American craft

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Dale Chihuly's 30-foot blown-glass chandelier in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2000

American craft is craft work produced by independent studio artists working with traditional

textiles, and metal (metalworking). Studio craft
works tend to either serve or allude to a functional or utilitarian purpose, although they are just as often handled and exhibited in ways similar to visual art objects.

History

The American studio craft movement is a successor to earlier European craft movements. Modern studio crafts developed as a reaction to

Arts & Crafts Movement. Morris distinguished the studio craftsman in this way: "[O]ur art is the work of a small minority composed of educated persons, fully conscious of their aim of producing beauty, and distinguished from the great body of workmen by that aim." Both European and American craft traditions have also been influenced by Art Nouveau. Both of these movements influenced the development of the contemporary studio craft movement in the United States
during the late nineteenth century, throughout the twentieth century and to the present.

Window of St. Augustine; by Louis Comfort Tiffany, now in the Lightner Museum, St. Augustine, Florida

American craft pioneers

In the early nineteenth century it became popular for rural Americans of modest means to take the decoration of their homes and furniture into their own hands. The artist Rufus Porter was an early proponent of the American craft movement. In 1825 he published A Select Collection of Valuable and Curious Arts, and Interesting Experiments Which are Well Explained, and Warranted Genuine, and May be Prepared, Safely and at Little Expense, which is a book of instructions for domestic decorative arts, including wall, floor, and furniture painting.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the preindustrial craft trades had almost disappeared. Industrial expansion and westward movement had largely severed American culture from early Colonial American and Native American craft roots. Against this backdrop,

art nouveau
.

Arts and Crafts Movement, "The Craftsman" increasingly developed American craft concepts over the years of its publication. Stickley's ideas later had influence on Frank Lloyd Wright
and future generations of American craftsmen, artists and architects.

The

Medieval European guild
.

Early craft institutions

The studio crafts movement was fostered by the establishment of crafts programs within post-secondary educational institutions. In 1894, for example, North America's first

ceramics department was begun at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. This was followed in 1901 by the establishment of the first ceramics art school at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. Similarly, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island
established the first metal arts class in 1901 and the first textiles class in 1903.

After World War I, a postwar spirit of internationalism influenced the establishment of other important craft institutions, such as the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Cranbrook craftsmen translated organic and geometric forms into the style that would be known as Art Deco. At Cranbrook, teachers like Maija Grotell produced important work in their own right while also teaching a new generation of young studio craft artists.

The Depression years and World War II

During the Depression years, the federal Works Progress Administration funded crafts projects as well as public works and murals as a way to both keep workers working and as a way to increase national morale. This enabled crafts to flourish at a local level. At the same time, American art programs began to include craft studies into their curricula.

World War II brought an influx of European artists and craftsmen. These European exiles brought with them a range of historical traditions including not only European craft practices but also knowledge of Asian and other non-Western cultures. One example of this influx is Tage Frid, a Danish furniture maker, who established the reputation of the Furniture Making program at Rhode Island School of Design, and there are certainly others. Also during the post World War II period a general dissatisfaction with industrial society began to fuel further support for handmade art objects. In 1943, the American Craft Council was founded to support craftspeople and cultivate an appreciation for their work. The ACC's founder, Aileen Osborn Webb was a potter interested in creating marketing opportunities for studio craftsmen. The organization eventually grew to include American Craft magazine and the Museum of Arts and Design (then called the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and at one point known as the American Craft Museum). As a result of these phenomena, post-war American craft became stylistically more refined as well as technically more proficient.

The 1950s and Peter Voulkos

Main article: Peter Voulkos
Peter Voulkos (left) assisted by John Balistreri.

During the 1950s, some artists turned to the truth-to-materials doctrine.[

vessel forms such as plates, ice buckets, and tea bowls
. In other works, Voulkos created new nonutilitarian forms, such as his purely sculptural, large-scale cylindrical "stacks."

Voulkos was also influenced by

Shoji Hamada. Hamada encouraged Voulkos to embrace a Zen approach to ceramics based not only upon technical proficiency but also upon a mental and spiritual union between creator and art object. Voulkos later cited Hamada's statement that it "took him ten years to learn the potter's wheel and another ten years to forget it"β€”an insight that inspired Voulkos' early attempts to fully form a teapot in two minutes.[1]

Voulkos taught at

ceramics
department and taught from 1959 until 1985. At Berkeley, Voulkos became increasingly prominent for his massive, cracked and slashed pots.

The 1960s and the new glassblowing movement

The culture of the 1960s was even more conducive to the development of studio crafts. This period saw a rejection of

California College of Arts and Crafts
, which he headed for two decades.

In 1971,

Chinookan words for "red" and "water," alluding to the iron-rich waters of the nearby Pilchