 1992 essay published by the Haystack Institute, Seelig argues that materials are essential, not incidental, to craft. The information materials embody, the artist’s “psychic identity” with the materials, and the processes involved with the manipulation of materials are all sources of ideas.

For the craftsman, materials not only possess profound qualities that affect us subliminally, but are also loaded with associations derived from our mutual experience of them. Whether processed, synthetic, natural or raw, what materials mean is a fascinating and richly complex area of cultural discovery. Even the words that name materials have strong cultural resonance: polyester, silk, porcelain, pine, oak, platinum, tin. The words may instantly conjure not only thoughts but literal images of the objects and experiences we associate with those materials. Over time we take an intimate reading on the material, and so often react in an exaggerated way. It is the stuff, its materiality, the succulent, pliable, plastic, soft, hard, malleable, diaphanous, translucent, shiny, oily, glittery materials which instigate, induce, and tempt us. Our initial response is to the physicality, the sensual: it comes mostly from instinct and intuition. We are drawn to materials not because we have figured out or rationalized our need for them. The attraction comes from elsewhere. Rarely do we get so close to reality without imitation or representation—in other words a more immediate sense of the real world through abstraction. It is an inestimable misunderstanding of craft to assume that materials are chosen primarily to service ideas. To the contrary, I believe we select materials for the way in which they offer clues about form yet to be visualized. Understanding this concept may reveal something about the creative process among us. I believe that materials and their consequential trans-

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formation may be the first stage in the search for idea. I think that materials suggest ideas about form because of their inherent physical properties but also, and more importantly, because of the way that material seems to contain or to have absorbed unique information that is meaningful to whomever makes contact with it. The information contained by matter is not necessarily universal, for each of us will read and respond in our own peculiar way. In fact, the way we respond will give expression to a rich and eccentric experience of the world. To make form that responds only to a material’s physical properties—to what it can do rather than [what] it encourages us to do—more often produces results that are predictable and familiar. The artist’s ability to discover qualities in materials that go beyond their scientific properties will provoke form with a far more convincing sense of expression. Some artists are unusually willing to allow materials to play a significant role in the discovery of form. Although this may sound overly simplistic, it is the essential and limitless source of inspiration for those who are material-oriented. Believing that the source of ideas may exist within the material is often in strong contrast to the established thinking in Western art, where more often, material is envisioned as a crude resource to be exploited, to be overcome by the will of the artist/ creator: it is merely the stuff that bears the imprint of the artist’s style and technique. The answer goes beyond truth-to-materials or the notion that material is merely a means to an end. Materials contain clues that allow us to discover our own personal sense of reality through a subconscious process, an intuitive, creative process in which material is an active partner. The notion that materials have a personality, spirit, soul or whatever we use to characterize that with which we as human beings can identify, is a universal concept, dominant in Eastern philosophies, which can be traced back to primitive man. So-called primitive man was able to feel that his soul was not only something that dwelt within his body, but something that also lived in trees, in animals, stars, thunder and all other natural phenomena. I am not suggesting that we are capable of experiencing the world in the way primitive people did because they developed consciousness in a very different way. However, for the artist who has established a deep and intensive relationship with materials, the feeling of psychic identity, something of one’s spirit becomes closely identified with the physical, is very real. The artist working with materials, over time, may reach a heightened reality. A deep and overriding commitment to a certain materiality will reinforce the notion that this stuff is other than inanimate. Craft reinforces this empathy with material in its physiological dependence on process. Activity is rhythmic, repetitive, continuous: beating,

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turning, throwing, planing, scratching, burnishing, stitching. These processes have a direct relationship to making abstract form because of their often slower, more deliberate, focused, but at the same time meditative and mesmerizing qualities. This impulse to abstract is directly involved in the activity of making and is often in synchronization with natural body rhythms, with breathing, with heart beat, with soothing stroke, with the sexual cadence. The activity may induce some level of contemplation where the actual process remains on automatic pilot, but the decisions about shaping move into a state of mental freewheeling. That is, the process becomes second nature and decisions about shaping come as much from the irrational as from the rational. It seems that not only the conscious but the unconscious is engaged in the process of making form. Craft processes tend to be organic, closely associated with fundamental forces in nature. The physical shapes often grow or emerge by slowly adding or subtracting material. Certain processes, like weaving, layering, laminating, resemble sedimentation, and others, like carving, sanding, filing, relate to erosionary forces. Both of these processes involve building up or removing by bits and particles, by threads, chips and dust. Surface, shape and color in tapestry are realized by obsessive layering of threads, which eventually become cloth. In carving wood, massive amounts of material may first be removed in order to generalize about the form. The process often involves continuous chipping away, from large to small, scaled down, in some cases, to particles of wood dust being removed. Often the form emerges in slow motion, taking shape over an extended period, one thin layer added or one particle removed at a time. Source: Warren Seelig, “Craft and the Impulse to Abstract,” in Haystack Institute Monograph no. 3 (Deer Isles, Maine: Haystack Institute, 1992), 11–16.

ERIKA AYALA STEFANUTTI (b. 1965 in Traverse City, Michigan) received an M.F.A. from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1992, under metalsmith GARY GRIFFIN (b. 1945 in Wichita Falls, Texas). Griffin taught at the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, between 1974 and 1984 and at the Cranbrook Academy of Art between 1984 and 2006. In an article they coauthored for Metalsmith magazine in 1994, Stefanutti and Griffin assert that no material is a blank slate to which the artist bestows meaning. Rather, a medium is rich with the history of its uses and symbolic associations. (Similarly, colleague Tom Joyce keeps the role of weaponry and colonialism in mind when he creates his metal sculptures [see page 295].) This article won the magazine’s Annual Writer’s Award in recognition of its significant contribution to critical writing in the field. 56

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At the root of many attitudes and beliefs about material and the physical itself, is the belief that the mind and the body are two distinct realms, with the physical or bodily realm always inferior to the intellectual, or nonphysical. The sources of this idea show that the superiority of mind over the body is not innate, but a consciously constructed belief. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . That dualist influences are present in our field can be found in the common belief that the idea supersedes the actual object, where the object is always an imitation of the idea, and the often unchallenged assumption that influence or meaning flows only from maker into material. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To define knowledge as information that can be digitized or transmitted is to deny the value, the profundity, of physical ways of learning and knowing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As with individuals, cultures are defined and redefined by the objects they produce. Every time an artifact enters the culture and every time an idea is transformed into an object, its physicality has resonance. Powerful because they contain not only what the maker injected into them (consciously or not), objects also contain the associative power of the materials, including the social and political histories, and the history of the social relations that particular objects and materials uphold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It is in the transformation from the idea to the physical object, that the input of the maker, the history of the material, the history of the fabrication processes, the context of a given object in the community come together. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Metalsmiths often ignore the fact that material itself has an agency. Current metalsmithing exhibition catalogs emphasize self-expression and conceptually constructed images. Rarely, if ever, does one find a discussion of how the [medium] supports these claims, nor does one find affirmation that material has instrumentality of any kind. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . As we were working on this theme of reinventing material we asked ourselves: “What methods could one use to describe material, and what are the sources of those methods? Why is it that, generally, discussion of media is limited to its physical characteristics and aesthetic formal properties? Why is there no study or examination of the ways in which materials operate as meaning in the objects our field produces?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In an expanded paradigm, in which meaning can be perceived as springR E S P O N D I N G T O M AT E R I A L S

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ing from the object, makers may find that the making of meaning is not dependent solely on the producer’s volition, but that material and physicality also contribute. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In this age of the information highway and of non-material (conceptual) work, makers, particularly craftspeople, can recognize the profundity of producing objects as a confluence between maker and material. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When makers choose to adapt their critical paradigm to include an affirmation of the usefulness and meanings found in the physical, they make it possible to more clearly name and appreciate all of the different elements (narrative content, material, physical) which contribute to the significance of their objects. In so doing, they make available to themselves an expanded, more complex method of evaluating their work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Often when makers acquire their material, they assume it to be a blank slate, without a past life, memory, or recollection; through their work, they will project meaning onto the substance, unable or perhaps unwilling to see meaning as a dynamic between their labors and the meanings/history/ resonance of the material. What are the ideologies that allow makers to see some materials as blank, awaiting the dynamic of the maker’s hand, and others such as “found” or “alternative” materials as having rich, usable histories? Of course there is no such a thing as a not-found or neutral material. As a war medal has a rich history that contributes to the significance and value of an object it becomes a part of, so does sheet metal. The difference in the meaningful value of these media resides not in the materials themselves but in metalsmiths’ ability and willingness to perceive and articulate it. Each maker’s belief system determines whether or not they recognize that all materials have “memory” and a past and present life. Source: Erika Ayala Stefanutti and Gary S. Griffin, “Remaking Material,” Metalsmith 14, no. 3 (Summer 1994): 32–39.

MICHAEL LUCERO (b. 1953 in Tracy, California) fuses painting, sculpture, the history of ceramics, the natural world, folk art, and indigenous cultures in his clay sculpture. Lucero has furthered the tradition of figurative sculpture since his days at the University of Washington (M.F.A. 1978), where he was a student of Howard Kottler. In an interview published in his 1996 retrospective catalog, Lucero notes that feminism helped free him to follow his natural inclinations rather than work in an estab-

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lished male paradigm of heroic, monumental sculpture. He realized he could work in small scale and create larger sculptures by assembling multiple smaller units.

The women faculty members with whom I studied, and who hailed from the Bay Area, were discussing Judy Chicago and feminism. Feminist thinking, in particular, was new to me. My painting professor, Louise Stanley, for example, talked about how she liked the idea of making a painting on the kitchen table. I thought that sounded interesting. What really struck me was the idea of making smaller work. I thought, why can’t I join in this conversation? I don’t need fancy equipment—metal grinders, welders, etc. Smaller scale doesn’t mean less significant. In fact, it has the potential to mean just the opposite because it invites a closer physical relationship. So I began making small clay sculptures. I was just adapting the feminist arguments to suit my own creative impulses. Ironically, everything I did as a child was handmade in a funky kind of way. It was smaller, on a more human scale, and manageable. During this period, I never thought in monumental or traditional terms, nor was I motivated by typical “male” sculpture. In fact, that scared me. It wasn’t something I felt completely at ease with, in part because I never had any real introduction to it other than the basic rudiments taught in school. On the other hand, my father wasn’t a welder. Rather, he was a tinkerer who made such small, usable objects as wooden boxes and cast cement planters for our backyard. Along with my male friends who studied sculpture, I was inspired by William Wiley’s assemblage, which we perceived as a counterculture statement in terms of scale and in a material sense. So, I felt I didn’t have to weld steel, carve wood, or chisel stone to make sculpture. Suddenly, I thought there were infinite alternatives and I could make something that was as justified or as legitimate as anything traditionally understood as sculpture. Though clay was still not truly accepted, on the West Coast you could move out the potter’s wheel, bring in a lump of clay, and start making things by hand. All of a sudden, hey, you’ve got some sculpture going! That was a given. The trick was to personalize it! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . At Humboldt [Humboldt State University, Arcata, California] we were taught that you could embroider and still call it sculpture. I thought wow . . . this is exciting. I was fortunate to be there. This whole process demystified the heroism typical of much of the art of the day and gave equal credibility to the crafts or their alternatives . . . small scale could be just as powerful as large scale.

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I really identified with the process entailed in embroidery and quilting. I remember visiting my parents during my first semester in graduate school. I saw my fifth-grade teacher, who was particularly inspirational to and supportive of me. We talked about a project I had worked on in his class. It was a processional staff to be used in a May Day parade. I purchased a big dowel and with pieces of chicken wire and crepe paper, I made elaborate flowers and tied them to the staff. When I returned to school, I decided that was how I loved to work. So I took my clay and made little parts and tied it to this big chicken wire form. . . . I had finally broken away from my previous mode of making one-piece ceramic sculptures. That rejuvenated my mind. I recognized that I am compulsive, I am obsessive. I decided not to deny it, but to use it to my advantage. That’s how I regrouped. It helped me to reinvent the making of the form in a real interesting way. I thought, now I can personalize it. I came to the conclusion that piecework was not just for women—I decided I could do it, too. Source: Michael Lucero, “A Conversation with Michael Lucero,” interview by Mark Richard Leach, in Michael Lucero: Sculpture, 1976–1995 (New York and Charlotte, N.C.: Hudson Hills Press and Mint Museum of Art, 1996), 19, 22. Hudson Hills Press, P.O. Box 205, 3556 Main Street, Manchester, VT 05250, <www.hudsonhills.com>.

LESLEY DILL (b. 1950 in Bronxville, New York) received an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute of Art in 1980. Since 1990, when she was given a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, Dill has been integrating words with sculptural forms, often dresses that are made of paper or cast bronze. Interviewed in 2000 for Hand Papermaking magazine, Dill speaks of her emotional and intellectual attachment to paper as a medium, her involvement with process, and her feeling for nature as expressed by paper—all of which align her with the craft community.

Arlene Raven: Tell me how you started with paper. Lesley Dill: Living in India for almost two years began my relationship with paper. What is the process of falling in love? Is it immediate magnetism to a person, place, or material? Or is it something that starts out in a serendipitous, accidental way, and then gradually becomes interwoven with your life and you can’t imagine living without it? Accidental couplings, like myself with India and with paper, often lead to a long-standing connection. And of course India is a country that makes paper, unbelievable paper. Paper and cloth are used a great deal in the spiritual traditions: deities are wrapped; prayer flags release words into the wind; you write prayers 60

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Lesley Dill, Dada Poem Wedding Dress, 1994. Acrylic and thread on paper on mannequin, 64 × 60 × 70 inches. (Collection of the Orlando Museum of Art, Acquisition Trust Purchase, 1996; photo © the Orlando Museum of Art; photo by Raymond Martinot)

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and hopes on little pieces of paper that you attach to trees, that you put in bowls, that you burn. In many ways, my work with paper increasingly paralleled the entire metaphor with which I make my work, which is about language and image. Spoken language happens in the air between people. So, prayer flags, written language that’s burnt—these imply language and the soft, tactile surfaces that hold it. Language is then returned to the air, much like spoken language. This implies the utter belief in spoken language. Raven: The content of breath, it seems like you’re saying. Dill: Yes, language is the intention of breath. Sometimes I think I am paper. I see myself as frontal, flat, and wide into space. Like a blank piece of paper, I’m initially pre-linguistic and represent a world of inner life and silence. I wait to be imprinted on, or to reveal myself in language. As a material to work with, paper is the closest medium to air that I can still touch. I love its fragility and implications of violence. It rips, tears, and crumbles. Raven: Artists enjoy a certain level of violence. Dill: Yes, but paper can always be mended. It can be sewn back together, glued, and remade. There’s an obsessive quality to how you use paper in artwork. When you make it, that’s obsessive as well. I find this obsessiveness soothing; it marks time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . For many years I made paper suits and dresses thinking of them as skin surrogates. I’d embroider them with horsehair and also stain them with tea. I thought if you put all our different skin colors in a blender, they’d come out tea-colored. The stains, creases, and sewing mark time and replicate our daily emotional experience of being touched, soothed, pinched, caressed, and bruised. I also like the soft physicality of working with paper. It’s a very living, inthe-moment process. As a material you bring it very close into your body as you work. I rip it, cast it, shrink it, cut it, add to it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I grew up in Maine and the Adirondacks; my father was a biology teacher and my grandfather had a tree farm outside of Boston. We walked in the woods a lot. In a way, when you work with paper, you’re really working with trees, bark, and plants. You’re working with deconstructed nature, natural cells. Working with paper is my home, as if the sense of my childhood is pulled into my present.

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Source: Lesley Dill, “Interview with Lesley Dill,” interview by Arlene Raven, Hand Papermaking 15, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 3–7.

In a 2000 magazine article, metalsmith and critic BRUCE METCALF (b. 1949) refuses to accept the currently popular notion that there is no difference between art and craft. Like Warren Seelig, he believes that attachment to a medium, rather than to an idea, is a defining element of the crafts. In contrast, fine art subordinates materials to content. (See also page 26.)

Crafts have to be made, crafts have to be objects, and crafts usually must have some connection to traditional materials, techniques, and histories. Being necessarily limited, craft is thus not fully commensurable with art. It is philosophically different. Like it or not, craft and art are somewhat different things. . . . It’s my contention that the primary cause in craft practice is the labor, not the idea. I come to this conclusion from extended observation of craft education and culture. It’s no secret that the majority of present-day craft practitioners were first exposed to their craft in an educational institution. As a teacher for the past twenty-two years, I have watched hundreds of perfectly ordinary students walk into teaching studios. Some students—not all—awaken. They discover something that changes their lives, and a few go on to make a lifelong commitment to their chosen discipline. I am absolutely convinced that this awakening is to the working of a material, and not to “intellectually interesting ideas.” Students respond first and foremost to the material in their hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Most of those men and women who make jewelry or weaving or ceramics into their life’s work, never give it up. I take this extraordinary dedication as evidence that the craft—the tacit knowledge and the emotional attachment to it—precedes all other considerations for the craftsperson. To paraphrase Adrian Piper, I propose we think of the craftsperson as being a maker of objects who will not subordinate his or her medium, whatever the medium, to intellectually interesting ideas. I believe that loyalty to medium is a basic characteristic of craft culture. And as such, loyalty to medium defines a fault line between art culture and craft culture. Recall Piper’s implicit doctrine that medium must be disposable, and compare it with the loyalty of the craftsperson to medium. As concepts, they are mutually exclusive: one can subordinate medium to idea, or idea to medium, but not both. R E S P O N D I N G T O M AT E R I A L S

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There are thousands who think that the only proper ambition for a craftsperson is to become an artist. So, everyone agrees. It’s “art jewelry,” “fiber art,” “art furniture,” and “art glass.” The problem is that if craft is really art, it must be compared to all the art that is out there. Those people who claim to be making art/craft have a lot of explaining to do. Craft must be held up to twentieth century theory, because art is inescapably bound to its discourses. In the present environment, when art is almost synonymous with conceptual art, craft must stand next to [Marcel] Duchamp’s pissoir, and answer for itself. The answer says more about craft’s difference than its similarity. Craft can’t be anything at all, and thus craft is not fully commensurable with the broadest conceptions of art. Furthermore, craft is permeated by the loyalty of its makers to material and process. In my opinion, any attempt to offer a persuasive argument for craft in the new millennium must take these two properties into account. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . To the degree that craft intends to take a place alongside of art, craftspeople must assemble a cogent explanation of what craft is, and why. If craft and art are not fully commensurate, as I claim, then this explanation must focus on the differences between craft and art, not their similarities. Those similarities (formal qualities, theoretical stances, etc.) cannot explain why a craftsperson should choose to limit her creative project to a particular medium, nor do they explain the profound emotional bond that experienced practitioners feel for their work. Until these differences are explained, the legitimacy of craft will continue to be questioned. And once we understand exactly how craft and art are not fully commensurate, then we can make persuasive claims for the place and purpose of craft as a distinct creative enterprise. Source: Bruce Metcalf, “The Problem of the Fountain,” Metalsmith 20, no. 3 (Summer 2000): 28–35. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

DOROTHY GILL BARNES (b. 1927 in Strawberry Point, Iowa) received her B.F.A., M.F.A., and Master of Art Education degrees from the University of Iowa. In the 1960s she taught carpentry to seventh-grade boys. In her sculptural baskets, which are inspired by materials that she gathers outdoors, Barnes’s knowledge of woodworking is combined with her love of nature. She originated the term “dendroglyphs” to describe the markings on bark made by animals, insects, and herself, which she often preserves in her sculptural baskets. “Not knowing what I’m going to find and what I’m going to

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do with it is the thing that keeps me interested.” In a 2003 oral history, Barnes records how she derives inspiration from natural materials.

The thing that came together for me that worked so well is that the sewing part and the carpentry part and the love of being in the woods all just kind of came together with this. And I don’t think there’s any place in a classroom, except perhaps now in the good crafts schools, where you can have in-the-woods experience to collect your art materials. You go to a place and buy your art materials. And if you have that access to the outof-doors and to observing in nature, and then also have in your head the idea that you could either sew it, braid it, paint on it, break it, fold it, pleat it, burn it—all the different things you can do to wood and to bark. And to have that available to you and then have some of the skills that give you the chance to put it together one way or another. Not always the good sense to do it in a proper way, and not always the good sense to make a form that’s interesting, but the trial and error is constant. There’s never a right way, because everything you pick up in nature is going to be different from the thing you picked up in nature before. It’s not duplicated. If you try for the duplicates and try to get exactly the same straight rod of wood from the same kind of tree, time after time after time— there’s a lot of discipline and a lot of learning and a lot of hard work and a lot of persistence for that, and you end up with something beautiful. But I don’t have time to do that because I’m too interested in so many of them that I would rather practice each time and try to do something different with it, because I think I wouldn’t be able to manage the other way. I think that not knowing what I’m going to find and what I’m going to do with it is the thing that keeps me interested. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I go first to the woods, and if the woods or the backyard or wherever is supplying something for me that I can use and put in my hands that I’ve harvested myself, then the form is figured out. I mean, the form doesn’t come first. It has to be the access to the material and what the material will do as I hold it, and not just what I take that is a straight and flexible and easy to weave, but looking into the tree and finding the parts of the tree or the bush or the grass or whatever, and asking myself, why can’t I use that as well? And will it show more about what I’m seeing here in nature if I use more of it in the object that I’m going to present? And so, I mean, you can’t take a mulberry tree down and cut it close to the ground without seeing that it’s turning into orange. And as you dig down you just go, wow! When you see yellow with purple stripes under-

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ground, you just—I’ve had to take people from my house sometimes when I’m out in the yard doing that, and I’ll just say, “You’ve got to come to see this.” Most people don’t believe that there’s anything that bright underground. And you can only see it for maybe just a few hours; it’s very light, bright yellow with purple stripes, just as if they had been drawn on with a piece of pastel chalk. And it is an amazing experience. Source: Dorothy Gill Barnes, oral history interview by Joanne Cubbs, 2003, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

SHEILA HICKS (b. 1934 in Hastings, Nebraska) became interested in textiles after receiving degrees in painting from Yale University and traveling to South America. Since the late 1960s, she has been known worldwide for monumental “woven walls” installed in public and private institutions. In 1977, taking a break from architectural commissions and decorative textiles, Hicks created a series of installations using laundry and found garments. “This basic material has a profound echo,” she states in a 2004 oral history, in which she reflects upon deeply emotional responses to clothing as a material. (See also page 167.)

Sheila Hicks: When I showed laundry, which I borrowed from hospitals, I considered it to be my work. I piled it up in the Eighth Biennale of Lausanne [1977]—about five tons of laundry, placed on a platform, and sculpted it in the form of a glacier, or an avalanche, or a cascade. It was textile art composed of white, clean, cotton hospital laundry. That, too, was my most personal work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many artists were making decorative or functional textiles and tapestry, but this basic material has a profound echo. You can sense the presence; it is powerful. You can use it as art language. I found I could work with it and say meaningful and significant things about the world. When I went to Israel, I used military uniforms and sculpted an environment with them. In the Lausanne Biennale, I used their nurse’s blouses. . . . I saw how people could be affected by the silent presence—the physical presence—of familiar textile garments used in a conceptual way. Monique Lévi-Strauss: Ah, death and suffering. Hicks: Exactly. Life and death. Lévi-Strauss: Yes, and also with the uniforms. Hicks: That helped me discover how to evoke powerful human . . . emotions and responses by using textile. I stepped back and took a breather from decorative art, architecture projects, and just worked with this ma66

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Sheila Hicks, Soft Sculpture of Nurses’ Blouses, 1978. Installation at the Municipal Gallery, Montreuil, France, ca. 24 × 42 feet. (Photo by Philippe Deleporte, © Sheila Hicks)

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terial. In Sweden I had a wonderful collaboration with the director of the Lunds Konsthall [Marianne Nanne-Brahammer]. She obtained truckloads of laundry from the local Swedish hospital. It was in the winter, so it snowed. To see this material arriving in the snow on the main square caused a big stir because the local market also took place in front of the museum. It’s a university town, too, so the students walked to school through this plaza, and they saw laundry pouring into the art museum. I invited them to come in and help me construct the exhibition—to mount it, to mold it, to form it. I worked very hard from then on, on my exhibitions. I went to a space, brought the materials in, and then made the exhibition in accordance with the space, the light, and the sensitivity of the community. That is how I did an exhibition in Montreuil, near Paris. . . . It was in a town hall and I worked with community volunteers. . . . It was a communist suburb of Paris and socially progressive. Representatives from the American Embassy came to the opening, as did a few French ministers, who were not necessarily left. They wanted to see what this artist was trying to say with 3,000 nurses blouses hung inside the community center, and why the Montreuil cultural officer [Mic Fabre] had chosen to present this. . . . People were stunned; they were awe stricken. People walked in, stood frozen, or sat down, and cried staring at this tombé [falling mass]—at this big curtain of nurses blouses hung with safety pins—pinned together, one to the other. It was a whole fleet or army battalion of ghosts that had come in during the night, through one of the windows, posed like butterflies quivering in the space. It made people upset because they had had emotional experiences with hospitals, or spiritual awakenings, and people came back more than once. Busses brought children from schools to see this and the children thought it was stupendous. They laughed, joked, sang, ran around inside the environment; so it brought joy and it brought sadness. What did I learn? I learned about the gamut of emotions that can be somehow elicited from the viewer. I won’t call it art, but an experience quite equivalent to what some call art. Art provokes an emotion, a reaction: attraction or repulsion. It can be a significant learning experience, or jolt, even a revolting, upsetting experience. And I thought: this is the way I want to work—with this material. . . . I want to reinforce its validity. Textiles had been relegated to a secondary role in our society, to a material that was merely functional or decorative. I wanted to give it another status and show what an artist can do with these incredible materials.

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Source: Sheila Hicks, oral history interview by Monique Lévi-Strauss, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

GERHARDT KNODEL (b. 1940 in Milwaukee) was director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, from 1996 to 2007 and head of its textile program since the early 1970s. As a student at Los Angeles City College in the 1950s, Gerhardt Knodel studied with Mary Jane Leland, who taught textiles in the structured manner of the Bauhaus school. In her rigorous exercises, students printed lengths of commercial fabric, which they then presented to the class. In a 2004 oral history, Knodel reminisces about his early pleasure with the compactable medium and his reaction to the rolling and unrolling of the fabric.

I remember the first time I laid out this piece of fabric, block printed a three yard piece of fabric, and then what I loved about it was when you were finished with it, you could roll it up. You could fold it up. You could put [it] in a bag. It was all kind of collapsible. And I could, you know, just gather all this stuff, I had taken all these three dimensional designs courses, all this stuff, I had stuff everywhere. But the textiles were collapsible. I thought that was really neat. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anyway, we’d get in there and I’d take my rolls of fabric and open them up like that, so the whole thing unrolled and everybody would go, “Oh, look how beautiful.” [laughs] You know, and it was really—it was neat, and then I’d roll them up and put them away, you know. It was kind of this very comfortable, and I felt every time I did the unrolling, I felt like it was kind of an extension of myself in an interesting way. Source: Gerhardt Knodel, oral history interview by Glenn Adamson, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Part 2 Getting an Education Before World War II, there were few professional craft training programs in the United States. After the war, institutions of higher education changed to accommodate an influx of veterans whose tuition was supported by the G.I. Bill. Among other benefits, government support freed young adults from parental purse strings and the resulting influence over their educations (see Harvey Littleton) and fostered enormous growth in diverse programs for the arts. For example, the American Craftsman’s Education Council, recognizing an opportunity to serve returning veterans, developed a dual vocational and rehabilitative program at Dartmouth College in 1944. As it grew, its therapeutic mission diminished and its professional and academic standards matured. Within five years, this fledgling program evolved into the School for American Craftsmen and relocated first to Alfred University and then to its present home at Rochester Institute of Technology. The program was connected

to the American Crafts Council (ACC), its influential sales outlet (America House), exhibition space (Museum for Contemporary Crafts), and publication ( Craft Horizons)—all made possible through the patronage and determination of the ACC founder and president, Aileen Osborn Webb. Other programs within and outside academic institutions were initiated or developed across the country and had diverse structures, philosophies, and disciplinary focus. Unlike older and more hierarchical crafts-training opportunities in Europe and Asia, there were few controlling guilds, authoritative precedents, restrictive licenses, and accrediting requirements. Instead, emergent American programs offered diverse entry points, easy access, and flexible professional pathways into industry, small business, and academia. Developing these programs often required revitalizing entire disciplines or establishing them anew. Before Margret Craver initiated the Handy & Harmon workshops, which are credited with the birth of modern American metalwork in 1947, she had traveled in the United States and abroad to consult out-of-print texts, master metalsmiths, industrialists, and museum officials. Similarly, the launch of the American studio glass movement in the 1960s owes its success to inquisitive young artists who worked to uncover the secrets of the domestic and European glass trade. Fritz Dreisbach recounts the field’s debt to Dominick Labino, a consultant from the industrial sector, while Richard Marquis fondly recalls the training he received during a Fulbright residency at Venini, the renowned Venetian glass factory.

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4 Training with Masters Given the emergent nature of professional craft training in the postwar United States, many American artists sought formative instruction from established European or Asian masters. They appreciated their teachers’ emphasis on technical virtuosity and sensitivity to form as a necessary and appropriate foundation. At the same time, however, Americans often bridled at the suppression of individual creativity and spontaneity that is integral to the apprenticeship system. Tage Frid and Warren MacKenzie attest to the frequent clashes of culture, class, and values between the European guild system and the American ethos of independence and innovation. This ethos is exemplified by the freewheeling style of American ceramics master Peter Voulkos, described by Paul Soldner, his first student at Otis Art Institute and a colleague in building a new university department from scratch. Some of the entries included in chapter 2 provide an additional perspective on training with masters by describing traditional craft practices and aesthetics associated with family and culture.

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TAGE FRID (b. 1915 in Copenhagen; d. 2004 in Newport, Rhode Island) emigrated to the United States after World War II to establish the woodworking program at the School for American Craftsman at Alfred University (the program later moved to the Rochester Institute of Technology), where he taught from 1948 to 1962. He later taught at the Rhode Island School of Design (1962–85). Frid helped establish Fine Woodworking magazine in 1962, serving as an editor until his death, and wrote Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking (1993), a three-volume textbook essential for serious artists in the field. In a 1975 article in Fine Woodworking magazine, Frid compares the relative merits of American craft education, primarily based in the academy, with his own traditional European apprenticeship. He laments that, by rewarding innovation over competence, the American system fails its students and their clients. By contrast, he offered his students a strong vocational foundation featuring the nature and properties of wood, technical skills, and traditional construction methods.

I was born in Denmark [in 1915], so therefore my background for furniture design is a little different from that of most American furniture designers. That may be the reason that I view design from a slightly different angle, and feel strongly about the background that a furniture designer should have. I started as an apprentice in a cabinet maker’s shop in Copenhagen when I was very young. Because I was not what you would call an outstanding student in school, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to serve an apprenticeship. When you become an apprentice in Denmark, you sign a contract for five years, which is binding on both parties. Those were five of the longest years that I have ever spent! The working hours were from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., six days a week. At night from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., I was required to attend technical school, where drawing and a knowledge of the materials were taught. Salary for the five years was $1 a week and the guarantee that I would be a journeyman at the end of five years. I did not learn very much about design, but I did learn a good deal about wood as a material—its strength, its limitations, and how it is put together. Today people look down on vocational education because it has not inherited the prestige of the past generation in America. In Europe, the craftsman enjoys the recognition he deserves. There should be an effort made to put more respect into vocational training. A student taking vocational training is just as intelligent as a student enrolled in a college program; the only difference is that the student does not want to be an academician. I think it is better to be a good craftsman and happy than to be a doctor or lawyer and unhappy just to satisfy mom and dad. 74

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I think we have to start with the teachers of vocational subjects in high schools by giving them a better background. Instead of teaching them a little of each craft and having them become jack-of-all-trades, they should be taught one craft so that it is mastered and they can teach students in that particular field. I think also that they should be furnished with a better design background themselves in order to be able to guide the student in making his own design. Now if a student wants to make a coffee table, he is told to go to Drawer 3 and pick a design, usually from some popular magazine, which certainly does not help the student to understand good design. The student in a vocational school should be instructed in mechanical drawing, materials and processes, design and art history. In schools today we like to expose students to a little bit of everything. I think it is a good thing for them to be exposed to various media, but it should be for a limited time only until they make up their minds about which field they desire to enter. Educators today like to talk about the spiral where the students know a little bit about everything before finally reaching perfection. I think it would be much better to turn the spiral up-sidedown and learn one thing well, and as you go on and improve, spread yourself out to other fields. . . . In 1948 I got off the banana boat and started teaching in the Crafts School [School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University]. When I arrived at the school, the students and some of the teachers kept talking about the “freedom of the material.” This sounded interesting and exciting to me, and I could hardly wait to find out what it was all about. It didn’t take me very long to find out when I started teaching. They did not have control of the material; so many of the things made were actually accidents. I do not think that all furniture designers should be craftsmen first, but I certainly am convinced that the designer should know the material in which he is going to design. I really do not see how a designer can go in cold and design something in a material about which he has no knowledge, as it is extremely difficult even for a professional to switch from one material to another and do a good job. If you combine technique and knowledge of the material, you certainly should be able to make some interesting and beautiful furniture—because if you have this background, you will automatically design around the construction, and not construct around the design. You will combine the two of them, as construction becomes second nature when you are designing. I am sorry to say that many times a different approach is used, and that is to construct around the design. Many students and designers are so worried about the looks and the sculpture of the piece, they first think about the beauty of the piece and later worry about how it is to be put together. TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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I strongly believe that this is definitely the wrong approach to take when you are designing furniture. When people buy furniture, they are very particular, and want a chair they can sit in and a bed that they can sleep in. Source: Tage Frid, “Woodworking Thoughts,” Fine Woodworking 1 (Winter 1975): 31–32. © 1975 The Taunton Press.

PAUL SOLDNER (b. 1921 in Summerfield, Illinois), a distinguished potter, educator, and manufacturer of pottery equipment, was Peter Voulkos’s first student at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles (1954). He taught at Scripps College from 1955 to 1992; invented and marketed pottery wheels and clay mixers; and founded Anderson Ranch, a Colorado artists’ community, in 1966. Voulkos was a singularly influential artist and teacher who inspired his students to find their own creative voices and visions. In a 1978 Glass Art Society Newsletter, Soldner identifies the essence of his mentor’s philosophy—self-reliance, restless inquiry, and formal experimentation that defies tradition.

I searched out Pete [Voulkos] through various inquiries of other potters, looking at magazines, Craft Horizon and so forth, and decided I’d like to study with him. But the luck part as far as I’m concerned was the year he left Montana and went down to Otis Art Institute [1954] was the same year I left Ohio and was accepted as a graduate student. . . . I was the only student for about six weeks as I recall and then other people joined us; a woman from Switzerland, there was a Japanese student, Joe Edwards from New York, and then later, John Mason and Kenny Price, and Billy Al Bengston, [Michael] Frimkess, Jerry Rothman . . . a lot of good times. But in that first six weeks it was very interesting because we had no equipment. We had no ceramics department and I would go to class and Pete would be there and he’d say, “Well, what do you want to do?” All we really had at that moment was a single table and a sink. There were no kilns, no wheels, no clay, nothing. And so we would go get a cup of coffee, of course, first things first. And then we would begin to visit throughout Southern California. He’d say, “Well, let’s go see Carelton Ball today down at USC, and let’s go check out Vivika Heino over at Chouinard, or UCLA with Laura Andreson. Well, what we were looking for was what kind of equipment they have, where do they get the clay. While the school was getting ready to set us up we had nothing to work with. In retrospect, that’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me and sometimes I really question because of that valuable experience at not having anything to start with and having had to be involved with design and building and making all the selections plus having every God-damn thing go wrong, so wrong with clay; shivering, crazing, bloating, 76

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Peter Voulkos working in his Glendale Boulevard studio, Los Angeles, 1959. (Photo courtesy of the Voulkos Family Trust)

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whatever could possibly go wrong happened to Pete and to us when we started making pots. But the point was that without that struggle I don’t know exactly where I would be in my own understanding today. I think that I’d be in a different place. But I was sometimes worried as a teacher that we provide too much. And we make everything so accessible and so easy and so well defined that it’s a very cocoon like situation which once you’re outside of is pretty tough. But to watch Pete sort of come to grips with some of these problems and then solve them I think was a very important thing. And one little example, I think it is interesting and very symbolic, he was noted at that time for a nice, luscious, sexy glaze, which came out of the reduction [in] a hard fire brick kiln out of [the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena,] Montana, a down draft. When he came to LA he tried to repeat that quality because that is really what he had made his name on. And it was, incidentally, a big enough reputation that even though he had a little brick yard out in Montana people like [Shoji] Hamada and [Bernard] Leach went to his studio as probably one of the few in the country to see this guy. Anyhow, he wanted to recreate that same effect. And when we finally got the clay and finally got it together in a kiln he tried. But it wouldn’t work. Not only did he have the usual problems with glaze slip and everything, once he saw the glaze slip problem with the clay body and not floating, he still could not get the glazes to get juicy and, you know, do all that beautiful stuff he had before. And I watched him try on three occasions to recreate the situation. One was he decided it was the water. No, he decided first it was the minerals were the problem because the minerals in Montana conceivably were different from what he was getting in Southern California. So he wrote back to Rudy Autio who was his partner and a resident [artist] at Archie Bray and had him send the minerals from Montana to Southern California. He mixed them up, tried them, and the same thing happened. The glazes came out very dry. So then I guess he figured it was the water that was a problem and if any of you have ever been to the Archie Bray Foundation in the early days, you know that they didn’t have their own water system, they had to get it from the nearby brewery next door and they say water makes a difference with beer so Pete was willing to toy with the idea that it made quite a difference with glazes, and he had Rudy mix the glazes with that water and send them down and the same thing happened. The glazes were mature but they were rather dry and unattractive in the sense that he had always thought the glaze should be. And to me that was an important moment to watch him look at the glaze. First with disgust, and then sort of literally open his eyes and say, “Hmmm, that’s not so bad.” [laughter] And from that moment on he didn’t try to make luscious glazes as far as I could see. He just gave up the whole thing. He became 78

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more involved with painterly aspects and then with sculptural qualities and ignored the glaze more and more to the extent that I guess he barely used one glaze at all. So that was a kind of important turning point. The other important turning point as I recall was two girls came to visit us, one was a very, very beautiful, tall statuesque girl, from Chouinard, and they conned Pete, which is very easy to do, into throwing the biggest pot ever. That was their question. “Will you throw the tallest pot you can throw?” So he kind of blushed a little and said, “Well, O.K.” And he turned out a tall cylinder about like that. Similar to the ones he had been doing. Sort of a bottle form straight up and then that classic-Greek-Voulkos neck . . . he had incidentally [done] his thesis on necks and tops, I believe (at California College of Arts and Crafts). And we had coffee and after the girls left he kept on going with that pot. I kept watching him through the coffee break and he kept looking at the pot with sort of a questioning look in his eye [that] says, “Well, what else could I do to it?” And after the girls left he went over and cut, turned the wheel on, it was still soft, and he took a tool and indented two very, very strong grooves into the clay which destroyed, first of all his surface which he had paid great attention to making defined, he destroyed that completely. Also he divided the pot in three different areas so right away he set up some problems. Furthermore he went over to another wheel and threw four or five again with similar tops, these little Greek tops, bottle tops, and when the clay was harder in the afternoon, added them to the central one, so all of a sudden he had made a real utilitarian vessel that was bordering on leaving its utility because of its beauty. People didn’t care if they used it or not. But he left that formal quality that he had always done before by attaching these four or five extra spouts and by condensing the middle. And in that one pot I saw him leap from where he was to a whole new dimension, more into a sculptural thing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I have been trying from time to time to put my finger on exactly what studying with Pete was all about and it is hard to do because he is a crazy, multifaceted person, but there is a story again lengthy but it is beautiful and it relates a little to the panel this morning on education. I think what Pete had as a teacher, well, I had a major in art education so I should know something about teaching, and yet he taught in a way that I never heard outlined in art education courses. It was by example, it was by working in the classroom, but more importantly was really not saying anything until it was important. So, he left you alone most of the time or talked about everything else but pots. But once in a while he would come right to the point and his coming to the point really set it off. So, I am going to relate this little story how it is said that he once taught. He would bring his class TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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together in the fall. We had never had any experience before with clay, and he would say, “All right, I am going to show you how to throw a pot, follow me carefully, watch, and ask questions.” And he would proceed with wet clay, explaining every step of the way, throw it on the wheel, explain what centering was all about, go back and do it again when someone asked for a re-demonstration, very patiently he would center the clay, lift it and pull it and get it up to a 20–21–22 inch cylinder and when there were no more questions he would say, “Well, that’s the assignment.” Then he would go and drink coffee or whatever for the rest of the semester because nobody could throw a 21 inch cylinder that fast. But, the carrot was out there and everybody worked their ass off trying to get the 21 inch cylinder, and finally late in the 2nd semester maybe, one big honcho was able to get it. We’d go tell Pete, “I did it.” So Pete would come out, his cigar in his mouth, get a big tape measure or yard stick and the room was extremely quiet because everyone was waiting for this moment to see if he really made it or not. He’d measure the pot, and if it was truly 21 inches he conceded, would take a big puff on his cigar and say, “Well, I guess he did it. Now what the fuck are you going to do with it?” That was his next assignment. Source: Paul Soldner, “Small Studio Panel,” Glass Art Society Newsletter 3, no. 1 (1978): 6–23.

WARREN MACKENZIE (b. 1924 in Kansas City, Missouri) began his study of ceramics in 1946 at the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1949 until 1952 he served as an apprentice to the renowned British potter Bernard Leach and embraced Leach’s dedication to handmade functional ware in the traditions of Japanese and English folk pottery. MacKenzie returned to the United States in 1952, opened a pottery that is still producing dinnerware, and began a long teaching career at the University of Minnesota. MacKenzie describes daily life as an apprentice in the Leach pottery in a 1981 anthology about apprenticeship published by the editor of Studio Potter magazine. He reflects on the immediate and long-term effects that the three-year experience had on his own professional practices, teaching philosophy, and lifestyle, including his own opportunity to serve as the master to an aspiring apprentice.

I think it best that I speak briefly about the experience that my late wife Alix and I had at the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, England, and of the kind of apprenticeship that we experienced there. When we went to the Leach Pottery in 1949, we had been trained at an art school, as most Leach Pottery apprentices had been. The apprentices at the Pottery were expected to have some skills in throwing, although perhaps not skills which were up to the standards of the Pottery. Alix and I quickly discovered that we did not have the training necessary. It took us weeks to acquire the skills 80

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we needed in order to ensure that the pots we made could be sold in the showroom and not evoke criticism of the Pottery. We made only standard ware pots at that time—pots which were designed previously by Bernard Leach, or someone else from the Pottery. The size of the pot, the weight of the clay, and so forth were recorded on a card which the thrower later used to reproduce the pots in batches of one dozen to one hundred, depending on the complexity of the pot, its size, and how many of the pots were needed for the kiln firings. At that time there were five people throwing at the Pottery, with Alix and me as the two apprentices. We cost the Pottery a fair amount of money in the beginning, as we received a minimum wage from the first day we worked there. Eventually our pots came up to the Pottery standards and brought some income. (Many years later we found out that the standard ware pots at the Leach Pottery were not its main source of income; the main income was from the individual ware of Bernard Leach, which was sold at exhibitions for relatively high prices.) Bernard Leach had a separate studio in the Pottery where he worked. We took tea together, mornings and afternoons, and we had discussions then concerning the quality of the standard ware being done. Bernard was seldom in the Pottery for a critique of the things that we were doing, however. David Leach, his son, was in charge of the Pottery at that time, and he was the person who told us whether or not the pots were up to standard. Bill Marshall was the most experienced thrower, and he made the more difficult pots. Bill would sometimes help us with the concepts of the pieces we were attempting to make. When we first went to the Pottery, we were allowed to do individual pots, as the mood moved us. This meant that if you were making a batch of soup bowls and had an idea for a particular bowl you wanted to make yourself, you just did it. It went into the firing and was charged off against what we called our firing allowance. Every person who worked at the Pottery was allowed to use one quarter of a cubic foot of space in the kiln as a firing allowance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The work at the Leach Pottery was divided into specific functions. If you were a thrower, you did only throwing. One fellow did only the glazing for the standard ware pots; another made all the clay, and, in addition, packed pots to be sent off by parcel post—a good deal of the Leach Pottery’s business was done by mail order. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alix and I were very fortunate to be able to live in the same house with Bernard Leach. He had separated from his second wife and was living alone, TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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and he asked if we wanted to live with him. I must admit we learned a lot in the private discussions and offhand comments with Bernard. Visitors came and went—artists, critics, philosophers, writers—and many lively discussions took place, discussions in which we were privileged to participate. We learned more about aesthetics in those situations than we did back at the Pottery, where we were confined to making the standard ware. Having made Bernard Leach (or standard ware) pots for two years, we were indoctrinated with the sense of form that Leach used. It took five or six years after we had returned to the United States before most of that sense of form no longer pervaded my own work. More difficult to get rid of than the sense of form, however, was the indoctrination of Leach’s ideas, which I don’t want to get rid of. I do believe in the ideas which Bernard espoused, and upon which he built his pottery. I see a problem in the whole American concept of being a potter: very few of us are willing to go to someone else’s pottery and make their pot shapes. In other parts of the world, this is an accepted and expected practice. In Japan, for instance, an apprentice makes nothing but one pot for several years, until he has mastered that pot, and come up to the master’s expectations. I don’t know many young Americans who would be willing to do that. I don’t know many American master craftsmen who would put the screws to an apprentice to produce an exact form and quality. I am not sure the traditional European or Oriental concept of an apprenticeship is applicable or workable in America. We live, quite simply, in a different time. When Mike Thiedeman first contacted me, I hesitated before replying to him because I was not prepared to undertake a traditional apprenticeship. Since I teach at the University of Minnesota, and as I am often away conducting workshops, I was hesitant about getting into a master-apprenticeship relationship where I would have to exercise close supervision over a person making my pots. At the same time, however, I thought it might be possible to work out something where there would be an exchange of ideas—where things would rub off, establishing a working ambiance which would be effective for both of us. When Mike came, we decided that he would work one day a week around the studio and relieve me of such things as mixing clay and glaze, and taking care of the odds and ends that always come up while I’m away teaching. When he began making pots for himself, we had informal discussions concerning his pots, both during the making and after a firing. In that respect we relate back to the relationship I had with Bernard Leach; that is, watching Bernard draw a few pot ideas on the back of an old envelope, as he sat at the breakfast table. 82

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mike and I have paid little attention to technical questions. Many apprenticeships seem to focus largely on technique, with the intention of producing one specific pot. The emphasis in our relationship has been almost exclusively upon what I might call aesthetic concerns. Those are what I consider most important. Technique, presumably, will come by itself. Why waste a relationship with a master craftsperson on something that you can learn as an undergraduate in a university? Apprenticeship provides an opportunity for the young craftsperson to come in contact with a working master who has already come to grips with aesthetic issues and can share some of this experience with the apprentice. In the best relationships, both master and apprentice can grow and change. The apprenticeship, furthermore, must deal with the psychological relations between master and apprentice. In a successful apprenticeship, both master and apprentice need a mature sense of what they are doing and why they are doing it; and in the last analysis they both must have an openness, an acceptance, a high level of tolerance, a strong civility, and a deep sense of the awareness of themselves and of other people. Source: Warren MacKenzie, “Warren MacKenzie: A Conversation,” in Apprenticeship in Craft, edited by Gerry Williams (Goffstown, N.H.: Daniel Clark Books, 1981), 21–24.

RICHARD MARQUIS (b. 1945 in Bumblebee, Arizona), a glass artist noted for humor and technical prowess, studied ceramics and glass at the University of California, Berkeley (B.A. 1969; M.A. 1971). At the handful of American colleges and universities offering glassblowing programs in the early 1960s, instructors and students built their own equipment, experimented with materials, and grappled with technical problems in isolation. Artists who wanted advanced training sought European masters. In a 1995 letter to Anna Venini, Richard Marquis fondly recalls the technical and cultural training he received as a 1969 Fulbright scholar in her family’s renowned Venini glass factory, founded in Murano, Italy, in 1921. (See also page 166.)

Dear Anna, It’s been over twenty five years since I worked at Venini and Co. The experience looms large in my development as an artist and as a person. At the time I received the Fulbright grant to Italy I was considered one of the most skilled glassblowers in the fledgling studio glass movement. It was a pitiful state of affairs. I was about as skilled as any ten year old on Murano. I did the best I could and had I known back then that so much attention would be given my work now I would have paid more attention and worked harder. TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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Richard Marquis making an American Acid Capsule at Venini Fabrica, Murano, Italy, 1969. (Photo by Bob Naess)

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It was a generous and amazing opportunity. But there were so many things going on I was like a kid in a candy store with only a penny or two to spend. I’d like to share with you some of my memories of that time: —At our first meeting Ludovico [de Santillana, director of Venini] calmly listened to me introduce myself and explain what I wanted to do and how it could possibly benefit the factory. I nervously spoke my rehearsed speech in my very bad Italian. He smoked his pipe and nodded and when I finished he smiled and started talking in perfect English. I was relieved and embarrassed and had just the inkling that the man had a good sense of humor and a good deal of patience to let me abuse his beautiful language for so long. For the next year we spoke only in English. —The workers never could figure out why I wanted to blow glass. First, I was so unskilled; second, I tried to make weird things; and third, since I had been given the title “guest designer” and had even been given an “office” why would I want to hang around the hot and dirty furnace area with sweaty men when instead I could spend my time in the clean offices with the pretty secretaries? —I remember when Tapio Wirkkala came for a couple weeks to work on some new designs the thing that impressed the workers the most was that he could drink his wine without removing the pipe he was smoking. I was also quite impressed. —It took months for the workers to accept me. There was the basic mistrust between the workers and the administration. There were strikes going on. Once there was an unplanned strike to protest the firing of a blower over something and everyone met upstairs in the mensa [canteen]. I decided to sit with the striking workers and I remember Ludovico’s eyebrows raise slightly when he saw me there. Later he told me he understood and that it was a wise thing to do. Because after my show of solidarity things were much easier for me on the blowing floor. —Another thing that helped me was when the workers realized I didn’t mind taking over the lowliest job on the team. That allowed the guy I replaced to move up one spot, the guy he replaced to move up, et cetera, until somebody got to smoke a cigarette or run an errand. The workers started to like having me around. —When I became interested in making murrine [bits of patterned glass] I watched and worked with the maestro Marino who did all the cane pulls while I was there. He was very skilled. I remember him being able to sleep during the lunch break on his glassblowing bench; quite a feat. —At other times I had a young worker named Mario who helped me blow my smaller things. But every once in a while I was allowed to work with a master and his team. For that privilege I chose to work with the TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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maestro Checco Ongaro because he was the friendliest and seemed the most interested. The times we worked were usually on Friday afternoons if the week’s production had gone on schedule. I’d be excited to be able to take advantage of his team’s skills and would have drawings and plans for making big complicated pieces. I’d forget that they had been working hard all week. Soon I noticed that when I started pulling out the giant molds to get ready, the production they were working on started to slow down and then I’d regretfully be informed that there wouldn’t be time to help me that day. However, when I had designs for smaller things that required problem solving and finesse instead of big things that just required strength and work then Checco and his crew would speed through their production and be happy to work with me. So, dear Anna, these are just a few old memories of mine. I learned a great deal at Venini. I could have learned more if I’d been more skilled and mature. You have to remember I was just a punk kid in his early 20s. I was poorly informed: I didn’t know who Carlo Scarpa was. I didn’t have an appreciation for much of Italian glass design. IF I ONLY COULD HAVE BEEN THERE THEN, WITH THE SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE, AND APPRECIATION I HAVE NOW. Oh well, that’s the classic lament. That rare opportunity I had is gone and I don’t think its likeness will ever come again. I appreciate the kindnesses your family showed me and I admire the original insight of Paolo Venini. Ludovico de Santillana was a generous and insightful man and I miss him. I am sorry the Venini factory is no more. The way one pays back such kindness is towards the future and not directly back to the benefactors. I hope that in some small way through my work and my teaching you get some satisfaction seeing the Venini tradition being passed on to new generations who appreciate quality. Most respectfully, (signed) Dick Marquis Source: Letter from Richard Marquis to Anna Venini, September 3, 1995, Richard Marquis Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

FRITZ DREISBACH (b. 1941 in Cleveland) is widely recognized as a catalyst in the studio glass movement and a scholar of glass history. His three graduate degrees are from Oberlin College (M.A.T. 1963), the University of Iowa (M.A. 1965), and the University of Wisconsin (M.A. 1967), where he worked as an assistant to Harvey Littleton. In 1962 the Toledo Museum of Art hosted two workshops credited with launching the studio glass movement by demonstrating the viability of an artist working alone with a small furnace. In 1964 the University of Iowa offered the very first glassblowing program in an American college or university. In a 2004 oral history, Dreisbach de86

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scribes the entrepreneurial mixture of determination, bravado, ingenuity, and generosity that was necessary to start an art glassmaking movement in the United States where the only precedents were industrial or hobbyist. (See also pages 131, 190.)

Suzanne Frantz: Was there a hot glass studio at the University of Iowa? Fritz Dreisbach: There was a Quonset hut which was used by the sculpture department, and they cleaned out one room of the Quonset hut, about a third of the total floor space. And when we walked in the room there was a pile of bricks in one corner and a one-inch gas line with a cap on it in the other corner and that was it. And we had to build the whole studio. That was the first thing you did. So we were building this thing, this big monolith out of bricks and so on, and I had no earthly idea what it was for, what we were going to do with it. I didn’t have any idea. [Tom] McGlauchlin showed us blowpipes and shears and jacks; I didn’t know what they were and I didn’t know what you did with them. We didn’t have an annealing oven, so we stole—I mean we borrowed one from ceramics. Frantz: Was this the first class in glassblowing taught at the University of Iowa? Dreisbach: Yeah, the very first and I just happened to be there—1964. . . . So, I thought—well, so I started looking at books, and I saw these fantastic goblets that were made in the seventeenth and eighteenth century— Venice, Murano. And I thought, wow, those are very, very, very expressive, fluid movement kind of things, but I had no earthly idea how to make one. And so I kept turning the pages until I came to the stained glass, and I thought, well, now, stained glass, that would relate to my painting experience. Here I could be painting with colored light. And so I thought when I got into this thing originally that the thing that I would probably end up doing is becoming a stained glass person, although I didn’t know what that meant, but that I would make stained glasses—stained glass window type pieces and paint with light. And I started immediately reading about and trying to understand how to color this material, because what we were using was a round marble for cullet. It was called Johns Manville 475, a formula that was developed by Nick [Dominick] Labino for JM [Johns Manville]. And the process of making fibers [fiberglass]—for some reason they make the glass in one furnace in one state, in West Virginia, and then they’d make it into marbles in that factory. And then they ship the marbles up to Ohio, where they reheat the marbles and blow them into fibers. And I think there’s some reason for that process, but it escapes me right now what that might be. But at any rate, we would capture the marbles before [they] got to the TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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fiber machine and Nick was kind enough to help all of us get started. That was one of his major contributions to the American glass activities of the second half of the twentieth century. Frantz: Was he around? Did you meet him then? Dreisbach: Almost. So, I would ask McGlauchlin questions like, well, what happens if we put cobalt in? You’d get blue. What happens if we put copper in? Well, it depends. It depends on what? Well, you can change it because if you change the formula—well, what’s the formula of these marbles? I don’t know, but I know who knows. And because McGlauchlin had been at the Toledo workshop in ’62—and had told us a little bit about that—he knew Nick, knew him quite well. So he introduced by mail and telephone, introduced me to Nick, and then I wrote to Nick a letter where I asked him—told him that I was blowing glass and trying to learn how to do this stuff, and that I wanted to color the glass, and that I wanted to know, if it was not proprietary information, if he could just tell me what family this glass was in. I just said you don’t have to give me the whole formula but just some of the things that are in it, so I know what I can’t do and what I can do. So he wrote back to me and he said, fine, come and visit, no problem, gave me a map and so on. . . . After that class that summer, I went to visit Nick on my way to see my mom and dad in Ohio. . . . Over the years he used to introduce me as the guy who came for an afternoon and stayed for a week and that is literally what happened. I was so excited to meet someone who was so knowledgeable about the chemistry and physics of glass, and not only of glass in general but of specifically that formula. He knew inside and out what that formula would do and could do and so on. And then he had been blowing glass longer than almost any of the other Americans at that time, unlike Tom McGlauchlin, who I’ve always said had been blowing glass about five hours longer than I had when we both started, really. Nick had been blowing consistently every day or every evening for two years at that point—one and a half years, two years. That was a huge amount of glasswork that he had made by then—by that time, hundreds of—literally hundreds of pieces. So, he was way ahead of us on a lot of things, and so this was like going to Mecca for me. And I did, in fact, plan to spend only an afternoon. And, in fact, I remember I stopped in Bowling Green and got a haircut before I went to his farm and studio because I thought I needed to be presentable because he was the vice president in charge of research and development of Johns Manville. He had a very, very high position, very—so this was a senior per-

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son in the science world of glass, and definitely also in the arts world, the glass art business, although it was only a couple of years old at that point. So I drove in—I got—I just got to tell you this story. And there was this old guy—not old, but there’s this white haired—gray haired fellow with a moustache mowing the yard in overalls. And I could see the house and I could see a shop way down at the end, but I didn’t know what the shop was at that time. It kind of looked more like a barn. It was just a metal shed— not a shed, but a metal building, and it looked like it could be a barn rather than a studio or a laboratory. And so I asked the guy that was mowing the yard where I could find Nick Labino—Dominick Labino—Mr. Labino, I think I may have said. And he said, yeah, I’m Nick. Are you Fritz? And he said—and he made me welcome right from that very, very moment. And so we went out to the shop and we looked at things, and he did give me the formula. He said, “Now, it’s okay for you to have this formula.” He said, “It’s not okay if you try to make fiberglass and sell it. Johns Manville will be all over you like a wet blanket.” But he said, “This is a public—this is not a proprietary formula that we’re trying to keep secret from anyone. It’s already in print.” I didn’t know that. Actually, I’m glad I didn’t because I’m so glad that I got to meet Nick from those earliest years. Source: Fritz Dreisbach, oral history interview by Suzanne Frantz, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Blacksmith TOM JOYCE (b. 1956 in Tulsa, Oklahoma) has been forging sculpture, architectural ironwork, and vessels for more than thirty years. Since receiving a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award in 2003, he has traveled widely in Africa and other countries to study indigenous blacksmithing techniques. Like most American blacksmiths of his generation, Tom Joyce was largely selftaught. When he entered the field in the 1970s, there was little demand for ironwork and almost none for contemporary design. He studied historical examples to learn technique and sought the mentorship of established blacksmiths who generously shared their expertise and sense of camaraderie. In a 2004 oral history, he recalls the influence of one his primary mentors, Tom Bredlow. (See also page 295.)

Tom [Bredlow] told me that he had always dreamed of working on a castle or for a cathedral. Reproducing the National Cathedral’s stolen candlestick from a pair made by one of America’s greatest smiths, Samuel Yellin from Philadelphia, provided the entrée he needed and was perhaps the most piv-

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Tom Joyce leading a class with Benito Steen, age fifteen (left), and Henry McDonald, age eighteen. (Photo by Kate Joyce)

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otal project of his life. He told me that he kept it for nearly a year—just looking at it and trying to figure out how he was going to approach making it. When it was complete, it was impossible to distinguish one from the other in terms of the methodology that he used—the tool marks that were left on it were also similar in size and scope and confidence really, to the original. So Tom was then hired on the spot to begin forging a wide array of architectural work to finish out the cathedral. These are among the greatest pieces of American iron in the gothic revival style that I know of. I’d admired Tom’s work in photographs for years, and to have him walk in with Arden Fritz one morning and spend the rest of the day with me talking about things, drawing stuff out on the dirt floor of the shop and critiquing my work, helped commit me to begin training in a more serious way. I also began imagining what part I might be able to play inside the profession and started passing along information as freely and as generously as Tom did in that afternoon. So we kept up a correspondence, and I visited him in Tucson and, of course, made the pilgrimage to the National Cathedral as well as to Philadelphia to see Samuel Yellin’s shop, which was still in operation then in 1983 run by his son, Harvey. It wasn’t until a little bit later, after I had been blacksmithing a bit on my own that I began meeting other smiths and feeling the camaraderie and encountering additional teachers willing to share. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tom could talk for days. I mean, it wasn’t uncommon that—when I would show up in Tucson that a conversation would start at 3:00 in the afternoon as he’s putting down his apron. Remember, it’s hot in Tucson, so usually everybody stops work about mid-afternoon and cracks open a beer. And the next thing you know, the sun is rising. It happened several times that we talked through the night—mainly me listening and Tom talking about observations that he’s made while looking at historic work or talking about being a smith in this time, when he felt more of a connection and affinity with nineteenth-century blacksmiths. Working in a similar way as earlier smiths allows one to learn from their sense of craftsmanship and work ethic that appears at times to have waned during this period of immense mass production of most items blacksmiths once made by hand. And so, our exchange was really essential, I think, in giving each other the kind of reciprocating encouragement to continue on this labor-intensive process, and one that we realized early on, too, that most people don’t see. I mean, well designed and executed ironwork is often invisible to—certainly to the general public, but even to all but a few discriminating eyes within our own profession. Ultimately we end up doing the work for ourselves and TRAINING WITH MASTERS

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for those that we know will be looking over our shoulders at what we’re doing and assess whether we’ve approached our commissions in an appropriate and satisfying manner. Source: William Thomas Joyce, oral history interview by Jan Yager, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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5 Studying in the Academy An important factor in the growth of American craft in the postwar period was federal support, particularly funding for returning soldiers to attend college or university under the Servicemembers’ Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill. Many veterans entered new craft training programs sprouting up across the nation in home economics, design, and art departments. Each of these contexts had a distinct teaching philosophy that influenced the kind of work its faculty and students produced. None, however, would mimic the apprenticeship system under which so many Europeans had trained. Arline Fisch comments on the positive aspects of teaching and learning art within a liberal arts institution, and Harvey Littleton discusses the benefits of including craft in universities where research and scholarship are expected. In contrast, Marguerite Wildenhain and Wendell Castle think that academic training is inadequate and champion a more vocational approach. Angela Fina, an independent potter, advocates for academic programs that balance theoretical and critical approaches with a solid grounding in the basics of functional craft production and marketing practices.

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HARVEY LITTLETON (b. 1922 in Corning, New York), son of a Corning Glass Works scientist, studied ceramics at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (M.A. 1951) and taught ceramics and glass at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, between 1951 and 1977. In 1958, under the influence of ceramics innovator Peter Voulkos, Littleton started experimenting with glass. In 1962 he instigated the first workshop in glassblowing for artists at the Toledo Museum of Art, marking the start of the studio glass movement. His own program at the University of Wisconsin fostered the talents of a generation of glass artists, including Dale Chihuly and Fritz Dreisbach. In 1963, one year after his groundbreaking Toledo workshops, Littleton wrote to Dominick Labino, vice president and director of research at Johns-Manville, a company that produced fiberglass, to solicit a financial contribution to outfit the new glass art studio at the university. The 1950s and 1960s saw a great outpouring of support—equipment, materials, funding, and expertise—from industry to help launch fledgling craft departments in academic institutions nationally. (See also page 106.)

October 25, 1963 Dear Mr. Labino, I am enclosing the request to Johns-Manville Corporation for $1500 in funds to finish equipping and operating our glassworking laboratory here at Wisconsin for the rest of the school year. I again wish to say that we appreciate the help that Johns-Manville has given in donating the “475” glass marbles to make possible this renaissance of an almost forgotten art form. We have attempted to give the credit to Johns-Manville in all the public appearances relative to this project and we will continue to do so. There has been an increasing public response to the revival of glassworking by the individual artist. The artist has been shut off from this material too long and design for industry without the artistic stimulus has become increasingly sterile. We hope that these students are a beginning toward a similar revival in glass to that in pottery which in the latest decade led American potters to the Grand Prix des Nations in the Second International Ceramics Exhibition in Ostend, Belgium in 1959. I hope that you will be able to forward this material as soon as possible to those concerned. Thanks again for all your help. Sincerely, (signed) Harvey K. Littleton Associate Professor Source: Letter from Harvey K. Littleton to Dr. Dominick Labino, October 25, 1963, Harvey Littleton Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Harvey Littleton at Toledo, 1962. (Courtesy of the Rakow Research Library of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, N.Y., Florian Archives [97.4.214]; photo by Robert Florian)

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MARGUERITE WILDENHAIN (1896–1985) owned and operated her own pottery, Pond Farm Workshops, in Guerneville, California, for more than forty years, making her living creating functional ceramics and teaching workshops. In her book The Invisible Core, Wildenhain bristles at the notion that art can be learned in liberal arts environments that include classes in subjects irrelevant to the craft. Like Tage Frid, Wildenhain believes that art is a calling and a lifelong vocation that requires rigorous, immersive training. Her life embodied the philosophy and values she espouses in this excerpt. (See also pages 9, 171, 226.)

We organize art education; we create exorbitantly luxurious art departments in schools, colleges, and other institutions for the propagation of art, as if it were a commodity like soap or steel that can be brought forth all at once when we discover that we have too little of it and need more. Art centers mushroom, brilliantly equipped with everything—but the artists. And because we are a progressive and democratic nation, we also want everybody to have a chance to try “making art,” whatever that may mean. Now I believe that this approach is fundamentally a misconception of art. Art cannot be mass-produced. It has always been taught by single masters to young people deeply interested in learning their profession well, but it never has been taught on such an immense scale and as an “establishment.” It is impossible to teach art to every student, housewife, or bored old lady who takes a course and then “makes art too.” This basic attitude toward the whole field of art is, for me, the first mistake in art education. Art is not a commodity available to all. The second question asks why we teach art in colleges, big and small, colleges that are for the pursuit of scholarship and scientific research, when they cannot answer satisfactorily for producing artists and art. We teach art as if it were just another discipline that could be taught in regular classes and in lecture courses like history or English. And to show that “We know what art is,” we sandwich the actual art course between History of Art, or Art Appreciation and Photography. I believe that this too is a wrong premise and any effort based on it is doomed to failure right from the start. Because art requires more time and longer work sessions over a much longer training period, even the basic elements of art cannot be taught in such a way. One of the main handicaps to achieving excellence in the field of art begins at this very point. In my opinion, it would be better to teach art in professional art schools, specially created for and built on the idea of professional art training, a training of long periods of apprenticeship or of intense study in the workshop, under skillful masters, not in a class meeting once or twice a week for a few hours, and only for one term or two. Nothing but the most dilettante 96

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approach can come out of this pseudo education. One cannot even call it training, because this is just what it does not do. It occupies and perhaps amuses the students, or releases their inhibitions, but it does not teach them anything solid about art. It does not even train them competently in their field. Let us go on with our enquiry. Who are the students that we want to educate in the arts? In colleges, universities, and junior colleges all around the country, we find thousands of young people who are “interested” in art. Some, I believe, are really interested, others only think they are because nothing special up to then has ever interested them really. Then there are all those young men and women who “only” want to teach art, without actually being artists in their own right. Besides these mostly serious-minded students, a large percentage of young people take “art” as a requisite for a grade or a degree, and others because it seems an easy course and one out of which one is never flunked. It is useless, I believe, to try to teach this “pell-mell” studentship with the synthetic pablum of so-called art appreciation and art education courses. Rather I suggest that there should be a serious, prolonged, basic, solid art training for all the students of the first group. They are the potential future artists and teachers, and they must get a training that requires most hours of every day over several years. That the same education should be given to the teacher as to the artist is obvious. How, otherwise, could he ever teach a class well, if he is not competent himself? Please imagine a doctor training medical students when he has had only a first-aid course as training. Excuse me for making this comparison, but that is exactly what is happening too often in our schools nowadays. Source: Marguerite Wildenhain, The Invisible Core: A Potter’s Life and Thoughts (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1973), 64–65. © 1973 Marguerite Wildenhain.

WENDELL CASTLE (b. 1932 in Emporia, Kansas) received undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Kansas. He has taught woodworking at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology as a professor (1962–69) and visiting artist (1984 to the present). His furniture fashioned from stack laminated wood has often been more sculptural than functional, placing him at the epicenter of art versus craft debates. Castle’s comments in a 1981 oral history about what furniture is and what furniture makers need to know demonstrate a reversal in his own earlier philosophy and practice and reflect a meticulous study of and reverence for historical European furniture styles and techniques. (See also page 254.) STUDYI NG I N TH E ACADEMY

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Wendell Castle: I don’t think that having the university situation is unworkable. I’m not sure it’s the best. Because it’s certainly unnecessary to take history and English and a lot of other things that people take in order to get a baccalaureate degree to make you a craftsman. That has not much to do with it. You don’t really need a degree for that kind of work. But you certainly need training. And I think some of the things that, I mean, I’m trying to correct now in the school here a lot of these deficiencies that I saw when I taught at RIT [Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen] . . . some of which are still there. For example, a lack of any real understanding of the history of furniture, which seems to be pretty important. And an understanding not a scholarly approach to the history of furniture, where you can recognize styles and put dates on them and all that, but just knowing what some of the styles are and what the development of how furniture got made is. How furniture became. The vocabulary for making furniture, how that progressed in the history of furniture. When they started using this kind of joint, when they developed a certain kind of drawer bottom and, you know, [how] that relate[s] to how furniture is made, and why it’s made that way, and the social reasons for furniture. There are an awful lot of social things that went into the development of furniture: Where and how furniture was used. And that they may or may not be sensible today. And if you didn’t understand that, you might accept . . . certain kind of functions that furniture was made for that just don’t exist today. And we have certain functions that furniture needs to do today that didn’t exist then. And I have an understanding of this, and know why these things happen. You shouldn’t go through four years of school and not have a clue about these things and then call yourself a furniture designer. Robert Brown: But on the other hand, back in the sixties you weren’t teaching this sort of thing either, were you? Castle: No. I totally ignored it. I thought that this would be detrimental, and even impair your ability to be creative, because I really thought that furniture had to become sculpture. Source: Wendell Castle, oral history interview by Robert Brown, 1981, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

LILLIAN ELLIOTT (b. 1930 in Detroit; d. 1994 in Berkeley, California) received an M.F.A. in textiles from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is widely known for her complex and unconventional baskets using natural materials and her collaborative works with artist Pat Hickman. Elliott taught in the Design Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1966 to 1971. 98

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In a 1989 oral history, Elliott reflects on the predominance of female students enrolled in her program. In an era when so many routes to professions seemed closed to them, women in the textile program had a backdoor entry to the full range of disciplines and career options available through university training. (See also page 215.)

I don’t think other university departments often understand the role of an art department or a design department within the institution, sadly. But I think that maybe they will sometime. They don’t understand that the mind is an active part of artwork, and that history and art history and archaeology and anthropology and all of those things all really hook into one another. One thing might touch one student, so that she might go off and do a whole project, or a whole field that connects those parts together, those puzzles. I feel, especially during the time when I was teaching at Cal [University of California, Berkeley], many women wanted to come to the University. Textiles provided a way in which they could enter. They often found that their true interest was in painting or in some other area. One girl went on to medical school; a number went on into anthropology; another to architecture. They’ve gone into other fields some of the time, but especially in view of the women’s movement, I think a program like the Design Department was important because it was flexible enough to admit people, even if they were not twenty-two or eighteen, and make it possible for them to reconsider what it was they wanted to do with their lives. I really believe very much in that. I don’t think that women should have to go through adult education programs all the time, or through programs that are outside of the normal channels. I think it’s perfectly fine for them to start at different times, and to go in different directions. I think we were able to make that possible for a number of women who would not have been able to do it otherwise. I’m sorry that there weren’t more men students in the program. I think it changes the character of the program to have both, and I think that it helps; it’s unnatural to have all one or the other. The program at Cal changed people’s lives completely, partly by the way in which they learned to see, partly by the fact that they were able to stand and see themselves in a new way. Because they were part of a university, they then had the choice of moving in other directions. Source: Lillian Elliott, “Artist, Instructor, and Innovator in Fiber Arts,” oral history interview by Harriet Nathan, 1989, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

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ANGELA FINA (b. 1937 in Saratoga Springs, New York) received her M.F.A. from the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York, and has been a self-supporting potter since 1979. In an address to a 1989 ceramics conference attended by academics, commercial artists, sculptors, and potters, Fina lobbies her peers. Concerned that the marketplace reduces innovative design to the lowest common denominator, she urges the academy to maintain its role in setting standards and providing training for production artists as well as sculptors and teachers.

The topic here is the teaching of pottery-making in art schools and universities. I am an emissary from a different world than the university, that of the full-time, self-supporting, functional potter. I sell 90 percent of my work wholesale to shops all over the country, and the rest retail; new and repeat orders come from shops at two wholesale trade shows each year. I am here to plead with the schools to initiate ceramics programs that will be another, and hopefully better influence than the current craft marking system. The way that wholesale crafts shows are run, from the selection of the craftspeople to the kinds of shops they attract, has profoundly influenced the character and the quality of the pottery now being sold in the U.S. Wholesale crafts marketing was first organized and promoted by American Crafts Enterprises (ACE), part of the American Craft Council, and then by additional show promoters, principally Wendy Rosen. In 1988 there were four ACE shows and three Rosen shows, with a total of 1,090 ceramics booths, and a total amount of wholesale ceramics orders of about $12 million. Other wholesale shows bring in at least $1 million, and wholesale reorders to potters during the year amount to another $4 million. Some potters do not go to wholesale shows, but have regular accounts with department stores, catalogs, or large chain outlets. Total wholesale orders to potters in the United States in 1988 [were] around $20 million. Add in about $10 million in retail sales of pottery at craft fairs and studio shops and the total is $30 million in 1988. These numbers do not include sales from art galleries or the sale of hobby ceramics or imported handmade ceramics; these are sales by potters who nobody ever heard of, to stores with names like The Cockeyed Dove and . . . Once Upon a Moose. Most of this work is wheel thrown pottery, although other techniques are used, especially slump molded slabs and slip casting. There is also some jiggered and ram pressed work. Many of these potters have gone to art schools or college ceramics departments, but most would acknowledge

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that the work they are producing has little to do with the concepts prevalent in college art departments. A lot of this work is mediocre in design, superficial, glitzy, or cute. The present marketing system rewards work that has an instantly eye-catching graphic appeal and ignores good pots with subtle surfaces and strong form. We need a new fresh influence on the work and on the way it is marketed. I would like to see students have the option of choosing to learn pottery-making in a commercial art program as well as in a fine arts program. I am not suggesting that present ceramics programs be modified; they are not designed to address the problems of the commercial market, nor should they. However, we do need a few new programs specifically set up to address designing and producing for the commercial market. Just a few schools with an entirely new program could have a profound effect on what is being made for the market and on the marketing procedures as well. In many schools in the U.S., commercial art programs exist side by side with fine arts programs. We have graphic design, illustration, fashion design, product photography, interior design, advertising art, film making, and industrial design. I think we need commercial clay design. We need programs which specifically address modes of production for the market, marketing and how it influences design, as well as business management and strategy. I am convinced that a market exists for better quality pottery than what is now being sold, and I think the schools have a role in making it happen. I know there is resistance to commercial ceramics being taught, partly because of the history of clay in colleges. As part of this panel presentation, Val Cushing went into the history behind the growing emphasis on aesthetics. Prior to the formation of NCECA [National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts], clay in colleges was part of the industrial arts departments where making kidney shaped ash trays was a favorite. It was NCECA’s founding members who waged and won the fight to get clay into the fine art departments. I’d like to see NCECA now get into making an impact on the $30 million worth of clay objects sold every year. What I’m calling for is a program designed and taught by the best professionals in the field, a program that makes no apologies about being directed to the multi-million dollar market, and that does not pretend to be “high art” any more than interior design departments do. Right now the schools are having very little impact on this heap of clay objects going into American homes. Unless the problem is addressed directly, the schools will continue to be irrelevant to the quality and character of it all.

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Source: Angela Fina, “A Recommendation for the Universities’ Role in the Craft Marketing System,” NCECA Journal 10 (1989–90): 13–14.

STEPHEN DESTAEBLER (b. 1933 in St. Louis) creates large freestanding figural sculptures in clay and bronze. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University, then studied with Ben Shahn and Robert Motherwell at Black Mountain College in 1951 and with Peter Voulkos at the University of California, Berkeley (M.A. 1961). DeStaebler taught sculpture at the San Francisco State University from 1967 to 1992. In the 1970s and 1980s, the San Francisco Bay area was an extremely fertile ground for the development of American craft within academia. In a 1994 oral history, DeStaebler reflects on the freedoms and flexibility he enjoyed during his long teaching career at San Francisco State University. Distanced from the more conventional expectations and restrictive demands of a research university, DeStaebler and his colleagues could create a learning environment conducive to experimentation and innovation.

I hobbled along until 1967 and then, to begin with, good fortune, I got my old position back at San Francisco. And held that position until I, I retired in 1992. So I taught approximately thirty years there. Well, thirty years, you know, all told, and probably when you take leaves and what not away, and with that and sabbaticals, I probably taught about twenty years at San Francisco. And I always liked what we stood for at State. We, we didn’t have much money. I mean, the State University system has always been the poor cousin of the University of California. And you can say, “Oh, gee, that must have been tough.” In a way, it was great, because we kind of created an atmosphere that any student could have set up for himself if he was motivated well, after he left. There was none of this high-powered big deal business. And my colleagues and I had a much greater involvement in the spirit of the place and, and the freedom to search out whatever was of interest to you and not program it according to medium technique. We’d be teaching as many diverse things the first semester to the students as we would as, you know, advanced students. And we were a great refuge for students who didn’t willingly fit into the categorization of [their] department. . . . For instance, there was an area for painting, an area for ceramics, an area for sculpture, photography, [printmaking], textiles. And like so many of the fiefdoms, they tend to build up barriers. And, and we were the only area, sculpture was the only area that, that opened the doors, rather than closed them. We had lots of refugees come from other areas, primarily ceramics, where they were being killed by absolutely mindless restrictions. For example, the teacher, head teacher there made it known very quickly that if they were going to use color, it had to be achieved through glazes. They 102

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couldn’t use paint, which is absurd. I mean . . . nobody’s going to be drinking or eating off of these sculptures. It isn’t like you have to have a glaze standard to keep people healthy. And it, it was the kind of thing that would just break the spirit of gifted students if they stayed in that climate. So we had them come over just, you know, just kind of like refugees, and plant new roots, much to the ire of the other faculty, you know. Source: Stephen DeStaebler, oral history interview by Ramsay Bell Breslin, 1994, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

ARLINE FISCH (b. 1931 in New York) is recognized as a leader and an innovator in the art jewelry movement, best known for her early body sculptures and use of weaving techniques in metal. She received a B.A. in studio art from Skidmore College and an M.A. from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. In 1956–57 Fisch studied silversmithing at the School of Arts and Crafts in Copenhagen and returned to Denmark in 1966–67 for further studies. Fisch founded the jewelry program at San Diego State University in 1961. Between her student years and her tenure as an academic, Fisch pursued jewelry making and fiber design abroad, read craft magazines, and joined artist organizations. A 2001 oral history reflects her cosmopolitan education, which influenced her belief that art students benefit from a strong liberal arts foundation and from a diverse but integrated education within the arts—including industrial and trade experience. (See also pages 127, 173, 217, 261.)

Arline Fisch: A true apprenticeship is really a trade orientation. It’s so consuming at the beginning that there’s no opportunity for thinking, and there’s no opportunity for artistic development. I think if the motivation is to be an artist, that other kinds of education are more valuable. If the motivation is to be technically competent, then certainly, working in a workshop is very good training. Sharon Church: Do you think people should have experiences in both? Fisch: It would certainly be an interesting development, to have that kind of opportunity. There are programs in England, and perhaps now in Europe as well, where students do a year out [in a workshop]. Unfortunately, it’s not a long enough program, but they have a three-year program, and one of those years is out of the school. I mean, ideally, it would be maybe a five-year program, with one year out, but not the last year, that it might be in the middle somewhere, so that the student has already developed some aesthetic concerns and some capabilities in design, or in drawing, or in conceptualizing form, and some rudimentary skills, and then goes into a workshop where the skills can be developed in a very narrow way. STUDYI NG I N TH E ACADEMY

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Arline Fisch wearing Halter, 1968. (Photo by Dölf Presig, courtesy of the Arline M. Fisch Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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That kind of discipline can be invaluable. Then, the student comes back and can apply that technical competence to his own ideas. And I think that could be a really interesting evolution. What’s happening in other places right now is there are some residency programs that are available to people who are coming out of school. Those residency programs kind of provide a haven for experimentation and development of a body of work that can then be presented to a gallery or an exhibition, or to sales. But that’s already a little bit beyond the educational aspect. I happen to think that the education of an artist within a liberal arts context is important for other reasons, that it provides a basis for understanding what art is about. It provides a whole realm of potential sources of inspiration. If you take a biology class and you take an anthropology class, and you take a drama class, look at how you’ve opened your eyes to potential for the development of your work. And you just simply don’t get that, and you don’t even get it in an art school. When an art school exists within a university, and actually allows students to make use of the university, not just to provide it with funds, then, to me, that’s an ideal education for an artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From the very beginning, I’ve tried to stimulate development of ideas; how do you develop ideas. We all do that, we make assignments that force the student to go out and look at nature or force the student to go look at historical material in order to build a kind of vocabulary that is not the same for everybody, because everybody looks at the information differently. As long as there’s a broad enough field of information, everybody’s going to respond to different stimuli. I think the important thing is for young students to develop a vocabulary of form that they understand, that isn’t just serendipitous, that isn’t just, oh, well, I drew this so I’m going to make it. That they can develop an idea from whatever source they’ve used, but that they use sources. I often say, I don’t expect you to get this idea out of thin air. Ideas don’t come out of thin air. They come out of thinking, and looking, and learning. I’ve always tried to build that into assignments, that they have to go and find something that’s going to provide the stimulus for the ideas that are hopefully going to develop. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . If you’re in a university situation, then you have access to things like anthropology, which I find very provocative. I love looking at anthropological journals. I learn a lot from them. History, drama—if you have a good drama department, they have a costume department, and one can send students there to learn that jewelry hasn’t always been a ring or an earring. That it STUDYI NG I N TH E ACADEMY

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has also been clothing, and crowns, and great regal ornamentation that goes well beyond what they see in the local department store. Hopefully, that’s kind of mind opening. Source: Arline M. Fisch, oral history interview by Sharon Church, 2001, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

HARVEY LITTLETON (b. 1922), widely acknowledged as the father of the American studio glass movement, taught at the University of Wisconsin from 1951 to 1977. In a 2001 oral history, he links the flowering of American art in the years before and after World War II to the impact of federal funding and the proliferation of art departments in colleges and universities nationwide. He notes that the American academy addresses art as a mode of intellectual inquiry and a subject for research in contrast to European trade schools and apprenticeships that emphasize technical training. (See also page 94.)

American art as we know it today is the product of several government programs. And it’s very seldom acknowledged. The WPA [Works Progress Administration], for instance, was very, very vital in the development of present-day American art, because it was the first time that American artists who were trained in America were paid to do their own work. They got $20 a week, or a month, or whatever it was, $20 a week just to paint paintings, or to make pots or whatever. [Furniture maker] Wharton Esherick was part of this thing. There were a great many people who benefited by that. Then, along came World War II and immediately after World War II— probably the most successful government program ever was the GI Bill. It took more than 10 million men, paid them to go back to school. Not only paid them to go back to school, freed them from any parental influence, and gave them a living amount of money along with all tuition and materials. A great many of us took advantage of that. In my case, I would have gotten my degree without government help, but I wouldn’t have gotten my degree free of my background, able to write my own ticket, so to speak. Then the other thing that was important was all of these men and women went into the universities and a high percentage wanted to take art courses. Their parents would never have permitted them in the past. Well, they came to places like the University of Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin had an Art Department of five people, one of whom was a painter. The other four were art educators to train teachers. By 1951, when I went there, there were four art educators and 20 painters, potters, sculptors, and what have you. And, where did those people come 106

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from? They either came from a few institutions like Iowa, Cranbrook, Art Institute of Chicago, that had graduate art programs, or they came out of WPA art. And, they created—the pressure of these students—the universities couldn’t pass up this good money—created art departments where there never had been art departments before. At Madison, it was the School of Education where the Art Department ended up. Illogical, but nonetheless there’s where it went. At Purdue it was the Home Economics Department, at Indiana it was the Art History Department, where they had a captive artist or two. And, all of a sudden they had Art Departments. These were prestigious institutions. The University of Michigan, it was the School of Architecture. So they created these things. Now, in Europe[an] art departments, art academies are not in the university. A child grows up, he takes the competitive examination to determine what his education is going to be, and the top 20% go to university free. But there’s no art in the university. Art history, yes, but no art. So what they in essence have done is to eliminate from art the brightest, most brilliant 20% top. Now, Bert Van Loo in Holland was educated as a pharmacist. And he wanted to be a glass sculptor. So what did he do? He had to apply to the Ministry of Education to get permission to go back to school. Whereas in America it’s a free-for-all. Totally undisciplined. But we injected among the art students people with degrees in chemistry, people with degrees in psychology, people with degrees in sociology, people with degrees in economics, people with degrees in damn-near-anything, who decided they wanted to take art. In 1970, 70% of our graduate students at the University of Wisconsin had come to art with other degrees. I always use Fritz [Dreisbach], because Fritz in 5,000 years of glassmaking was the first glassmaker who handled the blowpipe with five university degrees on his back. Now, that was never possible anywhere in the world, at any time, in those 5,000 years. . . . So this is a very special kind of thing that has happened here. And then a lot of people say, well, the Fulbright made a big contribution, which it did. But, you see, it had very fertile soil. When we sent Americans overseas to study, we sent Americans with strong backgrounds in art and other fields, as well. So, they went to these Kunstakademien and schools, trade schools, Fachschulen, in Europe, and they brought a totally different background than the students there had. So that they influenced what was going on all over the world because of the kind of people they were. And, of course, they produced an art which was richer and stronger, more experimental, and so on. You see the American art student is trained as a researcher, as well as a trained hand. The Kunstfachschule trains the hand, but not the mind, you see. We were very impressed. That’s why we created the Fulbright. But, we were very impressed with the skills in Europe. So by STUDYI NG I N TH E ACADEMY

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sending people there and by bringing teachers from there here, we fertilized our art with greater technique. And we married our restless spirit and our ability to research, and so on, with that thing. So the whole thing is open. Source: Harvey K. Littleton, oral history interview by Joan Falconer Byrd, 2001, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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6 Learning in Communities As an alternative to the cost, structure, and confining expectations of academic institutions, some artists started group studios where they could teach each other technical skills and market their work outside the gallery system. Judy McKie and Gyöngy Laky describe the do-it-yourself entrepreneurial spirit of the 1970s cooperatives they helped found on both coasts. Artists also initiated technical workshops to enhance skills and swap information about equipment and materials. Fritz Dreisbach, for example, toured the country in the 1960s, organizing glassblowing demonstrations to promote studio art in that medium. Artists and patrons founded nonaccredited schools and summer institutes such as the Pilchuck Glass School (Washington), the Archie Bray Foundation (Montana), and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (Maine). Often located in beautiful rural settings, these organizations reinforced the connection between making craft and living independently in harmony with nature. In a letter to prospective participants, Dale Chihuly and Buster Simpson, artist-organizers of Pilchuck’s first summer workshop in glass, describe the pioneer life and work environment they hoped to create. Beginning in the 1960s, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, artists’ organizations were developed in each craft medium. These include the National Council of Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), the Glass Art Society (GAS), the Society for North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), and the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA). Such organizations have had long-standing and profound influences on their respective fields, stimulating the communities of practice that bind the diverse strands of American craft together. Notwithstanding the tensions between the academics, independents, and hobbyists who populate these groups, they have provided professional training, exhibition spaces, and networking possibilities for successive generations of artists in annual local and national conferences. Albert Paley describes some of the stresses involved in serving diverse constituents with divergent professional backgrounds and interests. Brent Kington underscores the sense of community and informal, personalized learning engendered by craft organizations. 109

DALE CHIHULY (b. 1941 in Tacoma, Washington) is internationally renowned for his installations of sculptural glass. He received an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design (1967) and was the first American to work in the Venini factory in Venice. In 1972 Chihuly enlisted the help of artist LEWIS (BUSTER) SIMPSON (b. 1942 in Saginaw, Michigan) in planning the second summer at the Pilchuck workshop, which Chihuly cofounded with arts patrons John and Anne Gould Hauberg on their land north of Seattle. (Simpson currently addresses ecological and social issues in public art projects nationwide.) Chihuly and Simpson wrote the following letter to registered participants that second summer. It reflects the spirit of the workshop—its emphasis on self-reliance and communal responsibility, its irreverence and optimism, and its celebration of experimentation, which remain the guiding educational philosophy of the celebrated Pilchuck Glass School.

Page One (this page to be read very thoroughly please) On or around June 12th, we will all gather at Pilchuck to share in what we all have to offer (you can come early if you want to help us get things ready). After familiarizing yourselves with the site and seeking temporary shelter, we will then begin working on the shops and discussing the ten weeks to come. The two RISD architecture grads, Bill and Chris, will work with you on technical problems and aesthetic attitudes toward your ten week shelter. Enclosed you will find some notes and sketches on their ideas. Try and develop some of your own ideas for the type of shelter you might want to live in, and if you need any special hardware for its construction, bring it along. There will be some basic materials available and most other items can be obtained locally. It is hoped that the same considerations given your art will also apply to the way you live, the shelter you construct, your food and the way it’s prepared. In the first few days group discussions will take place to determine the shop schedules, to what extent there will be group cooking, and numerous other group decisions will have to [be] made to determine policy. Rubber boots and rain gear, cooking utensils (for camp and hiking)— that’s just a starter for things you’ll want to bring—start making a list now and get it down to the essentials for your personal living and art (remember there’s no electricity). We are starting a Pilchuck Library and reference room, so any books you can bring along and share with us would be appreciated—they won’t leave the library. Bring any and all types of cameras that you can get ahold of, no matter what condition or age. We’ll have a portable field darkroom for developing and print[ing] black & whites and slides. 110

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Pilchuck hot shop on a rainy day, 1971. (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections [Hupy 71197]; photo by Art Hupy)

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In order to preserve the peaceful nature of Pilchuck, we ask that all vehicles be kept in one area, away from the site. For getting around the immediate area a 3-speed bike would be great. And please don’t encourage your friends to come visit us, we’re not ready to deal with a lot of people. Once again we will have Open House on Sundays and this is a good opportunity for the townsfolk to come visit the freaks on the hill. It also gives us an opportunity to sell a few souvenirs and mementos and to make a lot of friends with the locals. We also hope to make a lot of new friends by introducing our new “Mobil Mall Circus” to the nearby shopping centers (Seattle was the first city in the U.S. to have a Mall, known as Northgate). This will consist of our mobile video van, portable field darkroom, glass furnace trailer, salmon bake and what other acts we get together. We would appreciate any suggestions and additions you might make to the M.M.C. We also hope to keep in close contact with other related workshops, taking full advantage of our audio-visual equipment. We could also use a [Xerox] machine or some sort of duplicating equipment. If you know of anyone who might lend us this equipment for the summer please call us right away at 401 331 9519. We’ve enclosed a map and the names and addresses of everyone accepted. This will give you an opportunity to contact each other for rides out. It might be nice to take advantage of these address stickers and send a little “Mail Art.” Shortly after everyone’s arrival we are hoping to have a “Highway Exhibition and Slide Show” featuring post cards and trivia and slides of everyone’s journey. So try and keep the Instamatic handy, particularly keep an eye out for any contemporary folk art (grass root art) in your home town or on the way out. Now there’s the question of the $. Please send us $100 as soon as possible, because we need this money for ordering our equipment. We expect that you should be able to send us this deposit within a week, sooner if possible. And we must ask that the remaining $300 tuition be paid upon your arrival—we want to spend our time working with you, not running around the site collecting bills for ten weeks. O.K., keep healthy and happy and don’t forget to sew on those labels in your socks (which reminds me—Pilchuck’s laundrymat consists of twintubs, scrub-board and wringer). See ya soon, (signed) Buster Dale Some important info on our facilities and how they’ll probably be used. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Shortly after everyone arrives we will be discussing the shop scheduling and the areas you will be working in. As we see it now, there will probably 112

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be three different groups. Some of you that got your application in near the end of the deadline will possibly be working more in the Media area that you indicated, because the Glass shop was filled first. We have circled the group which we think you might fit into best, but this will be determined when you arrive (the group you’re in can also change during the session if your interests change). GROUP ONE (GLASS)—You’ll have approximately 20 hours of your own bench time to do exactly what you want to with the material. You’ll also be expected to assist other people working with glass for the same amount of time (this means you’ll be spending 40 hours a week in front of a 2000 degree furnace). People in this group will have last priority in using the Media equipment. GROUP TWO (GLASS/MEDIA)—You’ll have approximately 15 hours in front of the furnaces and will be expected to assist others for the same amount (total of 30 hours in front of the furnaces). You will have regular access to the Media equipment. GROUP THREE (MEDIA)—You’ll have approximately 8 hours of your own furnace and will be expected to assist for another 8 hours (total of 16 hours in front of the furnaces). Naturally you will have first priority to the videorover(s), movie cameras, slide projectors and dark rooms. All three groups will have equal access to the following areas according to your own interest and energy: Glass furnace for casting and pouring Grinding, cutting and polishing area Stained glass, enamel and stain area Graphic shop Source: Letter from Dale Chihuly and Lewis (Buster) Simpson to participants in Pilchuck summer workshop, 1972, John H. Hauberg Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Acc. No. 2850-7, Seattle, Washington.

Silversmith MARGRET CRAVER (also called Margret Craver Withers, b. 1907 in Pratt, Kansas) graduated in 1929 from the University of Kansas, where she developed a lifelong interest in hollow ware and jewelry design. During World War II, as head of the Hospital Service Department of the silversmithing firm Handy & Harmon, she taught metalwork to wounded soldiers. After the war, she created the nonprofit Craft Services Department to train professional metalsmiths and art teachers. Craver was a unique force in reestablishing American metalwork as a craft discipline when there was less than a handful of advanced metals courses available in universities. To reseed knowledge and skills in the field, she traveled internationally, consulting with European and American masters, industrialists, historians, and traLEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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Margret Craver at work, ca. 1940. (Photo by A. F. Sozio, courtesy of the Margret Craver Withers Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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ditional craftsmen. She had a missionary passion and talent for teaching. The five Handy & Harmon workshops she developed (1947–53) are the foundation of modern American silversmithing and the crown of her long and distinguished career. Craver relates her craft history and the background of the conferences in a paper she presented at a 1982 symposium on mid-twentieth-century metalwork.

Mr. Gustav Niemeyer’s name should be the first to mention as a lifting force when telling the story of the workshop conferences of thirty-seven years ago. He was dynamic, intelligent, and human, as well as the President of Handy & Harmon, Refiners and Dealers in the precious metals. Upon our first meeting, I was surprised to be shown old photographs of a metal shop that was used in a hospital during World War I. I had just come from volunteering with the Red Cross at the Naval Hospital in Chicago where I regretted the lack of any metal working to supply projects that would furnish the physical motions needed for the patient’s therapy problem. So it was that while I was not looking for a job, I wanted to do something for the war effort. Instead of trying to learn to knit for the soldiers of World War II, I joined Handy & Harmon, set up a pilot program under the watchful eyes of General [Norman T.] Kirk, Surgeon General of the United States Army, and the Chief Occupational Therapist. My problems began with the lack of available quality tools and any written material to use as teaching aids. We moved on to develop at least one hospital metal shop in each of the nine commands of the Army, some in the Navy and Air Force, because tool companies accepted the tool challenge and we did our own elementary booklets. One, “Silver for the Craftsman,” gave me a great deal of pleasure. Handy & Harmon’s extensive research department was set up for large industrial companies, but when I visited I was excited when I saw that there was a quantity of material that would be useful to craftsmen. Not only new products but microphotographs that explained the very soul of the material as it was manipulated. Apprentice-trained European craftsmen said nothing like this little booklet had ever been done in Europe, and they were impressed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Just at the close of the War, Goldsmith’s Hall was interested in doing something for English Veterans, and they invited me to talk to their various Ministries—Health, Education, Rehabilitation, etc. My recollection of London was fire weed blooming in unearthly craters, great white marble capitals imbedded in streets, their former location still unknown, one third of Goldsmith’s Hall a deep black hole, all buildings surrounding Christopher Wren’s Church destroyed leaving it with just the space that he intended for it in the first place. At the same time, I became a member of a two-week LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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refresher course at the London School of Art for their leading designers and teachers who were just back from the service. I was greatly impressed with the amount of work the fifteen of us accomplished, and later one of the teachers would become directly involved with Handy & Harmon. In this Country at the close of the War, optimism abounded and the big silver plants went into full gear, eventually crowding out nearly all the fine, small established shops. When I say this, I think of the wisdom of the Scandinavian countries who saw some of the less attractiveness of an Industrial Revolution in advance. They built displays for permanent exhibition comparing the handmade work with the machine made in quality, design, and price so that no crafts were completely lost. At this time in this Country, no one would have known what you meant if you spoke of a designer-craftsman or an artist working in metals. The potters, at least, had an exhibition every other year in Syracuse done by Miss [Anna Wetherill] Olmsted. The weavers did not lose their techniques mostly because of cottage industries, or women trained during WPA days, or as family hobbists. Dorothy Liebes came along with her outstanding talent and ability. This craft became important. . . . Looking back at my frustrations at not being able to find a place to study metalworking after art school, it is difficult to think that there also were no books on the subject. The one English text by Maryon published in 1912 used an 1847 translation of Theophilus in the bibliography, had twenty-two line drawings and one chapter for each technique. I have already mentioned the tool situation as it was fifteen years later. The most I could do was to study small tool making with Leonard Heinrick, fifth generation armorer at the Metropolitan Museum, and I have to say that it was the only time that I have thoroughly enjoyed making tools. Forever after it was just a necessity before working on a new form. I had gem identification with Dr. Pough, gem curator at the Natural History Museum. Wilson Weir, a Tiffany craftsman, gave private lessons but was not interested in student much less contemporary design. He was interested in a plant called catbrier so I made leaves and leaves and for excitement now and then put in the proper worm holes that went from vein-to-vein only. Eight years after graduation, I finally found my first smithing teacher, Arthur Nevill Kirk in Detroit. He was just over from England. He had been given an unused Ford Motor plant building to teach in. With no other students, we had plenty of space and after bruising my hands a teapot did emerge. Stone Associates of Gardner, Massachusetts accepted me as a student for a summer. It was good to see seven skilled workmen even though they were reproducing the late Mr. Stone’s designs. There was an established 116

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time set for the production of each piece with no pay for overtime. Such work pressure made it obvious that small shops could not take private students no matter how talented they were. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . During my hospital service days, my travels took me across country, and I visited museums to find out about their collections of metal work. There was seldom any, and one director said flatly that he would certainly want no contemporary silver for it would be such a problem to keep clean. When I discussed the possibility of American metal smiths with one education curator at the Metropolitan Museum, he felt it would be a good idea if I helped design teachers get jobs with Reed & Barton, Gorham or Towle, etc. This plus my remembering Paul Klee’s theory “The final source of power in the artist is given by society,” I was wondering if I was not just wasting a lot of thoughts. I did get an appointment at the Museum of Modern Art with Rene D’ Harnoncourt. His question was would these possible artist craftsmen be interested in producing three hundred like objects. The Modern was just starting its Industrial Design Department and with the idea of raising the standards of design in industry. He was not sure of one-of-a-kind objects as a practical matter, but before I left he took from his desk drawer a handsome handforged hair ornament made in Africa. It was obvious that he could not use it, but kept it there for his own pleasure. We both smiled. I could not help but think how great the time was for American smithing to begin. We were far enough away from the Paul Reveres and John Coneys to be able to have an approach to the material with a freshness of spirit and a reflection of the present. I was sure that no one could doubt that creativeness and inventiveness was sure to show up given a chance. I summed up what I have been thinking and presented the need for some educational project to Mr. Niemeyer and his enthusiasm was great. Our Hospital Service Department at once became the Craft Service Department. Plans for the first of five conferences began with the objective of offering four weeks of work in silver to teachers with art and design backgrounds only. Twelve people were the maximum and the names of the Committee of Selection were on the application blank. We found the Rhode Island School of Design had enormous unused space with heavy smithing equipment, acid vats, ventilators and several years of accumulated dust. Mr. Bennett of England agreed to be the first teacher and the Head of the gold plant. Frank Spies gave the first of the metallurgical lectures. Our small staff was now working overtime when the press got wind of the prestigious Handy & Harmon, Refiners and Dealers doing something with designers which meant to them production, which sounded as though we were going into competition with our own customers, Reed & Barton, LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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International, Towle, etc. Here we were lucky again when help came from a public relations firm that had worked interpreting museum type exhibitions—Nathan and Erskin. Finally opening day of the first conference arrived, all conferees reported in in spite of its being such an unheard of project. Mr. Niemeyer came from New York to welcome the twelve, five minutes later Mr. Bennett gave a blocking demonstration, and twenty minutes later twelve hammers were at work, miracles beginning. Source: Margret Craver, “The Handy and Harmon Conferences,” paper presented at Renwick Symposium, “American Metalsmithing and Jewelrymaking of the 1940s and 1950s,” September 24, 1982, Margret Craver Withers Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

In a 1982 oral history, metalworker ALBERT PALEY (b. 1944) recalls his alienation as a featured speaker at an early conference of the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA). Begun in 1976 with only twenty members, ABANA is described by Brent Kington later in this chapter. Paley’s position as an academic and his interest in aesthetic innovation stood in stark contrast to the revivalist culture of the majority of participants. (See also page 46.)

So he [Alex Bealer] and Brent [Kington] got together and they established ABANA . . . American Blacksmith’s Association of North America, and they had the first meeting—I believe it was ’71. It could have been ’70. And they had a lot of old smiths from the hills and all that, and a lot of the younger people—it was kind of interesting. What happened is that—there’s a couple of reasons. First of all, one was the academic thing and the relationship to the craft endeavor. There was a new thing that broke out and there was a new area of exploration and all that. That was one. That was very much an academic response to it. And on the other hand is that the response to the establishment and the whole dropout thing of the 60s, blacksmithing fostered that as a lifestyle very much. The blacksmith was the self-sufficient, independent, noninstitutional kind of guy up in a cabin somewhere that was able to make his living, and also fostered that individualism and self-assurance and that, and also was stereotypic of an incredible macho kind of endeavor. So for all of those reasons . . . I didn’t go to that one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Then—well, I was asked—and I think it was 1976; it was five years after that—they had a large conference down in Southern Illinois and I was asked to address the conference and went down there, and it was kind of inter118

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esting. There was several hundred people there and the guys were walking around with denim jackets on and tattoos of anvils on their arms and feathers braided in their hair and—like a real down-home hillbilly kind of thing. And I went down there—I was quite excited about going there. I had just finished the Smithsonian gates [Portal Gates, 1974, commissioned for the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.]. They got quite a bit of coverage. I did the main fence for Chattanooga [1975, Hunter Museum], [about] which a movie had been made, and I had exhibited and things were going really well for me and I was—I would never go to conferences unless I’m invited, so I was invited to speak. So I felt that I had the chance to make quite a contribution to them. And it was—not redneck but it was a real dropout kind of thing, and it didn’t—I never feel I deal with intellectualism but it was completely the antithesis of what I was dealing with. There wasn’t research and investigation into aesthetics at all. You know, it’s an artist-blacksmith association; you would think that there’s technique to blacksmithing and the artist was the perception, and the mind and the hand going to development, but it was totally lopsided. And the majority of people were making Bowie knives and things like that, and just totally wrapped up into the nostalgia and the stereotype. So my main lecture, after I realized what was going on, was that the whole thing—the technique, really—I mean, you have to master technique but the main thing was the thought process. And if anything, historically the smiths of the past, the reason that they were so important is they were incredibly innovative. When Bowie made his knife it was a great invention on the cutting implement. You know, it’s very, very revolutionary and the blacksmiths that they looked back to were the ones that fostered the machine age. They made the prototype machines and so on and so forth. They were men of invention and insight because they had the skills and disciplines, and if that was the stereotype, you don’t—these things were done 200 years ago and it was the real challenge to be as innovative and try to put contemporary form in basically an anachronistic endeavor, and that didn’t go over too well. And there was something—even some calls from the audience were, “We’re here to talk about blacksmithing; we don’t want to hear about this art shit.” And it really kind of typified the whole thing because it was—the art or the aesthetics was that it was seen as the hierarchy establishment aristocracy. Source: Albert Paley, oral history interview by Robert F. Brown, 1982, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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JUDY KENSLEY M C KIE (b. 1944 in Boston) received a B.F.A. in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design (1966) before becoming a self-taught woodworker. She refined her craft as a member of several woodworking collectives in the 1970s, including New Hamburger Cabinetworks in Boston, before resolving to create one-of-a-kind pieces inspired by ancient cultures and folk arts. The counterculture of the 1960s had a profound impact on her education. In a 1986 oral history, McKie describes the communal spirit and “learn-as-you-go” zeitgeist of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, artists’ cooperative she joined, in which members shared knowledge, resources, studio space, and marketing outlets.

Judy McKie: I didn’t know any furniture makers. I was just making furniture for our house. Richard Polsky: You weren’t frightened by what you didn’t know? McKie: No. I was just trying to make a chair. And I was going to work on it till it was right. I didn’t know Tage Frid or [George] Nakashima or Wendell Castle. I didn’t know that there were people out there who were making furniture like art. It never occurred to me to be trying to do it that way. Polsky: And the American Craft Museum and all that junk—? McKie: I didn’t know that there was an American Craft Museum at the time. I knew there was a Whitney, I knew there was a Guggenheim. I didn’t identify with the craft movement until five or six years later. I started working in a collective workshop. . . . I joined a little cabinet collective called New Hamburger Cabinet Works, and it was composed of seven or eight members who had all gone to liberal arts schools. They’d gone to Harvard and MIT and Yale and every other place, and they’d decided that they were going to make a career of handson work. It was the sixties and this was a socialist organization. Everybody was learning and we were all sharing information and knowledge. No one had gone to school to learn woodworking. We were all reading the Encyclopedia of Furniture Making and everybody was doing things wrong and saying, “Hey, don’t do it this way, it will explode,” or “You can’t screw into the end grain. It will fall apart.” That is how we were teaching each other how to build. We worked together and we shared our wages. We shared all the maintenance responsibilities in the shop. We charged whatever we gauged the client could afford. If they couldn’t afford to pay anything, we worked for free. We all pooled our wages at the end of the month and divided everything up. We ended up all making two or three dollars an hour that way, which was just enough to survive on. But it was very exciting and the amount everybody was learning was exciting. There was a real communal spirit. It started to dissolve as an organization when people began 120

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Woodworkers at the New Hamburger Cabinetworks in the 1960s. Left to right: Ernie Russell, Matthew Bagedonow, Henry Stone, Hadley Reynolds, unknown, Judy McKie, Carole Neville, Margo Jones, Daniel “Dog” Breslow, and Sam Clark. “We all considered ourselves woodworkers—NOT ARTISTS!!!! ‘Art’ was a dirty word back in the ‘furniture for the people’ era of the ’60s” (Judy McKie, email to Diane Douglas, October 12, 2006). (Photo courtesy of Judy McKie)

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to develop their own inclinations toward certain kinds of work. There were some members who wanted to go in the direction of contracting, making more money and doing big jobs. And then there were people like myself. I’d learned about the basics of putting things together. The designing was very automatic. I started to feel that if I continued to be a woodworker, I wanted it to be a more personal process. That was when I started to reassimilate my visual background with my woodworking. I didn’t know other people working this way. I just— Polsky: Working which way? McKie: Working in a personal way. But I was getting bored with just pushing big slabs of wood through the saw—using nothing but straight lines. I decided that if I was going to continue making furniture, I’d at least like to interject a curve or something that made you feel that the object had been made by somebody with a specific idea. What I was doing seemed so cold and impersonal and machine-made. I had to change how I was approaching it. I thought about all the different things you could do with wood to alter or embellish it: decorate it, paint it, incise it, carve it, pound nails into it. Whatever you could do, I wanted to start trying some of those things. And that was the point at which I started making some things that were more my own. Source: Judy McKie, “Reminiscences of Judy McKie,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1986, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:12–13.

RICHARD NOTKIN (b. 1948 in Chicago) received a B.F.A. in ceramics from the Kansas City Art Institute (1970) and an M.F.A. from the University of California, Davis (1973). As a student of Robert Arneson’s at Davis, he rejected his mentor’s expressionistic vigor for a miniaturist’s intensity and love of detail. Since that time, Notkin has made meticulously crafted, cast clay teapots and tiles with political themes that include nuclear war and genocide. Notkin was an artist-resident and, decades later, a board member of the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Montana. As a retreat that offers communal studio space for artists, the Bray has stimulated and renewed generations of prominent ceramists nationally and internationally. In a 1998 interview, Notkin articulates his sense of the Bray’s importance as he reflects on a young resident’s proposal to design a t-shirt featuring a triumvirate of prominent clay educational meccas—Alfred (the New York State College of Ceramics School of Art & Design), Kansas City (Kansas City Art Institute), and Helena. (See also page 264.)

Those links [between Alfred, Kansas City, and The Bray] have been central historically, but the Bray network is much wider and deeper. The Bray 122

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Robert Harrison, Potters Shrine at Archie Bray Foundation, 1985–87. Assembled brick and tile, 11 × 25 × 25 feet. (Photo © J. M. Cooper, courtesy of the Archie Bray Foundation, Helena, Mont.)

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belongs to a kind of ceramics trade route. The Silk Road didn’t just happen; by analogy, neither does the pathway between most artists and the Bray. Young artists who follow the path tend to self-select. They usually have a strong work ethic, a good technical background, and the maturity to work outside an academic structure, where you are not jumping through someone else’s hoops. Like me, many of them don’t necessarily do their best work at the Bray, but they lay the foundation for inspiration in the future. The [Bray’s ceramics] collection shows this: most of it is not mature work. It’s exciting as a record of transition, a very fertile period in the careers of artists who are now renowned, but who were just artists with a lot of promise when they came to the Bray. Personally, that’s what I hope the Bray will always be—a sanctuary for promise. Source: Richard Notkin, “The Archie Bray Foundation: A Legacy Reframed,” interview by Patricia Failing, 1998, in A Ceramic Continuum: Fifty Years of the Archie Bray Influence, by Peter Held and Rick Newby (Seattle and Helena, Mont.: University of Washington Press and Holter Museum of Art, 2001), 58–59.

GYÖNGY LAKY (b. 1944 in Budapest), known for monumental textile installations, emigrated to the United States as a small child and received undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1973 Laky founded the acclaimed Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, an atelier in Berkeley that supported research and offered classes, workshops, and exhibitions. Fiberworks was an educational site and a community gathering place that inspired egalitarian, grass-roots participation from professionals and novices in the Bay Area for fifteen years. Laky, a professor at the University of California, Davis, describes the early days of the center in a 1998–99 oral history.

Gyöngy Laky: A friend of mine, Dennis Morinaka, an artist who had studied at CCAC [California College of Arts and Crafts], took me to see a studio he thought he might rent. It was in downtown Berkeley. It happened to be a place I’d heard about but never visited, called The Berkeley Tapestryworks. . . . Now, you see where the “works” of Fiberworks comes from. The sixties and seventies were fraught with “works” of all kinds, there were Bookworks, and Poetryworks—[laughter] so I’m not surprised we ended up with a name like Fiberworks. I fell in love with the place. There were vertical looms, which are really just big frames, but there they were, huge looms, several of them, in front of several walls in the space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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It [Fiberworks] also seemed to catch the imagination of a lot of people. One of the things that happened there right from the beginning; it was a beautiful space, it had a lot of ambiance, so that others wanted to spend time there. I think sometimes environment is important. Just the kind of ambiance somewhere will be conducive to things happening. We used to joke all the time about the “salon effect.” No matter who came by with a little bit of interest, there’d be coffee—Peet’s—on the stove. There’d be tea, all the right kinds of herb teas that we loved. There might be a little something else. Someone would come by with a little snack or cookies or whatever, and drop them off. So, we spent a lot of time sitting around talking. It was wonderful. Some of those conversations were fabulous, meaningful, out of the heart. They were really great. The fact that there wasn’t too much going on left room for this. As I recall, only two or three of the classes had enough students. So what do you do the rest of the time? I bought chairs at fifty cents to two dollars each; I think the most expensive used chair I bought was two dollars. We, of course, needed to strip them and sand them and then paint them to make them look great. Somewhere along the way somebody had given me large spools, PG&E wire spools, but these were huge. One of them was like six or seven feet in diameter. A couple of the others were four and five feet, and those were really nice for small group gatherings. There wasn’t a lot of business going on, since most of us didn’t have career jobs yet. There wasn’t a lot of pressure or activity; we sat around and had conversations. It was really and truly wonderful. There was another thing about these conversations. Right from the beginning there was a sense of openness. If somebody came by and that individual was interested, that individual sat down and joined the group and got into the conversation. It didn’t matter whether we knew each other or not. There was a spirit of openness and inclusiveness which was wonderful. It led to many, many good things happening. Harriet Nathan: Were many of these people former students of Ed Rossbach at Cal [University of California, Berkeley]? Laky: Most were. Most of the core of people who showed up and painted chairs and sanded and fixed the lights and things like that were my closest friends and colleagues. Chere Mah, Wendy Kashiwa, Nance O’Banion, and Susan Druding, who is owner of Straw Into Gold. There were a number of others. The circle widened very easily and spontaneously. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Another issue at play, this was bra-burning time and the rise of feminism, was the fact that it was mostly women who were involved in the

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textile field. We had hardly noticed. The art work was very intelligent and very creative, and very inventive. Here was a place where women could excel. There were a few men around, I remember them. I notice them in the photographs from that time. [laughs] They were there, but here was a field gaining in strength and momentum in which women were the leaders and women were doing the extraordinary works. It was exhilarating. I was a woman, I was exhilarated. We knew about and used the women’s movement, but we also somehow stumbled upon a field where women automatically were the leaders, where women automatically could excel, where women automatically were supported in their ideas. It was quite exciting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The philosophy we developed was that creativity, in a sense, belongs to everybody. It is part of our culture. Also, that everyone and anyone has a measure of creativity. It was a kind of open door on art, that it seemed we had there. People walked in and it did not matter who they were, what their backgrounds were. It mattered whether they wanted to contribute, or whether they wanted to be creative or to learn. Many individuals did walk in who had tremendous things to offer. They just kind of walked in and said, “Would you be interested in . . .” “Well, yes we would.” And “Yes, please do,” or “show” or “do a demonstration.” Or, “If you want to put on an event,” if it seemed to fit, well, “jump right in.” There was an openness that was really quite wonderful, coupled with the idea that children, grandparents, your neighbor, anyone and everyone had the potential to be creative and have—not the right to—but I don’t quite have the right language here. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Whether a person had a great deal of background or very little did not establish whether the outcome of the creativity would be good or bad. Sometimes we had people come to Fiberworks who had no background. They would come in and do something that was absolutely wonderful and that would influence all the people around them, individuals with no art training. This happened often enough so that we came to see that creativity is an aspect of human beings that can pop up in unexpected places. And of course there were people who then made a choice about their profession, to go in a creative direction, to spend their whole lives doing visual art. Other people just did it as part of who they were and part of their daily lives. That’s fine. At Fiberworks there wasn’t a sense of hierarchy about the purpose. If you just did it because you enjoyed it, that was as important as doing it because it was your full-fledged profession and you were going to be exhibiting in museums. I liked that a lot. I like that. It felt very egalitarian, that attitude. It put value where value belonged. 126

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Source: Gyöngy Laky, “Visual Thinking and the Intelligent Hand,” oral history interview by Harriet Nathan, 1998–99, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2003.

In a 2001 oral history, ARLINE FISCH (b. 1931), a jeweler, fiber artist, and academic, notes that nonaccredited summer schools, conferences, artists’ communities, and retreats offer hobbyists, working professionals, and academics opportunities to mix and immerse themselves in work and community. These settings present an informal, personalized approach to learning while simultaneously engendering a sense of common purpose and mutual concern. (See also pages 103, 173, 217, 261.)

Arline Fisch: There are many people who come to a need to enhance their education later in their careers. It’s not easy to drop into a university program at the age of 40, nor is it possible even to take the time out of an already busy adult life to go to school. Haystack, and Penland, and Arrowmont provide an opportunity for people who are in need of new energy, in need of new information, or who simply are in need of community. I think that’s probably the most important thing that these schools provide, because a two-week period of time isn’t going to change your life very drastically. Technically, the amount that you can learn is somewhat limited by the time, but the sense of community is so strong in these schools that that’s what people talk about. That’s what they remember about their experiences at these schools, not so much what they learned, but what they experienced. I think that many of the people who teach in these schools are not academics, so they’re not coming in giving assignments, that’s simply not how these schools operate. They deliberately choose people to teach who are professionally active in many different ways, some professionally active like yourself, both teaching and making, and others professionally active because they work all the time, their sole livelihood is producing their work. In the same session at a school like Haystack, there may be somebody in every category that’s not necessarily in the same material, but there’s someone who is an academic, there’s someone who runs a full time studio, there’s someone who does large scale commissions, there’s someone who writes. All of those options are presented in a way that’s totally available, that you can sit next to any person you want at a meal and talk about whatever provokes you, or whatever information you want, or whatever you want to know. How do you do that? How do you do a craft fair? Or how do you get a Fulbright, or how do you work in another country? Those are hard questions LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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if you’re out in your own little community at home, where you don’t have access to other artists or you have access only to a very few artists, and it’s a very limited world. But you go to a place like Penland or Haystack, and suddenly, you’re in a very big world, a very big community of artists, all of whom have some measure of competence, some measure of confidence, some kinds of experience, and they’re there because they’re willing to talk about it. So the community thing is that sharing. People don’t go to Haystack or Penland to be alone. They are alone already. They come there to be part of a group, part of a community with shared interests, but not shared experiences. I think that’s what’s so very vital about those particular schools, that they provide this kind of range of experience that can be shared one to another in a very comfortable way. Sharon Church: Implicit in what you’re saying is a kind of generosity that might characterize these communities. Fisch: I think if you don’t want to share, you wouldn’t choose to go there. Occasionally, I suppose there have been students who have gone with the idea they’re going to gain, they’re not going to give, but I think that’s rare. And certainly, once they get there, the spirit of sharing is so strong that it is really hard to resist. Church: I think that those schools provide a very unique experience that you’re describing. I wonder if you think that craft, as an activity, as an art activity, has something special within it that inclines us to share, to seek out this community. Fisch: Oh, I think so. If you look at organizations, for example, in the craft field, there are all these organizations, and everybody is very generous in sharing information in print, or in conversation, or in exhibitions. It’s difficult to find that same kind of sharing in other places in the world. It also doesn’t appear to happen as readily in the painting field, for example. I don’t see organizations of painters getting together, talking about shared interests. I think it’s a much more solitary enterprise. Maybe it is just solitary by its nature, or it may be solitary just by tradition, but it tends not to be a shared communal activity, whereas craft seems to be, in some ways, because it requires more of a mentoring kind of education, so that there is a need to pass information from one generation to another generation, technical information, that it provokes or stimulates this kind of sense of community. I’m not sure. Source: Arline M. Fisch, oral history interview by Sharon Church, 2001, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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L. BRENT KINGTON (b. 1934 in Topeka, Kansas) received a B.F.A. from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1957 and an M.F.A from the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1961. Between 1961 and 1996, Kington was associated with the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and became its director in 1981. Kington worked primarily as a silversmith fashioning small-scale objects before developing an interest in forged iron sculpture. At Carbondale he was instrumental in fostering a resurgence of traditional blacksmithing in America. In a 2001 oral history, he recalls the seminal conference of the Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA) in 1976. Like many of the other media-based artists’ organizations, ABANA prospered because of strong grass-roots participation by artist-members across the country and critical financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Brent Kington: ABANA [Artist-Blacksmith’s of North America] had a newsletter at the time, and through SNAG [Society of North American Goldsmiths] and ACC [American Craft Council], we did some promotion for what was going on. We were anticipating 200, thinking 200 people, maybe 250, and we got to 490. A lot of people just showed up. You know, it was like I had— Mary Douglas: [laughs] It was like Woodstock of the blacksmiths’ association. Kington: Oh, yeah, it was. I got a telephone call the day before the thing started from Marion, Illinois. Douglas: Down the road. Kington: Yeah. And this guy said, “I’m from Nova Scotia. I’ve been hitchhiking for seven days to get here. I am so tired. Can somebody come and get me?” It was amazing. Douglas: Where did you put everybody up? In the dorms? Kington: No. The university has a summer camp called Little Grassy. A touch of nature, Little Grassy Lake. And they have very primitive cabins, two very finished, heated things. There is a state park nearby for camping, and they could take up to 300 people. We had people in town at lodgings, camping out at the lake, camping at the state park, all over the place, at Little Grassy. I had to make arrangements at the last minute to feed an extra 125 or 130 people. They [would] just keep showing. The time was right, the mood was right, everything was good. We set up three demonstration arenas. As we met more people getting out to this, we heard more and more about other people. [Frank] Turley was a demonstrator, [Tom] Bredlow was a demonstrator. Wally [Jim Wallace] was aware LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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of Francis Whitaker, who had a blacksmith shop in Aspen, Colorado. . . . Richard [Wattenmaker] wanted to be there, and he ended up getting an invitation to talk about the history of European iron. A very important name when we get into this research, I invited him to come and speak; that’s Cyril Stanley Smith, who was a professor at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. He worked on the Manhattan Project, was the author of 50 or 60 books on metallurgy and metallography. I found out about him two ways. One was from a catalogue of an exhibition held at St. Thomas University that was sponsored by Menil Museum in Houston. He writes an introduction to the exhibition, one of the introductions. And in ’64, when I was in New York for the World Craft Council thing, I was rummaging through the ACC library, and I came across a book of his called A History of Metallography [University of Chicago Press, 1960]. I was desperate for any information, and I borrowed it. But he ended up being a consultant when we got into the Damascus research. Those three guys I mentioned were the research team people. He’s very elderly. He flew in in the morning, intended to be there doing his lectures during the day, and fly out that evening or the next morning early. He ended up staying two more days, he got so hung up in it. Douglas: And this was the Smith from MIT? Kington: Cyril Stanley Smith, yeah. And a guy by the name of Slim Spurling from Colorado was a demonstrator, and I’m sure there are a couple others that I can’t think off the top of my head. We had three demonstration sites; it was blacksmiths’ Woodstock. I mean, people were going nuts. They were going absolutely ape over this whole thing. When everything was over and our final dinner and everything, I had some things to say, you know, “Thanks for coming” and all that business. “And incidentally, you know, all these sponsors who made this possible, if you could find the time, write NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] and tell them how you feel about the way the government spent their money for this.” Fifteen people stopped in Washington, D.C., on the way through, tromped in the office. Slim Spurling from Colorado drove to D.C. And who was it, was it Aleanna Kanorly? Maybe she was there then. She called me and she said, “We’re getting all these dirty-faced, grubby guys walking in and telling us what a great experience they had in Carbondale.” Slim drove to Washington, D.C., walked in in his dirty jeans. He said, “I just want you to know that I’ve had the most life-transforming experience I’ve ever had in my life, and I want you to know why. Your money was well spent.”

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Source: L. Brent Kington, oral history interview by Mary Douglas, 2001, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

FRITZ DREISBACH (b. 1941) describes the origins of the Glass Art Society (GAS) in a 2004 oral history. GAS was launched from the belly of its parent organization, the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) in 1971. Beginning in the 1960s, artist-run organizations developed in each craft medium and became one of the most important influences in the field. They provided informal training for successive generations of artists, disseminated professional practices, provided a forum for critical debate, and, most profoundly, generated a strong sense of community for artists across diverse geographical and professional settings. (See also pages 86, 190.)

Fritz Dreisbach: What I remember was that we were coming to Penland [School of Crafts, Penland, North Carolina] as teachers—the teachers would come down to the school—you’d always try to overlap the guy that was after you and the guy that was before you so that you could have this little time for a day or two to exchange ideas and information and drink a few cold ones and blow a little glass and celebrate and have fun and party. Well, I thought, you know, it’d be really great to expand on that and I thought of the idea of role modeling after NCECA. Now, I had already at this point been on the board of NCECA. I was one of their board people that—I was their token glass guy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Most of the glass people were ceramics first and then glass, so they all went to NCECA meetings because that’s where all their ceramic guys were and friends were, and they would go there. And there was nothing yet for glass so they would go there and there would be enough of them oftentimes they’d end up with a room where they could talk about glass issues. And what did NCECA do? They encouraged it. They said, “We’ll make sure you’re on the program. We’ll put one of you on the board and we’ll make sure that issues that deal with glass are dealt with in our conference. You will not be treated as we were.” Suzanne Frantz: So why didn’t you just stay with NCECA? Dreisbach: Oh, well, one room, are you kidding? One presentation? You know, three days and you get one presentation. It was good, we needed it to get started, but let’s face it, eventually we were going to want our own—I mean, look at GAS [Glass Art Society] now. GAS now is probably the size NCECA was when we’re talking about, in the 70s.

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Great California Glass Symposium, “Last Blow in Berkeley with C. Fritz Dreisbach,” December 5, 1973. (Photo courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, N.Y.)

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So I studied them and we talked to various people, and finally I came to Bill [Brown] and I said, “You know, we want to do this thing and here’s our role model and this is how they run their conferences and we’d like to pattern after that, but of course a much smaller scale.” And he said, “Oh boy, I don’t like that idea.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “Well, glass floors are like horseshit.” And I said, “What?”—or you could print in there “manure” if you don’t want to use that four letter word. And I said, “What? What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, you put a big pile of it in one spot, it stinks, but if you spread it out all over the countryside where you belong, it’ll do some good.” I said, “Well, Bill, look, just let us get together for three days and we’ll stink a little bit and then we’ll all go home and we’ll all teach each other and pass on all this information to our fellow—to our students primarily.” Because we had decided that we would only have teachers that first couple of years. We had to make restrictions because of the size of the facility and so we decided to draw the line at students. So we only had professional studio owners and teachers and that was it. Frantz: Did you have a program for that first meeting? Dreisbach: No. Frantz: What did you do for three days? Dreisbach: One guess. [laughs] Frantz: Rhymes with fear? Dreisbach: [laughs] So somehow American Craft Council found out about this, that we were going to do this, and they awarded us a $500 grant to start a new organization, craft organization. That was fine. We cashed that right away. I put it in a bank in Spruce Pine and I cut it in half and we only spent half of that money that first year because I wanted to make sure that we had enough to have two of these things. And in fact I did the same thing that Toledo did, although self-consciously I think, I don’t think I consciously copied them. We had what was called GAS I. And the poster—there are some people, I can’t remember exactly when—there were a lot of things in the 60s if you were really there you probably couldn’t remember it. Some people can’t remember how the name arrived or when the name arrived but there is actually a poster that I made that has G-A-S I, Roman numeral I, and then there’s another poster for GAS II with the same format. So we had the name before we actually met that first time. But it was at the second meeting that the officers were elected and that we became serious enough to put together the beginnings of the legal format of the articles of incorporation and bylaws and all those kinds of things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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Frantz: And what were you envisioning? I know you were modeling it on NCECA but what were your hopes for GAS? Dreisbach: Well, certainly we were going to have a good time. NCECA people always had a good time. But it was a way of connecting with each other and not—and breaking down those grass is greener on the other side impressions, misconceptions that we all faced similar concerns, we all needed good sand, we all needed good galleries, we all needed this and that, and why not share in that? And I’ve often thought that what we did as the glass art group, not just GAS but as artists working with glass, what we did was pioneering and that we needed to stick together and help each other if we were going to fight off the elements, not unlike the pioneers trying to settle America—not unlike that at all. I also have another saying that there were not very many, almost no shy glass blowers in the 60s. You might even say that today. There aren’t very many, if there any, shy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It takes a certain amount of moxy to push forward and make these things happen, and if we had been cautious, if we had been secretive, everything would have slowed down. I’m not saying it would have stopped—I’m not saying you couldn’t have glass today but you wouldn’t have glass the way we know it right now. Source: Fritz Dreisbach, oral history interview by Suzanne Frantz, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

GERRY WILLIAMS (b. 1926 near Calcutta, India) began his career in ceramics by taking classes at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen in the early 1950s. In 1972 he founded Studio Potter, a nonprofit magazine that acts as a forum for artists working alone and reflects his philosophical commitment to serving the field. Williams’s career as a utilitarian potter and his stewardship of the publication reflect the Ghandian ideals of community, egalitarianism, self-sufficiency, and service that he encountered as the son of missionaries in India. These remarks, published in Studio Potter, are excerpted from a speech Williams delivered at an international ceramic art conference in Fuping, China, in 2004. Williams entreats publishers of ceramic art journals to continue disseminating information and promoting the appreciation of ceramic art traditions and processes.

The world of ceramic journals and publication is a unique one. These are not books. They are not radio. Not television. They are not a song to sing, nor a secret to whisper, nor a shout to be heard in the dark.

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Ceramic journals are primarily words and pictures that inform and record what is happening in the field, or in the lives of artists, or in the soul of events. They should, however, be considered part of the literature of our world. The literature for the ceramic world is generated primarily by intrinsic services. 1. By technology and the necessity of making and firing ceramics. 2. By aesthetic concerns of form and style in different cultures. 3. By the lives and work of prominent ceramic artists. 4. By the history of ceramics in different cultures and times. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I would like now to speak a little about my own publication Studio Potter and its background. I have been its editor since 1972 when it was first started. I was born and brought up in India where my parents had a school based on experimental education. They were acquainted with Gandhi and visited him on several occasions to work on projects. That background contributed to my decision to become a potter. When Studio Potter first began it was regarded as a service to the field, as it still is. It is a non-profit organization that publishes two journals, holds symposia, and provides technical, as well as aesthetic and historical information to working potters in the United States and many other countries. Its basic forms follow these principles: To provide information in the first person on technical, aesthetic and life style issues. To deal with themes of interest to working potters. To conduct interviews with regional, as well as nationally-known potters. To be published without advertising. To archive for future use information about contemporary potters and their work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We believe that the best person to interpret personal ceramic art is the artist himself or herself. The ceramic artist is the best one to speak of the work in context of the life, and is therefore the truest interpretation. We avoid wherever possible using the critic as writer, especially one from outside the field. We do, however, welcome historians writing about work in the context of history. We do not carry advertising because we value the independence of our non-profit status. With all due respect to our friends in the ceramic supply world, as well as to the galleries, we do not wish to be subjected to pressure from commercial interests. We miss their money but prefer our freedom. Source: Gerry Williams, “The Goal of Ceramic Journals and Their Influence on the Field,” Studio Potter 33, no. 1 (December 2004): 70–72.

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SABRINA GSCHWANDTNER (b. 1977 in Washington, D.C.) is an artist, writer, and curator who works in film, video, and textiles. She is the founder of KnitKnit magazine, a limited-edition art journal dedicated to the intersection of fine art and craft. Gschwandtner received her M.F.A. degree from Bard College in 2007. The KnitKnit Sundown Salon, from which the magazine derived, was a gathering of artists that was organized by the author with two colleagues and held in Los Angeles on February 2, 2004. The variety of art exhibited and the communal spirit that developed recall the heady days in the 1970s at places like Fiberworks Center for Textile Works in Berkeley (see page 124) and New Hamburger Cabinetworks in Boston (see page 120). (See also page 296.)

Sara Grady’s expertise lies in gathering people together for elaborate picnics, film shoots, garden parties, and circuses. Fritz Haeg creates gardens, buildings, occasions, homes, and bridges. I don’t know how Sara and Fritz first met, but I imagine it was an immediate and effortless commingling of vision and enthusiasm. Both are idealistic instigators of happenings. Together they hatched a plan for a salon about knitting, and then Sara called me. Because Sara and Fritz were in Los Angeles and I was in Brooklyn, the three of us planned most of the KnitKnit Sundown Salon through email: the idea was that I would bring artwork to Los Angeles with me, and they would invite local artists, crafters, and designers to create and show work inside Fritz’s geodesic dome in Eagle Rock, a neighbourhood of Los Angeles. I don’t know why knitting has become so popular recently. Many people ask me for an explanation, and I wish I had a definitive answer. I usually explain the phenomenon as a reaction to a combination of the following: anxiety-producing political and economic times; the war in Iraq; excessive use of computers; an increasingly fast-paced society; and superfluous and inhospitable technology. Sometimes I speak about the evolution of feminism: how craftwork no longer carries late-twentieth-century negative connotations about a woman’s role as a homemaker. These days, many women choose to knit; it no longer is something women are expected to learn and do. I started knitting in college as a way to pass time while I was waiting to graduate. I liked to space out while knitting as a break from bouts of dense art theory reading. After I graduated, I developed a more critical relationship to knitting centered around the idea that handcraft could challenge long-held artistic and social values. I started KnitKnit to gather a group of similar-minded people, those who, like me, had come to knitting from other artistic pursuits. 136

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Riding my bike home from Prospect Park one autumn day in 2002, I thought, I’m going to interview Jim Drain and Jamie Peterson, and make a ’zine about handcraft and conceptual art. As I pushed down on each pedal, I thought, knit, knit, knit, knit. “KnitKnit” became the name for my ’zine, my art project, and my way out of having to choose between knitting and fine art. KnitKnit is a biannual ’zine as well as a name under which I am able to curate art shows and events. It is also a vehicle for expressing my interest in the extreme, the unconventional, the direct, the weird, the funny, the shocking, the anti-craft, and the anti-art. I am always seeking people who have pushed their ideas about craft to the limit. These extreme knitters— and their votaries—are those whom Sara, Fritz, and I invited to the KnitKnit Sundown Salon. . . . I’ll knit a list for you here [describing the event], a rambling sentence that starts at the top of the geodesic dome and purls its way down: While the Los Angeles chapter of the Church of Craft had its monthly meeting, Tina Marrin’s wild, knitted boots, psychedelic sweaters, and chandelier rug were on display, next to which her sister Bridget’s knitted dollhouse complete with working lights and a tuft of white-knitted smoke was presented, Daniel Marlos served homemade rhubarb pie on his knitted placemats, and Megan Whitmarsh sold her embroidered canvasses and wallets, Michele Smith’s film Like All Bad Men He Looks Attractive, looped on one of Fritz’s computer monitors, Jen Hofer composed and typed out letters by request on a typewriter for her “escritorio publico” performance; and I think it was inside the top of the dome where I first spotted Eugene Ong’s knitwear, in the form of an ornate, revealing wedding dress worn with a matching headpiece by svelte Anna Sew Hoy; on the second level of the dome, Amy Hoeffecker offered cupcakes and other treats, and I met Lisa Anne Auerbach, who was modeling her geodesic hat, and Clare Crespo’s crocheted ham dinner was on view, and Althea Merback’s miniature Picasso sweater was exhibited, and my sisters were selling copies of KnitKnit issue #3 while wearing Liz Collins dresses with Jim Drain armbands, and Laura and Joe of Dearraindrop looked suitably suspicious in handmade cloth masks, and as I moved down the spiral staircase to the bottom floor of the dome, I saw that Adam Sidell was wrapping someone into a cocoon using a very long piece of knit fabric, and Melissa Thorne’s paintings were displayed, and Feral Childe did a performance, and old sweaters were being unraveled to make new things, and knitting lessons were being given and received; all day art films, videos, and music videos were projected, such as KuLEARNING IN COMMUNITIES

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sama’s Self-Obliteration, and Stephen Beck’s Video Weavings, and Steriogram’s Walkie Talkie Man; all day we listened to “music to knit to” submitted to us by artists like Stephen Vitiello, My Barbarians, Becky Stark, Jeff Goddard, Tan As Fuck, and others. When event attendees packed up the craft projects they had been invited to work on throughout the day, they left behind bits of fabric, yarn, and thread—a dotted map that we followed up the stairs and out the front door when it was time to go home. It wasn’t just the quality of the work inside the dome or the abundant activities that made the event momentous; it was the complete reciprocity with which the work was given and received. I have not experienced that level of engagement at any other art show. For eight hours on a gray February day in Los Angeles, the KnitKnit Sundown Salon existed as a utopic, three-tiered marvel of handmade wonders, a communal undertaking that gave me hope for the rise of a new social order. Source: Sabrina Gschwandtner, “Left Coast Knitting” (2007), in Sundown Salon: 2001–2006 in Words and Pictures, edited by Fritz Haeg (Livingston Manor, N.Y.: Evil Twin Publications, forthcoming).

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Part 3 Making a Living The nuts and bolts of earning one’s keep affect the kinds of objects produced. Makers negotiate and compromise with recalcitrant clients and capricious markets; they expand or contract their output depending on opportunity and personal ambition; they assume different roles as producers, designers, employers, and sales representatives. A maker can work alone to produce one-of-a-kind or limited-production objects, employ others in a small studio or larger business producing multiples in quantity, or work for hire as a designer (divorced from labor) or laborer (producing the designs of others). These roles are not mutually exclusive, and many artists move between them. Edith Heath, for example, started as an independent potter before creating her innovative business manufacturing dinnerware and ceramic tiles. Richard Marquis describes the issues that arise when he designs pieces for his limited-production studio as distinct from his one-of-a-kind works. Dan Dailey

discusses working as a designer for the French glass company Daum in addition to creating his own work. Concerns with production schedules, costs, contracts, pricing, personnel, and marketing affect those who work alone or run a business. These issues are not as acute for academics such as Arline Fisch, who receives a salary and fringe benefits from her institution. A guaranteed income allows professors to create objects without the overwhelming pressure to make sales. Independent artists such as Marguerite Wildenhain and Donald Friedlich voice resentment toward academics, whom they sometimes see as controlling professional organizations in their fields and being inconsiderate of the demands on nonacademic producers. This tension between studio artists and salaried teachers is particularly evident in this part, which focuses on those outside the academy.

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7 Starting a Business In the post–World War II United States, there were few institutionalized apprenticeship systems in the crafts; unbroken traditions of craft production were rare; and a vigorous manufacturing sector competed for materials, equipment, and buyers. As a result, basic tools and equipment often had to be rediscovered or reinvented (as did the basics of craft education, discussed in part 2). Charles Harder lays out the problems and potential for small studios in that era, and Jack Lenor Larsen describes starting his innovative textile businesses from scratch. Building codes, contracts, hiring, and juggling commerce and selfexpression are ongoing issues for those supporting themselves in the crafts whether they are working alone or are embarking on a major business.

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CHARLES M. HARDER (b. 1889 in Birmingham, Alabama; d. 1959 in Beaumont, Texas) trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was an influential teacher at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University from 1927 to 1957. As head of the design department beginning in 1944, he reshaped the school’s curriculum to meet state requirements for industrial and professional design. In an article published in a trade magazine at the end of World War II, Harder outlines the problems of starting a small pottery business, which include competition from abroad, high labor costs, resistance to mechanization, inadequate technical knowledge, and difficulty in purchasing raw materials in small quantities.

A recent editorial in Ceramic Industry calls attention to a rapid increase in the number of small plants manufacturing ceramic art products. It raises some interesting points and the implication, for designers in particular, would seem to justify further discussion. Speculation as to the postwar survival of small pottery shops runs to extremes, but on the whole there is a prevailing air of optimism. Whatever the outcome, some general good will derive from the experience. As pointed out in the editorial, one of the minimum gains will be an increased supply of artists with practical experience in business and in production. Maximum gains might result in the retention of a considerable portion of the domestic market in this type of luxury goods. And inasmuch as minor trends and fashions in design often make their first appearance in this class of ware, a definite influence on other lines of native ware might result. This could be wishful thinking, and is certainly a long-term proposition, but worth some speculation in view of the selfconscious attempts that are made, from time to time, to foster the growth of “an American style.” IDEAS RELATED TO ECONOMICS Meanwhile, it is safe to assume that a few of the new small producers will succeed in relating their creative ideas to the laws of economics and manufacture, as well as to the material itself; and it is those who will have the strongest chance of survival in any postwar contest. In his own way, each will have to solve the perpetual contradiction which exists between the demand for variety and individuality in design, and the demand for low costs. That much would seem obvious, yet back of it lies the principal reason for the predominance of imports over domestic goods in this class of ware, and, incidentally, for the discouraging experiences of a good many small pottery ventures. In one form or another the same dilemma has plagued the lives of manufacturers of American ceramic wares for over

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50 years. So the present market is hardly a fair standard of evaluation of one’s success in solving the puzzle. Although there has been a phenomenal increase within the past five years, small art potteries and producers of “fine art ceramics” have been in operation, in various parts of the country, for many years. Some of these have had relatively short careers. Others managed to enjoy a precarious existence over a longer period. Some were run by people with excellent taste and with creative ability, but who lacked experience in business and, in many cases, had insufficient information about modern methods of manufacture. Lack of information was sometimes rationalized into an overly sentimental attitude toward primitive equipment and ways of working. In making such an observation, however, due allowance must be made for foreign competition, lack of capital, and the fact that small orders of equipment and material were not attractive to suppliers. And there is some justification for the artists’ preference for a flexible production setup. It gives greater freedom and personal expression to his design. In a few cases, primitive equipment and handcraft methods have been turned into successful design and advertising assets, but for the most part, this has been done in non-industrial regions, where there was a stable supply of relatively low cost labor. In general, the failure to take advantage of modern production practice and business methods has only resulted in discouragement for the artist potter. Some designers have produced individual pieces of fine ceramic ware of good quality and design, but have been unable to do so in sufficient quantity, or at a price which would be attractive to buyers of that class of ware. COOPERATIVE FIRING FACILITIES Among the newer group, there are some interesting developments. Some are operating in garages and basements in metropolitan areas. The potteries vary in size from two-and-three-man shops, to small tunnel kiln plants having 15 or more employees, and using relatively efficient methods of production. The experience of their operators, and their general qualifications for ceramic work, runs to extremes in either direction. A few shops are operated by painters or sculptors who have had ceramic training and experience; others by combinations of business men and buyers; or by ceramic engineers and consulting designers. The bulk of the product is pottery novelty and gift items, with a few commendable attempts at special household and tableware items. As the background would indicate, there is a wide variation in technical and design quality of the ware. But the

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amount of energy back of the movement, and the quantity of output, are impressive. Several interesting experiments in co-operative buying and in sharing of firing facilities are worth notice. Although some imported wares may soon be on the market, and other consumer goods will be competing for the luxury dollar, several factors would seem to favor the small artware shops. The growth of the movement has been rapid and its product is diversified. Some of the shops have accumulated a sufficient backing of experience and capital to make the necessary adjustments. A number of artists have found in ceramics a means of fitting themselves into the economic life of the country, and have discovered in themselves other talents as well. They will share in any general increase of business over prewar levels. Furthermore, it will be some time before the Japanese and Central Europeans can reenter the market. And if even a small portion of the technicolored dreams of postwar housing should come true, there will be a live demand for new accessories, whose form, color, and texture have yet to be realized. Suppliers and dealers are becoming more tolerant in their attitude toward small orders. Prepared bodies and glazes can be had in small lots, and at a cost that is not excessive for this class of ware. ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT A large part of the high quality ceramic imports formerly came from the Scandinavian countries, and from France and England. These may well be the first to return with glass, earthenware, and reduced stoneware, porcelain and china. It may create a difficult problem for some of the local potters who are getting rather fancy prices for single pieces of ware in the specialty shops. There is a possibility that some of our own stuff will take on a Swedish-French accent, but even this has its redeeming features: technically, at least, one could find worse models. Furthermore, the experience might result in a more widespread realization of the fact that the ability to hold water is one of the more important functions of a ceramic vessel. The stimulation of competition with well designed products could bring about a healthy improvement in technique and design without either becoming imitative in character. If ceramic artists in America continue to receive popular approval in the face of competition, the best of them will develop a characteristic response. Let us call it their “style.” It will always show in whatever “lines” the potter may choose to make; and it will be more than just a “manner of working,” although that may be its outward dress. But dresses wear out—even the good ones from Paris or Vienna can’t last forever. If the artist potter’s per-

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sonal style is to have any substance, it will be a reflection of his response to his surroundings. It may be instinctive or calculated; it may be sensitive or otherwise. But it will be a response, and it will be his style. It will therefore be a visible record of the manner in which he solves the problems which confront him. A borrowed answer has obvious implications. THE POTTER’S STYLE Specifically, the potter’s style may be affected by such things as his immediate location. It may give him limitations which, if recognized, can be turned into design assets. Other factors will be the materials used, native or otherwise; and the type and layout of equipment. He will do well to keep abreast of every new development in the industry as a whole. Each new device, each way of working, each new material, can have within it the seeds of an idea which can be translated into design. The sum of our individual styles will always have a national flavor. It cannot do otherwise because we all share the same needs, traditions, social customs and ideals. And we are all surrounded by a common national economy. At all times a national style is with us. We may like it or not, but it is a reflection of our whole way of life, and 130 million of us must share in the credit or blame. It is, too, a reflection of the way we solve our common problems. Ours is an economy of mass production. All around us the age of handicrafts has been dying for a hundred years. Its scars, and its ideals and traditions, may well survive for a long time, but for us, as a “way of life,” the handicraft age is dead. The handicraftsman, in our time, can enjoy only an amateur, part-time status. An occasional exception proves nothing. A couple of hundred years ago, mass production chased the artist out of the market place. Since that time he has been hiding in museums, and only recently has he been able to face the idea of “mass production” with any show of courage. There are two main features to mass production. The first of these, the division of labor, is as old as the pyramids. The other is mechanization. And neither prohibits the creation of beautiful things. Handwork is not beautiful because it is handwork. It can be, and often is, as ugly as the worst machine stuff. SLOW TO ADOPT MECHANIZATION The pottery industry as a whole has been slow to adopt mechanization. But it has made amazing progress in this direction within the past 20 years. The process will continue although it may never be as complete as in other industries. For the volume goods industries this has meant a simplifica-

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tion of lines and styles. With all due allowance for the high selling price of luxury wares, their designer must also find an answer to high labor costs. It will not be an easy one, and it may vary as widely as the product. One of the main purposes of this class of ware is to satisfy the urge for “something different,” and one of its requirements is originality and variety. The upper bracket demand is for a sophisticated use of materials and excellent design treatments. Some lines may lend themselves to volume production, and others only partially so. European and Japanese ware of this type was designed to take advantage of hand operations and low cost skilled labor. Inevitably some American potters will attempt a solution on the basis of European designs produced in American materials, and with high cost and relatively unskilled labor. Artistically and financially this may prove to be tough going unless there are some strong compensating factors involved. Those who can find a more rational answer will probably make more money, have more fun, and produce a better article. Although his product does not lend itself readily to mechanization, the artist potter can learn much from observing the producers of large volume, low cost ceramic wares. TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE INSUFFICIENT In far too many cases the artist potter attempts to operate on a thin margin of technical knowledge. In many cases this consists of a list of addresses, where he can buy a “pint of slip” and “get something fired.” Admittedly, the present market is a picnic. But when it is over, the art potter will have need for a rather wide knowledge of ceramic procedure and material, in all of their various modes of expression. A ceramic engineer can help, but with all due respect to his talents, one cannot expect him to foresee all of the aesthetic implications in earthy materials. That is the designer’s job. And if the artist potter would hold his place in the economic picture, he will plan his product so that a thousand items can be sold for five dollars each, instead of one for fifty dollars. He will begin to know now what his product costs in terms of labor, materials, and overhead. He will surround himself with efficient modern tools and equipment, which he will arrange logically and know how to use to best advantage in expressing his ideas. If, in doing these things, he should discover that historic styles and treatments become a bit rebellious in such an environment—then we may be sure he will find a more natural answer. Source: Charles M. Harder, “A Message to Ceramic Designers,” Ceramic Industry 44, no. 6 (June 1945): 76–78.

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EDITH HEATH (b. 1911 in Ida Grove, Iowa; d. 2005 in Tiburon, California) founded Heath Ceramics in 1948 after success as a studio potter. Her company, under new ownership, still produces its famed dinnerware and ceramic tile in a modernist style, using the combination of handwork and industrial production techniques Heath devised. A large order from the San Francisco department store Gump’s started Heath on her business career, a textbook example of ingenuity and persistence that could well illustrate Charles Harder’s article in the preceding excerpt. In giving up artistic spontaneity for what she called “considered creation,” Heath felt she was embracing an aesthetic of maturity. In a 1957 conference lecture, Heath describes the origins of her business. In a later oral history, she describes the dismissive reaction of the craft establishment—particularly the American Craft Council—to her new production methods and technologies.

A craftsman can build his product from the ground up. In ceramics, he literally takes the materials of the earth, reassembles them into new formulas essential to the creation of fresh material from which fresh forms can flow, and creates one-of-a-kind or many. The one-of-a-kind is one type of esthetic research, the making of many, another type. The first three years of my ceramic career were spent in research in materials and techniques. In 1944, Dr. Jerry McAgy, Acting Director of the Legion of Honor Museum, invited me to have a one-man exhibition of my work in ceramics. The buyer at Gump’s store saw the exhibition and asked to buy the things—some 300 pieces, consisting of tea services, beer mugs, wine sets, platters, bowls, vases, etc. This was the beginning of my being in business. Shortly thereafter, this same buyer telephoned to ask if I would take over the ceramic workshop which Gump’s had established as a place for making things for the store since they could not get imports and merchandise because of the War. My obligations would be: 1. Give them first choice on what I made. I could make whatever I wanted. 2. I could use all their equipment, but I would have to pay the rent, insurance, utilities, materials. (This was the second plateau in my entrance into business.) I quit my art teaching job, and with one assistant, began turning things on the potter’s wheel. After consulting with the buyer as to what the store needed, and what I would like to do, it was agreed that dinnerware service of some kind, with accessories, would be a challenge. I liked making sets because it forced me to master the potter’s wheel, and I wanted to make things for daily use because I liked dishes. It was not long before Gump’s began sending buyers from other stores—such as Marshall Field, Neiman-

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The first Heath Ceramics factory in Sausalito, California, 1950s. (Photo courtesy of the Brian and Edith Heath Trust Collection)

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Marcus, J. L. Hudson, Bullock’s, America House etc. This necessitated getting more assistance, so two more ceramic students came to work. We had three potter’s wheels, and they learned to throw the shapes as nearly like mine as possible. Mr. Heath, who was then Regional Director of the American Red Cross, came in during his off time to install better clay mixing equipment, helped stack kilns, pack, ship, take care of the bookkeeping etc. After the War ended, he quit his job and became full-time partner because the business was netting enough to support both of us. He is an ingenious engineer, mechanic, and business manager. His work with the Red Cross entailed the supervision of several hundred personnel as well as the administration of a budget which exceeded a million dollars a year. This experience certainly helped qualify him for the management of our small business. Then another act of fortune (or the devil) befell us. Ten craftsmen in the Bay Area were invited to exhibit at the Merchandise Mart January Gift Show as an enticement to Eastern buyers. It was at this exhibit that Nelson Gustin, a national distributor with show rooms in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, first saw our dinnerware. During the following year, we discussed with him many times the possibility of his becoming our distributor. Our volume was not large enough, our work space too small, our equipment too inadequate to warrant an agent. Also there were not enough trained potters who could throw dinnerware. So a decision had to be made—either continue as we were or move to larger quarters, install a jigger wheel and change to a semi-mass production plant. More important, by this time I had begun to question the validity of making dinnerware on a potter’s wheel in an industrial society. It seemed to me that repeating shapes on the potter’s wheel made a machine out of the individual. Man had developed equipment that made this unnecessary. It meant, of course, that the appearance of the dinnerware would change. It would have to be redesigned to fit the limitations of the machine. Spontaneity would be replaced by another esthetic—what I call consideration. We knew that many people would regret this change, just as one might regret seeing a child grow up. However, consideration is one of the characteristics of maturity, and I had to recognize it. The considered creation may be thought of as lacking in emotion, too controlled and not very exciting—yet all of us recognize the need for quiet—that spontaneity (wonderful as it may be) can be tiring. So Heath Ceramics finally came of age. We moved into larger quarters, bought a jigger wheel, four 20 cubic foot kilns, filter press, pug mill, etc. and employed an accountant. We became a legal partnership. Mr. Gustin

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became our distributor. He would act as a jobber, selling, carrying the accounts, paying us at the end of every two weeks for what had been made regardless of whether it had been sold. He also co-signed a bank loan of $10,000, which we were to repay in three years. We drew up a 5 year contract with the N. S. Gustin Company whereby they should be our sole sales organization. They still function in this capacity. Well, I must say, we grew up. Some rough times followed. The buyers who had purchased the potter’s wheel pots were not sure the jiggered ware would sell. After all, it didn’t have the handmade look. Fortunately there were small contemporary shops springing up all over the country, particularly in university areas, where our new dinnerware found an appreciative market. Also we were invited to exhibit at the Good Design Exhibitions held at Modern Museum in New York, Detroit Art Institute, Akron Art Institute, Walker Art Center and in a European traveling show which emanated from the Modern Museum in New York. Also the Home Arts or Home Economics teachers in some of the universities used the dinnerware for teaching purposes. They went so far as to write to us fan mail. In fact, I learned more about some of the inherent properties of our dinnerware compared with others on the market. They tested for chip resistance, thermal shock resistance, ease of cleaning etc. Heath rated tops. Magazines also ran articles about what we were doing. So finally, at the end of the third year, we began operating on the black side of the ledger. We now employ 22 people. All but 3 are college or art school graduates. We have a profit sharing system based on seconds’ rate. If seconds run over 15% no profits are shared—amount of profits shared is proportional to percentage of seconds. We are working at maximum production within the floor space we now have. All ware is made to order. So again we have reached a plateau in ten years. What will Lady Fortune offer us next? I now use the potter’s wheel as a sketch pad for ideas. I also collaborate with architects and with landscape architects for special ceramic installations, such as fireplaces, screens, planters, and garden walls. Do I have fun at what I do? I am proud and pleased with what 23 people do. Heath Ceramics is the result of the good work of many people—not just Edith Heath, studio potter. Is what we make mundane? To me, it is like good food, well-made, with a subtle flavor. Is this Art? Time will tell. Source: Edith Heath, “A Small Business in Ceramics,” Asilomar: First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1957), 124–27.

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Rosalie Ross: I think you had mentioned once that it [using jigger molds] was sort of like a different idea, or that it was saying you’re no longer doing handmade pottery, and you got into some sort of a—kind of a hoo-ha, didn’t you? Edith Heath: Oh, yes. Well, . . . one of the reasons why I left the [San Francisco] potters’ association, was that if you were—you couldn’t be a good potter without making the whole thing from beginning to end. If somebody else worked on the piece, it was no longer yours. In other words, you were the master—you knew everything about the piece, and therefore if you went to another way of shaping the piece, where other people could shape it, because they couldn’t throw, but they could use a machine and pull down a tool that would shape the outside. A jigger wheel is industrial adaptation of a potter’s wheel. So, if you couldn’t shape it free-hand by yourself, at least you could do it on a tool, that meant you were one step removed from being an artist, or a craftsperson, because you were now introducing a machine to do the job. And another person, who wasn’t concerned at all about the shape or who had nothing to say about the shape, would participate in the making of it. The same way in the glazing of it, and in the trimming of it, and the firing and so on. So that the things that an individual studio potter would do from beginning to end—there are about sixteen steps you go through in the shaping and making something out of clay—that could be done by sixteen different people, instead of one person doing all sixteen. So to that extent, you no longer were a craftsman, you were now an employer employing people, and so that was a no-no. Ross: Well, how did that manifest itself? Did you get into some sort of a discussion about it, was it a debate, or was it—? Heath: Well, I remember—we had been sending things to New York, to America House. That was an organization that had been started by Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb during the Depression years. She saw quilts hanging on lines out in the country, upstate New York, and there were potters who worked up there in the winter months; when they couldn’t be out in the field, they made ceramics. So she bought things from the craftspeople in New England and brought them into New York and sold them, and that was the beginning of America House. And there were many craftspeople who during the Depression had worked on the Federal Arts Projects, which included all the crafts, who were now looking for markets for their work. So America House was established as a national organization for craftspeople. The curator at that time was Mary Wright; she was the daughter of Frank Lloyd Wright. And she wrote

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to me and in effect sort of scolded me. She said, “You’re selling out.” [laughs] “Now you’re going to be making things for the mass market, and it won’t be the same thing.” Ross: Were you crushed by that? Heath: Well, I was a little bit—well, I was sort of halfway amused by it, because the idea of making things on a potter’s wheel in an industrial society really was an anachronism as far as I was concerned. It was okay to do it while I was learning, and getting the feel for the clay and so on, but after all, a machine doesn’t have a mind. The machine doesn’t decide what the shape is going to be; a human being has to decide that. So I felt that I was as much in control of what was made as I ever was. Just because I asked someone to help me didn’t mean that I had released all responsibility for the piece, because they were assisting me. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [Mary Wright] said, “You now can go into the department stores, you’re not part of the crafts movement any more.” So that was the result of that. But, the museums took another attitude, that the crafts organization did not take, and organized good design exhibitions, where things made on the machine were shown. So that it was only among the craftspeople that there was this division. And then the craftspeople, they wanted to be considered fine artists, see, as distinguished from good industrial designers. The industrial designer was different than a fine artist. Ross: And you were, in their eyes— Heath: An industrial designer. Source: Edith Heath, “Tableware and Tile for the World, Heath Ceramics, 1944–1994,” oral history interview by Rosalie Ross, 1990–92, 1994, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1995.

JACK LENOR LARSEN (b. 1927 in Seattle), an internationally renowned textile designer, writer, and curator, introduced fabrics influenced by indigenous handweaving to the textile industry. In 1952, soon after receiving a graduate degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art, he established Jack Lenor Larsen Inc., one of two design houses to be honored with an exhibition at the Palais du Louvre (1979–80). In a 1971 oral history, Larsen recounts the genesis of his business in the early 1950s and contrasts the control he exerted over his own products with the lack of control he experienced while working for others. (See also page 197.)

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Advertisement for Jack Lenor Larsen Inc., early 1950s. (Drawing by Don Wight; photo courtesy of the Jack Lenor Larsen Papers, Northwest Architectural Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries)

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Siamese silk house, Thaibok, were afraid that they were going to lose Siam and they needed an American collection, and would I design it. They were amateurs in fabric and very encouraging, and so I did. And then at a certain point I said that I had to talk to their mill, because I had to verify what kind of loom we could use and they said, “We don’t know what a mill is.” And so they put up the money and I got fabrics produced which was all new to me. But in the process I learned something about small scale power weaving. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I found a New Jersey Italian master weaver who had gone bankrupt. He knew everything and could solve any problem, and I said, “If I rent you a loom will you weave on it?” And he was delighted with that, so we rented one loom in a factory and he went to work and eventually I had sixteen looms, and my own plant. And I did run into a power loom which is faster and more reliable than the hand loom, and I could make hand woven fabrics on it—anything—I could put in half-inch strips of leather. My idea of what could be done on the hand loom versus the power loom, my definition of power woven fabrics kept expanding as I got further into it. Also I was making custom fabrics on a hand loom at one point. I had twenty weavers in and I did have real production looms—that I had never intended to produce. I just got into it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Paul Cummings: What was the problem with being a consulting designer? People wanted fabrics, they wanted to see it and buy it then— Larsen: They wanted it presented commercially, they wanted things that would sell. Usually there’d be someone in the firm who was sort of enthusiastic but then it would be turned down. That one firm—perhaps I was going to work for them one day a week, which would have been enough to keep me in beans, but they said, “Well, we don’t put anything in our collection until it’s been selling three years.” That would have been a good job for me, and I would have accepted it, and probably gotten buried in the process. I was lucky I didn’t get it. But I really expected that at some point somebody would come along and want me to do something for them and [there] would be a retainer which would pay for this and then I wouldn’t have to make fabric anymore. Just design. I found two things: nobody came around until I didn’t need them anymore, and that once I was sort of above water and had a little business going, then people would ask if I could work for them. And the other thing I found was that the control I had in doing everything under my direction—buying the yarn, approving the color, who it was to be sold to, how the samples were made, and what the photographs should look like, and what was going to be said about it—all of this, and

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in our own small way we had enormous control. Working as a consultant . . . people felt that if they bought your time, that that was all that you were supposed to care about, and if they changed the color or didn’t make it or did it in rayon instead of wool or anything, that was none of your business. And this I found very, very difficult to cope with because in a sense it spoils the fun. The reason our fabrics are really not commercial is because we labor over them for sometimes two or three years, improving and changing and developing, and it’s the craft quality in our fabrics that makes them special. Source: Jack L. Larsen, oral history interview by Paul Cummings, 1971, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

JOHN LEWIS (b. 1942 in Berkeley, California) established a glass studio in 1969 after working with Marvin Lipofsky at the University of California, Berkeley. When his first business license listed him as a glass manufacturer, he was shocked, because he had considered himself an artist. In this excerpt transcribed from a Glass Art Society panel discussion in 1978, he discusses the balancing act between creation and business and states that his academic training was no preparation for running a limitedproduction shop.

John Lewis: I have a studio in Oakland, California. It is a studio that I started when I was a student at the University of California, Berkeley. I was an architecture student in 1967 when I became interested in glass. I worked in the school studio for about 6 months then went down to Oakland and started a studio on 8th Street. I’ve been there ever since. About a year or two after I had begun the studio, I put together some furnaces, and some ovens, and started blowing glass and working on my pieces and then paying for it by the selling of the objects I made. That is where I started and then I got a questionnaire from the City of Oakland. They wanted to know what I was doing down there and so I answered the questionnaire for the purpose of leasing that building. I said I was a glass sculptor making art, and I kind of left it at that. About two weeks later I got a reply back and it was my business license. They licensed me up to do what I initially set out to do as a school project. . . . In the business license there was a little box at the bottom that said that I was a glass manufacturer and that was kind of a shock and a surprise because I never really looked at myself as a glass manufacturer. I looked at myself as an artist and a sculptor. So, periodically after this point, I kept getting redefined as a glass manufacturer. The facility company considered me a glass manufacturer, the insur-

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ance company that I buy my insurance policy from considered me a glass manufacturer. It seems that in the context of being a producer of a very difficult situation, to work out all the large problems, technical problems, and expenses, it became less and less like an art studio and more and more like a manufacturing facility. I have been able to, over the years, maintain enough of my art, fitting art with production. I have produced many salable objects, and sold enough. In a lot of situations I have done wine goblets, paperweights, objects of all kinds, bottles, and bowls, and vases and kind of whatever I could sell to cover the overhead, and in the last eight or nine years, the expenses have kept increasing all the time, with inflation and the cost of fuel. It became more and more of a business around this kind of situation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q: Looking at your work it is very repetitious and, you know, in the beginning you said you started off to be an artist and I don’t know why you didn’t stick with that. Lewis: These pieces are not as repetitious as they seem. The pieces to me are examples of different types of glass that I make at the studio and they happen to be objects that are salable and then I can support my involvement with the media. It also gives me the liberty to do experiments, to build equipment and to essentially run the show. You know, a lot of times, the point was made this morning by the professors, you know you try to find time for your art eventually. Look at my current set of circumstances as putting art on the back burner for a while and concentrating on production to meet the overhead and to meet the expenses of running the studio. Does one exclude the other? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . This morning Henry Halem started to touch on a point that I would like to rehash. About his situation at his school, where he has an institution behind him that picks up more than just free cost and rent of the space and the glass and the electric bill every month, they are picking up the whole tab essentially, and they are paying him for it. He’s got a regular salary and he’s got health programs, and retirement benefits and he has insurance and he’s got a lot of things because he is in a very fortunate position of being aligned very solidly with an institution. That is what the people on this panel are without. You know the tenured faculty, professors, are in completely different circumstances than we are here. My experiences in school were totally different with glass than they were when I got on the outside. The reality is that . . . the business of running a studio, you can’t get from a professor, because a professor is in an academic context, which

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is so far removed from the business thing that you can’t possibly demand from your professor that he is going to say, “Well, you want to take whatever you make or whatever you are manufacturing and get it out there in so and so market and work with representatives.” This is all stuff that you learn on the outside based on what the product you are manufacturing is. And manufacturing, again, is a harsh kind of word. Source: John Lewis, “Small Studio Panel,” Glass Art Society Newsletter 3, no. 1 (1978): 6–12.

HELENA HERNMARCK (b. 1941 in Stockholm) graduated from Konstfackskolan University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in her native Stockholm. She moved to Canada and then to the United States in 1975. Her immense tapestries incorporating photorealist imagery are in many museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, where she had a one-person exhibition in 1973. Making a living in the crafts often means employing others, particularly when executing major corporate and public commissions. In a 1987 oral history, Hernmarck comments on her relationship with assistants who helped produce her monumental works.

Richard Polsky: I saw that you did have two assistants in the studio. Helena Hernmarck: Yes. Polsky: On the commission that you’re just going to begin, what percentage of the physical weaving do they do? Hernmarck: It varies. But Molly [Doe Wensberg], who’s a very good weaver, has done some very good work. She has done the rug on the wall behind you. And she and I mix colors somewhat differently. In the past, I’ve always dominated my apprentices, in that I’ve been on the loom beside them. So they’ve had much more to do it exactly the way I saw it. Because Molly got here and did the blue wash without me, she’s the only one who’s ever been with me who never worked beside me, because I had a tennis elbow and was told not to weave for a year. And now she has developed her own way of interpreting my technique. And it doesn’t help in speed that I work beside her. We’ve done it a little bit, but she does just as well without me. So I’m free to do these other smaller pieces that I’m exhibiting now. So I look upon it now for the time being, as long as I have her and as long as her work is as good as it is, I’m letting her work on the big ones. Polsky: But she doesn’t sign it? Hernmarck: Her initials are on everything she’s woven. Because I always have my apprentices’ initials on the tapestries. So she hasn’t got any more

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than the others, even though in some ways she does more. But she’s well paid. Polsky: Do you put your initials on it? Hernmarck: My name is on it. And the year. And her initials. And then on the back we sometimes write out the full name of the apprentices. You know. To give all the information. But my clients have never objected to part of it or all of it being woven, as long as I’m there looking at it every day and evaluating what they’re doing. Polsky: That’s what Wendell Castle said to me too. “I’ll go right through there and say no, or stop, or do this, or that—” Hernmarck: And sometimes I’ll make them rip it up too, if it’s not what I like. So you have a certain amount of control, although one can’t say—I don’t feel totally uncomplicated about it. I have complicated feelings about it. Because if she does extremely well, in a way I’m jealous of her. She’s doing what I enjoy doing, and in some ways I’m better than her. But right now it just works out this way. But nothing lasts forever, so I know Molly wants to have a baby fairly soon, so then we’ll have to rearrange our relationship. She might become a free-lance with me and just work on some projects. So, you know, it’s all going to change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Polsky: Let’s say somebody came from Cranbrook or some other school. Do those people want to come and work with you? Is that a good job for them to have? Hernmarck: . . . I think it takes a special sort of person, who’s willing to work under somebody else. Even the way I was when I was young. I didn’t want to work under anyone else. So in most cases it works if they do it between undergraduate and graduate school. And I’ve had two or three people who have come for some years in between and then gone back to Cranbrook, let’s say, and did their own thing. When they are working for me they are very heavily influenced by my way of thinking. And I’ve also had two or three people who have left me and then continued making copies of my kind of work. But that sort of deteriorates after a while. It’s not anything I’m worried about, because some of them come and say, “I want a Hernmarck at a quarter of the price,” and they get it. They think they get it. But that’s just part of life. If you use help and want help, then you’re also teaching people a skill that is yours. And then they can take it and use it as they want. If they know what is good for them, they’ll go and develop their own style of art. But they learn a terrific amount about quality and color and finish and that’s very valuable to them. Because they couldn’t get that experience anywhere else.

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Source: Helena Hernmarck, “Reminiscences of Helena Hernmarck,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1987, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:38–40.

NORMA MINKOWITZ (b. 1937 in Bronx, New York) crochets open-worked sculpture of the human body. A 1958 graduate of the Cooper Union School of Art, Minkowitz translated her interest in drawing, line, and transparency into textile forms in the early 1980s. In a 1987 oral history, Minkowitz discusses the inception of her career. As a lonely young housewife, she started designing textile objects for women’s magazines, an activity she did not classify as art. Her involvement with textiles and her ambitions for the medium grew as her business progressed.

And then we moved to Hatfield, Massachusetts [in 1964], it was really lonely. It was tobacco country, with nobody around. And I started to read these magazines, like Woman’s Day and McCall’s, and there were always fiber and fabric gift items, and I thought, gee, it would be great if I could make something and sell it to the magazine. And I started to make things that were quite decorative, that didn’t really relate to art, because I don’t think at that time I really thought of anything with fiber or fabric as an art form. And I started to make things and I sold them immediately to the magazines. . . . I would send the work and they would offer me, fifty, sixty dollars, and they would give [readers] instructions on how to make it. . . . Or often I would send it in and they would just do a pattern from it. It was kind of exciting at the beginning and then it started to get really boring. And things just became a little more sophisticated each time, and then the work got more interesting. And then I did a series of pillow forms that were very sculptural, and at that time America House was where the American Craft Museum is in New York, and I brought down some of the forms and they took it, and Armstrong Cork Company bought them and used them in their room settings in a major magazine and they were very well received. And then it just kept getting further away from the how-to-do, and finally I joined a couple of organizations like Artist Craftsmen of New York and the Society of Connecticut Craftsmen in Connecticut, and the work evolved into wall hangings, and at that time already I was seeing things that were being done by other artists, and this whole sort of direction of very organic and textured work was starting to focus in my mind and I started experimenting. And what I was doing at first were very flat objects with fabric, and they began to become more sculptural and three-dimensional, and pretty soon the wall pieces would have stuffed crochet forms on it, and they were departing from the square form and they started to become rounder. And, STARTI NG A BUSI N ESS

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at this point I was already exhibiting in gallery shops with these organizations and I started winning awards for Best in Fiber, Best in Show. And it just kept building. Source: Norma Minkowitz, “Reminiscences of Norma Minkowitz,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1987, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:15–16.

BYRON TEMPLE (b. 1933 in Centerville, Indiana; d. 2002 in Louisville, Kentucky) made functional pottery for more than fifty years. Between 1959 and 1961, after attending Ball State University, Brooklyn Museum Art School, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Temple apprenticed with the great British potter Bernard Leach (1897– 1979) in St. Ives, England. From 1962 to 1989 Temple operated a production pottery in Lambertville, New Jersey, where he produced a range of standard tableware and supplied major retailers with up to 15,000 pots per year. Like Edith Heath, Byron Temple got an early boost from a large order placed by a prestigious department store. In a 1987 oral history, he discusses the labor of being a salesman and production potter, as well as his willingness to make the same designs over long periods of time to satisfy his customers’ demands for consistency and reliability.

Byron Temple: The very first account I had was Georg Jensen, which was at 54th and Fifth [in New York]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I had samples. . . . I had a little printed catalogue, and I said, “This is what I do. Here are some samples to give you some idea of quality and the colors. I’ll make whatever you want.” Richard Polsky: And I will sit at my wheel from morning to night? Temple: And do it. Polsky: . . . And I will make cups that you won’t be able to tell one from another. Temple: Right. And the price is right. And what he did was—the man I saw, he pushed this lot aside. He said, “I hate these. I like these. I’ll have a gross of this, a gross of that, and a gross of that.” I almost had a heart attack. Not that a gross was such a big number. I was very pleased that he wanted that number. He didn’t just want one or two dozen. So that was my first account. I made an appointment. I got cleaned up. Took my samples in on the Greyhound bus and checked one bag at Port Authority, and took my other bag of samples. And come back and switch if I needed to. And I came home. And I got the order ready and probably borrowed a car and drove it into the city to their shipping point, which is actually Long Island City. But that was my first go at it. But I thought, why 162

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start at the bottom? Why start at the tacky little shops that we’ve all forgotten the names of? Go to the guy at the top, who wasn’t selling a lot of handmade goods, but some, at Jensen. Polsky: Did you get your name on the line? Did you say to him, “I need to have—”? Temple: No. But each pot has my mark on it. Polsky: But who would know? Temple: At that time no one knew. Now it’s valuable, but no one knew. He was willing to take a chance on me. Polsky: But you didn’t say, “I want this to be my line”? Temple: No. He just chose from my presented samples, which was a cohesive line of mugs, creamers and sugarers, cookie jars, pitchers, and so on down the line. Utilitarian, usable goods, of which some he liked and some he didn’t. And he chose from those and started selling them at Jensen’s. But again, I admire him, because I was unknown. He’d never heard of me. I wasn’t a name. Now the phone rings. I don’t have to go any place any more. I used to take my canvas shopping bag and go out. I had to. The first ten years I was on the road about twice a year. I’d rent a car. I’d go to Washington, St. Louis, up to Chicago, and back. That circle, so to speak. I would go no further. Make samples, take samples, make deliveries, if I could. See new people. I’d go about twice a year. And each time I had a catalogue. I could leave it. I’d say, “If you want a dozen of number 36, you phone me or send me a postcard, and we’ll get you a dozen of number 36 in the mail.” What other craftsman was doing that in 1950? Polsky: Nobody. Temple: Nobody. Right. Polsky: Or today. Temple: Very few. Right. That’s why I’ve made it. Because I’m willing to work. And I’m not afraid to catalogue. It’s a big commitment to print that catalogue and say you’re going to make these same damned pots for the next eight years or whatever. Source: Byron Temple, “Reminiscences of Byron Temple,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1987, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:41–43.

MARGARET DE PATTA (b. 1903 in Tacoma, Washington; d. 1964 in Oakland, California) studied with Bauhaus émigré László Moholy-Nagy at the School of Design in Chicago in 1942 and became a central figure in the American modernist jewelry movement. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Metal Arts Guild and an advocate for and mentor to many Bay Area jewelers. In a 1989 article for Metalsmith magazine, De Patta echoes the social ideals of the STARTI NG A BUSI N ESS

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Margaret De Patta at work, ca. 1948. (Photo by George Straus Photography, courtesy of the Margaret De Patta Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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Bauhaus in wishing to create well-designed, affordable objects for a broad audience, not just the luxury market. She defends her role as designer and manufacturer against the negative reaction of some in the craft community, a reaction also felt by Edith Heath.

For quite some time I had become aware of contradictions between my social viewpoints and my method of work. Contact with the Bauhaus in Chicago clarified and strengthened the tendencies toward social integration. However I was justifiably apprehensive of the time demands of business that would interfere with my working and designing time—also the cost factors of even simple production plans appeared appalling. Believing firmly in the modern production potentialities to produce better articles in greater volume for the many and also believing in the ability of the average man or woman to appreciate honesty and integrity of design, I set out at last upon a new, and, for me, revolutionary path—I became an artist craftsman accepting the challenge of bridging the gap between the craftsman and production. So here then was the aim—to produce more than one piece of each design and to sell these pieces at a lower cost. It would have been possible to proceed upon another path—to produce more pieces and by increasing the number of retail outlets to place these at the same figure as formerly. Being somewhat of an idealist and not a capitalist at heart, I determined to place my designs upon the market at a figure to compete with the comparable material quality of costume jewelry. The problems entailed in this production venture can be best understood only by other designers also engaged in this heartbreaking pioneer work. In the entire field of jewelry production I found a perpetuation of traditional [techniques] and in spite of the innovation of a few modern processes the designs were still of past eras. A good design reflects the [techniques] and the viewpoints of its age, therefore no matter how beautiful an old design may be it is still a sad, mistaken thing when copied or imitated in our own day. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Opposition to my new work comes from other sources. This remark overheard and repeated by a friend—“Margaret De Patta? Oh! She has gone commercial” caused me to wonder. Is it a sin for an artist to earn his livelihood from his work? Is it more ethical to produce for the favored few than for the larger group? Have I betrayed and degraded my standards of design and workmanship established over so many years? The answers here are obvious, especially to those who have seen these later things. I am proud of the fact that the popularly priced piece is indistinguishable from the

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“one-of-a-kind” piece. It delights me to no end to display a group of these things and see the baffled frustration on the faces of the “handcraft for handcraft’s sakers” as they realize their inability to distinguish one group from the other. The design and the model are produced by me. The materials used are the same sterling silver and semiprecious stones. The workmanship and finish are of the exact same quality, the remaining difference being in the number of pieces produced of a given design. Source: Margaret De Patta, “Jewelry for an Ever-Increasing Minority,” Metalsmith 9, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 8. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

In order to secure income and support the creation of one-of-a-kind pieces, many artists produce a line of cheaper objects. Glassblower RICHARD MARQUIS (b. 1945) describes his production studio, Noble Effort (1983–87), and the nature of designing and creating multiples in a Glass Work magazine interview. (See also page 83.)

Richard Marquis: I started Noble Effort in 1983 with my partner, Ro Purser. But since 1975 I have run a production studio along with my artwork. There are many reasons. The major reason is that when I make art pieces there are no guarantees that anybody else will like them or would want to buy them. So, I have to have regular job to support myself and the regular job I have chosen is to be a production glassblower. The first purpose of production is providing the income, money. The other one is that it is just like training. To do a lot of things that I want to do for my art pieces, I have to be pretty good. And you don’t get good if you just blow glass once a month or twice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is a lot of problems when I do production glassblowing. The biggest problem is a confusion among shops and galleries. It goes like this: Who does this piece? It’s a Noble Effort piece. But you made it, Dick Marquis made it, right? Right. So, this is your piece, right? No, this is Noble Effort’s piece. What’s the difference? You made it, so why is it not your piece? Because, I designed it and I just happen to be the person who made it. But I don’t have to be the person who made it. But that’s really confusing. Now Noble Effort is going on over five years, and it has become less confusing. But in the beginning, most shops would sell Noble Effort with my name on it. It was really confusing. 166

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Koji Matano: What are you really doing as a worker of a production studio? Marquis: What I do is I become two different people, actually three people. One is: I’m a partner in this company. Right now, I own 50 percent of the company. Then, I’m also sort of a major designer. Then, the other aspect, I’m the worker. For five years the shop, Noble Effort, was right here [Puget Sound]. This building right over here. So I had to take care of everything. I had to do the charges, unload annealers and everything. I was sort of baby sitter, that was the caretaker’s job. Now it’s done. The studio was moved to my partner Ro’s place. Now it’s really nice because I’m like an employee. I get up early and I go to work. Theoretically, I walk in and I am told what to do, which takes a big burden off my mind. I don’t have to think about preparing. Ro is doing that. Also, in my own work, say, I want to make something with Latticino [patterned glass] rods. I’ve gotten this incredible choice of colors because we are doing Noble Effort. And also, because we are doing it as production, we always figure out better ways to make it because we do it so much. We have engineered labor saving devices to do it. If I was only using, say, Latticino in making my own pieces, I would hardly ever make it. Because we run it through the production business, we make it more often and we are getting better and better. So the production work benefits my artwork. Source: Richard Marquis, “Richard Marquis: Production Artwork Artist,” interview by Koji Matano, Glass Work, no. 2 (July 2, 1989): 21–24.

SHEILA HICKS (b. 1934), who lives in Paris and works on architecturally scaled textiles, describes the problems of leading an atelier as a woman and a foreigner in a 2004 oral history. As head of an international business, she faces complex contractual and management issues and must adapt her production methods to assure that the projects she designs can be completed even if she leaves the country. (See also page 66.)

Sheila Hicks: I had already worked with local craftsmen in Mexico and paid them with the proceeds of our combined work. [In Paris] I found two women willing to join me in the adventure of setting up a studio. These two French women, Danielle Gatti and Nicole Bonnetain, helped me take over the lease from Monsieur and Madame Delage, and form the Atelier des Grands Augustins. They explained to me what we could do, what we couldn’t do, and it consisted of no-nos: c’est pas possible. Everything I STARTI NG A BUSI N ESS

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thought we could try wasn’t legal or wasn’t the way it was supposed to be done. So I listened a lot and then I would make an end-run around barriers, but without following all of the prescribed rules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The problem was I was an American living in France; I was a woman; I didn’t have a well-known family or backing here, so it was hit-and-miss. Just when I thought I’d solved a problem, someone else would tell me why it was impossible and I’d have to set the clock back and try to find another way. That was in the smallest things like shipping, insurance . . . customs, of course, but even to insure a project at the outset—“Madame, how do we know you’ll be here throughout the project and if you take a loan at the bank, what guarantees can you give? This project depends so totally on you, your design, your vision, and your signature that it’s worthless if it can’t be completed.” So I had to find ways that it could be completed with or without me. My solution was to build into the basic principles of the work the concept of a repetitive module. I established the design, texture, scale, and color. Then I would teach others how to fabricate it so they could go on without me. With an error of margin, besides, that could add charm. I said error of margin. What I meant was margin of error. Maybe, in my mind, they’re both the same thing. I had to learn what it was like to be a construction unit, so I talked to people in the construction business: to electricians, plumbers, and small entrepreneurs, figuring out how they wrote their contracts—how they protected themselves when clients didn’t pay or when they wanted to change everything en route. Imagine if someone decides mid-project they don’t like yellow; they’d rather have blue. How do you cope with that kind of catastrophe when you’ve been working for six months for a client and their architects come to the studio, okay colors, designs, and then change their minds? It’s both exhilarating and frightening to work on large projects. You feel vulnerable. I am not a businesswoman. Monique Lévi-Strauss: But you have become one. Hicks: Not really. I shouldn’t tell this, but I’m poor in calculating and switching back and forth between inches and centimeters, yards and meters, pounds and kilos, so I have to cover myself by calculating large, which means I sometimes have considerable stocks of material left over after a project. That can be good. But what if I’m short of materials? How do I complete a project in a convincing way? These are the kind of problems that arise: you must become a problem solver, improvising creatively, and hope to surprise yourself— Lévi-Strauss: Yes, because you have an immense imagination. 168

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Hicks: Problems force creativity. What happens if I don’t manage to get through a project with unpleasant people? Everyone’s positive at the beginning, but things can turn sour along the way. What then? Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Sometimes you don’t invite clients to come back. Or you cancel a project in the middle and take the loss because you know you’re not going to be able to bring it to a happy ending. Source: Sheila Hicks, oral history interview by Monique Lévi-Strauss, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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8 Engaging the Market Finding buyers for one’s work is a major concern for those without dependable salaries from teaching or other activities. In the days before widespread craft fairs and galleries, Betty Woodman describes how establishing an annual Christmas sale provided her with an income. Such direct sales enable makers to sell their work and to keep more of the profits without the intervention of third parties. Galleries, on the other hand, offer artists an advocate, a space to exhibit, advertising, and insulation from clients. Working with a gallery, however, means negotiating with gallery owners and dividing sales income. Nora Naranjo-Morse writes a poem about the encounter between a Pueblo artist and a gallery director that illustrates how cultural differences and an imbalance of power can affect this relationship. Jun Kaneko shows that the balance of power can shift when an artist is well established.

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MARGUERITE WILDENHAIN (1896–1985) opened the Pond Farm pottery studio in 1942 and worked and taught there until her death. She notes the economic and educational impediments to making a living as an independent artist and discusses the fundamental economic advantages attained by academics. In a talk at a 1957 craft conference, Wildenhain shows clear resentment about their dominance in craft organizations and expresses dismay with the current state of academic training. The split between independents and academics is echoed by John Lewis (see page 157) among others. (See also pages 9, 96, 226.)

I do not accept the statement that a technical age is in itself a danger to the craftsman. On the contrary. Since today hand production does not also mean mass-production, the craftsman becomes free to be quite creative and personal in his work. This puts him on a level that is not in competition with industrial mass production. If the craftsman today cannot make a living with the work from his hands, this is due, as I see it, to two sorts of reasons—economic and educational. The economic reasons are: (1) The lack of direct contact and direct sales from producer to consumer. The 50% discount given to shops and decorators takes most of the profit from the producer and puts it into the pocket of the retailer. (2) The sales at “bargain prices” by major colleges of work by students, with equipment and materials paid by the taxpayers, and with help by teachers. This is an unfair competition to all young craftsmen who are trying to make a living on their own. (3) The “free craftsman” who makes a living from the work of his hands, who has not a regular salary or income to fall back on, is in no way adequately represented. Most organizations in the field of crafts choose teachers as representatives. These do not face the same problems as the craftsman on his own. The teacher-craftsman has a salary. The work he sells is only a supplement to his income from teaching. Besides, his workshop is equipped and maintained by the school where he teaches. He even has student labor at his disposition. (4) Shows and jury practices are often detrimental to craftsmen and to good craftsmanship, mostly due to incompetence of jurors. There exists a need for co-operatives and sales organizations run by craftsmen themselves which could sell to private customers, and also contact architects and potential customers, like federal and civil institutions. In all craftsmen’s organizations there should be at least as many free craftsmen as teacher-craftsmen to ensure fair representation. We need, and should have, a completely revised attitude toward shows, jurying, entrance fees, prizes, insurance, sales discounts. ENGAGING THE MARKET

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I have spoken of educational reasons responsible for the craftsman’s economic insecurity. These may be briefly summarized as follows. (1) The crafts education in most schools is not sufficiently basic or thorough. The student may go out with a Master’s degree, but is not equipped to stand on his own feet in competition with other free craftsmen. Also the expensive equipment and liberal materials provided by the school, the wasteful use of both in often senseless experimentation, give the student a totally unrealistic approach to his work. He feels lost when he has to earn all the things he took for granted in school. (2) Also, the fact that students in the crafts are often taught to be so-called “artists,” and to “express themselves” before they are even halfway decent apprentices, and in no way yet equipped, either as artists or craftsmen, to do so, fosters half-baked craftsmen, who are no artists and who are very poor teachers. (3) There is a lack of moral principles and of ethical approach to their work in many craftsmen today. The best-selling object is made, regardless of aesthetics or artistic integrity. Points of view and styles are changed from day to day. (4) The average young student craftsman is talked into getting a teaching job before he has ever tried to work on his own, and before he has proved that he can do this. He is discouraged to risk his “security” with the pessimistic cliché, “A craftsman cannot make a living at it today.” What a confession of incompetence. The truth is that the craftsman will be able to do so, IF HE IS GOOD. A discussion of this I regard as the most essential duty of our conference. The whole educational system in the field of art and the crafts needs discussion and reappraisal. Crafts should be taught in workshops over long periods counted in years, not in courses counted by hours and credits. Industrial production, including knowledge of materials, processes, price calculation, should be a part of every craftsman’s training. Emphasis should be put on the value of making certain things by hand not merely for the production itself, but for the development of the individual. We need, too, to fight the lack of ethical standards in our times, to encourage our youth to become honest and creative craftsmen, devoted to an ideal based on human dignity and independence. Source: Marguerite Wildenhain, “Ceramics—The Socio-Economic Outlook,” in Asilomar: First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1957), 17–18.

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ARLINE FISCH (b. 1931), a noted jeweler and academic, battled with the U.S. Customs Service over the definition of art, a discussion that could also be included in part 4 of this book. The financial implications of this discussion are clear, however—inflexible regulations that codify traditional roles undoubtedly affect artists’ careers. According to the Customs Service, objects with a function or an implied function cannot be classified as works of art. Fisch, after experiencing repeated difficulty in getting her jewelry back from international exhibitions because of this regulation, applied for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to challenge it. Excerpts from Fisch’s 1981 grant application are presented here, followed by excerpts from her resulting request to the Customs Service, via her attorney, Mr. Shapiro. In the third segment of this entry, Harvey Fox of the Customs Service replies to Fisch’s request, indicating at length why little can be done. (See also pages 103, 127, 217, 261.)

PROJECT: To develop and implement equitable United States Customs regulations for craft objects. PURPOSE: The purpose of this project is to change the current U.S. Customs regulations applied to craft objects. The regulations now in use vary with each material and specific object (e.g. wall hanging, teapot, silver jewelry) and are those which have been developed for commercial application. When applied to unique craft objects, especially those intended primarily for exhibition, they are inconsistently interpreted by local Customs officials. In contrast, items classified as “Works of Art” are not dutiable and are subject to fewer restrictions and costs when entering the United States. The intention of this proposal is to redefine craft objects as Works of Art. OBJECTIVES: 1. To develop consistent regulations applied to all unique craft objects made by individual artists regardless of material. 2. To approach the problem from an administrative rather than a legislative level, and to work within the interpretive parameters of the Customs Service to avoid statutory changes requiring Congressional action. 3. To redefine “Works of Art” to include craft objects of artistic significance regardless of material or possible function. 4. To develop documentation and creditable expert opinion for including craft objects in the “Works of Art” category. 5. To produce an informational pamphlet clearly explaining U.S. Customs regulations as applied to craft objects, and to circulate this information as widely as possible.

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BACKGROUND: As the Vice President for North America of the World Crafts Council I have been made aware of the difficulties facing individual United States craftpeople who participate in international exhibitions, and of craftpeople from other countries who wish to exhibit and sell their work in the United States. The Customs regulations applied to craft objects are those intended for commercial production and quantities; they are inappropriate for unique or very limited production items. At the same time, the category of “Works of Art” is so specifically and narrowly defined as to preclude the use of this designation by craft artists, despite the allowance for “the first 10 castings” of a sculpture or for seemingly unlimited numbers of “engravings, etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and other prints . . . printed by hand.” There is an opportunity for a broader interpretation of definition of Works of Art indicated in discussions already held with a staff officer of the Customs Service in Washington, D.C. He advised the preparation of detailed documentation for the consideration of craft objects as Works of Art, including expert opinion from museums, galleries and other qualified sources. With the current growth and stature of the craft movement this should not be a difficult task but it needs to be implemented and accomplished as quickly as possible. This would greatly encourage United States participation in international craft exhibitions, and would bring quality international craft objects into United States exhibitions and galleries. Source: Arline M. Fisch, “Grant Application to National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Arts Program,” 1981, Arline Fisch Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

INTRODUCTION Artists who work in craft media experience great difficulty with current customs regulations. Although the works produced by these artists are fully accepted in the art world and are invited for inclusion in international art exhibitions, they are considered under commercial categories by the Customs Service and are subject to import duties solely on the basis of their materials and possibility of function. Further, when they are declared as works of art they are subject to inconsistent and capricious rulings by local Customs Service officials because they are not specifically cited in the tariff schedule’s definition of works of art. Craft media and craft artists are fully recognized in the national and international art worlds. They must be given equal treatment with all other 174

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artists and art media by the U.S. Customs Service. It is possible to do this within the existing tariff schedule if a broader interpretation of the definition of “original works of the free fine arts” is allowed and if such an interpretation is consistently applied by all officials of the service. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM It is the contention of this submission that the Customs Service has the discretionary authority to interpret the current statutes, in accordance with the intention of the Congress, to include decorative and ornamental objects made by artist/craftspeople in materials such as clay, wood, fiber, metal, glass, and paper. Objects made with the primary intention of aesthetic statement and artistic expression which may have some minimal functional capability are currently accepted as bonafide works of art by museums and galleries which exhibit them equally with other artistic modes of expression (such as drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, and sculpture). In contrast to this view, the current Customs statutes define “free fine arts” as excluding specifically any articles of utility or for industrial use. This exclusion is applied to all articles which “might” be for use regardless of the actual functional capability, or of the specific intention of the artist responsible for their design and fabrication. There is therefore a need to develop an acceptable Customs definition of “works of art” which includes certain types of contemporary art not presently allowed except after extensive litigation calling for elaborate documentation and expert testimony. Source: Arline M. Fisch, “Request for Change in Regulations and Procedures for Works in Craft Media,” undated, Arline Fisch Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Shapiro, This is in reply to your letter of December 8, 1982, which enclosed the results of a study entitled “Request for Change in Regulations and Procedures for Works of Art in Craft Media” prepared by Arline M. Fisch, San Diego, California. Ms. Fisch states that artists who work in craft media experience difficulty with current Customs regulations as applied to item 765.25, Tariff Schedules of the United States (TSUS). She argues that craft media and craft artists are fully recognized in the art world and therefore should be given equal treatment with all other art media and artists by the Customs Service; she maintains that it is possible to do this within the existing tariff provisions ENGAGING THE MARKET

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if a broader interpretation of the definition of “original works of the free fine arts” is allowed and if such an interpretation is consistently applied by all Customs officers. She therefore requests, first, that item 765.25, TSUS, be amended to cover various materials “of the crafts person” in a wide variety of forms, second, that certain characteristics or criteria be applied to objects in craft media so that they may qualify as works of art, and third, that specific simplified Customs procedures be adopted to assist both American artists exhibiting abroad and foreign artists exhibiting in the United States. Under item 765.25, TSUS, original works of the free fine arts (other than those covered by items 765.03 to 765.20, TSUS), in any media, are entitled to duty-free treatment. Based on the language of this statutory provision, and in accordance with a long line of court decisions interpreting that language, the Customs Service has taken the position that item 765.25 is limited to creations that are (1) original in design, conception, and execution, as distinguished from the works of skilled craftsmen which are representative of decorated or manufactured arts, and (2) of such fine quality and high artistic talent as to be recognized as examples of the free fine arts by recognized art authorities. The scope of item 765.25 is further limited by Headnotes 1(ii) and (iv) of Subpart A, Part 11, Schedule 7, TSUS, which excludes therefrom both painted or decorated manufactured articles and articles of utility or for industrial use. In response to Ms. Fisch’s request to amend item 765.25, TSUS, it must first be stated that the Customs Service has no authority to take such an action since the provisions contained in the tariff schedules are statutory enactments which may be amended only by the Congress. Furthermore, we do not have the authority to apply a broader interpretation of the words “original works of the free fine arts” in derogation of the clear statutory language and the judicial determinations as to the meaning to be ascribed thereto. Therefore, to the extent that works in craft media do not fall within the scope of item 765.25 as set forth in the preceding paragraph, there is a limitation on what the Customs Service can do to alter the basic legal situation outlined by Ms. Fisch. As concerns the specific new text of item 765.25 proposed by Ms. Fisch, we note that it replaces the words “original works of the free fine arts” contained in the present provision with the words “materials of the crafts person”; thus, there would no longer be a specific provision in the schedules covering those original works of the free fine arts which are outside the craft media. Moreover, it is noted that the new text proposed by Ms. Fisch mentions vessels, containers, garments, baskets, furniture, and jewelry. Since such products are articles of utility within the meaning of Headnote 1(iv), it would be necessary to amend the headnote in order to avoid a con176

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flict between the two provisions. For these reasons we are not in favor of the text as proposed. With respect to Ms. Fisch’s proposed characteristics or criteria for objects in craft media to qualify as works of art, it is noted that uniqueness of the work is presently considered by the Customs Service in determining whether an article is classifiable in item 765.25, TSUS. The other criteria, however, do not appear to be very useful in making these determinations. As concerns the criterion of “artistic intent, the primary motivation being artistic expression,” we do not believe that the subjective motivation of the artist could ever be sufficiently identified for the purpose of making a legal determination concerning the applicability of item 765.25, TSUS, to a particular work. Similarly, the criterion of “aesthetic quality more significant than functional capability” would require a balancing between aesthetic quality, which is subjective, and the more objective standard of functional capability; given the difficulty involved in attempting to quantify aesthetic quality we believe it is more practical simply to determine whether or not a particular article is essentially functional in nature. As concerns the alleged procedural difficulties experienced by artists in craft media in importing their works into the United States and the solutions to those problems proposed by Ms. Fisch, it is noted, first, that the problems mainly involve legal issues relating to the applicability of item 765.25 to works in craft media and, second, that the proposed solutions depend on acceptance of Ms. Fisch’s request to amend that tariff provision. To the extent that there is an apparent inconsistency in the treatment given by Customs officers to works in craft media, we would suggest that this may result not so much from an inconsistent application of the principles of classification as from the fact that each work must be judged on its own merits with the result that the legal conclusion reached in respect of one work may not be applicable to another work which has different characteristics. As far as the request for simplification of procedures is concerned, it must be recognized that the present procedures (e.g., registration of a work with Customs prior to exportation to facilitate reentry under item 800.00, 802.10 or 802.30, TSUS, and requiring a surety bond to cover an importation under item 862.10 or item 864.70, TSUS) are necessary to ensure compliance with the tariff provisions enacted by the Congress. Given the lack of discretion on the part of the Customs Service to modify or ignore the statutory enactments of the Congress, there are definite limitations on what we can do to significantly modify the present procedures. Nevertheless, we do have some concern for artists who experience problems in attempting to obtain information on import requirements and procedures. In this regard, we believe that it might be useful to have a pamENGAGING THE MARKET

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phlet summarizing those requirements and procedures for the guidance of American and foreign artists. Accordingly, we will look into the possibility of publishing such a pamphlet which we believe would serve to eliminate much of the apparent confusion in this area. I would like to thank you for providing us with an opportunity to respond to Ms. Fisch’s comments and proposals. She is to be complimented for her detailed work which reflects a considerable amount of effort and careful thought. Sincerely, (signed) Harvey B. Fox Director, Classification and Value Division [U.S. Customs Service] Source: Letter from Harvey B. Fox to Mr. Shapiro, February 1983, Arline Fisch Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

HENRY HALEM (b. 1938 in New York) was introduced to glass while serving as Harvey Littleton’s assistant at the University of Wisconsin in 1968. He subsequently taught at Kent State University in Ohio (1969–98), where he founded and built one of the preeminent glass studios in the country. His book Glass Notes (1996) is widely used in the field. Halem writes in a 1982–83 article in the Glass Art Society Journal that money is corrupting the creativity of colleagues working in glass. He believes that many artists, with the encouragement of their galleries, respond to the economic success of their peers by seeking moneymaking gimmicks in their art. Halem counsels detachment from the market and a return to individual creativity.

I am afraid [that what] I see happening is—and I hope I’m wrong but I raise the question anyway—that the economic picture has intruded itself upon much of what is passing for creativity. That is, there are many of us who are beginning to make fairly decent sums of money. Certainly not by comparison to what many painters and sculptors make, but there is this success, and this whole idea of what success is has intruded itself upon many of the people who are working their way through this material of glass. What many of them seem to be seeking is not so much an individual direction or an individual answer to a question that they raise about what they are creatively and what they want to do creatively with glass, but what for lack of a better word, what kind of gimmick, what kind of concept they can be developing that will give them the success that some of us are having.

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Now some of the success that we enjoy comes about from the natural order of things, of hard work. Much of what we get is earned. But I don’t see many people seeing that as being what is perhaps rightfully ours as an extension of what hard work is about in this society. The reward in this society many times is money because of the way we are as a culture and society. But that’s the unimportant part. What I do want to talk about is the younger people grasping and reaching out for the wrong ideals and ideas, and that is the overnight kind of success which I’m afraid some galleries encourage. Without young artists they don’t have new people. Eventually the collectors have our work and they no longer want more pieces of ours, and naturally they look for the new people which they can get and have in their collections, and rightfully so. I’m not placing any blame; you cannot blame anybody certainly but yourselves, and I’d be a fool to blame galleries and blame collectors. Galleries have pragmatic concerns. So, as artists, we need to fight some of the pragmatic concerns that some of the galleries have and we need to steel ourselves and cut ourselves off sometimes and say, “The hell with the gallery, the hell with the collector. I need to go and work for one year, for two years; take a job as a bagger, take a job as a postperson.” Certainly many of you can say, as a little aside, that it’s easy for me to say this. Well, it is easy for me to say. I did go into teaching when jobs were there, and I went into teaching for the reason that I did not want to have to deal with what many of you have to deal with. And I admit it is difficult. There are no teaching jobs for you to relax in and do what you want to do when you want to do it. But still, it is important for the health of glass—it is important for your health to find your way in this material, and not try and find the easy way. There is no easy way, and it is more difficult now. It sometimes is easy to find a gimmick when you develop a good craft vocabulary. You become very glib with your craft vocabulary and make things that are pretty slick looking. Many times I have gone into galleries and have seen collections of work that have what you would call the “Oooooo” factor or the “Wow” factor; you are all aware of what this is about, especially in glass. For those of you who are uninitiated, you go into a gallery and you go “Wow, look at that!” And before you know it, you’ve purchased the piece. Then a month down the road, you’re looking at it—usually it’s the next day, though—you’re looking at it and you go, “Not so wow!” There really is not much content. There’s a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. Source: Henry Halem, “Where Are We Going?” Glass Art Society Journal (1982–83): 68–74.

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ALPHONSE MATTIA (b. 1947 in Philadelphia), an avant-garde furniture maker, received his M.F.A. in industrial design with Tage Frid at the Rhode Island School of Design. He has been an influential teacher there since 1990. Mattia swings between making work for himself (“spec pieces”) and making furniture for others. He suggests in a 1985 oral history that working with clients on commission is a necessary grounding in the community.

I have a real problem when you’re building work—spec pieces. Spec pieces for a while—I made them. And you start getting horny as a designer and you start thinking, “This is too personal. Here I am making these spec pieces. I really need to work with a client. I need somebody to come in and say, ‘I have this big dining room. I want this funny sideboard over here. And I want the table to—’” You know, when I don’t do it for a while, I get hungry to do that, to work with somebody. Make a commission for them. Usually, after every commission, I swear I won’t do any more for a while. I know it’s not forever, but I know I’ve had enough for a while. Now I’m going to do what I want to do. Build some spec pieces. And then I do the spec pieces and I feel it’s too internal. Source: Alphonse Mattia, “Reminiscences of Alphonse Mattia,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1985, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:99.

FRANCIS WHITAKER (b. 1906 in Woburn, Massachusetts; d. 1999 in Glenwood Springs, Colorado) apprenticed to blacksmiths Samuel Yellin (1885–1940) in Philadelphia and Julius Schramm in Berlin. An esteemed writer and mentor in the field, Whitaker closed his Mountain Forge in Aspen, Colorado, in 1989 and donated his tools to the new Whitaker Blacksmith School of the Colorado Rocky Mountain School. At the 1976 conference of blacksmiths in Carbondale, Illinois, that marked the revival of smithing as a studio craft (see L. Brent Kington, page 129), Francis Whitaker discovered a mission to convey the knowledge he had amassed over the previous fifty years. The excerpt below comes from The Blacksmith’s Cookbook (1986), which became the primary text in the field, combining instructional recipes with accumulated wisdom.

This gate that we are building—I came a day early, and we spent a whole day on making what I call mistake pieces or test pieces or trial pieces. I still, in my shop, take the time to do that same thing, and I don’t charge it to the job, because if I have to make test pieces, that means I really don’t know what I am doing completely. On many jobs I don’t have to do that, but the jobs still come along pretty frequently where I have to make a test piece, 180

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Francis Whitaker at the NEA blacksmith’s workshop, Southern Illinois University, 1978. (Photo courtesy of the L. Brent Kington Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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and I very often have to make special tools. I used to think that I should get paid for every minute that I put in, but if you do that, you aren’t going to succeed. The time will come when all the time that you give in learning and in training yourself, and in doing uncompromising work and having satisfied customers will pay off. Nowadays, I almost never quote a price. People come to me and say, “Mr. Whitaker, we know you do fine work. Will you do this and send us a bill?” That didn’t come overnight, and it came because I never compromised on a job. Once in a great while, you will find a customer you can’t possibly please anyway, and you have to have the wisdom to understand that, and sometimes write the whole job off. If you insist on doing good work, and never short your customer, when you get to the end of a job and it doesn’t quite fit, you don’t throw it together. It’s like the gate. The bottom rail has been a stinker, and we’ve worked it over and over. We were ready to put it together, and it still wasn’t quite right. We worked it over until it was. The young smith must realize that the material he works with is very stubborn, and the only way he can master it is to be more stubborn. For the human body and flesh to be more stubborn than the steel really means mastering it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There’s a great demand for good hardware, good fire tools, good railings. If you can make good samples, if you can make a small brochure with half a dozen good illustrations—no prices, don’t set up a catalog—the minute you do, you go to a lower class of customer. And the architectural field, in my opinion, is the field for the blacksmith. The craft fairs are not, because the people who buy there are accustomed to buying ready made articles. There’s a big difference between the person who buys a ready made article and the person who wants it custom made. The custom market is the place to go. You can go through architects, you can go through interior designers, but never operate on a commission basis. Say, “This is my price. I’ll sell it to you or I’ll sell it to the client for the same price. If you want your commission, you arrange that with the client.” And you can approach contractors that are building quality homes. These are all suggestions, and they work. Source: Francis Whitaker, The Blacksmith’s Cookbook (Vail, Colo.: Jim Fleming Publications, 1986), xv–xvi.

DONALD FRIEDLICH (b. 1954 in Montclair, New Jersey) received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1982 and creates modernist jewelry in glass and gold. In 1988 Friedlich criticized the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) for being dominated by academicians insensitive to the economic demands of independent art182

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ists. Friedlich was later a president of SNAG (2000) and the first jeweler to be an artistin-residence at the Corning Museum of Glass (2003). The tension between academics and studio artists in his 1988 article in Metalsmith magazine is also evident in excerpts by Marguerite Wildenhain and Henry Halem.

SNAG [Society of North American Goldsmiths] has repeatedly insisted on scheduling its conferences immediately before the West Springfield Craft Show, one of the most important trade shows of the year for working jewelers. SNAG has continued to ignore West Springfield [Massachusetts] in the face of ardent pleas, and even a petition from a constituency that grows larger and more influential in the field each year. At this point many of these members are put off by what they feel is an organization dominated by academic metalsmiths or, as one put it, “mentalsmiths.” To this constituency, many of the academicians appear, at best, unaware, and, at worst, insensitive to the needs of full-time jewelers. And while the argument has been made that jewelers can stop at the conference en route to West Springfield, this was true in very few cases this year. Holding the conference closer to West Springfield—as will be the case with next year’s Skidmore, Saratoga Springs, New York conference—will help but still disregards the extensive preparation the large craft shows require. Getting ready for these shows is time consuming, physically exhausting and financially draining. What’s more, it is difficult to anticipate and create the necessary inventory far in advance. Hunched over one’s bench until dawn, pulling “all nighters,” the jeweler often feels like a college student cramming for finals. How many of the teaching members of SNAG encourage their students to take a four-day trip immediately before exams? And we are not students but professionals whose financial stability often depends on craft shows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . One purpose of a conference is to expose participants to new and stimulating ideas, and at that SNAG succeeds admirably. But the primary purpose of a conference is to attract the diverse elements within the group. At that SNAG must improve. SNAG’s academic members must be able to impart the demands of the marketplace to their students. Members out in the marketplace must stay open to, and hungry for, new ideas. To accomplish this, SNAG’s future energy must focus on bringing all of us together. That means good speakers, good ideas . . . and good timing. Source: Donald Friedlich, “What If They Gave a Conference and Nobody Came?: The 1987 SNAG Conference,” Metalsmith 8, no. 1 (Winter 1988): 43. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

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NORA NARANJO-MORSE (b. 1953) contrasts the conditions under which she produces her ceramic sculpture with its marketing. In one of the poems from her collection Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay (1992), she describes oppositions of class, race, environment, and values in the marketing of her work. (See also page 32.)

Mud Woman’s First Encounter with the World of Money and Business She unwrapped her clay figures, unfolding the cloth each was nestled in, carefully, almost with ceremony. Concerning herself with the specific curves, bends and idiosyncrasies, that made each piece her own. Standing these forms upright, displaying them from one side to the next, Mud Woman could feel her pride surging upward from a secret part within her, translating into a smile that passed her lips. All of this in front of the gallery owner. After all the creations were unveiled, Mud Woman held her breath. The gallery owner, peering from behind fashionably designed bifocals, examined each piece with an awareness Mud Woman knew very little of. The owner cleared her throat, asking: “First of all dear, do you have a résumé? You know, something written that would identify you to the public. Who is your family? Are any of them well known in the Indian art world?” Mud Woman hesitated, trying desperately to connect this business woman’s voice with her questions, like a foreigner trying to comprehend the innuendos of a new language, unexpected and somewhat intimidating. The center of what Mud Woman knew to be real was shifting with each moment in the gallery. The format of this exchange was a new dimension from what was taken for granted at home, where the clay, moist and smooth, waited to be rounded and coiled 184

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Nora Naranjo-Morse, Deer and Children, 2005. Santa Clara clay, 18 1⁄2 × 15 × 3 1⁄2 inches. (Photo by Robert Sherwood, courtesy of Figarelli Fine Art)

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into sensuous shapes, in a workroom Mud Woman and her man had built of earth too. All this struggled against a blaring radio with poor reception and noon hour traffic bustling beyond the frame walls. Handling each piece, the merchant quickly judged whether or not Mud Woman’s work would be a profitable venture. “Well,” she began, “your work is strangely different, certainly not traditional Santa Clara pottery and I’m not sure there is a market for your particular style, especially since no one knows who you are. However, if for some reason you make it big, I can be the first to say, ‘I discovered you.’ So, I’ll buy a few pieces and we’ll see how it goes.” Without looking up, she opened a large, black checkbook, quickly scribbling the needed information to make the gallery’s check valuable. Hesitantly, Mud Woman exchanged her work for the unexpectedly smaller sum that wholesale prices dictated. After a few polite, but obviously strained pleasantries Mud Woman left, leaving behind her shaped pieces of earth. Walking against the honks of a harried lunch crowd, Nan chu Kweejo spoke: “Navi ayu, ti gin nau na muu, nai sa aweh kucha?” “My daughter, is this the way it goes, this pottery business?” Hearing this, Mud Woman lowered her head, walking against the crowd of workers returning from lunch. Nan chu Kweejo’s question clouded Mud Woman’s vision with a mist of lost innocence, as she left the city and the world of money and business behind.

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Source: Nora Naranjo-Morse, “Mud Woman’s First Encounter with the World of Money and Business,” in Mud Woman: Poems from the Clay (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1992), 202–3, 205. © 1992 Nora Naranjo-Morse. Reprinted by permission of University of Arizona Press.

BETTY WOODMAN (b. 1930 in Norwalk, Connecticut) is celebrated for combining painting, sculpture, and ceramic history in functional and nonutilitarian vessels and installations. She attended the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in New York from 1948 to 1950 and taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1979 to 1998. A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2006. For her journeyman’s certificate from Alfred, Woodman made a punch bowl with twenty-four cups. Her rigorous training in functional ceramics meshed with her belief that beautiful handmade objects would improve society. When Woodman later struggled financially as a studio potter, she instituted a private Christmas sale, described in a 1998 Studio Potter interview. Such sales are now a widespread tradition in the crafts. (See also page 265.)

During the years 1956–96 in Boulder, Colorado, I worked in my studio in isolation. Studio potters were few and far between. At that time being known and existing within a political structure in the world of ceramics in the United States was based on a university connection. Painting and sculpting meant living in New York and showing in galleries. In ceramics it was: Did you teach at Alfred? Did you teach at Berkeley? Did you teach at Kansas City? I didn’t teach [in a university before 1979], so I had no place in that structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In Boulder there was no place to sell my work. Just nothing. So I started something which turned out to be a very good thing for me. That was a Christmas sale. This may sound like the most ordinary idea in the world, but at that point nobody else was doing it. I started having sales once a year, sending out announcements and inviting people to the show. The first one we ever had was during a horrible wind storm. The metal shingles blew off the roof. I made $250. We bought a couch for the living room. Afterwards, people started coming every year to my sales and buying pots. I had a sale in Boulder for many years. Sometimes with a friend at her house, sometimes at mine. Then I started doing a second one in the Spring when I could hold it outdoors. I made a lot of flowerpots, hanging ones and wall pots. I built up a loyal following of people who would come to the sales. After the sale I got stores to buy my pots wholesale. I was surviving ENGAGING THE MARKET

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financially. George [husband George Woodman] and I have always worked to make a living because you don’t make much money teaching. Source: Betty Woodman, “The Painted Garden—Betty Woodman: An Interview,” Studio Potter 27, no. 1 (December 1998): 44–65.

JUN KANEKO (b. 1942 in Nagoya, Japan) studied ceramics under Peter Voulkos and Paul Soldner. A former professor at Rhode Island School of Design and Cranbrook Academy of Art, among other institutions, he cofounded the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1981. Kaneko has redefined the scale at which clay can be worked, creating monolithic, usually abstract, monumental forms that are often combined with geometric, painterly surfaces. Kaneko has clear demands in his relationship with galleries, which he codifies in his contracts. The power of a successful artist in relationship with a dealer, discussed in his 2000 interview in Studio Potter, can be contrasted with the powerlessness of a newcomer as described by Nora Naranjo-Morse.

I have a series of galleries, perhaps nine in all. I have a very strict contract agreement with each gallery. First of all, the basic aspect is a commission of 50/50. If they want to give a discount to a client that’s their business, but not from my commission. The basic philosophy between the galleries and me is that I’m completely responsible for everything I do in my studio, which is to create and supply high quality pieces when they need it, or do a show. But the minute it leaves my door everything is their responsibility, including shipping, insurance, promotion, etc. I need fifty percent to operate my end of the deal, and I lose pieces through accidents or technical changes. I don’t ask for help from the gallery for that. If a client comes into the gallery and wants to buy twenty pieces in one shot and wants a 35% discount, it’s up to the gallery to make that decision. Don’t call me and ask for help because I’ll never ask for help if it’s my studio problem. Another basic difference from other artists’ agreements is that I tax all of my galleries 21⁄2% to contribute to Bemis [Foundation, Omaha, Nebraska] out of all my sales. The fact is that while the artist may be able to exist without the gallery, the gallery could not exist without the artist. So it’s better to support some up-and-coming artist, even though by a little bit. If everyone had this idea, it would change things quite a bit. Bemis supports artists’ creative activity. It is a non-profit foundation. So I ask the gallery to give a contribution. If they don’t sign that paper, I don’t sign the gallery/artist agreement. We have to share some basic idea of art, and not just business. The gallery relationship relies on the personal understanding. If I have a good understanding with a person in the gallery, some business problem 188

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Jun Kaneko working inside a beehive kiln at the Omaha Brickworks, 1982. (Photo by Ree Kaneko, courtesy of the artist)

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such as being unable to sell or pay for it in one shot becomes a minor problem. When I look for a gallery, I look for a good gallery plus a person with whom I can develop a good relationship. Source: Jun Kaneko, “Arriving in a New World: An Interview with Jun Kaneko,” interview by Gerry Williams, Studio Potter 29, no. 1 (December 2000): 4–29.

FRITZ DREISBACH (b. 1941) notes in a 2004 oral history that the glass community modeled itself on the older clay community, except when it came to pricing. He believes that the high cost of glass production was not the primary reason that prices rose steeply with the change of medium. Rather, he says, those working in glass realized from the start that no one could make a living by selling cheaply, as the potters did. (See also pages 86, 131.)

Fritz Dreisbach: The glass was never cheap. The whole operation was never cheap and as a result, I believe, in contrast to ceramics, I believe, the price of the glass objects was always high. And for that we thank people who had to suffer through $8 pottery prices and then they just—when they started making glass they added a zero. So what was $8 is now $80, and then $800 and then $8,000 et cetera. Suzanne Frantz: And people say when you ask them about that, they attribute it completely to the higher cost of producing glass. Dreisbach: Role model. They don’t know. . . . I’m guessing that the people who . . . weren’t there in the 60s and didn’t know what we were contrasting [prices] with. . . . We were lucky enough and smart enough, there were a few of us that were smart enough—a few of them, not me—that were smart enough to make those price jumps immediately—immediately. Frantz: Not because of expenses? Dreisbach: Well, it was expensive and that was the excuse we used. But I’m certain—inside my brain I’m pretty damn certain that it was, you know, let’s not fall in that trap. Frantz: Eight-dollar mug at the craft fair. Dreisbach: You got it; you got it. We do not want that. We do not want to see that because the clay guys—I shouldn’t be talking too much about clay but the clay guys, there were sculptors and then there were potters. Do you know what I’m talking about, the difference? The folk potters, they’re great and bless them and so on, but they were promoting the $2.50 coffee mug. And then there were people who made figurative clay sculpture and occasionally made a vase and they tried to get $30 for their vase and $300 for their sculpture, and here’s a piece for $2.50. Where are you going to go? What are you going to take home from the craft fair that day? 190

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And so the only way these guys, these $2.50 guys, could make a living was to make eight jillion coffee mugs. And you know who was caught in that trap? Harvey K. Littleton making little bowls and selling them at the Chicago art craft sidewalk sales for unbelievably low prices. And when he started doing glass, inside his brain a switch went off that said, don’t you ever sell anything cheap, and he didn’t. And he taught us and showed us and demonstrated. You know, when you were asking what kind of teacher was he, well, there’s a good example where his experience was translated to us. I don’t know how, but somehow we got the point and none of us ever made cheap glass. And today you’ll find very few people with folk glass prices; you just don’t find it. Source: Fritz Dreisbach, oral history interview by Suzanne Frantz, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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9 Working for Industry In the early to mid-twentieth century, industrial designers, who conceive products that are manufactured by others with the aid of machines, were a vibrant part of the craft community and had a strong voice in craft conferences. Designers such as Dorothy Liebes, whose knowledge of craft processes informed her design work, were adherents of an optimistic modernism that saw the potential for beauty and cost-effectiveness in manufactured goods. The split between designers and makers progressed with the century, partially due to the disillusionment with mainstream culture after World War II (see chapter 1, “Integrating Art and Life”), the failure of industry to embrace designers (see Lillian Elliott), and their rejection by the American Craft Council, whose attention shifted to studio crafts alone (see Edith Heath, page 149). Illustrating the tensions between studio crafts and industry, Ed Rossbach discusses the absurdity of some artists’ desires to influence mass production while leading lives devoid of contact with the factory. By the 1960s, makers of craft were popularly seen as lone artists who were opposed to the values of industrial society and unwilling to engage with it even as reformers. This romanticized image does not describe the multitude of artists who moved between studio, production ware, and industry with varying levels of success, compartmentalizing their personal and commercial work while increasing their ability to make a living. In general, makers display entrepreneurial flexibility in their approach to craft as an income-producing profession. Robert Ebendorf’s pursuit of variety in the types of careers he presents to his students is an attempt to enlarge the parameters of a life making craft. His experiences making his own one-of-a-kind and limited-production jewelry, doing benchwork for others, and designing for industry are offered to new generations of artists.

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DOROTHY LIEBES (b. 1897 in Guerneville, California; d. 1972 in New York), a selftaught weaver, started her career in the 1930s by designing and making handwoven textiles for architects and decorators. Her use of unconventional materials, rich textures, and bold colors attracted prominent architects including Frank Lloyd Wright. In the late 1940s she became a designer of industrial, mass-produced textiles for Goodall Fabrics and United Wallpaper, among other companies. Liebes became a successful businesswoman, respected designer for industry, and passionate advocate for the advancement of craft in the 1940s and 1950s. The quintessential modernist, she professed unbridled confidence in the promise of postwar American design, as is clear from her 1947 speech for a fashion group in Chicago. She foresaw a rich collaborative landscape: architecture informed by innovative craft and industrial design informed by innovative aesthetics and technology. Her allegiance to the promise of modernism rather than to the preindustrial age reflects a common division between industrial designers and studio artists. In a 1960 letter to interior designer Michael Greer (1916–1976), Liebes pays continuing homage to the imagination and energy of big industry.

Good design shouldn’t be regimented, and, at the moment (in our field), science has the lead on art!! The two parts of my subject are closely bound. Without any doubt, the world is fascinated by scientific and technological developments in the home-furnishing field. This is a natural follow-through of war-time findings, in part, and the growing research developments in all manufacturing units. Also the growing demand on the part of the public for better, more efficient objects in their home-furnishing picture. The scientific development in textiles is a romantic and exciting story. Fabrics can be made to perform. You can almost call your tricks and the laboratory rushes into action. Do you want it fireproof—bacteria-static— acoustically perfect—durable as iron—light as a feather with the thermostat of a fur coat—fade proof—soil proof—water proof—practically 100% proof?? To a non-scientific mind, this is all very exciting and mystifying but it is a great conditioning factor for the artist-designer and a great sales attraction for the public. In the field of plastic textiles we are still exceedingly experimental. There is a great story ahead as new products are proven. And plastics have captured the public’s imagination as no other new product. It’s up to us to prove them and make them attractive. Generally speaking, there has been more Science than Art in plastics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The iron curtain between Art and Science is lifted. The Industrialists no WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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Dorothy Liebes in her studio, ca. 1970. (Photo courtesy of Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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longer consider Designers and Artists happy, impractical escapists, and these in turn do not think of Scientists as joyless, grubbing-amongst-testtubes bores; hence they are a team which can work for enlarged inspired production of beautiful, useful objects. Certainly, more and more industrialists realize the importance of good design! They know that it gives them power to expand their markets, both at home and abroad. Paraphrasing on Mr. Shakespeare’s “The play’s the thing,” for us in Textiles and Home Furnishing, imagination—the Idea is the thing! Let us never forget that America leads the world—a heavy burden of responsibility—and that we must create and produce with vision and intelligence. Source: Dorothy Liebes, “Good Design Unregimented: Should Science Outstrip Art?,” speech for fashion group, Chicago, July 7, 1947, Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

The miracle of big industry, such as the research department of DuPont, is their constant imagination and energy in developing new and better products. The other day in Wilmington, I was asked to close my eyes and hold out both arms. I did so, and then I felt something across my arms. It felt like tissue paper or blown up cotton air. When I opened my eyes, here was a bolt of cloth—very beautiful shimmery white and done in a basket weave. It turned out to be fifty yards of a new cloth, and it weighed no more than a feather. It also had a thermostat, which would be warm and still breathe. These are the sorts of things they are developing for Antarctica and space clothing. [Fashion designer] Bonnie Cashin is working on space clothing right now. It’s all great fun and certainly makes use of one’s imagination. My work for DuPont is exciting because I have to work, believe it or not, behind locked doors. They bring me sacks full of new fibers in the raw state with the eternal question, “What would you do with it?” We have a model spinning set up and a twister in the basement with 24 spindles. We try spinning it up in a certain way, or rather twisting. Often it is in the form of a gooey rope, and we have to tighten it up and make it usable. Many of the things which have been sent to us seem at first to be impossible, we have discovered do for awning cloth, or for men’s shorts or window curtains or drapery, or for a very sturdy, durable table cloth. There are thousands of end uses, and our contribution via our contract is many, many models. Recently we have been working with man-made fibers for carpets for Bigelow, and our contract here calls for twelve model carpets a month. This is a lot of new ideas to be put forth, and sometimes only one of them will reach home. Out of these fabrics [that] have come from the new fibers are coming WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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many new things. My constant plea is that we treat the new fibers in a way that gives them a distinctive identity. I think it is all wrong to take Zefran and try to make wool duvetyne, or to make Orlon into Harris Tweed. It seems to me that the man-made fiber fabrics deserve treatment as individual fibers on their own merit. In addition to this, there’s a great deal being done with the poured, or weaveless, fibers. It’s already on the market in certain industrial forms, but you’ll be surprised at the beauty of the poured awnings, for instance. The sky really is the limit. Source: Letter from Dorothy Liebes to Michael Greer, December 12, 1960, Dorothy Liebes Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

CHARLES ORMOND EAMES JR. (b. 1907 in St. Louis; d. 1978 in St. Louis) is a revered mid-twentieth-century designer. With his wife and business partner Ray, Eames designed affordable, compact, and lightweight furniture for the post–World War II generation, using new technologies and materials. These remarks are excerpted from a speech delivered by Eames at the first national conference on American craft convened by the American Craft Council in Asilomar, California, in 1957. He champions excellence over innovation as the defining value for craft production. (See also page 227.)

There is an area in design that has to do with not taking on individual responsibility, but making a sense of responsibility run through industry and management, making those who have previously thought of themselves as responsible only in those areas—management and industry—more and more responsible in the peripheral areas. This is the sort of thing that must happen to the whole of society. There is an area in large industry which has this and that in abundance, but which lacks craft. And there is a similar lack among craftsmen in regard to what industry has. Craftsmen need to examine the mechanics of production and the results and relationships in industry. Mutual understanding will do much for both. It will help build up a feeling of craft in industry, to industry’s and the craftsman’s and society’s benefit. I began by speaking of architects, and now, at the close, I want to go back to architecture again just to mention Mies van der Rohe. I want to mention Mies because here is a man who is essentially a superb craftsman. It has been said of Mies that the ambition of his life would be to take the most perfect brick in the world and lay it in the most perfect bed of mortar and in the most perfect relationship to the next brick. Mies himself has something to say which bears on this, and which bears 196

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much thinking about. He said, “I don’t want to be interesting. I just want to be good.” This, I think, a craftsman should have tattooed across his chest. Source: Charles Eames, “The Making of a Craftsman,” in Asilomar: First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1957), 65–66.

Textile designer and business entrepreneur JACK LENOR LARSEN (b. 1928) rallies his audience in a speech at the second annual conference on American craft sponsored by the American Craft Council. Claiming that limits to success are largely selfimposed, he urges his peers to show greater ambition, discipline, and professionalism in their efforts to raise the profile and standards of the field. (See also page 154.)

We have more freedom than any craftsman historically. We are to a great extent free from the need to make things utilitarian, and art for art’s sake has conditioned our craft philosophy. We are free from dogma and symbolism. Most American craftsmen are free from having to make a living by their production. We are free both from the dictates of tradition and from those of our own cultural group. We are free, or can be free, from parochialism in that we have available to us materials from the world market and, as part of our inherent cultural heritage, we have the techniques and styles of the world and of history. Unfortunately, all of these are the freedoms of the super cargo, the non-essential, of the guest. The freedoms I have mentioned are treacherous in that they border on directionless irresponsibility—ideal soil for that kind of parasitic, fruitless individualism that impedes our cause. Masquerading as guileless self-expression is a self-projection more insidious than in “Commercial Art.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We do give the client what he wants rather than what he needs. We retreat from major skirmishes with commerce. We think of industry not as only a competitor but as an oppressor, not as a dragon but as something contaminated. Industry can be a tool we work with and an instrument we play on. But industry is not a patron. It has no talent scouts. It expects to be sold and dealt with business-wise. Why should we resign ourselves in a post-industrial age to scraps of work that don’t amount to one-half of one percent of the produced total? Acknowledging our defeat in the main line of production, it might follow that craftsmen would retrench to the fine art and luxury markets and hold this small fort well. Is this true? It is not! In many respects it is less true than in the early part of the century when some silver, art glass and small production ceramics were still handmade and American. It is too true that WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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most of the well designed, handmade products of contemporary nature that are in our stores and galleries are from a new crop of foreign craftsmen. The enormous effort by foreign industries to design for the American market has not stimulated the American craftsmen. Conversely, American manufacturers paraphrase these foreign products. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . We console ourselves that crafts are minor arts. Almost only in the Renaissance was it so. Before that, the Gothic tapestry, stained glass and Romanesque carving were major arts. Peru, like other non-western cultures, expressed itself in ceramics and fabrics. We need organizational discipline desperately and we must create this somehow of ourselves. We must create a profession out of an area that is contingent with the dilettante and the un-serious, remembering that even fine art itself is suspect. We have problems of multiple media and of many levels not only of quality but of craft government. We have the problem of ever increasing growth in numbers of both vocational and avocational craftsmen and of continuing revolution in both esthetics and media approach. I do not mean to be a wet blanket or pessimistic. I believe the future can be bright. I believe our potential is larger than most of us realize. The need for craftsmen in industry and as complements to it grows. Discipline in training, in research, in professionalism, in craft government becomes paramount. If we ignore the opportunity to impose this self-discipline, we can be ignored. Craftsmen, individually and as a professional group, need structural discipline to utilize freedom. Source: Jack L. Larsen, “Discipline and Freedom,” speech, June 1958, in Dimension of Design: Second Annual Conference, American Craftsmen’s Council (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1958), 59–62.

KAY SEKIMACHI (b. 1926 in San Francisco) studied with Trude Guermonprez at the California College of Arts and Crafts (now California College of Art) in Oakland from 1946 to 1949 and with Jack Lenor Larsen at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 1956. In the early 1970s, Sekimachi began using the loom to make complex, tubular hanging sculptures out of nylon monofilament. Other materials she has used with ingenuity and sensitivity include antique Japanese paper, hornet’s nests, and leaf skeletons. In the 1960s Sekimachi tried to design textiles for industry. In the process, she confronted the problem of cheap, unauthorized copies of an artist’s design, which is outlined in a series of letters between Sekimachi and manufacturers. Suzanne Hugue-

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nin of Knoll Textiles writes about modifying production on a Sekimachi design after discovering a supposed copy imported by another firm. In his self-defense, accused importer Hamilton Adams makes a spirited critique of the concept of originality.

Dear Kay: Just this little letter to tell you that while we are continuing our efforts to reproduce your two designs on handlooms in Japan we have also decided to once more approach a mill in Italy and to give them suggestions on how to reproduce your design on power looms. We have decided to do this after discovering the cheap and unauthorized copy of your design of which we have sent you a sample. Undoubtedly the same technique can be employed with finer yarns and by using a very heavy linen for the outline. In any case, we want to give it another try and I still hope that at least one version of your lovely design can be incorporated in our new Fall casement collection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . With kindest regards, Yours sincerely, Knoll Textiles, Inc. (signed) Suzanne Huguenin Source: Letter from Suzanne Huguenin to Kay Sekimachi, June 11, 1963, Kay Sekimachi Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Dear Miss Huguenin: It was wonderful to get your letter of the 11th. And am so glad that you are going ahead with my original design. Oh, I do hope that the Italian mill will come through. In regards to the copy that is being imported and sold, I have talked with both Edith Heath and Margaret de Patta who have had similar experiences. What they had to tell me was not encouraging at all. Mrs. Heath took her case to court, won, but did not receive any compensation. Margaret de Patta said she would have had to sue every shop that sold the unauthorized copy of her design and so did nothing. She also told me of the case of a friend of hers who designed a two position lounge chair. All her friend could do was to make a deal with the people who copied the design (and this was an exact copy) for payment in very small royalties. I really don’t know what to do. I can’t afford a law suit. Shall I write the importers for payment in royalties? Or shall I just forget about it? Do you have any suggestions?

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I shall certainly submit new casement designs. Have again been working on stupid commercial stuff and am anxious to work on designs which require a little more creativity and brain work. Sincerely, K. S. Source: Draft letter from Kay Sekimachi to Suzanne Huguenin, June 19, 1963, Kay Sekimachi Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Dear Sirs: Recently and with quite a shock the enclosed sample of linen casement which is imported by your firm was brought to my attention. I believe that it is a modified copy of either of two of my designs both of which were on exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and also reproduced in Craft Horizons, Sept/Oct, 1961, p. 17 and Nov./Dec. 1961, pg. 11. I realize that the technique was changed to leno to achieve the knotted effect, but the basic idea and design are mine and if the manufacturer worked from my design or a photograph of my design, I naturally expect compensation by way of royalty or other material arrangement. It is only fair and proper that the designer be given due credit and remuneration. I would appreciate hearing from you in regards to this matter. Thank you. Sincerely yours, K. S. Source: Draft letter from Kay Sekimachi to Hamilton Adams Imports Ltd., July 3, 1963, Kay Sekimachi Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Dear Miss Sekimachi, We have your letter of July 3, and candidly, we have just no idea as to whether or not our item is in any way similar to one of your designs, since in fact, we are not at all conversant with “Craft Horizons.” However, the cutting you sent us is certainly one of our qualities, which we import from a mill in Belgium. I would say that it would be just impossible to control any woven design produced by normal processes; that is, plain loom, dobby loom, jacquard loom, lappet loom, etc., etc. You could almost say that in weaving, there is nothing new, as while we bring out hundreds of new items every year to make up both a dress fabric line and a casement line, we certainly consider this a “new” line, but it is new by varying the weight, the weave, the 200

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yarn color, the weave construction, but we just could not say that there is a single item in the line that is absolutely new if to be new or original it had to be something that had never been done before. In fact, many of the designs we originate are copied. We have even had our printed designs copied, but there is nothing we can do about this. For instance, in referring to your particular cloth, I of course, don’t know where the similarity is, but you mention a knotted effect. We have had the broken line of warp effect in qualities years ago achieved by a leno weave, but in heavier qualities to the casement cutting you sent us. Anyway, I am sure you will appreciate the fact that a fabric designer might as well give up if he has got to be concerned as to whether or not an idea that he has had been done before, and as a consequence, could not be done again. No doubt, since your letterhead indicates you are a handweaver, you do produce many attractive effects, since the number of effects that can be achieved by design and color is pretty limitless, but I am afraid you would also have to admit that however long you work, you would never be able to produce an article and claim that something similar had never been done before. Sincerely yours, Hamilton Adams Imports, Ltd. (signed) Hamilton Adams Source: Letter from Hamilton Adams to Kay Sekimachi, July 11, 1963, Kay Sekimachi Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

JOHN PRIP (b. 1922 in New York), a fourth-generation metalsmith, was apprenticed to a silversmith in Denmark when he was fifteen, receiving training that was rigorous and rare for an American boy. In 1948 he returned to America to establish the metalsmithing department of the School for American Craftsmen, first at Alfred University in New York and then at the Rochester Institute of Technology. There he opened a shop with colleague Ronald Pearson. In 1957, wanting new experience and further training, Prip became designer-inresidence for Reed and Barton manufacturers, a job he writes about in a 1964 article for Craft Horizons magazine. Like many makers, Prip had multiple careers as a studio artist and industrial designer.

Coming right from Denmark to this country [in 1948] and teaching and doing nothing else but teaching for six years—you know, you are living a rather sheltered life. Most of my friends were Europeans, and I had lived for nine years in this country. I felt that I was living apart from things in a WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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John Prip (left) at Reed and Barton, late 1950s. (Photo courtesy of the American Craft Council Research and Education Department, Craftsmen Portfolio Archives)

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way. I felt the need of getting out and finding out—and also gaining some additional experience in my own field. In the course of looking around, I contacted an acquaintance in New England, and he in turn contacted Roger Hallowell of Reed and Barton. I don’t quite know how I happened to arrive at my arrangement with them. I guess I went in and sold them on doing it. Hallowell is an alert person and a good forward-looking president of a company, and as such he feels the same way that the people who are making Ford automobiles feel. They are thinking of how to make the company bigger and better and ways to change it, and he is always thinking, in his own way, of exploring new ideas . . . and the possibilities. As designer-in-residence, I could do just about anything I wanted to do. However, it had to work out to their advantage. If I had been sitting down there in the studio for three years making jewelry, I’m sure they would have soon said, “Now look here, this is ridiculous.” But I think or hope I did for them what they hoped I would do. It’s been a good relationship. I finally found that I was in the United States, and it was interesting to get into a different kind of set-up, where I was working with all these guys who were—well, nine hundred various highly skilled workers. My father had a small factory like Reed and Barton, only much smaller— forty, fifty people working. They made flatware. I’ve played in silver factories since I could walk, so it was nothing new and frightening to me, although I still can’t completely understand certain things—I mean the real technical intricacies of some of the machinery and equipment they are using. Still, I understand what the machine is doing, even though I don’t know exactly how it goes about doing it. This is a field that is so restricted. It’s like sifting through the ashes after a thousand people have already sifted through them, hoping to find some little something that others have overlooked. We have beautiful spoons that were done 250 or 300 years ago, and they could have stopped right then and there. It’s a little bowl with a handle on it, and you keep restudying it—giving attention to minor detail. In designing for stainless steel, I make my samples out of silver. It’s so much easier for me to work with, although in my mind there is a difference. I made a sample recently of something that I had in mind for a sterling silver design. Then the factory mentioned to me that they had been thinking of doing this design in stainless. I very often say, “Okay, if that’s what you want to do with it,” but in this case I felt very strongly that this was not for stainless steel. This was thought out and achieved as a sterling silver design. I will say this for them, there is give and take. After discussing the design with them, they agreed. WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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I learned an awful lot there. I learned to respect what they were doing. I guess I came to Reed and Barton with a certain superior feeling, but I was rather impressed with the integrity with which they approach their job. It’s a very honest sort of game to be in, in a way, because no one makes any bones about it. Either it sells or it doesn’t. You can argue forever about the merits of a painting, but in a sense the merit of something done for industry, aside from whatever aesthetic judgment you may pass on it, is very easily evaluated. It shows up either in black ink or red ink. That’s it. No one is keeping you from doing the greatest thing ever done as long as it will sell. In 1960, I again felt the need of a change. I wanted to move out. Until then I had been working in a studio at the plant. Now I have my shop at home, and I would like to think that I divide my time into three separate areas—I try to keep them separate—teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design, working for Reed and Barton, and the rest for my work—metal sculpture, jewelry, paper cut-outs—time to do as I wish. Source: John Prip, “John Prip and Reed & Barton,” Craft Horizons 24, no. 2 (March 1964): 51–52.

BILL BROWN (b. 1923 in Fenton, Michigan; d. 1992 in Penland, North Carolina) was the second director of the Penland School of Crafts (1962–83). Under his leadership, blacksmithing, photography, and glass were added to the curriculum, and the school became a magnet for national and international artists and teachers. Brown also created sculptural works in metal and wood. After World War II, Brown worked as a designer for Steuben Glass, a division of Corning Glass. He speaks of the importance of designers being in intimate contact with the artisans who make the final product in a 1980 interview in the Glass Art Society Journal.

Marvin Lipofsky: You once told me about your experience working at Steuben in 1949. I found it a very interesting story. How did the whole thing begin? Bill Brown: The Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston—a man by the name of Tom Messerschmidt, I think it was—had the idea that industry and art should know more about each other. He talked to the people at Corning, and they seemed to be interested: Corning was one of the only companies that was interested in even trying. But when they looked for glass designers who would be willing to design for Corning and Steuben, there weren’t any glass designers—not that they could find, anyway. Then they decided, “We’ll find designers. We’ll let them design glass.” 204

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lipofsky: Steuben went looking at the art and design schools? Brown: Yes. All over the country. Jack Gates was Director of Design for Steuben, and Jack Ward was in charge of design for the Corning Glass Works. The two of them went out on the road and interviewed over three hundred people. I was working for my master’s in sculpture and design at Cranbrook at the time. I went down with my good suit on and my museum shoes and met them in a hotel room in Detroit. After the interviews they chose twelve of us to come to Corning for eight weeks in the summer, about July and August of 1949. Lipofsky: Were all the designers about the same age? Brown: Yes, I guess we were maybe twenty-four or twenty-five. There was one woman in the group, but most of us had just gotten out of the army. They built us a studio upstairs at Corning Plant A. They took one corner of the second floor and made a room about forty feet wide and sixty feet long: they put desks in there and brushes and pencils, paper and all. There was an office in the back of it. Then you’d go through a door and there was another area they had closed off, with bleachers in there and a glory hole [glass furnace]. That was where John Johnson’s crew took what we drew and blew it. Johnny Johnson was the head gaffer: his crew was the best. Then most every day they’d bring in the head of sales and chemistry, and we met everybody. They’d talk to us about an hour. We didn’t know much about all that, but it was nice of them to come. They didn’t really give us any specific projects to do. They would talk about whether we had any ideas for candelabras or goblets, or whatever; and so we just drew what we wanted to and took it out to Johnny. He would put the drawing up on the glory hole, and the crew would look at it and they would know how to gather the right amount of glass and everything to get it done. So Johnny would make it right in front of you; and watching him, you’d know that you hadn’t drawn it right. We didn’t know how glass was made, so we’d be asking for things that were impossible to do. If Johnnie couldn’t do it, nobody, by God, could do it! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lipofsky: Why did they place the design studio in New York City and not in Corning? Brown: They thought, I guess, that the designers might go to exhibitions of paintings and sculpture and all of the very exciting things there are in New York City, so the design staff all had to live there. But that summer at Corning was wonderful. We learned a lot about what glass would do. And slowly, the more we knew about it, they would let us out on the floor. At WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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first, they’d put somebody with you, because you were likely to get stabbed with the glass with everybody walking around. Once we knew how to handle ourselves out there and not get in the way, we could walk all over the place. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The twelve of us in the design program that summer had a wonderful time. We could go watch the crews blow any time we wanted to get out of the studio. If we wanted to go downtown for paper or a pencil or to get a soda or whatever, we had a badge that would let us come in and go out any time. They paid us really great—eighty bucks a week—and they had our room and board and the whole thing paid for. They gave us a membership in the Steuben Club up on the top floor of the old Baron Steuben Hotel. The club was for the executives of Steuben and Corning. And Mr. Houghton, President of Steuben, would come around and visit us in the design studio. He spent a lot of time up there with us. They had figured, I guess that when the summer was over, one out of the twelve of us would be able to design for them. But right near the end Jack Ward and Jack Gates brought everybody in and talked to us all together. They said, “Something amazing has happened. We’ve found out that all twelve of you can do this. It’s marvelous. We can’t believe it. So instead of taking one of you we want to take three: one for Steuben and two for Corning. We’re going to talk to you and see how each of you feels about it. Then we’ll decide what’s going to happen.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jack Ward asked me to be the Director of Design for Corning and I said, “Wow. That’s something else, to ever be considered for the job! But I just can’t do that . . .” Lipofsky: Why do you think he asked you to come? Brown: I don’t know. He’s probably nuts. He offered me more money than they pay God: three times what I was making. I didn’t even pay any attention to him, it was so much money. But I said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. It’s an honor to be asked, but unless you move the design studio to Corning, I’m not going to do it. It should be in Corning because you should have the designers with the blowers. You’d ‘dink’ up your design and go right out there and have them blow it for you.” The company had its own plane flying between Corning and New York City every morning and every night, going back and forth. The designers could just as well fly to New York City to see a show as fly from the city to the plant in Corning. In fact there were two planes, so you might as well have the designers live in the little town two blocks away from the plant and the room where they work. Then they could walk right out to Johnny after 206

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they draw their great thing and say, “John, blow this, will you, so we can see what it really looks like.” Well, they didn’t want to do that. They thought that the designers should be in New York City so that they would absorb the great flower of the arts or something. Source: Bill Brown, “Bill Brown’s Steuben Experiences: Conversation with Marvin Lipofsky,” Glass Art Society Journal (1980): 74–76.

ED ROSSBACH (b. 1914 in Chicago; d. 2002 in Berkeley, California) is widely acknowledged as one of the most influential American artists and teachers in the fiber arts. He received a B.A. in 1940 from the University of Washington, an M.A. in 1941 from Columbia University, and an M.F.A. in 1947 from Cranbrook Academy of Art. A quiet man, he nevertheless influenced generations of artists as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley (1950–79), writer, and artist. He was an artistic explorer on the loom and off, in both traditional fibers and unconventional materials such as newspaper and plastic tubing. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., in 1990. In a 1982 article about the 1940s for American Craft magazine, Rossbach examines the roots of modern fiber art from its focus on industrial design and production immediately before and after World War II to its embrace of nonutilitarian expression in the following decades. Rossbach himself played a role in this evolution through his explorations and innovations as a working artist, teacher, and writer. (See also pages 249, 278.)

At Cranbrook, [Marianne] Strengell’s students wove samples of utilitarian goods—upholstery, drapery, clothing—which were neatly mounted to show to clients. Nowadays young people are bewildered by these mounted samples from the 40s and 50s. What did fiber artists think they were doing? Why did they waste their time? I can only reply that we did not question its reasonableness, but instead found satisfaction in the presentation, in this semblance of professionalism. The Cranbrook weaving studio was equipped with a large power loom. While I was there, no student ever used it or, as far as I know, ever evinced interest in it. We were handweavers with no desire to use or understand the power loom. Yet, in a curious way, we regarded our handwoven samples as somehow connected with industry. We had vague undefined feelings that what we were weaving would possibly influence taste and the design of textiles that “industry” was power weaving. Merely by making the textiles, and occasionally exhibiting them, we were exerting an influence on industry. I don’t know how we acquired this feeling. . . . It must have been in the air during the 40s. WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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Ed Rossbach in his studio, 1993. (Photo © Tom Grotta, courtesy of browngrotta arts)

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It seems to me that while contemporary handweaving for utilitarian purposes was moving toward power weaving, the handweaving that was not looking toward mechanization was moving toward non-utility (though often it masqueraded as utilitarian). The separation between utilitarian power weaving and non-utilitarian handweaving led to a gradual reevaluation of what handweavers were doing, and an awareness of distinctions between artists and designers, between artist-craftsman and designercraftsman, and between art and craft. Source: Ed Rossbach, “Fiber in the Forties,” American Craft 42, no. 5 (October–November 1982): 15–19.

KATHERINE WESTPHAL (b. 1919 in Los Angeles) is a pioneer of the fiber art movement who, with her husband Ed Rossbach, helped transform the entire range of textile arts. She is particularly noted for her work in wearable art and surface design and as an influential professor at the University of California, Davis (1966–79). In a 1984 oral history, Westphal notes that in order to make money for a European trip in the 1950s, she and Rossbach made printed samples of fabric designs for sale to manufacturers. For almost a decade, this work supplemented their income from teaching and artwork. (See also page 283.)

When Ed [husband Ed Rossbach] and I were down here [at Berkeley ca. 1950], we decided we really wanted to go and spend some time in Europe. So when his first sabbatical came we thought we would like to spend the whole year in Europe, but obviously you couldn’t on an assistant professor’s salary. So I thought, “Well, what could I do?” Mary Dumas was teaching printed textiles at the University so Mary said, “Well, come on now. I will teach you how to do these methods.” So I did this and I prepared, oh, I suppose 20 textile swatches. I looked through the yellow pages of the New York phone book under textile converters, and got all these names and addresses of them, and I wrote to them and said I had a group of textile designs, would they be interested in seeing them. Well, of this group I got about three answers. One of them was really kind of a long letter and it was an interesting thing. I didn’t know the difference at that time—it wasn’t listed in the book— which were agents and which were converters. These were just names in the telephone book, and I was pretty naive about this whole thing. So I wrote back and said I would send them some designs. So I rolled up my textile designs, on pieces of cloth, and sent them back. Well, I immediately had a phone call, and he said, “Are those your designs? You didn’t cut them WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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off other pieces of cloth?” And I said, “No. They’re my designs.” Well, he was interested. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They were all sorts of things. They were silkscreen, they were potato prints, they were stencils, just the whole gamut. Silkscreening is not a particularly easy method for designing because it requires so much in preparing the screen that you can’t do enough variations. It is making a plan and then you get what you planned, and that wasn’t the way I worked. I just worked from materials and I had to be very flexible and move in many directions, build up and pare down. Well, he sold a few of these things and got very interested and asked for more and more things. Well, some time in this whole process he said to me, “You know, designs are usually prepared on boards.” Nobody in industry was buying textiles [designed] on textiles; they were always buying printed textiles that are designed on pieces of cardboard. I was designing them on the cloth, because I wanted to see how they looked when they moved. He said, “I have to convince my clients that this is possible.” Well, he convinced them. And Ed got interested in doing this, so he did some. For about eight years we both had this agent and we worked on free-lance. I did most of the designs that were sent because Ed had another job, but he would do them occasionally. We’d bundle everything up, and the agent would come out when he had a demand. American Fabrics said that the trend in the future for women’s wear was going to be textiles that looked like India and they had borders on them. So Frederick Karoly, my agent, went through his little collection of designs that he had in New York, and he flew out over a Labor Day weekend bearing this little bundle of things, and he said, “I go back in two days; I want borders and gold on all of these things.” So we worked the whole weekend putting borders and gold on these things [laughing] so he could take them to the market on Tuesday when he got back. But it was this sort of pressure that finally made me decide I really didn’t want to do this anymore. It was very seasonal. Sometimes you would be working very constantly for weeks at a time and then there would be nothing for months because you were responding to what industry wanted and also their aesthetic demands. Source: Katherine Westphal, “Artist and Professor,” oral history interview by Harriet Nathan, 1984, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1988.

(opposite) Katherine Westphal, commercial textile made from original batik design (detail), 1952–56. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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DANIEL OWEN (DAN) DAILEY (b. 1947 in Philadelphia) received a B.F.A. from Philadelphia College of Art in 1969 and an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1972. He founded the glass department at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, in 1973, where he continues to teach. He also maintains a glass studio and produces small-scale work and major architectural commissions. Dailey has been a designer for the French company Cristallerie Daum for more than twenty years. In a 1989 interview he calls his work for Daum a “hybrid,” noting its mix of his personal aesthetic with the market requirements of a major company.

I had worked at Venini [Venini Fabrica, Murano, Italy] and really enjoyed that experience. I wanted to work in Europe developing a relationship with industry so communicated with Daum, Lalique, and Baccarat. Jacques Daum, who was then president, made me the most interesting invitation, meaning more than just come and take a look and meet us. He said come and work and it’s totally open; we’ll see what happens. Plus it turned out that they were very used to working with artists. Daum has a history of working with artists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I went there [1977] and didn’t really know what was going to happen, but I met the directors of the company in Paris and I had to give a slide lecture [to the CEO]. My French was really just left over from high school. . . . I stumbled through it and it was okay. And they invited me to stay as long as I wanted. [I stayed 7 weeks.] I didn’t make anything for myself until the third year. Every time I went, I made something for them—a line of tableware, meaning bowls, vases, wineglasses, candlesticks. . . . I made clocks and lamps but not everything was eventually edited [for manufacture]. Some things never made it past the prototype stage. So the things that ended up as regular production items were bowls and [other functional] objects. [The third year] I carved some molds in graphite and we blew into them in the factory. They’d give me an hour or two with a team in the morning and I’d just try out my molds. Then I’d go back to the mold shop and refine them until I had them the way I wanted them. When I got a good-looking prototype, when it was time for me to go home, I’d say, “Okay, produce 10 of these and send them to me.” Or 20 or whatever. So that worked out pretty well. I made three or four different series using blanks that were produced in the factory for me in my own molds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I have pieces that have been in steady production for 10 years. I got a lot of surprises working that way. I would expect a proof to come 212

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Dan Dailey, Presse Papier Vase Series, designed for Daum, France, 1979. 8–10 inches high each. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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to me. It would arrive and my design had been changed. Like they would add 5 centimeters of vertical height to the rim of a bowl so it had all of a sudden this funny mechanical edge to it. I’d call them up and say, “Well, there’s something wrong with the design that was produced. It doesn’t look like the drawing. Please look at the drawing and check it out.” Somebody would get on the phone and they would be from the engineering department. They’d say the mold can’t work without that 10 centimeters of vertical height on that machine. All the molds were made and they had a couple thousand dollars invested in just the molds, production time, and so on. So a lot of compromises were eventually made to the design because of techniques that I wasn’t aware of. If I had known, if I’d had more experience, then I could have designed around it maybe. But I learned, in some cases, the hard way and also had to accept other people’s design input without me knowing it. I wouldn’t realize it until a piece was sitting there. That’s an interesting aspect of working with industry, long distance like that. . . . They tell you not to design for the market and I have a terrible time trying to think up what everybody will like anyway. My taste doesn’t blend with the public’s too often. They encourage their designers to try to think up something that will look like it came from the hand of that designer. They try to get me to think up something that only [I] would do. And still it doesn’t look like the rest of my work. It’s a hybrid. It’s mostly because of other people’s input and usually not because they think it doesn’t look right but because it can’t be made quite as I designed it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The buyers will come in and look at all the suggested design prototypes by the design staff and they’ll say, “I think this is going to sell” and “I think that’s a bad idea” or “a good idea.” This kind of input from people who know the market best carries a lot of weight. Many things that you think are pretty interesting you’ll find the designers with the down face that afternoon because some buyer just nixed it and they listen to the buyers instead of the designers. So instead of the factory making some sort of a stance and saying “This is what we think we should look like,” they turn around and say “This is what our buyers think they’ll buy and we’re going to make this.” They have to pay attention to it, otherwise they’ll be out of business. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There are no guarantees though. It’s not as if I go there and I know I’m going to be paid for my three weeks I’m putting in. Every time it’s a gamble. One of the things that made it less of a gamble for me is knowing I could have a week of my own working time in the factory or work for myself in the mornings and work for them in the afternoon. That really opened up a lot of possibilities for me. 214

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Most places that I’ve worked for in that vein don’t have a lot of room for humor in the things that they produce. I think they may be afraid of it. Especially because a lot of the things are meant to be shown in classy showrooms and carry high prices so they don’t associate humor with that. Humor belongs in Jack’s Joke Shop at a $1.59. Generally humor doesn’t fit in when I’m designing for Daum. If it does, it’s got to be pretty subtle so that it’s something that can be seen in that way from an oblique [point of view]. But usually I try to subdue that side of my nature and just go with ideas that I have along other lines. The architectural pieces that I’ve been marketing are only vaguely humorous if at all. . . . Most of the humor that I come up with illustrates a humorous situation and many of the architectural pieces that I’ve been making do not illustrate any humorous situation. They’re just scenic or arrangements of shapes in space. That’s one way I get around it. Source: Dan Dailey, handwritten transcript of interview by Karen Chambers, August 28, 1989, Rakow Library, Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Dailey’s clarifications from 2007 are in brackets.

LILLIAN ELLIOTT (1930–1994) taught in the Design Department at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1966 to 1971, where she was a colleague of Ed Rossbach. In a 1989 oral history, Elliott recalls working as a textile designer for Ford Motor Company (1956–59) when women in the automotive industry, other than secretaries, were rare. However, she attributes her negative experience there not to sexism but to corporate culture and the company’s ignorance of the design field, a situation also noted by Charles Eames. Elliott believes that artists can be more influential working away from industry. (See also page 98.)

I got the job working in the Lincoln-Mercury Division [in 1956]. After I was there, it turned out, I was the first designer, first woman designer in the whole styling division. They had had no women. They had a thousand stylists, and no women. Just secretaries. They didn’t exactly know what to do with me, where to put me, you know, whether I should be in exterior styling or interior. They just didn’t know what to do with a woman who wasn’t a secretary there. Hiring me turned out to really be part of an advertising campaign, which was that women selected or bought cars so women should also design them. That year, we met with the press a great deal. They hired four other women after I was there, one for each of the divisions at Ford Motor Company: Edsel, The Advanced Studio, Ford, and I was Lincoln-Mercury. Maybe WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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Lincoln Continental had a designer, but anyway, we had around five. I stayed for more than three years. I earned what was considered a very good salary for a woman in that time. I was able finally to become somewhat independent. At the end of that period there were several major lay-offs. I found it was a very difficult place for people to work because no one quite trusted anybody else; everybody wanted to make sure that he stayed. Every year there was a major layoff. Everybody would say, “Oh well, we got rid of the dead wood. Now we’ll be able to carry on.” It was very dehumanizing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The lay-off finally came after a number of years. A number of lay-offs had come up, we were laid off, and they said, well, maybe at another time they’d be ready for fabric designers. One of my friends who was working there was a woman stylist that I still see—said she thanked them, because she didn’t think she would ever have had the courage to leave such a highpaying job. It was wonderful for her to get out, because she was relieved. It wasn’t right for her. It wasn’t right for me either. What had happened to all of the other designers that were fabric designers was that they were finally doing things like typing, because they could type, and the division needed somebody always to fill in answering phones and typing. I couldn’t type, and wouldn’t type; I couldn’t actually. And that was fine. So I was doing much more interesting things, like color matching and doing some lettering. In fact, they needed fabric designers. It was just that they weren’t quite ready for us yet. They did use a few of my designs as part of the planning. But I don’t know whether they used them in the final cars. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . It was very interesting. . . . There was so much talk from the Bauhaus on, about how the artist could influence society, the industry in society. In fact, you were much freer not being part of industry. You could influence industry in many ways more directly if you were not part of it, if you simply were doing your artwork. There were so many concessions to so many things, and so many people making the decisions that had no background in making those decisions, no training, no experience. They had experience, but it was from the carriage trade or something else. It had nothing to do with today’s world or art or the art world. Source: Lillian Elliott, “Artist, Instructor, and Innovator in Fiber Arts,” oral history interview by Harriet Nathan, 1989, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

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ARLINE FISCH (b. 1931) discovered that in Denmark, where the most renowned jewelers are designers for industry, she has been considered an amateur because her income comes mainly from teaching rather than sales. Her 2001 oral history suggests that the way one makes money has implications for one’s status and that different hierarchies are present in different countries and fields. (See also pages 103, 127, 173, 261.)

Arline Fisch: I remember having a discussion with the editor of the [Danish] goldsmiths magazine, in which an article had appeared calling me a gifted amateur—that was the title. And I challenged him at a dinner party at his house. I said, “You know, I really took offense at that: why am I called an amateur?” He said, “That’s a compliment.” And I said, “Not in my book.” And he said, “Well”—I’m sure he was trying to put a good face on—he said, “an amateur is someone who does something because they love it.” And I said, “You mean a professional does something they hate. I mean, that’s not quite enough.” The reality was I had never served a proper apprenticeship, and so I couldn’t possibly be called a professional. Sharon Church: Do you think that there was a distinction in his mind between someone who makes a living through his or her craft and someone who uses that craft as an art form? Fisch: Yes, I think so, because all of the Danes who are well known in the field basically work as designers. They don’t actually even make anything anymore. They design, and it’s made, and it’s manufactured, and it’s sold. And the selling is an important aspect of it. The fact that I didn’t do that, that I had this teaching position that supported me, also made me suspect. I didn’t need to be serious. I could make all these ridiculous, frivolous things because, clearly, I didn’t need to earn a living at it. Church: I think there is a question in everyone’s mind about whether you make a living from the work that you make or whether you are supported in other ways. And I think for some reason that’s much more an issue in the crafts than it is in the fine arts. I don’t think anyone expects the same thing of a fine artist. It must be our tradition. Fisch: Well, I’m sure it does come down to the fact that you make things that are at least marginally functional, and that people buy those things, and they don’t pay astronomical prices for those things. Therefore, you have to make a lot of them. If you’re going to do that, then you have to work at it full time, otherwise you couldn’t possibly earn a living. And that is a kind of trade position. It’s the same for painters. They just don’t talk about it in the same way. WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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I mean, painters, if they’re going to be full-time painters and earn their living, have to sell quantity, because they aren’t going to make one painting a year that’s going to support them. They make small drawings, they do prints, they do lithographs. But nobody notices, or nobody talks about, the entrepreneurial end of that, except scathingly, of those few people who are up front about it. Source: Arline M. Fisch, oral history interview by Sharon Church, 2001, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

In 1966 ROBERT EBENDORF (b. 1938), a jeweler and teacher, received a Tiffany Foundation grant to do benchwork in a small goldsmith shop in Fredrikstag, Norway, producing designs created by others. In 1978 he returned to Norway as a guest designer for a second, larger firm. Ebendorf, in a 2004 oral history, relates how he brought these experiences to his classroom, presenting students with options for work that differed from his own career as an independent jeweler and university professor. (See also page 39.)

Robert Ebendorf: The uniqueness of that experience was it was a small workshop and it did production pieces and it also had special . . . commissions that came to it. But the richness of being there was I was a worker and I wore a blue coat, went to work at 6:00 in the morning, and on my workbench would be, you know, soldering 200 cufflinks or to forge silver bracelets for production to be sent to Oslo, to the market there at the shop that they had in Oslo. So— Tacey Rosolowski: So this really was just hands on, gritty, in-the-trenches production work? Ebendorf: It was—it was where I sat as a worker—at the end of the day when I looked down at my workbench—no one came around and said you did a fine job or whatever. I evaluated the end of the day. And it was an opportunity where I saw and felt what it was about to be—the pride of being a craftsman and doing a fine job. And if I burned things up and things didn’t work I could see the disaster pieces in the scrap tray, but I could also look and count the numbers that I did successfully. . . . [You were] a part of a team and you would be given an assignment with a timecard and measurements and the formula so you’d know how many pieces of metal to cut and what length to cut it. And if you did every— all the movements properly you would end up with earrings. Or if you did all the movements properly you would end up with a forged bracelet that would then be sent to the polisher in the other room who would polish the 218

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piece and prepare it and put it in a little bag and send it—put it on the tray with the other pieces that would be 100 in the order. If the studio had a special commission—and we did, oftentimes the church would commission a chalice or a set of candlestick holders, and— and then the headmaster would give certain parts of the commission to— one person would build a certain part, another person would make another part, and then the other person would do the soldering and put it together. So I had the opportunity to bring back to America and back to the academic circle, to my students, the vocabulary and the experience—vocabulary meaning being able to speak to them and open another window besides being a one-of-a-kind maker—working with a team, working and being a part of an organization. At the same time, also, I was able to speak about production work a bit more articulate and a bit more understanding. So that experience for the year was bringing home that richness to share. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kjell O. Langthon [at the David Anderson Firm, Oslo, 1978] called and said, “Bob, you know, our friendship is rich and we’ve stayed in touch and how would you like to come and—I know you’re on sabbatical leave this year because . . . I’ve followed your work by those letters you’ve sent and the announcements. Would you like—would you entertain the idea to be our guest as a guest designer . . . and be on the design team?” So I said, “Yes.” I went. Why? Again, because I thought what was it like to be a full-time designer? I mean, I’m a maker that draws the ideas and thinks the concepts and sits down and carries it out, you know. So I’m the one-man band but what would it—what it is like to sharpen pencils all day and work—look at white paper and draw my ideas out and present my ideas and what—I don’t know. Just think what I could bring back to my students, to have that also as part of the—part of the recipe in this educational exchange as a teacher to the studio and to the students. So I went and spent a half a year wearing a white coat from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon, sharpening pencils, coming in on Monday morning with an assignment on a piece of Xerox paper. All seven of us were to design coffeepot, teapot, and cream and sugar and a tray and the price range that it must be marketed at would be such and such of— amount of money. So for a week—for the four days we would draw, we would make paper models. We would—some people would go to the woodshop and cut out shapes and spray paint them with silver and—well, however we wanted to design and present our ideas because on Thursday—on Friday morning we would have a staff meeting, a meeting where all the designers all would come together, do the pin board, present our drawings. WORKING FOR INDUSTRY

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And who was there at the meeting was the head of marketing, the head of the tool and die department, the vice-president, and also the public relationship person, and as we would make our presentations they would be taking notes. We’d have our discussions and after lunch we would find out which designs would be designs that they would pursue. And what drove the decisions of the green light was could we bring it in under a certain price range, so it was about marketing and about money. So we—oftentimes we would be very unhappy because the designs that we thought were worthy and were fresh and were—were our soul would not make the cut because it would be too expensive to produce. So it was interesting for me to experience as a team, working independently on ideas, but working as a team and then watching it be negotiated in such a manner with the calculator and they did, they had a calculator. They had scales there. . . . The marketing would put it on advertising and it was a real interesting eye opener for me of the real world, wearing a white coat, not wearing a blue coat and getting dirty and hanging my clothes up on the locker and having to shower at the end of the day in the locker rooms. But it was being privileged. I would draw—when pieces were being made in the workshop they would come up to the design studio and come in and put the piece in front of the designer and say, you know, “Is the curve right? Should it be higher? Is this thick enough gauge? Is that what you’re thinking about?” So, I had that experience where the marks on paper ended up being executed by the craftsmen and the designers just were the people who [were] not set in the ivory tower, but they generated the idea and then the worker bees, the craftsmen who loved the material and loved and [had pride in] what they did, they would make the work. And the company would stamp it and it would go on its way. So that was an experience that was rich for me to bring back and to be able to fold in to experience as a craftsman, as a maker. Now I could talk about being a designer and working in a corporation. Source: Robert Ebendorf, oral history interview by Tacey Rosolowski, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Part 4 Confronting Craft “If I abandon the functional reference am I also abandoning the world of applied arts? Is this a risk for me? Where will my work be placed?” These questions of professional identity, posed in jeweler Arline Fisch’s unpublished notes, resonate throughout part 4 as artists confront issues of aesthetics, culture, and politics inside and outside their studios. In quiet reflections, angry diatribes, and committed manifestos, they address tradition and reassess professional associations and standards to determine where they and their work belong. As proponents of traditional values in the crafts, Charles Eames and James Krenov decry the overbearing pressure for originality in design. Innovators Peter Voulkos and David Huchthausen, on the other hand, argue that craft should be positioned as a big tent with porous boundaries in order to avoid insularity and stagnation.

Because craft is defined by diverse communities of practice and shifting sets of criteria regarding medium, function, form, exhibition venue, and nomenclature, artists’ negotiations with tradition and society have implications that are simultaneously personal and sociological, pragmatic and ideological. Sometimes artists’ activities are the result of decisions they make for and about themselves. At other times their activities reflect limits defined by others—often with serious import. For example, Jim Melchert cites the importance of selecting diverse panelists for a national grant review committee. He argues that if the “peer” evaluators are limited to those with academic training, artists with other backgrounds will be slighted, resulting in the loss of potential funding and recognition.

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10 Testing Tradition Issues of medium, technology, utility, ornamentation, and originality arise as artists confront aesthetic conventions. For example, when traditionalist potter Ruth Poris rebuked the editors of Ceramics Monthly for reproducing a sculpture by Howard Kottler that incorporates commercial molds, a flurry of letters to the editor followed. That similar debates over appropriate practice and production standards occurred in other contemporary craft periodicals revealed how controversial this issue had become. These confrontations expose a creative tension between proponents of conservation who wish to preserve traditional standards and proponents of innovation who destabilize identity by encouraging change. This tension does not disappear over time. Peter Voulkos, who trained as a studio potter, felt an urgent call in the 1950s to respond to current directions in contemporary art. Thirty years later, innovative furniture maker Wendell Castle (see page 97) moved from sculptural expression toward work inspired by centuries-old European antecedents. Rosemary Lonewolf creates figurative sculpture that transforms the traditions of her family and pueblo, while potter Mark Hewitt claims that tradition is the new avant-garde. Richard Notkin contests the conventional call for “truth to materials,” and Stanley Lechtzin dismisses traditionalists’ devotion to hand technologies as a romantic vestige of the nineteenth-century arts and crafts movement. Assaults on conventional standards also come from artists rarely associated with the crafts, such as Claes Oldenburg, Richard Artschwager, and Scott Burton (see page 21), who make furniturelike objects that are displayed and marketed as sculpture. Glassblower and conceptual artist Josiah McElheny insists that art disciplines can overlap. He claims that the genius of Isamu Noguchi’s lamps and tables resides in their dual use as sculpture and furniture, with aesthetic and social impacts reinforcing one another. Some artists wonder how much elasticity the craft field can tolerate before its identity is dissipated completely. These concerns relate to their makers’ identities as well as to the objects labeled craft. John McQueen wonders how loosely a basket can be woven before it loses its identity as craft. Michael James, an academically trained male quilt maker, encounters mistrust from the female hobbyists who have dominated the field, illustrating that the conflicts are not just about the objects but about the cultures within which they are made. 225

MARGUERITE WILDENHAIN (1896–1985) is usually considered a conservative potter and educator in the context of post-Voulkos ceramics. Her reaction to the philosophy of revered British potter Bernard Leach may therefore be surprising. In October 1952 Leach came to Black Mountain College in North Carolina to participate in a pottery institute Wildenhain hosted. The father of the revivalist folk pottery movement in England, Leach espoused a philosophy of teaching and practice that was conservative and retrospective. In a published letter responding to Leach’s position at the institute, Wildenhain disagrees with his perspective, especially as it applies to the contemporary American context. (See also pages 9, 96, 171.)

Dear Bernard Leach: Ever since your first long visit to the United States and your article in Craft Horizons (Winter 1950), so many voices have risen in opposition and in doubt as to the value of what you are trying to convey to us, that I feel the problem needs to be discussed frankly and in public. No one could possibly doubt your sincerity or deny that you wish to foster high standards of craftsmanship. Still, if to arrive at that, you start from a wrong premise, it is obvious that your conclusions must necessarily be erroneous. It is understandable that you should stress the importance of roots in tradition. So do we all. But tradition is only good when it is alive, when no one is conscious of it and when it needs no praise. The minute, however, that tradition needs artificial bolstering because its design elements no longer have any relation to the present generation, then let us have the courage to throw it overboard. It is time then to search honestly for those forms that are related to us, that express what we feel, think and believe. It is equally evident that we cannot take over the techniques and forms, the way of life of another culture, no matter how excellent. No, we have no choice but to find our own way to what may become a new tradition for generations to come. No one but ourselves can do that for us; and this is a fact that we must face clearly and unemotionally. Roots are, of course, wonderful to have, but who has that one, single “taproot” you talked of? That single taproot no longer exists in our day. It is probable that it has never existed. No country, no single individual has only one root from which he draws strength. Roots grow when one lives according to what is right for him, when one’s life and work are deeply related and when both are closely connected with the country, the society, the ideas of the people around one. America has roots too, but they are many and come from all over the world, from all races. In this lies its uniqueness, its grandeur—this cementing together of a thousand parts. A country like America cannot have just 226

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one expression, one way of doing things. It must perforce have as many forms of expression as the sources of its life as a whole. That is America’s beauty and greatness, and nobody would want to see just one single form, one single way of thinking grow on this continent. For our tradition is just the opposite: it stands for the free choice of each individual. It ought to be clear that American potters cannot possibly grow roots by imitating Sung pottery or by copying the way of life of the rural population of Japan. Conscious copying of the works of a culture unrelated to the mind and soul of our generation would only produce dubious makeshifts and turn our struggling potters into either dilettantes or pure fakes. As creative craftsmen, we reject the tendency to force our generation into a mold that does not belong to it. No, if we want the crafts to remain alive, and even perhaps to grow roots again, we must give young craftsmen all the freedom and education, all the honest experimentation, using every technique and material in any way he chooses. Man needs to find room in the world for growth; he cannot have his mind, his work, his taste and his ideas restricted at the start by taboos and preconceived formulas and rules. We are all eager and willing to learn and to try, but no spirit can brook restriction. On the contrary, open up the whole world to us, show us the beauty of all races so that we may learn to see the different elements that have gone into the making of our own background: we have excellent traditions closer to us than the Chinese or Japanese, of equal merit and just as inventive. For these are the qualities we aspire to. In art as in life, the main thing is the divine spark. We cannot quench it in the student without killing it in the man. March 23, 1953 (signed) Marguerite Wildenhain Source: Marguerite Wildenhain, “Across the Editor’s Desk,” Craft Horizons 13, no. 3 (May–June 1953): 43–44.

CHARLES ORMOND EAMES JR. (1907–1978) worked as a part-time laborer in a steel factory before he became a teacher and head of the industrial design department at Cranbrook Academy of Art. These remarks are excerpted from a panel discussion held at the first national conference of American craftsmen convened by the American Craft Council in Asilomar, California, in 1957. The renowned architect and industrial designer denigrates the impulse toward innovation and originality in the design of modern craft. (See also page 196.)

To my mind crafts seem to suffer more from overdoses of originality in design, rather than from lack of this. Looking at something, you are frequently very conscious that somebody was very conscious of being “origiTESTING TRADITION

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nal,” and therefore did not know really what he was about. Too much originality, I would say. Not enough continuity. I can think of no great craftsman whom you would accuse of being “original.” You certainly wouldn’t accuse Mies van der Rohe of being “original,” yet he is certainly one of the greatest architects today. You wouldn’t accuse Sheraton [Thomas Sheraton, 1751– 1806] of being “original” in his generation. I wouldn’t accuse Paul Revere of being “original.” Revere was an excellent craftsman, and he put into his work many plus values. But he was not original, in a sense of “originality.” The panic to be original is one of the evidences of a lack of knowledge. We have too much design, to my way of thinking. If you are conscious of the design in anything you look at, then there is too much. Source: Charles Eames, “Discussion: Forum on Design,” in Asilomar: First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1957), 69.

PETER VOULKOS (b. 1924 in Bozeman, Montana; d. 2002 in Bowling Green, Ohio) is the recognized leader of the post–World War II American ceramics movement and, by extension, the country’s studio craft revival. He received an M.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, in 1952 and became an extraordinarily influential artist and teacher at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (Otis Art Institute, 1954–59) and University of California, Berkeley (1959–85). Voulkos brought the painterly, abstract expressionist aesthetic of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to the crafts. The championing of his style by Craft Horizons editor and critic Rose Sliva in 1961 (“The New Ceramic Presence”) exposed many fissures between functional and fine-art proponents in the craft world. In March 1957 artists from thirty-three states vied for participation and prizes in the Fifth Annual Miami National Ceramic Exhibition, sponsored by the Ceramic League of Miami. The jury included Voulkos, who, in a review of the process in Craft Horizons magazine, expressed strong disappointment in the quality of the entries and a sense of urgency that the field respond to contemporary art and culture.

The most important objective for having a competitive exhibit is to bring forth all and any new ideas. I am quite sure that any ceramist with the slightest degree of esthetic integrity would or should agree that ceramics as an art form is at low ebb and could justly use a kick in the pants. I, for one, am quite confident that it will take quite a bit more than a bean pot with or without Albany slip glaze to pull it out of its doldrums. My point of view, of course, has no meaning for those who still dwell under the illusion that making a tea cup is great art. But there still are the self-searching and

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Scene from the satirical skit “The Craftsman and the Jury,” presented by Midwest Designer-Craftsmen at the American Craft Council conference in Lake Geneva, 1958. Left to right: Aileen O. Webb, Harvey Littleton, and Peter Voulkos. (Photo courtesy of the Rose Slivka Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution)

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serious few who really count. These few do not have to be told, as they feel what it’s all about. It is truly their lives. Of course, there are good tea cups and mostly bad and it takes a high degree of intention to pull one off, but the fact still remains that it is just a tea cup even at its best. Why hold such a limitless medium as ceramics to their level of thinking? The Fifth Miami National this year with the larger cash prizes and admirable attempt to stimulate more and better entries has done a significant job. In spite of its liberal policy and dedication, however, it can only reflect what is actually happening in the field. With the exception of about ten objects, the Miami exhibition was, as most ceramic shows go, dull, unimaginative and uninspired—the same clumsy attempts at the same covered jars, bottles and footed compotes that have been appearing for ten years and really getting worse—the same nice glazes with absolutely no idea as to how to use them—the same little painted enamel on metal square and bowl. Only when techniques and materials transcend themselves is there a chance for art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Basically most things lacked any sense of involvement. They had a completely inhuman quality such as a machine often turns out better. Idea was lacking, and in its place we suddenly saw the misleading term, craftsmanship. This seems to be the favorite word in pottery circles throughout the country. So often the phrase, “it’s a good idea but the craftsmanship is poor,” pops up. This is one of the most ambiguous terms I can imagine. When will craftsmen begin to realize that to make an idea either good or bad, it takes not only craftsmanship but a sense of identity? Anything that may be embodied into pottery also makes up its craftsmanship and none can be separated from the whole, whether it looks like a rock or a simple bowl. This is only found through constant observation and the stimulation that comes from other creative fields. It is quite foolish to suppose that a potter would be highly stimulated only by looking at another potter’s work. If he is truly creative he gets his greatest stimulation by working. The reason I mention this is that I feel that craft groups become too clique-y and closed to the other vital arts. Can they not afford the luxury of looking at modern paintings and sculptures? It certainly is necessary to look at the past, but in order to build onto this we should live for the moment, for this is when the act of creativity will happen. At first, brand new ideas and concepts often appear ugly, and only by thorough and conscious effort to try and understand do they suddenly begin to make sense. From my jurying experiences I have come to the conclusion that most handcraft objects are made according to narrow sets of

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rules. There are too many rules and too little feeling. How is it possible to create without excitement? Source: Peter Voulkos, “The Miami Annual,” Craft Horizons 37, no. 4 (June 1957): 43–44.

RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER (b. 1923 in Washington, D.C.) began his art career as a furniture maker, a craft that continues to inform his work. He has often used plywood and wood-patterned laminates as his material in creating sculptures derived from everyday objects. Artschwager began designing and building furniture in 1950 and owned a successful limited edition production workshop in New York City with retail outlets in multiple northeastern states. He started making furniture-related constructions in 1962 and had his first one-person show in 1965 at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. His 1965 interview, excerpted here, was published in Craft Horizons magazine, paired with the following Oldenburg interview. Artschwager discusses the transition of his work from utilitarian furniture to conceptual art and the responses of family and co-workers to this shift in aesthetic.

Jan McDevitt: What I am very curious to know is what the craftsmen who work for you think. Richard Artschwager: Well, they are great people. They are very sharp. They work hard, they take their work seriously. When I first started, there was adamant hostility. This was an affront. With the foreman I laid it on the line. I told him, “This is not going to stop, and it’s going to get worse, and you’re going to live with it.” But as soon as I could show them my name in print or that I had sold something (best of all my name in print), then it was okay. On the other hand, when I tried to find a gallery dealer, Leo Castelli was the only one who gave me a positive answer in the mail, and it was a very positive one. I had sent out about a dozen little kits—you know, with photographs and a letter—and either I got short, courteous answers, or no answer. One of the major New York museums wrote this: “I am sorry to tell you that the Viewing Program deals only with work in the realm of sculpture and painting. After looking at the photographs you sent us, I am afraid that the committee feels that your work is more in the category of a craft.” McDevitt: In what way did the craftsmen in your shop show their hostility? Artschwager: Oh, by making bad jokes, by treating the stuff badly when it was standing there in the shop, shoving it around. I’d have something set up in clamps, and I’d find it off in a corner. Then I’d raise a riot, and there’d be a big fight.

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Richard Artschwager, Description of Table, 1964. Melamine laminate on plywood, 26 × 32 × 32 inches. (Collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Gift of the Howard and Jean Lipman Foundation, Inc., 66.48; © Richard Artschwager/Artists Rights Society [ARS], New York)

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Wendell Castle, Table with Cloth, 1980. Mahogany, 34 × 30 1⁄2 × 18 inches. (Photo by Steven Sloman)

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McDevitt: Why did they feel affronted? Artschwager: Many people are affronted by this the first time around. My wife was affronted, and we are very devoted to each other. McDevitt: But how, exactly, does it touch them? Artschwager: Because it’s some sort of an invasion. Nothing is safe, and everything is discovered in a limited way. The offense is that I’m spending time and money on things that should be good for something. That’s what I’ve gathered. I’m making objects for non-use; by use, I mean cups to drink out of, a spoon to stir with. By killing off the use part, non-use aspects are allowed living space, breathing space. Things in a still life painting can have monumentality—and I don’t think their monumentality has been lessened because their edibility or other use has been either taken away or not put into them. Instead, its focus is on other things. McDevitt: And what is this? Artschwager: It’s a table with a tablecloth. There are a lot of wisecracks made about it—“Well, you never have to send that to the laundry,” and so on, but it’s called “Table with Tablecloth,” and it’s about the way a table with a tablecloth is in a painting, in a still life—a three-dimensional still life. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I was doing ordinary pictures before I was doing ordinary objects, or surrogates or effigies or whatever you want to call them. Drawing mostly. I had practiced art off and on during this time because I had decided to go into it many years ago. I had actually studied for a year here in New York. But nothing really good came out until 1960 or 1961, and those were drawings— ordinary things, purposefully ordinary. It was formica which touched it off. Formica, the great ugly material, the horror of the age, which I came to like suddenly because I was sick of looking at all this beautiful wood. We have marvelous materials in our shop—gorgeous woods, absolutely the best that money can buy. But you look at acres of this stuff, and you don’t react to it any more. It’s like stock quotations unless you are interested in stocks. So I got hold of a scrap of formica—something called bleached walnut. It worked differently because it looked as if wood had passed through it, as if the thing only half existed. It was all in black and white. There was no color at all, and it was very hard and shiny, so that it was a picture of a piece of wood. If you take that and make something out of it, then you have an object. But it’s a picture of something at the same time, it’s an object. So I made a little object—a little box. I had real walnut on the outside and walnut memory or walnut picture (formica) on the inside. And then I made a wood and formica altar piece. It was a very good object—the first really good one. It was a celebration of the material which you lean your elbows 234

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on in twenty percent of the luncheonettes in New York. When you separate it from that, it’s pretty marvelous. To go back to what I said before, furniture to the person who uses it celebrates those things it is. Sometimes they are people surrogates. That sounds a little weird, but when you go on making furniture for years, you are either going to stop reacting to it or you are going to get some, I suppose, exotic reactions, and by now my reactions are no doubt pretty exotic. I guess this shows up in the very recent things. Right away I try to get rid of the “good” and the “bad” epithet and look for something else. But this is not so unusual. This is the way people are thinking these days. This is related to existentialism among other things. McDevitt: You worked at one time as a carpenter for Claes Oldenburg. Artschwager: I made a number of things for his show in 1962. They were armatures. I said to him, “Did you ever consider making upholstered furniture—not painted stuff but real furniture?” He said, “Why don’t we both make sketches?” Among my sketches were three or four chests of drawers. His reaction was, “But this is just a chest of drawers.” But that reaction did not last very long. He is the major influence on me. What he did is the starting point. But one could say that Oldenburg owes something to Jasper Johns—remember his beer cans cast in bronze? I work with industrial materials and manufacture. For instance, when I make a table object, I work in the factory and with its tools. I make the art completely outside of the art environment. I don’t make it in the studio. The look is a very different one. And the method is different too. McDevitt: When you look at the “Table with Tablecloth,” do you think of it as a sculpture? Artschwager: It’s not sculptural. It’s more like a painting pushed into three dimensions. It’s a picture of wood. The tablecloth is a picture of a tablecloth. It’s a multi-picture. There is something special about furniture. Pieces of furniture are close to the human scale. This gives furniture a human quality. It relates more intimately to the body in so many ways. You have to think about it—the shapes, the meaning. Source: Richard Artschwager, “The Object: Still Life—Interviews with the New Object Makers, Richard Artschwager and Claes Oldenburg, on Craftsmanship, Art, and Function,” interview by Jan McDevitt, Craft Horizons 25, no. 5 (September–October 1965): 28–32, 54–56.

CLAES OLDENBURG (b. 1929 in Stockholm) came into prominence with the pop art movement of the 1960s. His soft sculptures of common objects (such as typewriters and ice bags), his installations, and his staged events called “happenings” helped end the ascendancy of abstraction in the fine-arts world. TESTING TRADITION

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Oldenburg positioned his work in the interstices between traditional sculpture and everyday objects. His furniture-, telephone-, and tool-objects combine the museum and the hardware store. Oldenburg worked closely with master artisans, including his wife, who sewed many of his sculptures. He believed this collaborative process extended his ability to bring the world around him into his art. It is important to note that this 1965 interview with the artist was published in Craft Horizons, the magazine of the American Craft Council.

Claes Oldenburg: I started to make these objects—these things that were like sculptures and yet not like sculptures—and from there it was very easy to go to the larger objects in the home, such as the things that stand on the floor, the chair and then the bedroom. I’ve been trying to make a radiator and things of that sort, the larger things. I will probably end up trying to make a house, because a house is like an object, too, but that’s quite a grandiose project. What I want to do is to create an independent object which has its existence in a world outside of both the real world as we know it and the world of art. It’s an independent thing which has its own power, just to sit there and remain something of a mystery. I don’t want to prejudice the imagination. I want the imagination to come and make of it what it wants to make of it, but always the object will slip out of whatever definition it may be given. If someone says it looks satirical, the next day it may look very unsatirical. It may just look like an ordinary thing. My intention is to make an everyday object that eludes definition. It has to look like the real thing and yet not. I want the object to be more distant from me. Does that come across? The fantasy isn’t in the object. The fantasy is in the eyes of the viewer, and I don’t want to impose it too much on the object. I want the object to have its own existence. I think people love objects that don’t function. It’s like an escape. It’s very pleasant and funny, too. It’s like a human being trying to do something and not being able to do it. I’m happy if people smile at my work. I mean, I’m very happy if they enjoy it, because it can be enjoyed that way—as a frustration of expectations. The last generation believed very much in the work of art as an idealized thing. They thought of themselves very idealistically as great creators, magicians. The point of view has shifted as it does in the history of art to a reaction against this, and the artist wishes to be an ordinary man. I make no comment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The bed [in Oldenburg’s bedroom set, shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery] has a covering of black vinyl, a patterned vinyl, sort of like, ugh, snakes. 236

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Then there are the white vinyl sheets and pillows, and, of course, you can’t get into the bed. The bed is hard. It’s strictly a visual bed. Also, I had to make it in two parts; it divides under the folded-over sheet, because I couldn’t transport it. It’s built on an angle, in visual perspective, so that it’s much longer than you imagine, depending on where you stand. If you stand at one point of the bed, it looks enormously long. If you stand at another point, it looks very short. It changes in space. The whole idea is to present it in a way that takes it completely out of the functional class—to sort of lie in an area between what it seems to be and the work of art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The dresser is usually shown with the drawer pulled out, and the other ones are just fake. The big sun-mirror on top, which distorts the image, turns the room into a sort of painting, so that you can’t see yourself, only something vague. What you get out of the mirror is the sensation of a very shiny material. Also, it’s larger scale than normal furniture, and that’s part of the thing. I mean, if you put people into it, you may see the scale but it doesn’t look right. I had in mind to do a sculpture out of furniture, because I thought that it was possible to bring the two ideas together. Furniture functions as sculpture. Whether it has any power to do that or not, it could be said to have the same definition as sculpture. That is, it stands in space—in a very general definition—and most of my work has to do with turning the things I see in ordinary life into works of art without idealizing them too much. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jan McDevitt: To get back to the furniture, you care very much how it’s made? Oldenburg: Yes, very much. It must be extremely precise. There is a point where craftsmanship becomes so intense that it carries some power in itself. The beauty of the carpenter in Santa Monica who I employed for the bedroom is that he can carry his craft very far, and he can make the marvelous razor-sharp edges on formica which are very difficult to do. Even though he used cheap materials, he did it. I mean, formica is relatively cheap—but he still could carry it so far that it became an expression in itself, which is the same thing about my wife’s sewing. It’s an intensity of action which you wouldn’t get if you just hired anybody. And it’s more than just good craftsmanship. It’s a kind of intensity of wanting to do a thing. It’s very hard to find a good carpenter. Source: Claes Oldenburg, “The Object: Still Life—Interviews with the New Object Makers, Richard Artschwager and Claes Oldenburg, on Craftsmanship, Art, and Function,” interview by Jan McDevitt, Craft Horizons 25, no. 5 (September–October 1965): 28–32, 54–56.

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ROBERT ARNESON (b. 1930 in Benicia, California; d. 1992 in Benicia, California) is associated with funk art, a California translation of 1960s pop art. His ceramic sculptures of everyday objects are often shocking, crude, surrealistic, and comic. In the 1980s he largely abandoned humor to embark on a series of work about nuclear weapons and atrocities of war. Arneson taught at the University of California, Davis, from 1962 to 1991. In 1963 Robert Arneson’s work was chosen for a seminal exhibition, “Contemporary California Sculpture,” at the Oakland Museum. Daunted to be represented alongside formidable colleagues such as Peter Voulkos and John Mason, Arneson challenged himself to create a new work addressing ceramic history and the current state of contemporary art while also expressing his unique voice. His toilet, John with Art, was removed from the exhibition shortly after it was installed at the request of a corporate sponsor. Eventually, it became an icon of Bay Area funk art. Arneson discusses the toilet in a 1974 interview published in Artweek.

Robert Arneson: You know I backed into ceramics out of potting, right? Making little bowls and things. But when you start thinking about ceramics, well, what are the big ceramics? You start thinking about images, a lot of those things. A brick is about ceramics, the dinner plates are about ceramic. The toilet—the toilet is ceramic, but it’s not a toilet. People say “Do your toilets work?” No, my toilets don’t work because they’re not toilets. You can’t have a toilet unless you have an apparatus that flushes your waste. I just simply took a traditional form and defined it, made a sketch of it. I drew it. I painted it. I drew and painted a toilet, but I didn’t stop there. I made it out of the substance that you make toilets out of—ceramic. And I glazed it, somewhat. Some white. It’s a kind of give and take, a kind of playing. I like—if you’re going to fight the bull, you get real close, or else it’s no good. It’s those things that have to come real close, then pull back, to get the magic in there. Cecile McCann: Close to what? Arneson: Close to that thing that you can’t do, or very close to bad. I mean—it’s on an edge of things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But—all those works—I was really—challenging myself. Asking myself questions. The toilet preceded things when I was—there were giants around, at least for me, like Voulkos and John Mason, whose works were very physical. And the presence of them met you eyeball to eyeball. They had a presence, a tremendous presence, and I was just being wedged in between. And I had to deal with what it was I was doing. I, well, you were working 238

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Robert Arneson, John with Art (detail), 1964. Glazed stoneware, 34 1⁄2 × 18 × 25 1⁄2 inches. (Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Manuel Neri; photo by Paul Macapia, © Estate of Robert Arneson/Licensed by VAGA, New York)

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in ceramics, and you liked it. Yeah, but what are you doing? Are you going to make a quasi-Voulkos with your own little curlicue on top, or was I going to make something big and strong like John’s? I had played around with the bottle image, but that was just playing around, really, in terms of potting. But making my toilet really jolted me. It jolted me because I’m doing something—well—doing something that you know is in bad taste. These are no-no’s. And yet—no one’s ever done it. It has no art tradition. But if I make a figure, it has at least 2,000 years of art tradition behind it, and I’m certainly not going to tackle that right now. It’s much easier to tackle something that has no art tradition, or no art content. And then approach it pretty quick, and just hang loose, and let it go, and whatever junior high school scatological thing hops in your mind—if it’s in your mind—lay it out. There must be a reason why it’s in your mind. There must be some hang-ups. No hang-ups, whatever it is. And do it before you think about it. That’s drawing. Do it. Then erase it, if you want to, but don’t think about it, just let it happen. You do that in clay, something can happen. It’s about being open. It’s about trust. If you can’t trust yourself, you can’t do a work of art. Cause then you’re going to do someone else’s art, because you’re trusting them. You’re going to do something that picks up other gestures. You can do it. We know what all the clues are; it’s very simple. Art is simple. Source: Robert Arneson, “About Arneson, Art, and Ceramics,” interview by Cecile McCann, Artweek, October 26, 1974, 1–6.

JAMES KRENOV (b. 1920 in Wellen, Kamchatka) studied cabinetmaking in Stockholm, Sweden, before moving to northern California where, in 1981, he established the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking School. He is the author of four widely read books on advanced woodworking. The excerpt below is from A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook, first published in 1975. The book is part technical information, part memoir, and part philosophical treatise. It expresses the artist’s affirmation of traditional woodworking practices and skills, including his opinion that expertise evolves over time with careful observation, discipline, and focus. Reputed to allow wood to sit in his studio for months or years until the right opportunity for an appropriate piece of furniture revealed itself, Krenov decries the pressure on makers to set aside tradition in the interests of responding to contemporary trends or creating new or unique forms.

Around originality there is no doubt a law of diminishing returns; nowadays there has to be. Though maybe we are drowning not so much in the original as in the imitation, in just things. For many of us originality is a

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James Krenov, Cabinet, ca. 1976. Swedish elm. (Photo by Bengt Carlen)

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pressure; we are being pushed around by people wanting something new, different. Then there’s the other pressure of doing the new without borrowing too much of the old, or at least without getting caught at it. Students are forever running to libraries to get various books—on peasant art, Scandinavian modern, Shaker, Colonial, Indian—one this and one that. They fill their heads with all these images, and then frantically try to come up with something of their own. As though you put these ingredients in a kettle, add water, stir, and cook for two hours. What do you get? Pottage. Pea soup. It’s a losing battle. And so exhausting. Stay out of it. It took me a long time to realize this, and accept my unoriginal self. Try to find the sort of people for whom there is another originality—that of the quiet object in unquiet times. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Perhaps because of my limited imagination, I have never felt that as a craftsman I could, or should, excite people in the usual sense of originality. If what I do achieves this other result, of soothing, or simply pleasing a certain kind of person, then perhaps everything is all right. I try to remind my students of this, to give them confidence when I feel that they are worried about the future, under pressure, looking for new ideas rather than at the wood itself. Instead of touching the wood, turning it, looking at the other side, and then listening to it, these students are pressured by the belief that ideas have to come from outside and they have to be new and striking. So I try to restore their confidence and calm them and slow them down. I tell them that even if they won’t make all that many things, or things that are all that striking, the things that they do will, if they are done right, appeal to the right person. And that is very, very important and should be encouraging. At least it should be reassuring, although sometimes one wonders; even as we reassure, we are at that very moment ourselves right in the middle of tension and contradiction because it is so difficult to establish any tangible evidence of the fact that this message is valid. Perhaps I and people like myself are doomed to fail in that respect because we are, in a way, contradicting a proven truth. Source: James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1975, reprinted 1976), 45–46.

JOHN MASON (b. 1927 in Madrid, Nebraska) is a significant abstract sculptor working in clay. An early student and colleague of Peter Voulkos in Los Angeles, Mason’s style evolved from expressionistic to geometric. He taught at Hunter College, New York, from 1974 to 1985.

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In a 1977 interview with Rose Slivka, critic and editor of Craft Horizons magazine, Mason recalls a revolutionary moment in the history of American ceramics. In the early 1950s, Peter Voulkos was a new instructor at the Los Angeles Art Institute (soon to be the Otis Art Institute). With impetus from the G.I. Bill and little precedent to guide (or impede) them, Voulkos and his students forged a highly experimental teaching environment. Not only did it prove formative for these students, but it generated waves of innovation that transformed the field.

In a sense we were at that moment [1950] producing a lot of pottery that was almost like production pottery except that it didn’t follow the channels pottery would take if it was to be a line of ware. It did follow the tradition of the wheel and did follow the container-vessel situation. But the real purpose was to use the pot surface as painting, each one unique. You might spin out the same form as you would in production but you couldn’t duplicate the painting. And you didn’t know in advance what you would get. It was spontaneity all the way. The thing that fascinates me about this period is that it had been preceded by a time when there was not enough technical information to continue the craft in a vital way after it had been bypassed by the industrial revolution and industrial products and procedures had taken over the craft tradition. So here was a period of rediscovery, of learning all this information in order to reestablish the handcraft. And yet at the moment when it was possible to reestablish it, the people who were really involved in it didn’t want to reestablish it as a straight craft. They wanted to take it somewhere else outside the straight-line continuity of the craft tradition. And it wasn’t just one individual—it was a common feeling. At every seminar or demonstration or whatever, there was always talk about the future of pottery, of the craftsman, the artist, and there was always a desire to do something greater, more profound, more adventurous, more creative. It was more than just the simple homage to abstract expressionist painting. I think it also had a good deal to do with feelings of doubt about pottery, with reevaluating the whole history of ceramics and with reexamining attitudes about the use of clay. In other words, we were exploring the techniques to take them some place where the previous tradition would not normally have supported them. There was a feeling that it was time to change. Source: John Mason, quoted in 1977 interview by Rose Slivka, in The Art of Peter Voulkos, by Rose Slivka and Karen Tsujimoto (New York and Oakland, Calif.: Kodansha International and Oakland Museum, 1995), 41–42.

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HOWARD KOTTLER (b. 1930 in Cleveland; d. 1989 in Seattle) received a Ph.D. in ceramics from Ohio State University in 1964. He became a highly influential teacher of ceramics at the University of Washington, Seattle (1964–89), where he helped create a department focused on figurative sculpture. In his use of casting and application of collaged decals, Kottler created a radical visual language full of satire and gay sexual innuendo. When Kottler’s iconoclastic sculpture, The Old Bag Next Door Is Nuts, was featured in the pages of Ceramics Monthly in September 1976, it touched off a five-month firestorm of passionate commentary in the letters to the editor, excerpted here. Kottler’s response to his critics is last and displays the satirical wit, irreverence, and humor that is the hallmark of his art. Similar flurries of correspondence pitting the traditional against the innovative can also be found in medium-specific craft journals for metal and fiber.

Completely Outraged . . . My sense of justice, honesty, integrity, and aesthetic feeling [have been affronted, and I am] completely outraged by the picture on page 63 [of the September issue showing] Howard Kottler’s “Dream Street,” or “The Old Bag Next Door Is Nuts.” Shown as one example of illusionistic realism, the piece is cynical and dishonest, stretching originality beyond my level of acceptance. In total protest, I am enclosing a photo from page 27 of the spring summer 1976 catalog of Duncan molds, showing where mold DM 575 assembled with the DM 576 will make Howard Kottler’s “Dream House.” The least he could have done was to credit the unknown (real) artist who made the original piece from which the commercial mold was created. The best he could have done was to do his own work! Howard Kottler, whose camouflage is not very illusive, owes an apology to the judges of this show, to Ceramics Monthly (for failing to call attention to its origin), and to each of us who attempts to keep integrity as well as originality . . . in our own work. Ruth Poris Farmington Hills, Mich. Source: Ruth Poris, “Letters,” Ceramics Monthly 25, no. 9 (November 1977): 7.

Response to November Letters Frankly, I was disappointed to read Ruth Poris’s letter in the November issue regarding the work of a nationally known and respected artist. For years, Howard Kottler has not only shown great originality in his work, but

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Howard Kottler, The Old Bag Next Door Is Nuts, 1978. Slipcast clay, 13 inches high. (Photo by Judith Schwartz, courtesy of the Howard Kottler Testamentary Trust)

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by professional example has influenced a number of other clay artists to stretch their imaginations beyond clay pots into the realm of conceptual palace art. Concerning Howard Kottler’s use of molds—they have been used by clay artists for centuries. Further, if Duncan did not wish their molds to be used by others, they would not allow them to be sold, or would have stringent copyright laws presenting usage in a manner other than they particularly designate. But after all, Duncan is in the business of selling molds, and attaches no such rules to their sale or subsequent use. Regarding credit for Ms. Poris’s “unknown (real) artist,” I am certain that he or she was amply rewarded by the management of Duncan for the work produced. But Ms. Poris’s statements have wider implications. Does she mean that Picasso erred when he gave no credit to the toy manufacturer who produced the car used in “Bronze Mother Ape With Her Young?” Or that Jasper Johns should be chastised for failing to acknowledge the maker of the broom used in his painting, “According to What?” By Ms. Poris’s standards, can any current clayworks be considered truly “original,” or is it possible that they all come from a long line of Sung or Ming or Bizen ware? Is every clayworker “dishonest” for failing to credit Ferro Corporation, Mason Color and Chemical, Kentucky-Tennessee Clay Company, the people who bagged the clay, the diggers, the shippers . . . [?] The mind boggles at Ms. Poris’s “sense of justice.” I think the apology Ms. Poris demands should be offered to Howard Kottler, rather than by him. Leon I. Nigrosh Worcester, Mass. Source: Leon I. Nigrosh, “Letters,” Ceramics Monthly 26, no. 1 (January 1978): 9.

Comments Continue on Kottler Controversy In response to Ruth Poris’s November letter to the editor, I thought she was certainly correct in her observations, and I could not have agreed with her more. I was disappointed in the irrational letters in the January issue, and can only assume that these people are “mold-users” also. I fail to see what a nameless platemaker, or Picasso’s use of a toy, or the people who bag clay have to do with the issue. Kottler is no Picasso, and the toy was only a small part of his piece. Kottler’s use of molds was 50–75 percent of his work. To start harping about the diggers, baggers, and shippers of clay—in reference to Ruth Poris’s statement—approaches the ridiculous.

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Robert Smith Milwaukee Source: Robert Smith, “Letters,” Ceramics Monthly 26, no. 3 (March 1978): 7.

Kottler Confesses as Controversy Continues Ruth Poris does not apologize to me, but I do want to apologize to her. Indeed, Ruth Poris, I am a sinner. I have plagiarized from everyone. In my sculpture, “The Old Bag Next Door Is Nuts,” the Victorian house mold (artist unknown) sold by Duncan Ceramic Products was cast at Lloyd’s Ceramics and Pottery of Seattle; the nuts were cast from another Duncan mold (artist unknown); the bag mold was made from a real paper bag (artist unknown) by one of my former students, V’Lou Oliveira; the ceramic decals were made by Tim Hall of Seattle; and the Plexiglas box was made by Continental Industries of Seattle. Even the title, I must confess, is not my own but the brainstorm of two students—Michael Lucero and Alice Sundstrom. In fact, the only element that is mine is the concept for the sculpture. Hopefully, Ms. Poris will permit me this one small glory. I have revealed all. I am born again. Hallelujah! And if as you say, Ms. Poris, “our cultural heritage has come from honest artists,” then I feel washed clean and can walk in that golden path of honesty and integrity in my art. Hopefully, I can keep on this true road, but if I go astray, I feel certain that there will be “the timeless touch of thousands” like you, Ms. Poris, who will come to my rescue and turn me from the evils of craft. Howard Kottler Seattle Source: Howard Kottler, “Letters,” Ceramics Monthly 26, no. 5 (May 1978): 7.

JOHN M C QUEEN (b. 1943 in Oakland, Illinois) received an M.F.A. from Tyler School of Art in 1975. He called himself a basket maker until the 1990s, when references to the vessel became less prominent in his work and the scale of his art increased. Noted for his use of natural materials, his inventiveness, and his intellect, McQueen is often paired with Ed Rossbach as a pioneer in contemporary basketry. This 1978 reverie is one of many poetic investigations of the definition, boundaries, and possibilities of basketmaking recorded in McQueen’s journals.

A basket is egocentric and imprisoning, it holds tenaciously to its limits. It has its own organization and regulates its definition closely. By insisting on being a basket it keeps itself confined. Let other object[s] try to be art. A

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John McQueen, Untitled #203, 1989. Tulip poplar bark, 31 × 12 × 12 inches. (Photo © 1990 Dirk Bakker)

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basket is isolated, unique, separated from all but itself. Such defenses are tightly held. Uncertainty, movement, fear of being spread out is guarded against. The open object, the object of art, leads to a larger reality. The basket must reject this even when inside, it secretly entertains it. These secrets lead to hero worship and flights of fantasy. A basket must be careful. In such a state it could become unraveled. Source: John McQueen, “Basket Definitions,” journal entry, 1978. Courtesy of the artist.

ED ROSSBACH (1914–2002) muses on the relationship between utilitarian and nonutilitarian baskets in an undated and unpublished typescript. Noting that both kinds of baskets have always existed, he writes that they differ in degree rather than in kind. (See also pages 207, 278.)

BASKETS WITHOUT UTILITY Non-utilitarian baskets are not something new. Yet always before now they existed in conjunction with the utilitarian baskets of a culture. They were similar to the utilitarian baskets, but more refined, more highly decorated. The most skilled basketmakers were selected to make the most prestigious works. Probably a clear distinction between utilitarian and nonutilitarian was not recognized. The meaning of one was intimately related to the meaning of the other. There were the sumptuous non-utilitarian gift baskets of feathers and beads, just as there were the useful baskets with only a few feathers and a few beads. Both kinds of baskets carried spiritual meaning. There were presentation baskets impeccably worked to satisfy a society’s most rigorous aesthetic demands while exhibiting features that evolved from utility. At the same time there were useful baskets of vegetal materials scarcely at all transformed by the manipulations of basketmaking. Today’s art baskets can be perceived as existing in conjunction with the constructions of cardboard and plastic that are replacing baskets. The art can be thought of as arising from baskets remembered and also from all the utilitarian packaging and crating which characterize our society. They can be seen as raising the cardboard/plastic substitutes to expressive levels, with meanings and associations growing out of contemporary life. They can also be interpreted as essential reactions to the disappearance of baskets; as such they are expressions of deeply felt loss. They can be regarded as the products of a familiarity (for the first time in history) with all the baskets and other art objects made throughout the world and throughout time—creating new conditions in which art basketmakers work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TESTING TRADITION

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BASKETS AND UTILITY Today baskets that are not intended to satisfy any utilitarian purposes yet perpetuate utilitarian features. They show handles, supports, legs, closures, eccentric forms borrowed from some long forgotten time when such features were devised for utility. These features appear in contemporary baskets—as Proust says about literary style—to strengthen “by a tradition that lies concealed behind them.” Such survivals, vague and uncertain as they may be, allude to vanished ways of living. They operate with peculiar, undeniable force. According to Proust such survivals evoke feelings “pensive and secret.” Such vague references to past times determine and intensify the non-utilitarian basket. This is a curious phenomenon. Source: Ed Rossbach, “Some Random Thoughts about Baskets,” typescript, undated. Courtesy of Katherine Westphal.

WAYNE HIGBY (b. 1943 in Colorado Springs, Colorado) is former professor of ceramic art at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University. He has written extensively on the contemporary craft movement. Higby affirms the symbolic value of pottery and the primacy of the vessel as an enduring form for ceramic art in a 1982 article in the NCECA Journal, published by the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. Responding to transformations in the field inspired by abstract expressionism and modern sculpture, his manifesto situates modern ceramics within a larger historical frame.

The contemporary vessel is significant because as an artistic form it has the poetic force necessary to overcome the tyranny of Modern Art. Since the late 19th century, Modernist theory has dominated the visual arts, releasing its hold on our aesthetic consciousness only slightly in the last 20 years. Modernism’s great achievement was the creation of an autonomous art. In effect, it is an essentially non-representational art, the content of which is its own intrinsic form. Painting, first under the guidance of Cezanne, led the way, becoming an independent entity reduced to something that could only be about itself. Painting was isolated from all non-painting and nonaesthetic concerns. As a result, Modernist art became utterly abstracted from the concerns of life in a calculated and abstractly intellectual pursuit for purity. This search for purity is no doubt appealing in a time of dramatically shifting and disintegrating cultural values; but because of its essentially reductive nature, the Modernist’s idea of purity becomes lifedenying. In contrast, the vessel is life-affirming. As an aesthetic form, it symbolizes the physical and psychic life of humanity.

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The vessel is a manifestation of unity in art. It incorporates the complex dynamics of surface and form, seeing and touching, contemplation and use. It is not pure in the Modernist sense. It is not a part, it is the sum of the parts. The vessel represents the unity inherent in human experience. The contemporary vessel does share one important characteristic with Modernist art: the vessel is basically conceptual. It is primarily the idea of the pot that is inspirational. Like Modernist painting about painting, the vessel is pottery about pottery. It is at this level that the pot finds its place in contemporary art. Functional pottery is not and cannot be a part of contemporary art as it is now constituted. Functional pottery is one of those fundamental forms which integrates art and life. It is, in fact, nothing like art as the West has come to recognize art since the Renaissance. Functional pottery is in opposition to the separative notions of Modernist theory and serves a profoundly different philosophy. The vessel, on the other hand, is a transitional mode. It does not, however, represent a movement in art but rather a mutation. A movement constitutes a strategic shift or simple change of position within a strict framework. A mutation is a significant and basic alteration. In essence, a mutation is a function of evolution and, therefore, without precedent. Like all mutations the vessel, to the insensitive observer, appears to be nothing new; but in fact, it is an important, decisive innovation among the many innovations necessary in the inevitable change and development of the visual arts. Unfortunately, for some artists the vessel is just one more vehicle to use in revisiting Modernist art. Rather than establishing the dynamics of the vessel in relation to the history of pottery, the tendency has been to defuse the vessel’s power by adapting it to the visual styles of Modernism, creating in the process a Mannerist form of ceramic art. We are told of the revolution in ceramics, but often upon reflection this revolution seems to be simply one more rotation around the dominant styles of 20th century art. If we were to accept the notion that a revolution in ceramics did occur, we would certainly need to know clearly what it was against. Of course, our collective insistence in seeing ceramic history in the narrow context of a 50-year span from 1900 to late 1950 indeed might justify this idea of revolution. But if this revolution we hear about was also meant to remove from our vision the more magnificent forms in ceramic history such as 18th century B.C. Minoan pots or Isnick masterpieces, and in the process bind us to the service of Modernism’s dictatorial order, then the revolt has surely failed. Some interesting ceramic work has been produced during the last 30 years in response to mainstream art. However, the most significant work has been achieved through the quiet evolution of ceramics within the con-

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text of the vessel. The definitive works of ceramic art in our time have been the result of a reevaluation of the history of pottery and a persistent effort to overcome the tyranny of Modern art. Source: Wayne Higby, “The Vessel: Overcoming the Tyranny of Modern Art,” NCECA Journal 3, no. 1 (1982): 11–12.

DAVID HUCHTHAUSEN (b. 1952 in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin) received a B.S. in 1975 from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he served as a graduate technical assistant to Harvey Littleton, and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois, Normal, where he directed its glass program under the supervision of Joel Myers. His geometric, cold-worked (cut and polished) glass sculptures are widely exhibited. Between 1978 and 1984 Huchthausen organized a trilogy of museum exhibitions examining the state of contemporary glass art. In the introduction to a 1984 exhibition catalog, he describes an insular movement preoccupied with material and technique and urges his peers to move beyond their self-imposed ghetto into the riskier confines of the larger art world.

Since the late 1970s a distinct and obvious fracturing of attitude and direction has been developing within contemporary glass. As the emphasis on technique gradually begins to fade, the virtuosity of the material seems less significant and its inherent problems more obvious. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stagnation characterizes the situation in 1984. The promise of studio glass has apparently flattened into a mundane acceptance of marketability and emulation. Glass galleries continue to lament the neglect and indifference emanating from the art community, yet have failed to develop a cohesive aesthetic philosophy beyond presentation of a specific material. Most glass collectors remain glass collectors, not art collectors. The conceptual gap seems too wide to bridge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The ultimate question, and one which has been evaded, is whether or not it is imperative or relevant to execute a specific work in glass. When the success of a piece is reliant on the material alone, it will forever remain suspect on a conceptual level. Since the basis of “mainstream” art stems from a conceptual/emotive integration, the immediate dichotomy becomes obvious and the distinction somewhat clearer. “Magic” evolves from the mind and spirit, not from the material alone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A double standard certainly exists in the application of established aesthetic criteria to works involving glass. This involves a degree of technical 252

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insecurity on the part of critics and an insistence on the part of artists to pursue an affiliation with a specific material. What is necessary is not the development of critics who specialize in glass (with all its implied perspectives), but the cultivation of art critics who are willing to evaluate glass from a fine arts perspective. This requires both a lack of historical bias on the part of the critic and a willingness on the part of the artist to accept the collective results. This may be a rather bitter pill to swallow. Twenty years nearly devoid of relevant criticism have fostered a starvation for input and furthered an alienation from the art community. It has also generated an acceptance of mediocre critical response and a distinct avoidance of real and significant issues. Glass is continually categorized by techniques rather than concepts. This in itself is in absolute conflict with “mainstream” art. Art movements or styles have historically evolved from a central concept of the generation of an emotive response system, as in impressionism or abstract expressionism. An attitude toward visual image and a specific concept of design certainly existed during the Art Nouveau/Art Deco period, but covered the spectrum of decorative arts and never focused on a specific material. Anyone waiting patiently for the studio movement to receive a stamp of legitimacy as a fine art movement is basking in self-delusion. The fact remains that most of what has been produced by this “movement” is of little significance on an art historical level. Certain aspects of painting and sculpture have long been relegated to the sub-art level since they ceased to address contemporary concerns. Production lithographs, mass produced oil paintings, and limited editions of every genre have evolved into the ultimate and most accessible form of decorative art. Such a purging has yet to occur within contemporary glass, but perhaps the moment is at hand. Glass has its own rich and illustrious history which will certainly and justifiably continue unabated; realistically, this evolution has very little to do with the history of art. This is a distinction that cannot be avoided. The “Studio Movement” has rewritten the history of glass in 20 short years but has had virtually no impact whatsoever on the history of art. An examination of the over 1,000 slides entered in this exhibition reveals a distinct lack of art historical perspective and an attitude oblivious of contemporary directions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . By its very definition “mainstream” art remains in a continual state of flux, constantly challenging established convictions and attitudes. Most artists working in glass have been alienated by choice, opting for the sanctuary of an organized group ethic. The stigma of association with this movement is often stifling and certainly perpetuates a strict delineation from fine art. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the organizational focus TESTING TRADITION

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of a “Studio Movement” has been to generate and focus attention on the potential of the material. Any ultimate validation of glass may not originate from within the studio movement but from artists like Italo Scanga, DeWain Valentine, Chris Burden, Chris Wilmarth, Larry Bell, and others through the simple mechanism of previously established credibility “automatically” transferred to new directions of work regardless of the materials. Historical validating certainly exists in the case of [Marcel] Duchamp, Bell, and Wilmarth. While this exhibition documents many exceptions, one conclusion is inescapable: contemporary glass is not necessarily bad art as much as it is insignificant art. It has failed to address relevant contemporary concerns with an adequate degree of personal idiosyncrasy, historical perspective, or aesthetic risk. Source: David R Huchthausen, Americans in Glass 1984, exhibition catalog (Wausau, Wis.: Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, 1984), 7–9.

WENDELL CASTLE (b. 1932) taught woodworking and furniture design at the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, from 1962 through 1969. In a 1985 oral history, he describes a tension experienced by many artists using craft materials at that time. He notes his desire to escape the provincial field of furniture and his disappointment in the failure of the sculpture community to recognize his work. (See also page 97.)

Wendell Castle: I felt quite competent about being able to talk about three-dimensional art. And I really felt that I had a lot to offer. I thought I’d discovered a whole new direction that nobody else had ever thought of. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard Polsky: And you were going to use the sculptural approach to teaching? Castle: Yeah. I thought that was the answer for everybody else. I didn’t realize it was the answer for me. But that is what I had to offer, and I could talk about that and I could do it. Polsky: What do you mean specifically? You were going to tell people what? Castle: To pay more attention to the history of modern art than the history of modern furniture. And look at sculpture and look at design and look at nature for ideas, instead of looking at other places of furniture. Which was sort of a new thought in 1962. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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I was the first one to think of sculpture and furniture as being the same thing. Or having the ability to be the same thing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In a sense, I was doing it because that was what I knew how to do. I mean, I really wouldn’t know how to make furniture any other way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I aligned myself more with the art people in the community. I wasn’t as sympathetic with craft. So in a sense I was sort of anti-craft and spoke against fine craftsmanship as often making pieces that were shallow. And that spoke about craftsmanship only and had no real content. That the content was craft and the craft was too often about craft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I think I took a devil’s advocate point of view, in that I saw nothing but craftsmanship. So I thought in order to beat it down, I sort of had to be against it. And so I took a point of view that art was all-important. And perhaps I did overkill on that, but because I had to take such a hard line on that in the beginning, because nobody seemed interested in that in the beginning. So I really had to speak against craftsmanship and speak against conservativeness and speak against history and all that, to make a point. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I took the point of view that handmade furniture should be exactly that, and to make something that looks like it’s made by a machine is not the way to go. Introducing the personality of the artist into the pieces and trying to express yourself through the work. The idea of where to look for ideas other than furniture was something I brought to it. Polsky: Where did you suggest they look? Castle: Sculpture, painting, and nature are sources of ideas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I became dissatisfied by the late sixties. Polsky: What was dissatisfying to you? Castle: Well, what I’d been preaching at R.I.T. [Rochester Institute of Technology, School for American Craftsmen], what we talked about earlier, the sculptured approach, that workmanship was less important than content and all these things. After maybe four years of making that point, I made it too well. To the other faculty, who sort of held the balance there. Bill Keyser, who had, in a sense, been holding the balance there, because he’d been the traditional craftsman, because his background was craft and he insisted that things should be well made—he really saw that I had all the glamorous part of the job. And he wanted to be an artist.

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But I did get the press and the notoriety and the money and the glamour. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . When he kind of got involved with sculpture himself, well, there no longer was any balance in the department. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I also went through a crisis in my own work at the same time, because I’d also been questioning my own work at the same time I was questioning teaching. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I was not finding any universal acceptance of my work as art. In fact, I was probably finding very little. I was in craft shows, not art shows. And I never made that move that I wanted to make. In certain situations, from a craft side, it sort of looked as if I was making that kind of headway, but if you looked at it from the art side, it looked as if I hadn’t made much headway at all. I’d just made more headway than most other craftsmen, that’s all. Which isn’t saying a whole lot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . But without even trying to do so, I think I made sixties furniture. In the sixties I was not conscious of thinking of being part of my time, but I think I was part of that time. I think that furniture will be thought of in the future—when future histories are written and many things can be looked at in perspective, I’m inclined to think I’ll come off better than I thought I would at one point. Because I think that work will be seen as very relevant of the sixties. Polsky: What does that mean? Castle: I think it means to be very solecistic. You just do what you want to do and you don’t worry about whether society likes it or not. Society comes around to your way of thinking. You don’t come around to theirs. Individual oriented. Source: Wendell Castle, “Reminiscences of Wendell Castle,” interview by Richard Polsky, 1985, Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, New York, 1:48–49, 53–55, 75– 76, 87.

STANLEY LECHTZIN (b. 1936 in Detroit) believes that technology, particularly computer-aided design and manufacture (CAD-CAM), are liberating tools for artists. Associated with Temple University’s Tyler School of Art since 1962, Lechtzin has focused on the microcomputer as an aid for studio artists for almost three decades. His experimentation with plastics, electroforming, and computer-aided design has allowed him 256

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Stanley Lechtzin at his computer, making a brooch, 2005. (Photo by Daniella Kerner, courtesy of the artist)

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to create large, lightweight, sculptural forms for jewelry and ritual objects. Lechtzin says in a 1988 interview in Metalsmith magazine that if artists want to speak to their own time, they must employ current technologies. The challenge is to use them in a way that belies their anonymous industrial applications.

Michael Dunas: Why are you investigating the applications of computeraided design/computer-aided manufacture (CAD/CAM) to metalsmithing? Stanley Lechtzin: I’m looking for methods of utilizing the computer to minimize the amount of handwork necessary to create objects. The practicality of this is already well documented. It will not be very long before I will be able to show metalsmithing applications and therefore raise philosophical questions about the technical aspects, such as, are we engaged in a handwork activity or is the resultant object and its communicative values more important? The use of CAD/CAM points the way to a different future. Dunas: Your position sounds more like a polemic than a case for practical innovation. Lechtzin: I think it is. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dunas: So what then distinguishes the metalsmithing activity? Lechtzin: The exercise of intellect, the manifestation of the form. But nowhere is the mark of the hand seen as crucial to the definition. I think what I’m suggesting is to eliminate that confusion. The importance of an object is not in how well crafted it is but in how communicative it is of the human condition. . . . The activity of the metalsmith, as I have now defined it, probably does not differ greatly from the activity of architects, engineers or other practitioners engaged in creating objects. . . . There will be more conceptualization and less manipulation. Dunas: What you seem to imply is that, like architecture, metalsmithing is defined by a historically acceptable morphology. In architecture the history of building types defines the architect’s work regardless of the process by which he designs those buildings. Is that a correct assumption? Lechtzin: Yes, I accept that definition because I see my colleagues as producers of holloware, jewelry, functional and sculptural forms. We have our paradigms and we subscribe to using these paradigms. Therefore, as I see us moving into the computerized studio, we will continue to produce the types of objects that initially attracted our interest, but no longer will we need to master hand skills, which many of us devoted many years to acquire. Dunas: Assuming that CAD/CAM is fully accepted, not only by metal-

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smithing but by ceramics, woodworking, etc., do you then find any value in handmaking? Lechtzin: Not in and of itself. It is a romantic notion that at this time is still dependent upon many of the ideas put forward by William Morris and his friends. It was a reaction to many of the negative social manifestations that industry and the machine created in society. I do not see the computer as doing the same sort of thing, either economically or socially. I see the computer as quite the opposite, as a true creator of freedom and independence. It’s inexpensive, readily available, universal in its applications; anyone who wants it can have it. Therefore the need to separate ourselves from the users of the machine is no longer important. In the past it was important to say that we are individuals capable of retaining mastery of tool and material and to set ourselves up in opposition or as an alternative to the machine product, which was seen as working to dehumanize. The computer isn’t doing that and therefore there’s no need to defy it; there’s no need to take issue with it, and therefore we no longer need to hold onto the romantic notion of the individual working alone, producing beautiful objects with little more than their own hands. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I think that we may be embarking on a period in which that labor intensity will no longer be a useful criterion; I’m not sure that it is a clear criterion today. When we start examining it carefully, we come to the realization that people are evaluating subconsciously how labor-intensive the production of an object appears to be and assigning esthetic value to the more labor-intensive object. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I don’t see these activities in terms of progress, I see them in terms of history. I would characterize them as freeing individuals from labor, which I consider to be somewhat onerous, something that ought to be avoided by intelligent people. I don’t look to demonstrate to my friends, associates and potential supporters that I am capable of lavishing innumerable hours on an object for the sheer love of spending that amount of time. Now, I know that much of the content of craft is of that nature. It communicates this lavish expenditure of time. In some cases that may be the only thing of value that it communicates. I don’t think that’s very intelligent at this time in our history. Source: Stanley Lechtzin, “Conversations on Technology,” interview by Michael Dunas, Metalsmith 8, no. 3 (Summer 1988): 20–25. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

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MIKE KELLEY (b. 1954 in Detroit) is a provocative artist and critic whose work includes performance art, installations, sculpture, and film. In the late 1980s, he assembled secondhand, often soiled, crocheted dolls and afghans into soft sculptures, which placed him in a skewed relationship to the world of handmade crafts. Trained as a conceptual artist, Kelley is fascinated by the place of craft in popular culture. In the catalog for the Carnegie International 1991 exhibition, he examines how the time, labor, and emotion invested in the creation of dolls and toys give them an empathetic value that belies their nominal material worth and formal interest. Although aimed at populist rather than elite craft, Kelley’s concerns parallel Garth Johnson’s critique of the sentimental value attributed to handmade objects (see page 293).

When artworks started self-consciously commenting on their own status as commodities there simultaneously rearose the interest in escaping commodification. The argument was put forth that the artwork could function analogously to the gift, as an object outside of the system of exchange. This is what initially led to my interest in homemade craft items, these being the objects already existing in popular usage that are constructed solely to be given away. Not to say that I believe that craft gifts themselves harbor utopian sentiments; all things have a price. The hidden burden of the gift is that it calls for pay-back, but the price is unspecified, repressed. The uncanny aura of the craft item is linked to time. Crafts are the literal embodiment of the Puritan work ethic. They seem to announce that work is its own reward. This is spoken through the long, labor-intensive hours it takes to construct them by hand. They speak the language of the wage-earner in which there is a direct one-to-one relationship between time spent and worth. The equation is not between time and money; it is a more obscure relationship drawn between time and commitment, one that results in a kind of emotional usury. The gift operates within an economy of guilt; an endless feeling of still-owing attends it because of its mysterious worth. And the incredibly loaded nature of these objects is intensified by their material nature, by the seeming contradiction that their emotional weight far exceeds the worth of the cheap and lowly materials from which they are constructed. However, it isn’t proper to speak of the “junk” status of the craft item; it is in bad taste to comment on the monetary worth of a gift. The fine art junk sculpture could be said to have value in spite of its material, while the craft item could be said, like the icon, to have value beyond its material. In the process of acquiring large numbers of craft items, primarily dolls and stuffed toy animals, I started to become aware of them for the first 260

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time as discrete objects. That beyond simply being carriers of “love hours” (or “guilt hours”) they also had specific forms, and that there must be some connection between these forms and the objects’ use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I want to remove all vestiges of empathy—to deal with the pure “material nature” of the crafts. Three representational systems will be simultaneously used to present the crafts, categorized by construction, technique, and shape. One system is the crafts themselves arranged by category on simple folding tables. The second system consists of a photograph of each item with a ruler to show its true size, and the third is a drawing done by an archeological illustrator of one category of craft item. In this way all the psychological baggage usually attending these objects will be denied. And, of course, by repressing this aspect, these qualities become even more pervasive. Source: Mike Kelley, “In the Image of Man,” in Carnegie International 1991, vol. 1 (New York and Pittsburgh: Rizzoli and Carnegie Museum of Art, 1991), 94.

In unpublished notes from 1994, ARLINE FISCH (b. 1931) poses a series of questions about the consequences of abandoning utilitarian craft. As an educator and a practicing jeweler, she wonders if redefining conventions will lead to an artistic identity in limbo. (See also pages 103, 127, 173, 217.)

Because I work in a craft material should I concentrate on making objects which are both aesthetic and functional? How is function reconciled with aesthetic considerations and concerns? Is work which has actual function taken seriously in the world of aesthetics? If I make an object which looks like a functional one must I then take responsibility for its successful functioning? If I continue to reference functional form but not consider the actual functioning capability am I doing a disservice to anyone? Do I continue to use the functional reference because I am using materials associated with applied arts? Is it necessary that I do this? If I abandon the functional reference am I also abandoning the world of applied arts? Is this a risk for me? Where will my work be placed? What will be my competition? What will be the arena of criticism for what I do? Source: Arline M. Fisch, “Some Thoughts on Function vs. Art in the Crafts,” unpublished notes, June 1994, Arline Fisch Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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ROSEMARY APPLE BLOSSOM LONEWOLF (b. 1953 in Isleta Pueblo, New Mexico) is a fourth-generation member of the Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico who learned her craft from her father and aunt, innovators in contemporary Indian pottery. Lonewolf is known for her “story pots,” formed of hand-mined clay with incised naturalistic and autobiographical images, and for recent public arts projects. In a 1996 NCECA Journal article, Lonewolf describes the internal norms and external pressures that affect her as a practicing artist within a traditional craft community. She must negotiate gender conventions, changing technologies, individual expression, and market demand within the dynamic frame of personal, family, and cultural identity.

Technologies introduced to the art of Pueblo pottery making have received mixed reactions. Originally, Great Grandmother Sara Fina Tafoya, like all Pueblo potters, used a dried corn cob to sand green ware to a smooth surface prior to applying slip to the pot. Later, contemporary potters like my grandfather, Camilio Sunflower Tafoya, used sandpaper from the local general store to smooth his pots. Sandpaper, a new technological tool of his era, was viewed as a positive change as it resulted in a smoother surface, thus enabling pots to be burnished to a higher sheen. My grandfather also told me that in prehistoric times fire dogs (or fired clay cones) were used to elevate pots during the firing process. Today, however, the use of metal sheets, grills, and tin cans used to form a makeshift kiln is considered the “traditional” method of making Pueblo pottery. I have questioned these “traditional” purists with concerns such as: “Is not the use of sandpaper, machine tumbled polishing stones, sable (rather than yucca) brushes, metal carving tools, and electric or gas kilns merely an expression of innovation and creative evolution in the art of Pueblo pottery making?” One would think it is a simple and nonconsequential matter for a potter to use the “low technology” of sandpaper, tin cans, and metal grates. Yet complex issues, questions, dilemmas, and disputes have often risen for Pueblo potters from such seemingly simple actions. Pueblo Indian artists have been historically burdened with the threat of public censure, fines, and, even in extreme cases, banishment from the village based on their incorporation of “technology.” One of the heaviest burdens of tradition that one must endure is a family structure or culture that is closed, static, and unreceptive to another’s technology, ideas, or customs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ironically, access to the clay industry was also closed, static and sexually exclusive in Pueblo Indian culture. From the ancient Anasazi cliff dwelling 262

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times until the recent 1970s, pottery production was considered “women’s work,” a part of a female’s daily household chores. However, despite the threat of legal censure from the local tribal council and community ridicule, it was my Grandfather, Camilio Tafoya, and my father, Joseph Lonewolf, who were among the first men at Santa Clara Pueblo to reverse the norm in this previously gender exclusive field. Such are the similar, yet different cultural experiences. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I credit this remarkable visit with the Ohi’s in their Kanazawa [Japan] studio with providing me with the initial courage to step out of the “Indian artist” box. I returned to the American Southwest with revised career goals. Although I continued to produce pots inscribed with highly contemporary and personal subject matter, such as my feelings about pregnancy and a woman’s body as a bearer of life; my mixed heritage; the political status of women living on a Federal Indian reservation; and statements on the conflicts technology brings to native lifestyles, I also wanted to share my culture and heritage with others on a larger scale, in every sense of the word. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Among Pueblo potters, the spiritual belief is that the clay is alive. The essence of Clay Lady dwells within the beautiful, buff colored clay. Our hands are but the tools which allow her to reveal her beauty and her presence to the world. A small offering of corn meal opened my presentation and acknowledged a debt of gratitude and respect to the Clay Lady. And even in my new work, regarding the creation of a . . . glaze made from Pueblo-mined clay, I feel it’s just another way the Clay Lady is revealing herself and allowing me to do that. I’m the tool again. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There was no formal clay education. Instead, I was raised in an environment where many family members were artists and highly creative. From these excellent teachers I absorbed, osmosis like, the skills associated with clay work. I learned the technical process through imitation and casual observation as my father worked. Marketing and sales skills were acquired as I accompanied Aunt Grace Medicine Flower to art exhibits and shows. Additionally, stories of Clay Lady, the spirit who lives in the clay, were told as I worked in a family setting surrounded by these master potters. If anything, the pressure has been in large part self imposed to add my own special contribution to this impressive line of artists. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tourism also resulted in a flurry of creative activity at Santa Clara Pueblo. In responding to an audience inquiry about my great grandmother Sara Fina Tafoya’s pieces, I said, “Initially all her early work was strictly utilitarTESTING TRADITION

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ian. Later, decorative works such as wedding vases, candle stick holders, and ash trays were created in response to a rapidly developing tourist market. This tourist market pretty much dictated what forms and shapes were aesthetically pleasing. It was a period of transition for her—continuing to produce utilitarian ware for her household while also creating the more decorative pieces for the retail market. It wasn’t until my father’s time in the early 1970s that Pueblo pottery became truly nonutilitarian and was accepted as an art form. Prior to this time, all pieces were made with use in mind. Seed pots were created to store seeds for the next spring planting. Water vessels were formed for water storage. However, my father purposely removed the hole from the top of these pots and placed it on the bottom so as not to interfere with the design element. His intent was to purposely have the focus move from utilitarian to that of art.” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Among tribal people such as the Pueblo Indians, there is no word for art. Male and female alike have found that one of the best methods with which to express our native ideas, values, standards, and feelings was through the completion of our everyday chores. In the walls of our pots, in the embroidered fabric of our clothing, in the colorful strokes of our paintings, and in the steps of our ceremonial dances is found the vibrant elements of a culture. For it is within the significance of these elements that tradition exists for both a culture or a family. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I questioned why and what I was doing. I didn’t want to crank out cookie cutter pots and I was tired of the scrutiny and comparison of my pieces to other family members’ work. I struggled to resolve this burdensome purpose in life until suddenly, one morning, it became so very apparent to me. The answer came with a burst of emotion. “I create beauty!” I exclaimed out loud. From that day on, I released much of the burden that had been an inevitable part of my family clay legacy. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I knew I would find a way to express my individuality within the shadow of awesome creative giants. I would do it “my way.” Source: Rosemary Lonewolf, “Family and Cultural Traditions: Blessing or Burden?,” NCECA Journal 17, no. 1 (1996): 24–32.

RICHARD NOTKIN (b. 1948) debunks claims that transparency of process and truth to materials are fundamental craft values in a 1997 NCECA Journal article. In fact, he challenges all attempts to define essential qualities for the field. Pointing to the historical diversity of objects in his medium, clay, Notkin urges his peers to abandon hierarchies of process and technique. (See also page 122.) 264

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Throughout much of the “clay revolution” of the past 40 years, much of the artwork and aesthetic philosophy has eschewed process and technique in favor of spontaneity and the notion of “truth to materials.” But does clay really have a true nature? In the context of clay as art, I would argue that it does not. Everything that human beings do to clay alters its nature. We mine it, refine it, bag it, and ship it to unnatural habitats in ceramic supply company warehouses, where it is mixed with other refined clays and ingredients to create clay bodies that do not occur in nature. The techniques and processes an artist inflicts on this already adulterated material further removes clay from any semblance of its former natural state. In the rarefied environment of the academic petri dish, the notions of “truth to materials” and the “nature of clay” have been repeated so often that they have taken on the aura of religious mantras. In actuality, these twin notions are little more than doctrine that elevates and promotes certain techniques and processes while chastising and discouraging others. But is there really a hierarchy of greater and lesser techniques regarding the ability to enhance the “nature of clay?” Why, for example, is throwing clay on the wheel generally regarded as a purer, more natural form of expression than, say, slip-casting? I know of no force in nature that spins clay into cylinders! Similarly, there is no inherent superiority in wood firing as opposed to electric firing, other than the fact that it’s more fun to party around a wood kiln. And where is it written that ash glazes are holier than lustres, large scale works are of greater importance than small, or a gestural, spontaneous approach to the clay is of more relevance than intricate detailing and tight craftsmanship? In short, as applied to the ceramic arts, “truth to materials” is a misnomer, a worn out myth, a cliché. What we are actually talking about is prejudice. This prejudice favors and elevates certain techniques, processes and philosophical approaches, and, in the nature of prejudice, denigrates all others. Source: Richard T. Notkin, panel discussion, “Small, Tight, and/or Precious: Why the Hell Not?,” NCECA Journal 18 (1997): 27–28.

BETTY WOODMAN (b. 1930) explains the importance of the vessel as a referent in her ceramic art in a 1998 interview in Studio Potter magazine. Her point of view underscores Wayne Higby’s argument about the enduring presence and symbolic power of pottery geographically and historically. (See also page 187.)

The presence of the vessel in my work is often questioned. While the vessel may make the work seem conservative to the ceramic world, I think its presence can be viewed as avant-garde in the art world. The introducTESTING TRADITION

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Betty Woodman, Divided Vases—Christmas, 2004. Glazed earthenware, epoxy resin, lacquer, and paint, 34 1⁄2 × 39 × 7 inches. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Frank Lloyd Gallery, Santa Monica, Calif.)

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tion of function into the high-art canon is certainly not a foregone conclusion. Of course, it is easier to move from a “high” art position into “craft” than vice-versa. I don’t make abstract art. I may paint abstractly, but I use subject matter. The vessel is central to the history of ceramics. The history of ceramics has several veins. One is the figure, and that’s been around as long as there has been clay. Another is the vessel, and that’s essential to an understanding of what ceramics is. I continue to deal with the vessel. My vessel isn’t functional any more, but it can be. It’s about function and allows my work to be seen within the context of ceramic history. And in more ways these days, it’s also about the history of painting. If it’s going to be about clay, then this is an important, if not essential, fact. I insist on it. The vessel has allowed me to be looked at and accepted in ways that I would not be if I had made a piece of abstract sculpture. If you make a piece of abstract sculpture, you’re lined up with people making abstract sculpture, and the “why” of clay is indeed to be discussed. But there’s no question in my work of the “why” of clay. I have my place in the discussion of art today because I do use the vessel. I’m not treading on someone else’s toes. I think I have recognition today partly because of this. Maybe it’s partially because I’ve been smart enough to do it, or because I just do it. But I’m not making something called “ceramic sculpture.” Source: Betty Woodman, “The Painted Garden—Betty Woodman: An Interview,” interview by Gerry Williams, Studio Potter 27, no. 1 (December 1998): 44–65.

MARK HEWITT (b. 1955 in Stoke-on-Trent, England) descends from two generations of directors of England’s Spode china factory. After reading Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book while a student at Bristol University in the early 1970s, Hewitt rejected his managerial heritage in order to become a traditional potter in the folk tradition. After a three-year apprenticeship with Michael Cardew, Hewitt studied traditional pottery practices in West Africa and Asia before establishing his own pottery in Pittsboro, North Carolina. In a 2000 article in Studio Potter magazine, Hewitt, informed by his global experience, proposes a dynamic definition of what constitutes traditional craft production today and offers a tribute to its ongoing meaning and vitality.

Am I a part of North Carolina’s folk tradition? I come out of another tradition, the [Bernard] Leach and [Michael] Cardew tradition (if indeed it qualifies as a tradition), and am neither North Carolinian, nor folk, and have lived here a mere 17 years. However, most of what I know I learned as an apprentice or empirically in my workshop. I use two relatively local clays, TESTING TRADITION

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Mark Hewitt carrying pots to his kiln, 1997. (Photo by Roger Manley, courtesy of the North Carolina State University Gallery of Art & Design)

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as dug clays, and one from Tennessee, all of which I refine myself. I have an Alkaline glaze similar to the Lincoln County glaze, but I blow salt on it, as well as on pots that are unglazed. Though my kiln is a 14th century kiln from northern Thailand, essentially it is just a fancy groundhog kiln. The strong ash runs on the sides of some old groundhog fired salt glaze pots are the American equivalent of the ash runs on pots from Tamba, Shigeraki, Bizen, and Echizen. One doesn’t have to look Eastward for ash deposits and rugged clay quality. I choose to mix and match elements of both the Alkaline and salt glaze traditions as inspiration dictates. I use stained glass for ornamentation like they do in Lincoln County. I am a jackdaw, picking up the pretty, shiny things that I see here, wanting to make them my own. I’m not beholden to the tradition, but choose to be within its embrace. It is as though I am having a glorious affair with it, taking great pleasure in its company, but with an eye that wanders elsewhere too. Perhaps if I am here long enough I’ll make the grade. . . . By passing all that I know on to my apprentices, my own view of tradition will be modified and continue into the future. As an outsider I see things within the tradition that people inside may not; everyone has an individual eye. I remember the first time I saw a large collection of Lincoln County pots in a home in Lincolnton. It was a revelation; beautiful, big, slick, drippy green pots everywhere, looking like magnolia leaves after a summer rain. They were unknown, seductive, and powerful. I am still under their spell. But I cannot and do not want to copy them, I can only make my own. I am not making traditionally inspired pots for ideological reasons (forget romantic Orientalism), but for their tangibility, physicality, and presence. Time changes tradition, outsiders change tradition, insiders change tradition. A word is spoken, an idea transmitted, and the pots go on forever. Questions about tradition continue to fascinate me. I will close with some provocative talking points introduced at the Iowa Woodfire Conference to stimulate discussion. TRADITION IS RADICAL The prevailing status quo in the Western ceramic world is based on Art School BFA and MFA programs. There are very few traditional potters. To have an MFA is to be normal; to be a traditional potter is to be unusual, radical. TRADITION IS INDIVIDUAL At least 90% of the images in the contemporary ceramic press are of nontraditional pots. You can travel anywhere in the US and see the same types of pots at galleries and stores, all made of the same materials, whether in New York, LA, Chicago or New Orleans, Peoria, or Paducah. Artistic exTESTING TRADITION

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pression has become standardized, generic. To be traditional is to be individual. TRADITION IS EXPRESSION Within a tradition individual expression flourishes. Give ten traditional potters ten similar lumps of clay and the same pot to make and ten different pots will be made. Each will bear the imprint of individual character and skill. There will be expression even without trying. The expression may not be loud, but it will be full. TRADITION MEANS UNDERSTANDING YOUR MATERIALS To buy premixed clay and glaze materials from suppliers is to have only a partial understanding of them. It is almost a system of potting by numbers; all you have to do is fill in the blanks. To gather and refine your own means to know them from the ground up. Traditional pottery is vertically integrated and complete, non-traditional pottery is fragmented and horizontal. Traditional pottery is a home cooked meal of organic produce, nontraditional pottery is McDonalds. TRADITION IS EXCELLENT INEXPENSIVE EDUCATION Teacher ratios at traditional potteries are usually very low, usually no more than three to one. The teaching is constant, personalized, in your face, and thorough. You may even be paid to learn. Art schools are very expensive; the teacher/pupil ratios are poor and the teaching consequently less personal. TRADITION IS SOMEWHERE To be part of a tradition is to belong to a place, to have deep roots. Traditional pottery reflects its locality. Non-traditional pottery can be practiced anywhere, it is not rooted to its community so intimately, it is nowhere. TRADITION LASTS Tradition is not fashion; it doesn’t alter every five minutes like hemlines, or with every new glaze recipe. It is consistent and strong and can last hundreds of years; it is like a redwood tree. And there is a succession from one generation to the next. Non-traditional pottery has a brief beautiful flower which doesn’t bear fruit. TRADITION IS CHANGE Tradition is adaptive to technology without losing its core. It is a tree trunk out of which new branches grow. To survive, traditional potters constantly modify their operations to fit the times. TRADITION IS MONEY Traditional pottery has a higher share of the market relative to its size. It is easier to sell traditional pots than non-traditional pots. Some traditional potters are extremely talented business people, and survive well in a competitive marketplace. 270

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TRADITION IS A WORD The words tradition, nostalgia, and authenticity can be manipulated to create a very effective marketing strategy. As [North Carolina potter] Burlon Craig once said to me, “get all the publicity you can.” TRADITION IS OPEN Anyone can join, it may take a while, there are examinations to be passed, but an outsider has a chance of becoming part of a tradition. TRADITION IS THE FUTURE Traditional pottery is not going to die out, it has lasted a long time. [Laura Woodside Watkins, “Early New England Potters and Their Wares”] People still want traditional pots regardless of the rapid pace of cultural change. Given the right conditions it will continue to flourish. Source: Mark Hewitt, “Tradition Is the Future,” Studio Potter 28, no. 2 (June 2000): 14–16.

MICHAEL JAMES (b. 1949 in New Bedford, Massachusetts), whose ancestors were textile mill workers, earned a B.F.A. at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, and an M.F.A. at Rochester Institute of Technology, where he studied painting and printmaking. He is author of numerous books on contemporary quilt making and professor of textiles, clothing, and design at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. In the early 1970s James turned to quilting as a reaction to the rigid and exclusive academic hierarchy he experienced as a fine arts major. Yet he also found that the traditional quilt making community was itself hidebound. In 1975 James wrote to the editor of Quilter’s Newsletter asking why the publication was reproducing quilt patterns widely available in books rather than focusing on the designs of contemporary artists. The response was furious. As a male working in a female-dominated medium and as an academically trained painter working in a folk tradition, his very identity— not to mention his work—challenged prevailing cultural norms. James reflects on his position in a 2003 oral history.

Michael James: The work that we were doing, it was controversial in the quilt world because, of course, we were unabashedly dangling our BFAs and our MFAs, you know, in front of audiences of people who—many of whom never even finished high school, never mind went to college, and who owned—who felt a sense of ownership of the craft and who saw us as young upstarts who were interested in tearing down everything that they had worked so hard to carry on, you know, so that there was definitely this antagonism that developed. And I guess at first we didn’t understand the depth of feeling that most of these—most of the traditionalists felt about quiltmaking. For many people even today who are traditional quilt makers, that connection to the sort of TESTING TRADITION

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Michael James working on Processional, 1992. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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idealistic vision of American life is still very important, that quiltmaking is an emblem in a sense of those values or is representative of all of those values that people associate with the traditional American vision. And so they—you know, we were coming at it from a very different standpoint, and those values didn’t even mean too much, at least didn’t mean a whole lot to people like myself. And then, you know, this ties into being a man in the field that— David Lyon: Yeah, you were one of the few. James: —is a woman’s domain. That was doubly threatening, because not only was I coming in and saying that all these historical patterns had been done and there was no point in repeating them, but I was also a man saying it, and that was doubly insulting, I guess, and offensive to a lot of people. Source: Michael James, oral history interview by David Lyon, 2003, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

JOSIAH M C ELHENY (b. 1966 in Boston) received a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1988 and is acclaimed for his technical virtuosity and conceptual depth in the medium of glass. He draws on the histories of art, design, fashion, and museology for his installations. McElheny received a MacArthur “genius” award in sculpture in 2006. McElheny’s appreciation of sculptor and furniture designer Isamu Noguchi in a 2004 article for Artforum reflects a shared commitment to infusing forms with social meaning. He asserts that Noguchi’s successful conflation of utility with abstraction proves that sculpture need not exist in a sphere separate from everyday life.

When Noguchi represented the United States at the 1986 Venice Biennale, two years before his death, the centerpiece of his exhibition was a large, abstract, Carrara marble sculpture that functioned as a playground slide. Although originally conceived in the 60s when Noguchi created two wonderful tabletop sculptures depicting its general form, the full-scale version, Slide Mantra, was not realized until Venice, where it dominated the courtyard of the U.S. pavilion. A second version was completed posthumously in shining black stone, effectively his final work. Today both versions of the slide are installed in parks, where they exist simultaneously as immense, elegant artworks and as actors in the secular world of play. For me these works represent what is most compelling about Noguchi, that is, how he engaged the subject of use in relation to art. Here I am defining usefulness not simply in terms of functionality. Rather, I am interTESTING TRADITION

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Isamu Noguchi with Akari light sculptures in his Long Island City studio, 1960s. (Photo by Michio Noguchi, © 2006 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/Artist Rights Society [ARS], New York)

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ested in exploring how our experience of the use of things in the everyday world might become a subject for art, as well as how art can be used in ways apart from visual contemplation alone. Noguchi was an early proponent of the idea that sculpture can involve the viewer in ways other than confronting him or her with a monolithic image; he suggested instead that the experience behind our interaction with the functional forms around us could be absorbed into the sphere of art. His famous Akari lamps, for example, still effectively argue for the possibility of an overlap between sculpture that is looked at and sculpture that functions. This back-and-forth between the forms of art and those of the world is what is most “useful” about Noguchi, especially in light of today’s dialogue around the interconnectedness of art, design, and social space. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . All of the works mentioned here [in a hypothetical exhibition] describe a space outside themselves; they exist not only visually, but through what they imply the viewer can do. Their temporary and tactile qualities suggest that the life of art is in what happens to it. And it is this powerful model for exploring the purposes and methodologies of art and its uses that has been taken up by so many artists of late. The hypothetical Noguchi exhibition that I have described emphasizes his primary contribution to art: an expansion into the truly secular and profane material world inhabited by us. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noguchi’s famous lamps are probably the ultimate example of his conflation of art and function within a manufactured object. They are a result of his intimate interaction with the manufacturing process, an intimacy like that he had with the sculptures he made himself. Amazingly successful commercial products, they evoke a specific era and class of people interested in design, but they survive today as a visible aesthetic proposition—and extraordinary feat considering the vagaries of fashion. With these works, he wanted to create a new kind of art that provided a space of consideration within the domestic realm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . An Akari lamp is a sculpture simply because it is an object created within the same parameters in which Noguchi created his other works. Why should their practical use detract from their value as art? Noguchi’s myriad interests in shape, scale, materials, and lighting effects were applied to traditional lamp-making techniques in a factory in Japan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Much has been made of the overlap between art and functionality in the twentieth century, but few artists ever made this a focus of their work. TESTING TRADITION

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Many made functional designs in the postwar era, whether John Chamberlain or Donald Judd, but it was largely a side project, not a focus. Noguchi, it is fair to say, often did focus on how to inject the concerns of art into functional and manufacturable objects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Noguchi’s furniture is the result of the myopic, obsessive, egoistic processes that inherently form the basis of all art made by a single artist. They are, for better or for worse, an expression of Noguchi’s greater exploration, in all its idiosyncrasy and singularity. Noguchi’s genius was to realize that the objects produced by the process called sculpture could be lamps or tables, or at the very least look like them. None of this debases the idea of abstraction, which is usually defined in terms of its functionless “autonomy.” In fact, paying attention to the impure questions of use and viewer interaction does precisely the opposite. Such investigations add to the pool of what abstraction can be and what our experience of it is. For me this is the most important contribution of Duchamp—not that anything can be art, but rather that art can consider anything. Source: Josiah McElheny, “Useful Noguchi,” Artforum 43, no. 3 (November 2004): 176–79. © Artforum.

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11 Critiquing Culture The entries included in chapter 10, “Testing Tradition,” are primarily focused inward on craft’s identity as a discipline. In this chapter, artists look outward. Their commentaries on craft, humanism, populism, and feminism examine political and social questions at the heart of craft’s relationship to the larger world. Craft’s association with feminist artists and ideology has been a seminal influence on the field from the 1960s to the present. Judy Chicago and Susan Kingsley, echoing significant feminist theorists, discuss craft as a gendered discipline. Directly linking the historic marginalization of female domesticity to the marginalization of craft, they call for a redistribution of power that would give equity to craft among the arts. Lou Cabeen acknowledges inequity but proposes a different strategy. Claiming that there is value in critiquing the center from the margins, she asserts that the natural alliance between craft, the body, home, and women’s work provides compelling reasons to choose craft—even in its marginalized state—as a fitting vehicle for feminist critique. Jeweler Keith Lewis agrees that the margins are powerful and proposes that body piercing be regarded as oppositional art, made and displayed outside mainstream venues as a critique of dominant cultural values. Such positions give a more theoretical basis to the antiestablishment sentiments expressed in chapter 1. These critiques thread in and out of the decades following World War II, asserting weaker or stronger claims depending on the era. For example, commentary from the 1940s and 1950s reflects the tension between the Bauhaus goal of well-designed mass consumer goods and the postwar yearning for independence through art. The countercultural ethos of the 1960s and 1970s contrasts with a later emphasis on marketing and professionalism in the 1980s and 1990s. Concerns about globalization, consumerism, and commodification infuse the cultural critique of artists working at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

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ED ROSSBACH (1914–2002), a renowned fiber artist, educator, and historian, describes, in a 1973 article for Craft Horizons magazine, the transformation of craft from a necessary activity supporting everyday life to a photogenic spectacle, the product of cultural tourism. In his own travels, Rossbach aspires to find unself-conscious makers whom he views as role models and whom he compares with contemporary hippies in Berkeley. Rossbach’s observations herald the globalization of craft products and markets. (See also pages 207, 249.)

Wherever I travel I watch for craftsmen at work. So often I am reminded of a scene in a Jacques Tati movie: as the guests arrive, the host turns on the garden fountain, implying, of course, that this is the way things are; the fountain is always playing, it has merely been discovered by the guests. Almost everywhere, the handcrafts seek to offer the quaint, the colorful, the exotic. When even the most distant places are only a day away, the hunger for the sensation of being somewhere else (which is so denied by all the interchangeable, intercontinental hotels) encourages everywhere a Disneyland atmosphere. A “fun” or a “quaint” stage set is provided for the tourist to view and photograph. In the most remote ruin nowadays you must be careful not to trip over the spotlights. I wonder whether there is anything that was not created by Disney and Kodak for the delectation of the tourist. The phenomenon of the craftsman as a performer in a stage set extends even to the U.S. The modern artist or craftsman is concerned with fulfilling the public expectation, creating an image that photographs well. Not only the work itself, but everything—the person, the setting, the life-style— must be photogenic. Inevitably the role of the craftsman as a personality involved in quaint, interesting, and colorful activities has influenced his own stance, his own production. This pertains to more than the superstars. I think of all the ladies at craft fairs with their spinning wheels, spinning the hair from someone’s pet dog to be used as yarn for weaving a necktie for the master. Such a demonstration was unthinkable only a short time ago when everyone, including the old grannies and young children, was spinning to supply the increasingly voracious looms. In travel, I hope to find the true-blue, one-hundred-percent genuine, unpretentious, unself-conscious craftsman who doesn’t turn on the fountain as I approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Watching the block printing of these [Persian] textiles, almost on the opposite side of the globe from my home in Berkeley, I had to think how different the Berkeley scene would be without these so distant and so un278

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known craftsmen of Isfahan. These hand-blocked Persian textiles—bedspreads, tablecloths, shopping bags, dresses, and shirts—have become identified in my mind with Berkeley, with hippies and the hippie look everywhere. They seem expressive of the hippie culture—the overt rejection of the machine, its order, neatness, and perfection, its clear vibrant colors of synthetic dyes. The Persian prints say handmade loud and clear. They have the qualities which people in our machine society have come to interpret as appropriate to “handmade.” Even the straggly fringes of the Isfahan prints have been incorporated most expressively into the shifts and shirts, to join all the leather fringes as a hallmark of the hippie look. Even the environment in which these brownish textiles were produced would, I thought, please the hippies—the rumple-dumple laundry look of piles of textiles dumped on the floor or on the dusty ground and spread over what appeared to be makeshift equipment for the actual printing. I could only recall the Berkeley situation where hippies gather in environments purposely scroungy to sell their candles, macramé belts, and fringed leather vests and fur jackets from Afghanistan. I had the feeling that the method of production, and even the environment in which the production occurs, influence not only the look of the product but also the way the product is used. I wondered to what extent our modes of existence, our standards in the most apparently unrelated aspects of our lives, are governed, beyond any possible personal control, not only by our machine products, but by the environment in which they must be produced. Source: Ed Rossbach, “The Hand-Blocked Textiles of Persia,” Craft Horizons 33, no. 1 (1973): 54–55, 78–79.

In a 1979 article in the Glass Art Society Journal, ROBERT KEHLMANN (b. 1942), a glass artist and critic, calls for the American craft movement to remain responsive to its humanist heritage and open to diversity after two prior decades of unprecedented innovation. His concerns are prescient. In the 1980s and 1990s the field turned away from its antiestablishment roots and toward institution building, professionalization, and the pursuit of recognition and stature within the mainstream art world. (See also page 23.)

Object making, when its roots lie in the vessel, the coverlet, the shelter, explored beyond that context to the possibilities inherent in the material, or to an evocation of memory of the function, has an innate vitality, for it’s a direct descendant of human experience. Social circumstances, qualities and demands of regions, personal expressions, of love, nostalgia, passion. It has its humane roots still intact; however if it becomes a purely academic CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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exploration or manipulation; if the memory of the last Park Bernet auction price supersedes the memory of human experience, the crafts movement’s fate will be like that of the highly academic explorations of painting or it will be like that of the dinosaur. One of the really exciting things about the crafts movement has been that it has been an explorer’s movement, not so much as is ’70s art—a response movement, unselfconscious, sometimes awkward. The nature of materials, the concern for process, the nature of nature, a certain generous sense of “live and let live”—a certain room for cooperative effort and self loss for the common good have been part of the exploration. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Because the movement’s roots are so deeply humane, and its continuing nurturing so dependent on real human experience, I dread the demand of the expected, the academisizing, rule forming arterial sclerosis-producing pattern making which often seems so inevitable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I beg that we not become so narrow and academic that in our view of quality or the next expected step, we not recognize renewing, unfamiliar waters of the well. Source: Robert Kehlmann, “Twentieth Century European Stained Glass,” Glass Art Society Journal (1979): 97.

JUDY CHICAGO (b. 1939 in Chicago) is a central figure in 1970s feminism and cofounder with Miriam Schapiro of the nation’s first feminist art program at Fresno State University in 1970. She is best known for her autobiography Through the Flower: My Struggle as a Woman Artist (1975) and her tour-de-force installation The Dinner Party (1974–79), which involved 400 volunteers in tile-making, china painting, and embroidery for a giant banquet setting celebrating women in history. Feminist artists had much to say about the craft field, which has historically been related to women’s work (sewing and china painting, for example) and women’s domain (the home). Chicago honors and denigrates this field at the same time. In excerpts from her books The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (1979) and Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (1980), Chicago describes using textiles and ceramics for her purpose, adding content to what she perceives as imagination-bereft fields that mirror women’s lack of self-esteem. By changing the art, she aspires to change the culture.

I remember one particularly poignant experience of visiting a chinapainter’s house and seeing, as Virginia Woolf once said, that the very bricks

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were permeated with her creative energy. All the chairs had needlepoint cushions; all the beds were covered with quilts; all the pillowcases were hand-embroidered; all the walls were covered with oil paintings; all the plates were painted with flowers; and the garden was planted with the kinds of flowers that were painted on the plates. This woman had done all that work, trying as best she could to fit her creative drive—which could probably have expanded into mural-size paintings or monumental sculptures—into the confined space of her house, which could hardly have held another piece of work. The china-painting world, and the household objects the women painted, seemed to be a perfect metaphor for women’s domesticated and trivialized circumstances. It was an excruciating experience to watch enormously gifted women squander their creative talents on teacups. I wanted to honor the women who had preserved this technique, and, by making china-painting visible through my work, I hoped to stimulate interest in theirs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . My goal with The Dinner Party was consistent with all my efforts in the previous decade. I had been trying to establish a respect for women and women’s art; to forge a new kind of art expressing women’s experience; and to find a way to make that art accessible to a large audience. I firmly believed that if art speaks clearly about something relevant to people’s lives, it can change the way they perceive reality. In a similar way medieval art had been used to teach the Bible to illiterate people. Since most of the world is illiterate in terms of women’s history and contributions to culture, it seemed appropriate to relate our history through art, particularly through techniques traditionally associated with women—china-painting and needlework. Source: Judy Chicago, The Dinner Party: A Symbol of Our Heritage (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979), 8–16, 38–39.

Studying china-painting exposed me, for the first time, to the world of women’s traditional arts. I learned a great deal from the women with whom I trained—not only about china-painting, but also about a very different way of being an artist. Most china-painters see teaching as part of their work. Their teaching takes a number of forms; they give classes and seminars, but most importantly, at least for me, they teach by example. During exhibitions, they sit in their booths and paint while crowds of people watch them. This act and the public response to it intrigued me; the

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china-painters’ activity was in stark contrast with the isolated and private act of creation associated with twentieth-century “high art.” Watching these women work out in the open helped me do the same thing when the Dinner Party Project required a studio full of workers. Moreover, the enormous interest of the viewers at these demonstrations suggested that many people craved the opportunity to participate in art. My learning experience with the china-painters was not totally positive, however. Many of them viewed me suspiciously, were outright hostile, or thought of me as someone who wanted to exploit them—despite all my efforts, both public and private, to honor them. This kind of reaction forced me to confront the conservatism and fear which, along with generosity and warmth, typify the “subculture” of women’s crafts. During my apprenticeship with the china-painters, I often listened to their discussions about why china-painting wasn’t considered art. Interestingly, these conversations focused on the technique of china-painting— which is exceedingly difficult—rather than its content. But it is the absence of personal content that distinguishes craft from art. It was as if the conflict I had experienced between my drive to be an artist and my conditioning as a woman mirrored a much deeper conflict in most of these women. Although many of them possessed the visual skills to express personal subject matter, they did not take themselves seriously nor did they believe that their experiences were important enough to express. This lack of self-esteem resulted not only in a continual dependence upon preformed patterns and designs, but also in a resistance to new ideas and unfamiliar thoughts. All this only reinforced my belief in the importance of addressing women’s lack of self-worth as a crucial step in creating change and my determination to achieve this through art. Source: Judy Chicago, Embroidering Our Heritage: The Dinner Party Needlework (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), 10–11.

JAMES MELCHERT (b. 1930 in New Bremen, Ohio) is noted for his conceptual ceramic art and for his institutional leadership. His tenure at the University of California, Berkeley (1965–92), was interrupted by his service as director of the Visual Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA, 1977–81) and of the American Academy in Rome (1984–88). In this draft of a letter written during his tenure at the NEA, Melchert challenges the staff overseeing the crafts to create a big umbrella for the field by looking beyond the academic craft establishment and including panelists and potential grantees who might represent craft’s breadth, richness, and margins.

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Today [National Endowment for the Arts staff assistant] John [McLean] showed me the names of the first 16 people who have been asked to be members of the [craft advisory] taskforce. These are the first half and, I assume, the most obvious choices to make. I’m distressed to notice the following: All 16 fit within the mainstream of contemporary American crafts as defined by the ACC [American Craft Council]. All of them are white. All but one are college educated, which is to say, privileged. None of them are people identified with folk arts even though Bess Hawes [NEA folk art director] was led to believe they would be represented. Of the craftsmen in the group all but one work in ceramics. None is involved with production work. Moreover, the orientation of the group is consistently urban. Where in this group do I find the sort of persons you champion, the ones concerned with the great American mix, the broad spectrum of ethnic diversity? . . . Where are the clear-eyed scouts who will redirect our thinking? Source: Draft letter from James Melchert to Eudora Moore, craft coordinator at the National Endowment for the Arts, 1980, James Melchert Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

KATHERINE WESTPHAL (b. 1919) articulates her populist allegiance to craft in a 1984 oral history. She wants to move art out of museums and into the streets. Her wearable art turns people into animated paintings that are brought to the public, not sequestered in galleries. (See also page 209.)

It’s ever-changing, maybe like a painting that changes, because it changes when the person wears it, and it changes how the person wears it. It’s very fascinating, it becomes a show in itself. I don’t think it is well displayed in a museum; it is always pretty static and it doesn’t really show the possibilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Well, this is what should happen with this wearable art. It shouldn’t be just something on a coat hanger in a museum, or a model. It shouldn’t be on fashion models, because fashion models aren’t real people; they mince and they prance and they aren’t real. In fact most of these wearable artists that I talked to or got letters from when I was doing the lecture for Vienna, felt that they were doing this because they wanted to move what they were

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doing out of the elitism of the museum and out into the real world. So they liked to do things for fairs or to wear out on the street just to make people aware and look at something different that was going on. They didn’t like the idea of it just being hung on a wall in a museum with only a few people seeing it. They wanted it to be out in the mainstream, out where people were. And they wanted it to move and to change. Well, I think that’s the way I feel about these things too, but I don’t know how you reconcile this into our present-day structure of what gets exhibited and how it is exhibited and who gets to touch it and who doesn’t get to touch it, who gets to buy it and who doesn’t have the money to buy it even if they want to. Source: Katherine Westphal, “Artist and Professor,” oral history interview by Harriet Nathan, 1984, Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1988.

SUSAN KINGSLEY (b. 1942 in Evanston, Illinois) received an M.F.A. in visual art from Vermont College of the University of Norwich, Montpelier. She is the author of Hydraulic Die Forming for Jewelers and Metalsmiths (1993) and has published numerous articles on craft, art, and feminism. Kingsley is a strong advocate for responsible mining practices. In a feminist critique published in Metalsmith magazine in 1987, Kingsley cites “the facts and figures of gender” in her discipline. She correlates the predominance of women craft makers with the historical oppression of women and the second-class status of craft within the art world. Kingsley wonders whether the institutionalization of craft as a separate art category, perpetuated by craft organizations themselves, reinforces this second-class status.

A taboo was broken when the word “feminist” was used in the review of “Form Beyond Function” in Metalsmith (Spring 1987). In the context of craft, the word “feminist” has been avoided more than any other “f” word in the language. It is like a whispered “communist” must have been in the 1950s. In the last 20 years the women’s movement and feminism have provided major changes in our lives and culture. Yet the total absence of any mention of feminism, or the significance of women’s involvement, in the current American craft movement and in metalsmithing suggests that these are issues that have not simply been overlooked, but avoided. The field of metalsmithing has a masculine self-image. Despite the fact that probably two-thirds of American metalsmiths are women, and that many teachers indicate that their metalsmithing classes are predominately women, men have defined the field. With few exceptions, men are the accepted old masters, the leaders, the thinkers, the judges and the juries. 284

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The Facts and Figures of Gender: • In the last 10 years, there have been 92 monographs about artists in Metalsmith and Goldsmiths Journal. 77% were about male artists and 23% were about female artists. • Since 1980 there have been 43 articles in Metalsmith expressing the opinion of the author. 86% were written by men and 14% by women. • In the last 10 years, 12 major national metalsmithing exhibitions were juried by 21 men and 7 women. • 18 people have been elected to the SNAG (Society of North American Goldsmiths) board over the last 10 years. 12 were men and 6 were women. • In the larger craft context, numbers tell the same story. The catalog essay for “Poetry of the Physical,” the opening exhibition at the American Craft Museum, stated, “It is probable that among the leading craftspeople working in the United States today, women form a slight majority.” 65% of the artists chosen for that exhibition were male. • The 1984 NEA Craft Fellowships were awarded as follows: men received $515,000 and women received $240,000; $25,000 awards were awarded to 3 men and no women; $15,000 awards went to 25 men and 9 women; and $5,000 awards were made to 13 men and 21 women. • Of those who are turned down for NEA Artists Fellowships, 85% of the males try again; 85% of the females do not. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . From a feminist perspective, one that questions assumptions, and challenges hierarchies, the next questions are obvious: • Could there be a connection between the exclusion of women and of craft from art history? • Is it because we have defined art in a particular way, that both craft and women have been eliminated from discourse? • And is it possible that the ideas of art and craft have been placed in opposition, creating a hierarchy that is similar to the gender hierarchy? A review of art history, including both women and craft, could be revealing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . At the turn of the century, misogyny reached its all-time peak. There appears to have been an unprecedented attack on women by philosophers, CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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writers, scientists, artists and intellectuals. They believed that women had not been able to participate in the great evolutionary process that was guiding the intellectual male. And so the course continued. Women were defined by their domestic functions. Painting continued to be considered men’s work. Women were encouraged to become artists but in ways that would not threaten men economically or intellectually. Forms of art that didn’t require genius were suitable for women. Craftwork was domestic art, and therefore appropriate. Art was considered preferable to political activism for women. Middle class women were considered amateurs and their work inferior. Misogyny was pervasive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Many women have looked to other cultures—prehistoric, ancient, primitive and ethnic—for overlooked and forgotten meanings for jewelry and for art. Because our culture has separated art from life, they search for ways of reconnecting them. Metalsmithing itself makes this connection. In some cases, the choice to work in a craft medium was made in order to avoid the patriarchal history of painting and sculpture. The notion of great inborn artistic genius has no counterpart in craft. As craft is still thought by many to be dependent upon learned skills, women have sensed that they would have an equal chance for success. Women no longer doubt that there is anything that they cannot learn to do. Mastering a craft has a special meaning to many women. Because positions of power have been denied women in our culture, having perfect control over materials can be a kind of revenge. In the studio, she can become the ruler of perfection. It is not until someone comments on her mastery, or good craftsmanship, that she realizes that she can’t get credit in her own name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Because women wear jewelry in our culture, they understand meanings for jewelry that men cannot. They understand the wearing of jewelry as a dramatic performance, a transforming experience or as a medium for selfexpression. They understand the subtle qualities of jewelry that its physical presence on the body create; its weight, sound and movement. Because women have learned to interact with others in ways that foster the other person’s development, they teach workshops and share their knowledge freely. This apparently recent and distinctly American custom in crafts, the widespread sharing of technical innovation and information, should probably be credited to women. Because women reject being passive decorative objects themselves, they 286

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do not tend to make passive decorative objects. Many women charge their work with emotional currents, the themes of restrained violence, and unresolved confinement, noted in the previously mentioned review of women’s sculpture in “Form Beyond Function.” Many women make their work a statement about their own condition; what you see is one thing, but what is hidden and what you “get” is something else. And finally, because women and men are not opposites, it is likely that many men share with women these connections to metalsmithing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How can an art historical tradition based on archaic assumptions and a distorted and limited vision of human potential possibly claim intellectual superiority? Can anyone explain why reason and tradition are more important than skill and imagination? Is there any reason why art that is “public,” made to decorate whitewalled galleries and museums, is more worthy of consideration than that which is personal and meant to enhance a person’s body or immediate environment? Is there any reason why the exclusion of artists working in craft media from publicly funded art museums is not a political issue? And finally, has craft challenged the relevancy of “mainstream art” to contemporary society? By participating in the hierarchy, crafts actually support the leading position of fine arts by playing second fiddle to it. The American Craft Museum, for instance, assures that craft remains separate and in second place by providing a reason for art museums to not show it. It creates the division and provides justification for galleries and art critics to see it as separate and to continue to exclude it from serious art discourse. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Accepting its place in the hierarchy, the craft world seems to be endlessly waiting for the boundaries between art and craft to disappear. By trying to be as intellectual as, as public as, as financially successful as and as star-studded as the fine art world, craftsmen participate in and support the system. From a feminist perspective, this approach is totally inappropriate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Now, at the end of the twentieth century, perhaps the increasing participation of women, in all aspects of society, will lead to a true rebirth. A balance between masculine and feminine values could make possible a New Age, and create a new meaning for art that reflects the complete range of human potential and participation. Women and men could then be seen as CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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human beings with equal potential, and craft and art would no longer be opposites. Source: Susan Kingsley, “A Feminist Perspective,” Metalsmith 7, no. 4 (Fall 1987): 26–31. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

KEITH A. LEWIS (b. 1959 in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania) received an M.F.A. from Kent State University in 1993. He makes rings, brooches, and necklaces that explore issues of loss, memory, and sexual identity; writes for Metalsmith and Artweek magazines; and has taught at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, since 1994. In a 1991 article for Metalsmith that advocates the inclusion of piercing in the jeweler’s vocabulary, Lewis reaffirms craft’s allegiance with antiestablishment values and lifestyles. His call to recognize “renegade ornament” is a call for jewelers to critique the status quo and give expression to minority and marginalized communities. In using art on the body to confront the hegemony of the cultural mainstream, Lewis’s critique aligns with feminist voices like Lou Cabeen’s.

As makers of wearable objects, we metalsmiths concern ourselves with the cultural language of ornament. Whether or not we claim to be producing art, the creation of such objects requires consideration of questions like, “will it be comfortable?” (“should it be comfortable?”), “is it appropriate?” (why should it be?), “is it too unusual?” In asking these questions we are engaged in challenging or accepting cultural definitions of what is considered to be acceptable or appropriate ornament. As additional inducement to explore piercing, metalsmiths should realize that considerable potential for profit exists in these areas. In exploring piercing, several important factors must be examined, including the range, goals and practice of piercing historically and currently, and the mainstream cultural value system that piercing confronts. This is a difficult challenge, as we are unaccustomed to looking at our own culture and value system with anything close to open eyes, but it presents the possibility of formulating a cultural critique that will help create an environment conducive to diversity and artistic expression. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Renegade ornament rejects the concept of slavish cultural conformity and either seeks to produce alternate cultures or provides protection from and ammunition against the constraining influence of the ambient culture. In the words of another tattooist, the possession of a forbidden ornament “provides a constant source of irony and distancing.” Either the ornament is a personal secret, that can be shared or not, or it is a visible badge of the refusal to conform, and a turning of the tables on society. As writer 288

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Keith Lewis, Nipple Ornament from “Ivo Suite,” 1989. Sterling silver and red brass, 1 3⁄5 × 1 inches. (Photo by Betty Helen Longhi; model: Ivo Dominguez Jr.)

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Dick Hebdige says, “. . . it translates the fact of being under scrutiny into the pleasure of being watched.” In light of unspoken social constraints, as well as complacency about the role of ornament, piercing demonstrates how jewelry can be a powerful and radical art form. As producers of ornament, we have a special responsibility to understand what ornament means, because we help reinforce its acceptable boundaries. In this context, renegade ornament speaks to the primal need for expression and individuality, even in the conformist consumer culture, and offers the artist unexplored territory for experimentation and expression. Since many piercing sites are usually hidden under clothing, one area for exploration might be to produce jewelry that hints at its existence through clothing. Other areas might include the linking of pierce sites, which leads to increases of scale, and the design of work to maximize sexual and wearing sensation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . In rejecting manufacturing and accepting handwork, in seeking to produce the unique rather than the repeated, craftspeople too are renegades. This provocative connection between the users of renegade ornament and us as makers of all manner of ornament requires exploration and attention as we attempt to navigate the pitfalls of the consumer culture. Source: Keith A. Lewis, “Renegade Ornament,” Metalsmith 11, no. 3 (Summer 1991): 10–12. (Metalsmith is published by the Society of North American Goldsmiths.)

LOU CABEEN (b. 1950 in Danville, Illinois) received an M.F.A. in 1989 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has been a faculty member in the University of Washington’s fiber art program since 1993. She often references traditional, embroidered household linens in her art, noting a “long-standing interest in the issues of domestic labor and the channeling of female creativity.” Like Judy Chicago before her, Cabeen identifies with women’s work. Unlike Chicago, she does not belittle its traditional content or the absence of it. In an article for the New Art Examiner in 1993, Cabeen writes of textile history as the antidote to the arthistorical canon, which has failed to acknowledge the creative work of women and the centrality of the home to “pivotal life experience.”

I came across a reproduction of Nancy Ward Butler’s 1842 mourning quilt, commemorating the death of her 20-month-old granddaughter. This object, and many I have since found in my studies, stands in direct refutation of conventional thought about the expressive potential of cloth. Butler’s grief is recorded in nine-inch-tall block capital letters, filling the field of this quilt with the stark message “Nancy A. Butler died Feb. 3 1842 290

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Lou Cabeen, Commemorative Blanket #1 (Triangle Shirtwaist Fire), 1989. Handwoven and hand-stitched cotton, 48 × 48 inches. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

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aged 20 mo.” This was not decorative, this was not weak, this was not sentimental. This was full-blown grief and anguish experienced by a female body and worked full-size in a “female” medium—the quilt—whose functional format (a cloth sandwich used as a bed-covering) seemed to me to reference no actual use, but stood as a poignant supporting metaphor for the loss not only of a child, but of the woman she might have become. The historic record of objects, if not the conventional perception of them, now supported my experience that pivotal life experiences usually occur in our homes, and the cloth that surrounds us when they occur can carry tremendous emotional resonance. And so I plugged fearlessly into the realm of domestic textile techniques to support the content of my studio work. I began to study textile history in earnest in order to construct my own knowledge about the nature of making things that referenced domestic life. There were clearly things to be learned here that Jansen, Gardner, and Arneson never taught me. In the narrowest view, textile history encourages me in my battle with cultural stereotypes of women and their relationship to the world of making. Specifically, studies in textile history keep me from being sentimental about women and their needlework. Sentimentality about home and what is wrought there is part of the great silencing that the Modernist canon achieved. We assume that our private experience—that is, experience that takes place in domestic settings—is unworthy of artistic investigation because traditional art history tells us so. Textile history tells a different tale, built of compelling evidence, and stresses in a more anthropological approach the cultural context in which objects are made. Consequently, the social systems, the resources, and the philosophical constraints that impinge on creativity in any age are recognized and discussed. Instead of pretty, mindless busy-work being made in a kind of vacuum, one finds objects that are profound aesthetically as well as informative as cultural documents. Studying the nineteenth-century tradition of mourning art commemorating the dead, for example, one finds not only profoundly personal expressions of grief such as Nancy Butler’s quilt, but also the codified cultural practices of mourning which included the making of jewelry from the hair of the deceased (by mail order if one wished). Textile history seems to me to be a history of the making of objects by those of us Western culture has deemed invisible and silent, or if not exactly silent, then certainly unworthy. To use current art-parlance, the histories of all the crafts can be seen to be the history of the “other.” Well, so be it. If I seek to do battle with the limitations of the high art canon, where else should I look for inspiration and a sense of continuity? I cannot 292

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pretend that the hegemony of painting and traditional sculpture does not exist. I cannot pretend that I have not been shaped by its assumptions. But, by studying and grounding myself in this “other” history, by riding that dragon on the margins of art history’s page and sending back reports, the roles of “subject” and “other” suddenly reverse. The well-charted regions of art history recede on the horizon, they become the margin from my current vantage point and I begin to contribute to charting the expanded map. Source: Lou Cabeen, “This Way Be Dragons,” New Art Examiner 21, no. 1 (September 1993): 13–15.

GARTH JOHNSON (b. 1973 in Lincoln, Nebraska) became involved with the Pottery Liberation Front at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, in the late 1990s. He continues to challenge the attitudes of ceramists and artists toward each other’s fields in his website (PotteryLiberationFront.com) and blog (on ExtremeCraft.com), which he started after receiving his M.F.A. in ceramics from Alfred University in 2000. Johnson professes a love-hate relationship with craft. In a 2000 blog entry, he appreciates the versatility of individual mediums while criticizing the preciousness of craft’s social mystique, which he associates with the British arts and crafts movement.

Ceramics greatest ally and worst foe is its own past. The ceramic artist is generally shackled to the past or wandering oblivious to it, rather than being propelled and enlivened by it. Reverence for the past is futile: it is only through knowledge and engagement of the past as an active entity that we can claim our shining future. Reverence for material is another matter entirely. It is no accident that many of the most engaging works of ceramic art of the 20th century were created by artists outside of the ceramic field. These artists intuitively knew the secret of effective ceramic art: CLAY IS DIRT! Regardless of history, the importance of ceramic art lies not with “feeling the spirit of the clay,” but by denying it. You, the artist, are the active agent, not the pile of inert clay before you. Clay is not a mystical spirit, which will impart historical significance and knowledge upon you in exchange for dirtying your hands with it. Clay will not fill that void in your life like some divine spackle. Clay begs for discipline, and you must provide it. Show it who has the upper hand. Clay is mute, filthy, inert, and inherently lazy. A meaningful dialogue with clay is impossible if you don’t hold up your end of the conversation. Only you can cause the clay to reach across the boundaries of time and tradition to fulfill its true destiny. CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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YOU ARE WHAT YOU OWN. In this era of global corporate culture, industry and advertising tirelessly promote the idea that personal identity is constructed, not from one’s memories or knowledge, but the brands and products one swears allegiance to. Rebellion and uniqueness are promoted as qualities that can be obtained by wearing Khakis from the Gap or drinking Mountain Dew. Traditionally, the fundamental principle of advertising has been to assert that the consumer targeted needs to buy the product advertised because everyone wants it; to keep up with the Joneses, if you will. Increasingly, advertisers base campaigns around the notion that product use is not merely something that you have to have in order to keep up with the Joneses, but that this product will distinguish you from the masses. It is impossible to stand apart from society or define yourself through the possessions you own. This clever ploy is one that has been used by the cult of pottery since the dawn of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Arts and Crafts Movement, led by William Morris, sought to reintegrate handmade objects into the lifestyle of “enlightened” individuals in an industrial age. “Refined” (read “wealthy”) patrons could reestablish links with the past, a time before industry in which simple people could readily commune with nature through the simple, handmade objects that they owned. This cult was further entrenched in the ceramics world by Bernard Leach and Soetsu Yanagi, who promoted Asian ceramics as an exotic opportunity for the enjoyment of simple pleasures. This attitude continues to dominate the rhetoric used by the functional potter: the use of handmade objects is somehow an escape from the commercialization and industrialization of the modern world. This is a direct corollary to the philosophy of modern advertising, that the objects one owns makes them different than the rest of society. What makes the cult of the handmade even more insidious is that the most cherished of these handmade items are never used at all, rather, put on a shelf to display and accrue value in the handicraft market. QUALITY AND INEQUALITY There is nothing inherently wrong with handmade ceramic objects, but they must be taken for what they are: objects of pleasure and contemplation, rather than a way of life. Any lifestyle defined by objects will ultimately ring hollow. The foremost objective of the Pottery Liberation Front is to smash the artificial boundaries and hierarchies of the ceramic world. Only when biases regarding gender, firing methods, and craft media have been obliterated can the ceramic world move forward. DO WE HAVE TO BREAK YOU TO SAVE YOU? 294

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In order to save itself, the ceramics world must enter a period of transgression. The sacred cows of the past carved up, to be devoured by hungry adherents. The hypocrisy of the “cult of touch,” and the proponents of “the simple life” will be exposed, allowing for greater understanding and appreciation of the way that ceramic objects function in daily life. It is through intense activism and subversion that the ideology of the handmade is given the brand name recognition that it deserves. Only when barriers and biases of gender and medium are smashed can we claim what is rightfully ours. Wake up, world! The Pottery Liberation Front stands posed, hammer in hand, ready to destroy the old world order, that our society can be built anew, atop the shard pile, with renewed vigor and life. Revolution must come from the heart! Clay is Dirt! The revolution will not be a tea party. Source: Garth Johnson, “The Revolution Will Not Be a Tea Party” (August 2, 2000), (accessed August 2006).

In a 2004 oral history, TOM JOYCE (b. 1956), a practicing blacksmith, speaks about the affiliation of his chosen medium with the history of conquest and war and the negative environmental impact of extracting iron ore. His attentiveness to the ethical consequences of smithing infuses his work and life with moral authority. (See also page 89.)

Jan Yager: I was so struck when I was looking the other night at Frank Turley’s book [Southwestern Colonial Ironwork, 1980, with Marc Simmons], and he was saying that when the Spanish came [to America] that the first job of the ironworkers was to make scales to weigh Montezuma’s gifts of gold to melt them down and ship them back to the queen. Tom Joyce: Frank and Marc Simmons’ book introduced me to the historical context from which our materials come to us. Understanding this historical connection provided the first inkling as to how great a responsibility blacksmiths share in using these materials that come charged, through their extraction and manufacture, with so much prior political, environmental, and economic effects. The design of my work is tempered, while living in New Mexico, with full knowledge of how and why iron ultimately arrived here during the fifteenth century when the Spanish first came. Thinking of the later colonial conquests directed from the east is what brought other settlers—my ancestors into the regions of the Midwest and eventually here. Yager: Another violent period. Joyce: Exactly. And this thinking continues to be one of the most important parts of my work—I think about the responsibility and try to let the CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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work speak to important issues that surround its manufacture and its use and its recycling. I must recognize the tremendous toll, not only on the environment, but also on human resources to extract and manufacture these bars [of iron] that we kind of take for granted because it’s cheap material. It’s a partially subsidized industry through tax, land, and utility incentives and so iron comes to us artificially inexpensive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Blacksmiths have been central facilitators for an expansive ideology that assists dominant cultures moving out into the world through conquest. Yager: You mean, by making the wagon wheels and— Joyce: The wagon wheels were a part of that kind of development. And certainly with respect to making weapons, blacksmiths were always at the source of developing new ideas for better or worse ways of harming one another to appropriate more land and subjugate more people. So along with each one of the commissions, it feels helpful to recognize the dual function of most everything that we make; that all the while we as blacksmiths have choices to make about the potentially positive or negative effects of our work. Source: William Thomas Joyce, oral history interview by Jan Yager, 2004, Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Interviewed in 2008 by art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson for Modern Painters, a British periodical, four American artists working in textiles and multimedia sculpture discuss relationships between craft, labor, and politics. Their shared concerns include issues of craft and skill, conceptualism and the body, the democratization of art practices, and maneuvering in and around the art establishment.

LIZ COLLINS (b. 1968 in Bethesda, Maryland), a knitwear designer who makes textiles, apparel, and sculptural installations, received her B.F.A. (1991) and M.F.A. (1999) from the Rhode Island School of Design, where she now teaches.

SABRINA GSCHWANDTNER (b. 1977) is the founder of KnitKnit magazine. (See also page 136.)

CAT MAZZA (b. 1977 in Washington, D.C.) received her B.F.A. from Carnegie Mellon University (1999) and her M.F.A. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (2005). She combines traditional craft with digital media to explore the relationships between textiles, technology, and labor.

ALLISON SMITH (b. 1972 in Manassas, Virginia) received a B.F.A. from Parsons School of Design (1995) and an M.F.A. from the Yale University School of Art (1999). She teaches, exhibits, and lectures internationally.

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Liz Collins: I wonder if the fine-art versus craft split matters anymore. I teach a new generation that doesn’t care about old art-craft hierarchies. The DIY [Do-It-Yourself or Design-It-Yourself] movement doesn’t think of craft as a dirty word. Allison Smith: Even though the work each of us makes can be categorized as craft, we are all trying to stretch the boundaries of conceptual and collaborative art as well. We are conceptual artists whose subject is craft. That’s the difference between our work and studio craft artists: we are working within a theoretical framework. And yet all of us are actively courted by the craft arena—often more courted by that world than by contemporaryart audiences. Julia Bryan-Wilson: One striking thing about you all as artists is how you explore the relationship of craft to politics. If craft implies utility, for you four, craft’s “function” is to generate political dialogues. Smith: Well, American culture—a lot of cultures, actually—foregrounds craft as a mode of expression for defining national identity. In livinghistory reenactments and open-air museums, which are pedagogical sites, the focus is always on two things: craft and war. Obviously our master narratives of history are about war more than anything else, but at these sites it’s craft that meticulously re-creates war and makes it visible. Handicraft becomes a metaphor through which to think about the terrain of war. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sabrina Gschwandtner: My Wartime Knitting Circle in the “Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting” show at New York’s Museum of Arts & Design [2007] worked really well, because the museum was very generous in allowing people to knit at my table without paying an entry fee. But other times I run into installation problems, because curators don’t always understand that this kind of work is not made through a studio practice that leads to discrete objects. The works are collaborative, and can be made outside the exhibition site or at the site itself, or some mixture of both. It’s not the same as when artists come in and bring their materials and create an installation that somebody walks around in and then leaves. The audience is helping to create the work. So the exhibition site becomes a participatory space, an activist space, an education space, and a tactical space. It’s also a working space. Smith: When “Notion Nanny” was exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum in 2007, there was a similar institutional confusion about what the art actually was. It was a living, active process that would continue throughout the show. The public is coming in and doing things; I’m there doing things. Things are being added; things are disappearing. The show is accumulating

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objects and ideas as it goes on. I had apprenticeships with craftspeople in the area, and crafts we made collaboratively were integrated into the exhibit. You just said a great string of words, Sabrina, about how an activist, participatory, tactical space is part of the work. It’s something that isn’t always clear, I think, for the institution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cat Mazza: I had a different experience with the “Radical Lace” show. The piece I was showing is a 14-foot-wide blanket portraying the Nike swoosh. The swoosh is made up of four-by-four-inch squares that serve as petitions for fair-labor policies for Nike garment workers. It was created by knit hobbyists from over 25 countries who visited the microRevolt website. The interface . . . allowed users to virtually sign their names and mail in their hand-stitched squares instead of the traditional signing of a petition. And the public is supposed to add to it during the exhibition. But MAD [Museum of Arts and Design, New York] decided not to show the Nike blanket; they decided to show documentation of it. Maybe the political rhetoric made the institution concerned; there were also copyright questions because of the logo. But there was another issue, too. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aesthetics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . They decided that the Nike blanket would be in the exhibition. Then, three days before the piece was supposed to go up, I got an e-mail from the curator saying, “We’re so sorry; we just can’t hang it. It’s too difficult to hang, and it looks too ‘funky’ among the other work.” I thought maybe someone from Nike was on their board. But in fact the aesthetic issues are just as interesting. The banner is made from iridescent orange yarn—acrylic, synthetic material—and the squares are made by hobbyists, so they are sometimes a bit amateur looking. The museum assumed that the banner aspired to some high-art quality, which was never the intention. The show was about radical and subversive artworks using knitting or lace, and while the piece fit into their title, it didn’t fit into their aesthetic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Looking back on the Nike piece’s appearance in “Radical Lace,” I was really disappointed, but on the other hand, it made sense. We negotiate these different venues, and our expectations have to change based on those venues. I use Web media to reach audiences beyond the museum. In fact this connects back to craft, because craft, like the Internet, is also seen as a democratizing medium, a social network that operates outside the institution. Gschwandtner: What’s fascinating, too, is that people pick up knitting 298

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needles as an escape from the computer. In the face of everything fast and glinting, they want something real—a reinjection of the artisanal. But handicraft often brings them back online, because they go searching for instructions or tips, and they discover there’s this whole online community of blogging crafters. So it feeds back into the digital environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smith: A lot of what we’ve been talking about is the mind-body split— how intellectual labor is valued over manual labor. Craft, as a physical, performative act, is still considered to be at odds with the intellectual labor that has fed conceptual art and a lot of politically motivated art. For many of my political artist role models, the critique of the commodification of art entailed a rejection of hands-on making—and craft became a bad word. So bringing back the political-activist spirit to something interactive and bodily is really important. Collins: Part of my mission with Knitting Nation, which has taken various permutations since its first appearance at Allison’s “The Muster,” was to give people an inkling of the human effort involved in the process of making something. My intentions were multifaceted. It’s a public art experience that lays bare the process of machine knitting and textile and garment construction. It’s also a celebration of movement and the physicality of a manual process. And it’s usually collaborative, with many people working together to build one thing; in this it’s a commentary about labor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smith: Craft has become a buzzword in the artworld, too. In so much contemporary art, though, when a work is supposed to be about craft, what that means is it’s got some big, sloppy stitches on it. It’s a kind of disrespect to craft traditions and the deep history of hand-making. Gschwandtner: Well, I’m a pretty bad crafter, I have to say, I took some sewing lessons recently and just learned how to do an invisible hem. I work with film, video, photography, sewing, embroidery, crochet, and knitting, and I’m pretty much just technically proficient with all of those mediums. Collins: But that’s not your process. Gschwandtner: No, it’s not. I make installations, events, and publications, among other things, that challenge boundaries between artist and curator, or archivist, and between art and craft. When I wrote my book KnitKnit, for example, I chose a publisher, Stewart, Tabori and Chang, that specializes in craft books. It’s a division of Abrams, the art book publisher, so Abrams sells KnitKnit to yarn stores and to art bookstores. It was really important for me to write with handcraft hobbyists and fine-art readers in mind, because I wanted to mix perspectives on what art is and can be; I’ve often used handcraft as a site to engage ideas about what constitutes art. CRITIQUI NG CULTURE

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Smith: If you’re using craft, the question of skill is going to enter the critique no matter what. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mazza: I have a mentor, Faith Wilding, who worked with Judy Chicago on Womanhouse and made influential craft-based artworks in the ’70s. Wilding is also now involved in new media and cyberfeminism, and she made me aware of those overlaps. Third-wave feminist theory has taken up other aspects of identity—sexuality, race, and class—so feminism is still relevant; race, class, and gender are also played out in the global economy, as advanced countries subjugate an entire third-world workforce to create products. I try to consider this more global critique in my work. Source: Julia Bryan-Wilson, “The Politics of Craft,” Modern Painters 20, no. 1 (February 2008): 78–83. © Louise Blouin Media.

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Index Note: Italic page numbers refer to illustrations. ABANA. See Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America Abstract expressionist painting: craft contrasted with, 3; aesthetic of, 228, 243, 250 Academic training: Albers on, 5–7; intellectual training emphasized in, 6–7, 106; Richards on, 12; emphasis on creativity, 31; and pottery, 31, 96–97, 100–102, 269; and response to materials, 63; Littleton on, 71, 93, 106–8; Wildenhain on, 93, 96–97, 171, 172; Castle on, 93, 97–98; Fina on, 93, 100–102; Fisch on, 93, 103, 105–6; federal support for, 93, 106; and glass, 94, 106–8; and furniture, 97–98; Elliott on, 98–99; and textiles, 98–99; and commercial art programs, 101; DeStaebler on, 102–3; and metalsmithing, 103, 105–6 ACC. See American Crafts Council Adams, Darrell, 30; and craft traditions, 28, 29, 31–32 Adams, Hamilton, 199, 200–201 Aesthetic qualities: constructive process contrasted with, 7; and master training, 83; and Cushing, 101; and academic training, 103; and blacksmithing, 119; and technical knowledge, 148; integrity in, 172, 228; and U.S. Customs regulations, 175, 177; and industrial design, 193, 211, 212; and social impact, 225; of abstract expressionist painting, 228, 243, 250; and Artschwager, 231, 234–35; and vessel, 250–52; of glass, 252–54; of hand labor, 259; and function, 261; and politics, 298 Akron Art Institute, 152 Albers, Annie, 4: and social integrity of craft, 3; and role of intuition, 5, 6–7;

on discipline, 5–8; and constructive process, 7; and materials, 53 Albers, Josef, 5 Alfred University, 71. See also School for American CraftsmenAmerica House, 72, 151, 153–54, 161 American Craft Museum, 120, 287 American Crafts Council (ACC): and academic training, 72; and marketing, 100, 129; and blacksmithing, 129, 130; and Glass Art Society, 133; and Heath, 149; and studio crafts, 192 American Crafts Enterprises (ACE), 100 American Craftsman’s Education Council, 71 Andreson, Laura, 76 Appelhof, Ruth, 18–19 Archaeology, 99 Archie Bray Foundation, 78, 109, 122, 124 Arneson, Robert: and Notkin, 122; and traditional standards, 238, 240; John with Art (detail), 239 Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 127 Art galleries: and pottery sales, 100; and sales income, 170; and power relations, 170, 184, 186–87, 188; and Kaneko, 170, 188, 190; pragmatic concerns of, 179 Art history, 99, 107, 292–93 Art Institute of Chicago, 107 Artist-Blacksmith’s Association of North America (ABANA), 109, 118–19, 129–30 Artist Craftsmen of New York, 161 Artschwager, Richard: and traditional standards, 225; and aesthetic qualities, 231, 234–35; Description of Table, 232, 234, 235 Auerbach, Lisa Anne, 137 Autio, Rudy, 78

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Baccarat, 212 Bagedonow, Matthew, 121 Ball, Carelton, 76 Barnes, Dorothy Gill, 64–66 Basketmaking: and experience of time, 43; and McQueen, 225, 247, 249; and function, 249–50. See also Fiber, artists working in Bauhaus, 165, 216, 277 Baulines Craftsman’s Guild, 19, 20 Bealer, Alex, 118 Beck, Stephen, 138 Bell, Larry, 254 Bemis Foundation, 188 Bendolph, Mary Lee, 28, 40–42 Bengston, Billy Al, 76 Bigelow, 195 Blacksmithing: and training with masters, 89, 91–92; and learning in communities, 118–19, 129–31; and test pieces, 180, 182; ethical consequences of, 295–96. See also Metal, artists working in Bonnetain, Nicole, 167 Bredlow, Tom, 89, 91, 129 Breslow, Daniel “Dog,” 121 British arts and crafts movement, 3, 294 Brown, Bill: and Dreisbach, 133; and industrial design, 204–7 Brown, Robert, 98 Bryan-Wilson, Julia, 297 Burden, Chris, 254 Burton, Scott: on design, 21, 23; Viewpoint, 22; and traditional standards, 225 Butler, Nancy Ward, 290, 292 Cabeen, Lou: on craft as vehicle for feminist critique, 277, 290, 292–93; and Keith A. Lewis, 288; Commemorative Blanket #1, 291 CAD/CAM. See Computer-aided design/ computer-aided manufacture Cardew, Michael, 267 Carpenter, Arthur Espenet (Art), 19, 21 Cashin, Bonnie, 195 Cashinahua of Peru, 38 Castelli, Leo, 231 Castle, Wendell: on academic train302

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ing, 93, 97–98; on furniture, 97–98, 254–56; on using assistants, 160; and innovation, 225; Table with Cloth, 233 Cave, Nick: and materials, 51, 53; Soundsuit, 52 Central Europe: and pottery market, 146 Ceramic Industry, 144 Ceramics. See Clay; Clay, artists working in; Pottery Cezanne, Paul, 250 Chamberlain, John, 276 Chicago, Judy: and Schapiro, 16; Womanhouse, 16, 300; and feminism, 59, 280; and craft as gendered discipline, 277, 280–82; The Dinner Party, 280, 281, 282; and Cabeen, 290 Chihuly, Dale: and Littleton, 94; and work environment, 109; on learning in communities, 110, 112–13 China-painting, 280–82 Church, Sharon, 103, 128, 217 Church of Craft, 137 Clark, Sam, 121 Clark, Sonya Y. S., 37–39 Class: craft affirming links to, 3; and training with masters, 73 Clay: nature of, 11–12; centering of, 12–13; qualities of, 29, 265; technical knowledge of, 33; commercial clay design programs, 101; clay sculpture, 102–3, 190, 267; spiritual beliefs about, 263; and discipline, 293. See also Pottery Clay, artists working in: Darrell Adams, 29; Robert Arneson, 238; Judy Chicago, 280; Val Cushing, 13; Stephen DeStaebler, 102; Angela Fina, 100; Charles Harder, 144; Edith Heath, 149; Mark Hewitt, 267; Wayne Higby, 250; Garth Johnson, 293; Jun Kaneko, 188; Howard Kottler, 244; Rosemary Apple Blossom Lonewolf, 262; Michael Lucero, 58; Warren MacKenzie, 80; John Mason, 242; James McKinnell, 13; Jim Melchert, 282; Nora Naranjo-Morse, 32, 184; Richard Notkin, 122, 264; Daniel Rhodes, 13; M. C. Richards, 11; Diego Romero, 34;

Paul Soldner, 76; Byron Temple, 162; Robert Turner, 13; Peter Voulkos, 76, 188, 242; Marguerite Wildenhain, 9, 96, 171, 225; Gerry Williams, 134; Betty Woodman, 187, 265 Clothing. See Fiber, artists working in; Textiles Collaborative art, 297–98 Collectors: role of, 23, 24 Collins, Liz, 137, 296, 297, 299 Commodification, 34, 277 Competition: manufacturing sector as, 143; foreign competition for luxury goods, 144, 145, 146 Computer-aided design/computeraided manufacture (CAD/CAM), 256, 258–59 Consumer culture, 1, 34, 277, 290, 294 Cooperatives: and entrepreneurship, 109; and learning in communities, 120, 122; and small pottery businesses, 146; and marketplace, 171 Counterculture: Richards and, 11; and independence, 19, 21; and politics, 26; and Wiley’s assemblage, 59; and blacksmithing, 118, 119; and woodworking, 120; marketing emphasis contrasted with, 277; and hippie culture, 279 Craft: fine arts compared to, 7, 14–15, 63–64, 65, 97, 101, 209, 287, 297; technical knowledge of, 13–15, 29, 31–32, 33, 83, 107–8, 128; federal support for, 93; and sharing, 128; and America House, 153–54; U.S. Customs regulations for, 173–78; and industrial design, 196–97; criteria defining, 221, 223; and makers’ identities, 225. See also Work process Craft fairs: and glass, 15; and pottery sales, 100; and blacksmithing, 182; West Springfield Craft Show, 183 Craft Horizons, 72, 76 Craft objects: definition of, 173–78 Craft organizations: and learning in communities, 109, 128, 131, 133–34; and mechanization, 154; academics’ dominance in, 171, 182–83 Craft Services Department, 113, 117

Craft traditions: and culture, 1, 28, 34, 36, 38, 226, 262–64; and nonprofessional makers, 28; and Darrell Adams, 28, 29, 31–32; and pottery, 28, 29, 31–32, 33, 34, 228, 230–31, 250–52, 265; and Naranjo-Morse, 28, 32–34; and quilting, 28, 39, 40–42, 271; and Ebendorf, 28, 39–40; and Bendolph, 28, 40–42; and Romero, 34, 36; and Lindquist, 36–37; and woodworking, 36–37; and Clark, 37–39; and training with masters, 73; and production, 143, 145, 225; artists’ negotiations with, 221, 223; and Kottler, 225, 244, 246–47; and Lonewolf, 225, 262–64; and Hewitt, 225, 267–71; Wildenhain on, 226–27 Craft training programs: growth in, 71–72; emergent nature of, 73; and veterans, 93; trade orientation of, 103; teacher/pupil ratios in, 270 Craig, Burlon, 271 Cranbrook Academy of Art, 107, 207 Craver, Margret, 114; and metalsmithing, 72, 113, 115–18; on learning in communities, 113, 115–18 Creativity: academic training’s emphasis on, 31; material as partner in process of, 55; and Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, 126; and consideration, 151; and small textile businesses, 169; effect of marketplace on, 178–79 Crespo, Clare, 137 Cristallerie Daum, 212, 214–15 Cultural tourism: Rossbach on, 278–79 Culture: and craft traditions, 1, 28, 34, 36, 38, 226, 262–64; consumer culture, 1, 34, 277, 290, 294; from remote beginnings, 9; and materials, 54, 57; and training with masters, 73, 82; and art galleries, 170; and quilting, 225, 271, 273; and basketmaking, 249; and ornament, 288, 290. See also Counterculture Cummings, Paul, 156 Cushing, Val: on technical knowledge of craft, 13, 14; and meaning, 15; and aesthetics, 101 INDEX

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Dailey, Daniel Owen (Dan): as designer, 139, 141; and industrial design, 212, 214–15; Presse Papier Vase Series, 213 Dartmouth College, 71 Daum, Jacques, 212 Decentralization, 14 Decorative arts, 19 De Kooning, Willem, 228 Demonstrated wisdom: and craft traditions, 38, 39 Dendroglyphs, 64 Denmark, 217 De Patta, Margaret, 164; small jewelry business of, 163, 165–66; and copies of work, 199 De Santillana, Ludovico, 85, 86 Design: and integration, 8, 9, 75–76; construction integrated with, 9, 75–76; act of designing, 21, 23; emotional response to, 46, 48; and training with masters, 74; and materials, 75; and vocational education, 75; for industry, 94, 117, 154; effect of marketplace on innovation in, 100, 101; and academic training, 103; and woodworking, 122; fashions in, 144; demand for variety and individuality in, 144, 148; and small pottery businesses, 145–46, 147, 148; and labor costs, 148; and small textile businesses, 154, 156, 157, 168; and small jewelry businesses, 165–66; and small glass businesses, 167; and spec pieces, 180; originality in, 200–201, 221, 228. See also Industrial design DeStaebler, Stephen: on academic training, 102–3 Detroit Art Institute, 152 D’Harnoncourt, Rene, 117 Dill, Lesley: and materials, 43, 60, 62– 63; Dada Poem Wedding Dress, 61 Discipline: as antidote to social chaos, 3, 5; Albers on, 5–8; and materials, 7; of forming, 8; sense of, 19; craft as gendered discipline, 125–26, 277, 280–82, 284–88; of makers, 198; and clay, 293 Domesticity: as locus of feminist art, 304

INDEX

16, 18; reclaiming symbols of, 16, 19; fiber arts linked with, 27. See also Feminist art Douglas, Mary, 129, 130 Drain, Jim, 137 Dreisbach, Fritz: on Glass Art Society, 23, 131, 133–34; and studio glass movement, 72, 86, 87, 109; and Littleton, 86, 94, 191; on training with masters, 86–89; academic training of, 107; and learning in communities, 131, 133–34; on pricing, 190–91 Druding, Susan, 125 Duchamp, Marcel, 64, 254, 276 Dumas, Mary, 209 Dunas, Michael, 258–59 DuPont, 195 Eames, Charles Ormond, Jr.: and industrial design, 196–97, 215; and originality, 221, 227–28 Eames, Ray, 196 Ebendorf, Robert: and craft traditions, 28, 39–40; entrepreneurial flexibility of, 192, 218–20 Economics: and independence, 21; and wholesale craft shows, 100; and small producers, 144–45; and mass production, 147; and education, 172; and financial implications of U.S. Customs regulations, 173–78; and creativity, 178–79 Education: doing versus recording, 5; and knowing for later, 6; leading to elementary seeing, 7–8; ideals in, 12–13; and Voulkos as teacher, 79–80; and production, 172. See also Academic training; Craft training programs; Learning in communities; Training with masters Edwards, Joe, 76 Elliott, Lillian: on academic training, 98–99; and industrial design, 192, 215–16 England, 146 Esherick, Wharton, 106 European apprenticeship system: academic training contrasted with, 72, 74, 106; and American ethos of inde-

pendence, 73, 82; craft training programs compared to, 93 Evans, Ted, 24 Exhibitions: and pottery, 14, 116; and textiles, 68; and U.S. Customs regulations, 173–78; and populism, 284; and gender, 285; and collaborative art, 297–98 Existentialism, 235 Fabre, Mic, 68 Fabric: and connection to domesticity, 19; and industrial design, 193, 211. See also Fiber, artists working in; Textiles Fachschulen, 107 Federal Arts Projects, 153. See also Works Progress Administration Feminist art: domesticity as locus of, 16, 18; and Schapiro, 16, 280; and scale, 58–59, 60; and textiles, 125–26; craft associated with, 277, 284; and globalization, 300. See also Gender; Women’s movement Fiber, artists working in: Anni Albers, 5; Dorothy Gill Barnes, 64; Mary Lee Bendolph, 40; Lou Cabeen, 290; Nick Cave, 51; Judy Chicago, 280; Sonya Clark, 37; Liz Collins, 296; Lesley Dill, 60; Lillian Elliott, 98; Sabrina Gschwandtner, 136, 296; Helena Hernmarck, 159; Sheila Hicks, 66; Michael James, 271; Gerhardt Knodel, 69; Gyonky Laky, 124; Jack Lenor Larsen, 154; Dorothy Liebes, 193; Cat Mazza, 296; John McQueen, 247; Norma Minkowitz, 161; Ed Rossbach, 207, 249, 278; Miriam Schapiro, 16; Warren Seelig, 54; Kay Sekimachi, 198; Allison Smith, 296; Consuelo Underwood, 27; Katherine Westphal, 209 Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, 124–27, 136 Fifth Annual Miami National Ceramic Exhibition, 228, 230 Fina, Angela: on academic training, 93, 100–102 Fine arts: crafts compared to, 7, 14–15,

63–64, 65, 97, 101, 209, 287, 297; industrial design contrasted with, 154 Fine Woodworking, 74 Fisch, Arline: on academic training, 93, 103, 105–6; Halter, 104; and learning in communities, 127–28; as salaried professor, 141, 217; and financial implications of U.S. Customs regulations, 173–78; and industrial design, 217–18; and professional identity, 221, 261 Ford Motor Company, 215–16 Fox, Harvey, 173, 175–78 Frantz, Suzanne, 87–88, 131, 133, 134, 190 Frid, Tage: on training with masters, 73, 74–76; Wildenhain compared to, 96 Friedlich, Donald: on demands of nonacademic producers, 141; on academics in craft organizations, 182–83 Frimkess, Michael, 76 Fritz, Arden, 91 Fritz, Robert, 15 Fulbright residencies, 72, 83, 107 Function: justifying sculpture, 21, 23; and furniture, 21, 23, 50, 97; and association of use, 50, 273, 275; and U.S. Customs regulations, 173–78; and textiles, 207, 209; and industrial design, 217; and Oldenburg, 236, 237; and Rossbach, 249–50; and pottery, 251, 263–64, 267; and artistic identity, 261 Furniture: functionality of, 21, 23, 50, 97; and craft traditions, 38; and training with masters, 74–76; and design, 75–76; as sculpture, 97, 98, 225, 237, 254–56; and academic training, 97–98; Castle on, 97–98, 254–56; commissioned work in, 180. See also Wood, artists working in GAS. See Glass Art Society Gates, Jack, 205, 206 Gatti, Danielle, 167 Gee’s Bend quilts: popularization of, 28, 40–42 Gender: craft affirming links to, 3; craft as gendered discipline, 125–26, 277, INDEX

305

280–82, 284–88; and metalsmithing, 284–85, 286; and textile history, 292. See also Feminist art; Women’s movement Gender roles: and knitting, 136; and pottery, 263; and quilting, 271, 273, 290, 292 Georg Jensen, 162, 163 G.I. Bill, 71, 93, 106 Glass: and craft fairs, 15; and marketplace, 24; and training with masters, 83, 85–89; and academic training, 94, 106–8; and learning in communities, 110, 112–13, 131, 133–34; and industrial design, 204–7, 212, 214–15; aesthetic qualities of, 252–54. See also Studio glass movement Glass, artists working in: Dale Chihuly, 110; Dan Dailey, 212; Fritz Dreisbach, 86, 131, 190; Henry Halem, 178; David Huchthausen, 252; Robert Kehlmann, 23; Harvey Littleton, 94, 106; Paul Manners, 15; Paul Marioni, 50; Richard Marquis, 83, 166; Josiah McElheny, 273; Joyce Scott, 24; Buster Simpson, 110 Glass Art Society (GAS): and Kehlmann, 23, 24; Dreisbach’s description of, 23, 131, 133–34; development of, 109 Glass Art Society Journal, 23, 24, 26 Globalization, 277, 300 Goldsmith’s Hall, 115 Goldsmiths Journal, 285 Goodall Fabrics, 193 Good Design Exhibitions, 152 Gordy, D. X., 29, 32 Gordy, W. J. (Bill): and Darrell Adams, 29, 30, 31–32 Gorham, 117 Grady, Sara, 136, 137 Great California Glass Symposium, 132 Greer, Michael, 193 Griffin, Gary: on materials, 56–58 Gschwandtner, Sabrina: and learning in communities, 136–38; and politics, 296, 297, 298–99 Guermonprez, Trude, 198 Gump’s, 149 Gustin, Nelson, 151–52 306

INDEX

Haeg, Fritz, 136, 137 Halem, Henry: and John Lewis, 158; on marketplace, 178–79 Hallowell, Roger, 203 Hamada, Shoji, 78 Hamilton, Ann: on materials, 43, 53–54 Hand labor: value of, 53, 91, 116, 260–61, 290, 294, 295; as primary cause in craft practice, 63; Wildenhain on, 96, 171, 172; mass production compared to, 147, 152, 153, 165–66, 171, 197; and CAD/CAM, 258–59 Handy & Harmon, Refiners and Dealers, 115, 117; workshops, 72, 113, 115, 116, 117–18 Harder, Charles: and Rhodes, 14; and business of small studios, 143, 144– 48, 149 Harrison, Robert: Potters Shrine at Archie Bray Foundation, 123 Hart, Alexandra Jacopetti, 20 Hauberg, Anne Gould, 110 Hauberg, John, 110 Hawes, Bess, 283 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 26, 109, 127, 128 Heath, Edith: small pottery business of, 139, 149, 151–54, 162; and production, 192; and copies of work, 199 Heath Ceramics, 149, 150, 151–54 Hebdige, Dick, 290 Heino, Vivika, 76 Heinrick, Leonard, 116 Hernmarck, Helena: on using assistants, 159–61 Hewitt, Mark, 268; and craft traditions, 225, 267–71 Hickman, Pat, 98 Hicks, Sheila: and materials, 66, 68–69; Soft Sculpture of Nurses’ Blouses, 67; small textile business of, 167–69 Higby, Wayne: and craft tradition, 250–52, 265 Hobby ceramics: and pottery sales, 100 Hobby quilting: culture of, 225 Hoeffecker, Amy, 137 Hofer, Jen, 137 Hoy, Anna Sew, 137 Hu, Mary Lee, 49; and materials, 48, 50

Huchthausen, David: and boundaries of craft, 221, 252–54 Huguenin, Suzanne, 198–99 Ideas: materials as source of, 43, 55, 57; subordinated to materials, 63; development of, 105; and industrial design, 219; nature as source of, 254, 255 Independence: and lack of authority, 6; through work, 14, 15; and counterculture, 19, 21; and economics, 21; and European apprenticeship system, 73, 82; summer institutes’ emphasis on, 109; and blacksmithing, 118; and CAD/CAM, 259; through art, 277 Indiana University, 107 Industrial design: and academic training, 94; and Carver, 117; fine art contrasted with, 154; and Liebes, 192, 193, 195–96; and Elliott, 192, 215–16; and textiles, 193, 195–96, 198–201, 207, 209, 211, 215–16; and aesthetic qualities, 193, 211, 212; and Eames, 196–97, 215; and Larsen, 197–98; and production, 197–98, 218–19; and Sekimachi, 198–201; and Prip, 201, 203–4; and Bill Brown, 204–7; and glass, 204–7, 212, 214–15; and Rossbach, 207, 209, 211; and Westphal, 209, 211; and Dailey, 212, 214–15; and influence of artists, 216; and Fisch, 217–18; and metalsmithing, 217–18 Industrial Revolution, 3, 116 Innovation: and training with masters, 73, 74; effect of marketplace on, 100, 101; and blacksmithing, 119; tension with traditional standards, 225; and Lonewolf, 225, 262–64; and Mason, 242–43; and pottery, 243, 251. See also Originality International exhibitions: and U.S. Customs regulations, 173–78 Iowa Woodfire Conference, 269 Jack Lenor Larsen Inc., 154, 155. See also Larsen, Jack Lenor James, Michael: and culture of quilting, 225, 271, 273; Processional, 272

Japan: and training with masters, 82; and pottery market, 146, 148 Jewelry. See Metal, artists working in J. L. Hudson, 151 Johns, Jasper, 235, 246 Johns-Manville, 87, 89, 94 Johnson, Garth: and history of pottery, 293–95 Johnson, John, 205, 206–7 Jones, Margo, 121 Joyce, Tom, 90; and history of metalsmithing, 56; on training with masters, 89, 90–91; on ethical consequences of smithing, 295–96 Judd, Donald, 276 Kaneko, Jun, 189; and art galleries, 170, 188, 190 Kanorly, Aleanna, 130 Kant, Immanuel, 39 Karoly, Frederick, 211 Kashiwa, Wendy, 125 Kehlmann, Robert: and Glass Art Society, 23, 24; on humanist roots, 279–80 Kelley, Mike: and value of handmade objects, 260–61 Keyser, Bill, 255 Kingsley, Susan: on craft as gendered discipline, 277, 284–88 Kington, L. Brent: and learning in communities, 109, 129–31; and ArtistBlacksmith’s Association of North America, 118 Kirk, Arthur Nevill, 116 Kirk, Norman T., 115 Klee, Paul, 117 KnitKnit, 136–37 KnitKnit Sundown Salon, 136–38 Knodel, Gerhardt: and materials, 69 Knoll Textiles, 199 Kottler, Howard: and Lucero, 58; and craft traditions, 225, 244, 246–47; The Old Bag Next Door Is Nuts, 244, 245, 246–47 Krenov, James: and originality, 221, 240, 242; Cabinet, 241 Kunstakademien, 107 Kunstfachschule, 107 INDEX

307

Labino, Dominick: and studio glass movement, 72, 87–89; and Littleton, 94 Laky, Gyöngy: and learning in communities, 109, 124–27 Lalique, René, 48, 212 Langthon, Kjell O., 219 Larsen, Jack Lenor: on starting businesses, 143, 154, 156–57; and industrial design, 197–98; and Sekimachi, 198 Laub, Lindsey King, 31–32 Leach, Bernard: and Cushing, 14; and training with masters, 78, 80–82, 162; Wildenhain on, 226–27; and Hewitt, 267; and hand labor, 294 Leach, David, 81 Leach Pottery, 80–82 Learning in communities: and summer institutes, 109, 110, 112–13; and Paley, 109, 118–19; and McKie, 109, 120, 122; and Laky, 109, 124–27; and craft organizations, 109, 128, 131, 133–34; and Kington, 109, 129–31; and glass, 110, 112–13, 131, 133–34; and Craver, 113, 115–18; and metalsmithing, 113, 115– 18; and blacksmithing, 118–19, 129– 31; and Notkin, 122, 124; and pottery, 122–24, 134–35; and textiles, 124–27, 136–38; and sharing, 127, 128; and Fisch, 127–28; and Gschwandtner, 136–38 Lechtzin, Stanley, 257; and hand technologies, 225, 258; and CAD/CAM, 256, 258–59 Leland, Mary Jane, 69 Leongard, John, George Nakashima, 45 Lévi-Strauss, Monique, 66, 168 Lewis, John: and small business, 157–59; and split between academics and independents, 171 Lewis, Keith A.: on body piercing as oppositional art, 277, 288, 290; Nipple Ornament from “Ivo Suite,” 289 Liebes, Dorothy, 194; and textiles, 116; and industrial design, 192, 193, 195– 96 Lindquist, Mark, 37; and craft traditions, 36–37 308

INDEX

Lindquist, Melvin, 36–37, 37 Lipofsky, Marvin, 157, 204, 205, 206 Littleton, Harvey, 95, 229; on academic training, 71, 93, 106–8; and Dreisbach, 86, 94, 191; and studio glass movement, 94, 106; and Halem, 178; and Huchthausen, 252 Lonewolf, Joseph, 263 Lonewolf, Rosemary Apple Blossom: and innovation, 225, 262–64 Loos, Adolf, 46 Lucero, Michael: and scale, 58–60 Lyon, David, 273 MacKenzie, Alix, 80–82 MacKenzie, Walter: on training with masters, 73, 80–83 Mah, Chere, 125 Manners, Paul, 15–16 Manufacturing: as competition for craft production, 143; and classification of small businesses, 157–58, 159; and industrial design, 192; and Noguchi, 275–76; rejection of, 290; and blacksmithing, 296 Marioni, Paul: and materials, 50–51 Marketplace: and glass, 24; effect on innovative design, 100, 101; domestic market in luxury goods, 144–45; and mass production, 147; and direct sales, 170, 171, 187–88; detachment from, 178–79; and blacksmithing, 182; and craft organizations, 183; Naranjo-Morse on, 184, 186–87; and industrial design, 195, 214, 220; and craft traditions, 270, 271 Marlos, Daniel, 137 Marquis, Richard: and studio glass movement, 72, 83; on training with masters, 83, 85–86; American Acid Capsule, 84; production studio of, 139, 166–67 Marrin, Bridget, 137 Marrin, Tina, 137 Marshall, Bill, 81 Marshall Field, 149 Mason, John, 76, 238, 242–43 Mass production: craft standing against, 26; and economics, 147;

hand labor compared to, 147, 152, 153, 165–66, 171, 197; and small pottery businesses, 151, 154; artists’ desires to influence, 192. See also Production Matano, Koji, 167 Materials: emotional response to, 1, 11, 40, 41, 43, 46, 54, 55–56, 60, 62, 63, 66, 68; and discipline, 7; fine arts compared to crafts, 7; spirit of, 11–12, 43, 46, 55; empowerment of traditional materials, 27; and craft traditions, 31, 36, 270; and Nakashima, 43, 44, 46; Hamilton on, 43, 53–54; Seelig on, 43, 54–56; as source of ideas, 43, 55, 57; and Dill, 43, 60, 62–63; and Paley, 46, 48; and Hu, 48, 50; and clash between message and medium, 50; and Marioni, 50–51; and Cave, 51, 53; truth to materials, 55, 225, 264, 265; Stefanutti and Griffin on, 56–58; agency of, 57, 58; associative power of, 57, 60; and Lucero, 58–60; ideas subordinated to, 63; loyalty to, 63, 64; and Metcalf, 63–64; and Barnes, 64–66; and Hicks, 66, 68–69; and Knodel, 69; and training with masters, 74; Frid on, 75; and small pottery businesses, 147; and test pieces, 180, 182; and industrial design, 203; and Notkin, 225, 264–65; and Artschwager, 234–35; and Krenov, 242 Mattia, Alphonse: and commissioned work, 180 Mazza, Cat, 296, 298, 300 McAgy, Jerry, 149 McDevitt, Jan, 231, 234, 235, 237 McDonald, Henry, 90 McElheny, Josiah: and use in relation to art, 225, 273, 275–76 McGlauchlin, Tom, 87, 88 McKie, Judy Kensley, 121; and learning in communities, 109, 120, 122 McKinnell, James: on technical knowledge of craft, 13; and meaning, 14; on control over destiny, 15 McKinnell, Nan, 14 McLean, John, 283 McQueen, John: and basketmaking, 225, 247, 249; Untitled #203, 248

Meaning: of formed things, 6, 7; in pottery, 14–15; craft as vehicle for construction of, 27; and materials, 44, 55, 56, 57–58; and basketmaking, 249 Mechanization: and small pottery businesses, 147–48, 151, 152, 153, 154; and handweaving, 209; hand labor contrasted with, 259 Melchert, Jim: on peer evaluation, 223, 282–83 Merback, Althea, 137 Merchandise Mart January Gift Show, 151 Messerschmidt, Tom, 204 Metal, artists working in: Margaret Craver, 113; Margaret De Patta, 163; Robert Ebendorf, 39, 218; Arline Fisch, 103, 127, 217, 261; Tage Frid, 74; Donald Friedlich, 82; Gary Griffin, 56; Mary Lee Hu, 48; Tom Joyce, 89, 295; Susan Kingsley, 284; Brent Kington, 129; Stanley Lechtzin, 256; John Lewis, 157; Keith Lewis, 288; Bruce Metcalf, 26, 63; Albert Paley, 46, 118; John Prip, 201; Erika Ayala Stefanutti, 6; Francis Whitaker, 180 Metalsmith, 285 Metalsmithing: and agency of materials, 57, 58; and Handy & Harmon workshops, 72; and Craver, 72, 113, 115–18; and academic training, 103, 105–6; and studio artists/salaried teachers tensions, 183; and industrial design, 217–18; and CAD/CAM, 258; and gender, 284–85, 286; and cultural language of ornament, 288, 290 Metcalf, Bruce: narrative jewelry of, 26; and materials, 63–64 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 196–97, 228 Mimbres pottery, 34 Mind/body relationship: and materials, 57; and hand labor, 299 Minkowitz, Norma, 161–62 Modernism: reaction against, 46, 48, 250–52; and industrial design, 193 Mohloy-Nagy, Lázló, 163 Morinaka, Dennis, 124 Morris, William, 3, 259, 294 INDEX

309

Motherwell, Robert, 102 Museum for Contemporary Crafts, 72 Myers, Joel, 252 Nakashima, George, 45; and integration, 8–9; and materials, 43, 44, 46 Naranjo-Morse, Nora: and craft traditions, 28, 32–34; and art galleries, 170, 184, 186–87, 188; “Mud Woman’s First Encounter with the World of Money and Business,” 184, 186–87; Deer and Children, 185 Nathan, Harriet, 125 Nathan and Erskin, 118 National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), 101, 109, 131, 134 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), 109, 130, 173 Nature: and materials, 44, 56, 65–66; living in harmony with, 109; as source of ideas, 254, 255 NCECA. See National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts NEA. See National Endowment for the Arts Neiman-Marcus, 149, 151 Nelson, Robert, 50–51 Neville, Carole, 121 New Hamburger Cabinetworks, 120, 121, 136 Niemeyer, Gustav, 115, 117, 118 Nigrosh, Leon I., 244, 246 Noble Effort, 166–67 Noguchi, Isamu: and use in relation to art, 225, 273, 275–76; Slide Mantra, 273; Akari light sculptures, 274 Nonprofessional makers: and craft traditions, 28 Notkin, Richard: and learning in communities, 122, 124; and materials, 225, 264–65 N. S. Gustin Company, 152 O’Banion, Nance, 125 Occupational therapy: and metalworking, 115 Oldenburg, Claes: and traditional stan-

310

INDEX

dards, 225, 236–37; and Artschwager, 235 Olmsted, Anna Wetherill, 116 Olson, Charles, 12 Ong, Eugene, 137 Ongaro, Checco, 86 Originality: in design, 200–201, 221, 228; and Eames, 221, 227–28; and Krenov, 221, 240, 242. See also Innovation Otis Art Institute: and Voulkos, 73, 76 Painting: and abstract expressionism, 3, 228, 243, 250; and Artschwager, 235; and modernism, 250; as source of ideas, 255; and pottery, 267; chinapainting, 280–82; and gender, 286 Paley, Albert: and materials, 46, 48; Portal Gates, 47, 119; and learning in communities, 109, 118–19 Paper, 60–64 Pearson, Ronald, 201 Penland. See School of Crafts, Penland, N.C. Peru, 38, 198 Peterson, Jamie, 137 Picasso, Pablo, 246 Pilchuk Glass School, 109, 110, 111, 112–13 Piper, Adrian, 63 Pollock, Jackson, 228 Polsky, Richard: and McKie, 120, 122; and Hernmarck, 159, 160; and Temple, 162, 163; and Castle, 254, 255, 256 Pond Farm Workshops, 9, 96, 171 Pop art movement, 235 Populism, 283–84 Poris, Ruth: on craft traditions, 225, 244, 246–47 Portugal, 48 Pottery: as symbol of wholeness, 12; and technical knowledge of craft, 13–15, 29, 31–32, 83; exhibitions of, 14, 116; and craft traditions, 28, 29, 31–32, 33, 34, 228, 230–31, 250–52, 265; and academic training, 31, 96–97, 100–102, 269; and training with masters, 76, 78–83; revival in, 94; and small business, 100, 144–48, 149, 151–54, 162–63, 184, 186; and learning

in communities, 122–24, 134–35; and direct sales, 170, 187–88; pricing of, 190–91; and innovation, 243, 251; history of, 293–95. See also Clay; Clay, artists working in Pottery Liberation Front, 294, 295 Power relations: and art galleries, 170, 184, 186–87, 188; and gender, 286 Price, Ken, 76 Prip, John, 202; and industrial design, 201, 203–4 Production: and small glass businesses, 15–16, 158, 166–67; and craft traditions, 143, 145, 225; and small pottery businesses, 145–46, 148, 149, 151, 162–63; and small textile businesses, 156, 167–69; and small jewelry businesses, 165–66; and education, 172; and U.S. Customs regulations, 174; and industrial design, 197–98, 218–19. See also Hand labor; Mass production Purdue University, 107 Purser, Ro, 166, 167 Quilting: and craft traditions, 28, 39, 40–42, 271; work process of, 60; and culture, 225, 271, 273; mourning quilts, 290, 292. See also Fiber, artists working in Randall, Ted, 15 Raphael, Judy: John’s Big Spoon, 51 Raven, Arlene, 60, 62 Reed & Barton, 117–18, 201, 203–4 Revere, Paul, 228 Reynolds, Hadley, 121 Rhodes, Daniel: on technical knowledge of craft, 13, 14; on independence, 14, 15 Richards, Mary Caroline (M. C.): on centering, 3, 12–13; on work process, 11–13 Riegger, Hal, 14 Rochester Institute of Technology, 71. See also School for American Craftsmen Romero, Diego: and craft traditions, 34, 36; Rio Grande Purging, 35

Rosen, Wendy, 100 Rosolowski, Tacey, 218 Ross, Rosalie, 153, 154 Rossbach, Ed, 208; and work process, 43; students of, 125; and mass production, 192; and industrial design, 207, 209, 211; and Elliott, 215; and function, 249–50; on cultural tourism, 278–79 Rothman, Jerry, 76 Ruskin, John, 3 Russell, Ernie, 121 San Francisco State University, 102 Scale: and sculpture, 58–60; and power weaving, 156; and Kaneko, 188 Scandinavia, 116, 146 Scanga, Italo, 254 Scarpa, Carlo, 86 Schapiro, Miriam: and history and culture of women, 3, 18, 19; Womanhouse, 16; and domesticity as locus of feminist art, 16, 18; and feminist art movement, 16, 280; My Heart Is in the Highlands, 17; on mother’s importance, 18–19 School for American Craftsmen, 71–72, 74, 75, 98, 255 School of Crafts, Penland, N.C., 127, 128, 131 Scott, Joyce: and social class, 3; and social issues, 24, 26; Three Graces Oblivious While L.A. Burns, 25 Sculpture: function justifying, 21, 23; and scale, 58–60; furniture as, 97, 98, 225, 237, 254–56; and academic training, 102–3; clay sculpture, 102–3, 190, 267; as source of ideas, 255; and use, 273, 275–76 Seelig, Warren: on materials, 43, 54–56; and defining element of craft, 63 Sekimachi, Kay: and industrial design, 198–201 Serra, Richard, 16 Servicemembers’ Readjustment Act of 1944 (G.I. Bill), 71, 93, 106 Shahn, Ben, 102 Sheraton, Thomas, 228

INDEX

311

Sidell, Adam, 137 Silversmithing. See Metal, artists working in; Metalsmithing Simmons, Marc, 295 Simpson, Lewis (Buster): and work environment, 109; and Chihuly, 110; on learning in communities, 110, 112–13 Slivka, Rose, 228, 243 Smith, Allison, 296, 297–98, 299, 300 Smith, Cyril Stanley, 130 Smith, Robert, 246–47 SNAG. See Society for North American Goldsmiths Society for North American Goldsmiths (SNAG), 109, 129, 182–83, 285 Society of Connecticut Craftsmen, 161 Soldner, Paul: on Voulkos, 73, 76, 78–80; and Kaneko, 188 Spain, 48 Spies, Frank, 117 Spurling, Slim, 130 Srinivasan, Mandayam, 39 Standard of quality: importance of, 9, 11 Stanley, Louise, 59 Steen, Benito, 90 Stefanutti, Erika Ayala: on materials, 56–58 Steriogram, 138 Steuben Glass, 204–6 Stone, Henry, 121 Stone Associates, 116–17 Strengell, Marianne, 207 Studio artists: relationships with salaried professors, 141, 158, 171, 179, 182–83; relationships with industrial designers, 193 Studio glass movement: and Marquis, 72, 83; and Dreisbach, 72, 86, 87, 109; and Toledo Museum of Art, 86, 88, 94, 133; and small businesses, 157–59, 166–67; and boundaries of craft, 252–54. See also Glass Studio Potter, 134, 135 Tafoya, Camilio Sunflower, 262, 263 Tafoya, Sara Fina, 262, 263–64 Technical knowledge: of crafts, 13–15, 29, 31–32, 33, 83, 107–8, 128; and small pottery businesses, 148 312

INDEX

Temple, Byron: small pottery business of, 162–63 Textiles: emotional response to, 66, 68; as collapsible, 69; and academic training, 98–99; and learning in communities, 124–27, 136–38; and small businesses, 154, 156–57, 159–62; and industrial design, 193, 195–96, 198–201, 207, 209, 211, 215–16; Persian textiles, 278–79; domestic textile techniques, 290, 292–93. See also Basketmaking; Fiber, artists working in; Paper Thaibok, 156 Thiedeman, Mike, 82–83 Thorne, Melissa, 137 Time: and work process, 43, 55–56, 62; and value, 259, 260 Toledo Museum of Art: and studio glass movement, 86, 88, 94, 133 Tourist market, 263–64, 278–79 Towle, 117, 118 Training with masters: Frid on, 73, 74–76; MacKenzie on, 73, 80–83; and culture clashes, 73, 82; and furniture, 74–76; Soldner on, 76, 78–80; and pottery, 76, 78–83; Marquis on, 83, 85–86; and glass, 83, 85–89; Dreisbach on, 86–89; and blacksmithing, 89, 91–92; Wildenhain on, 96, 97 Turley, Frank, 129, 295 Turner, Robert: and integration, 3, 14; and technical knowledge of craft, 13; influence of, 15 Underwood, Consuelo Jimenez: ethnic heritage of, 3; and fiber arts, 27 United Wallpaper, 193 University of California, Berkeley, 99 University of Iowa: and studio glass movement, 86, 87; and academic training, 107 University of Michigan, 107 University of Wisconsin, 94, 106–7 Valentine, DeWain, 254 Values: reflected in work, 1, 11, 26–27; and materials, 44, 53, 57; and train-

ing with masters, 73; and Fiberworks Center for the Textile Arts, 126 Van Loo, Bert, 107 Venini, Anna, 83, 85–86 Venini, Paolo, 86 Venini Fabrica: and studio glass movement, 72, 83; and Marquis, 83, 85–86; and Chihuly, 110; and Dailey, 212 Vessel: as aesthetic form, 250–52; Woodman on, 265, 267 Veterans: and G.I. Bill, 71, 93 Voulkos, Peter, 77, 229; Soldner on, 73, 76, 78–80; and Littleton, 94; and DeStaebler, 102; and Kaneko, 188; and boundaries of craft, 221; on current directions in contemporary art, 225, 228, 230–31; and Arneson, 238; and Mason, 243 Walker Art Center, 152 Wallace, Jim, 129–30 Ward, Jack, 205, 206 Watkins, Laura Woodside, 271 Wattenmaker, Richard, 130 Weaving: and cottage industries, 116; small-scale power weaving, 156; and function, 207, 209 Webb, Aileen Osborn, 72, 153, 229 Wensberg, Molly Doe, 159 Westphal, Katherine: and industrial design, 209, 211; commercial textile made from original batik design (detail), 210; on populism, 283–84 West Springfield Craft Show, 183 Whitaker, Francis, 181; and blacksmithing, 130; on test pieces, 180, 182 Whitmarsh, Megan, 137 Wier, Wilson, 116 Wildenhain, Marguerite, 10; and social integrity of craft, 3; and standard of quality, 9, 11; on academic training, 93, 96–97, 171, 172; on demands of nonacademic producers, 141; on craft traditions, 226–27 Wilding, Faith, 300 Wiley, William, 59 Williams, Gerry: and learning in communities, 134–35 Wilmarth, Chris, 254

Wirkkala, Tapio, 85 Withers, Margret Craver. See Craver, Margret Wolfe, Thomas, 24 Women’s movement: and academic training, 99 Wood, artists working in: Richard Artschwager, 231; Scott Burton, 21; Art Carpenter, 19; Wendell Castle, 97; James Krenov, 240; Mark Lindquist, 36; Alphonse Mattia, 180; Judy McKie, 120; George Nakashima, 8, 44; Claes Oldenburg, 235 Woodman, Betty: and direct sales, 170, 187–88; on vessel, 265, 267; Divided Vases–Christmas, 266 Woodman, George, 188 Wood-turning movement, 36 Woodworking: and craft traditions, 36–37; and School for American Craftsmen, 74; and learning in communities, 120, 122. See also Furniture; Wood, artists working in Woolf, Virginia, 280–81 Work process: form and meaning in, 6, 7; cosmic presences in, 11; Richards on, 11–13; pleasure in, 43; and experience of time, 43, 55–56, 62; and materials, 55–56; of quilting, 60; loyalty to, 64 Works Progress Administration (WPA), 106, 107, 116 World Craft Council, 130 World War II: postwar period and crafts, ix, x, 1, 19, 28, 33, 143, 144, 196, 277; centrality to makers, 3; Albers and, 5; Nakashima and, 8; Alfred potters and, 13–14; G.I. Bill, 71, 106; Frid and, 74; Craver and, 113, 115–16; disillusionment after, 192 WPA. See Works Progress Administration Wren, Christopher, 115 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 153, 193 Wright, Mary, 153–54 Yager, Jan, 295, 296 Yanagi, Soetsu, 294 Yellin, Harvey, 91 Yellin, Samuel, 89, 91 INDEX

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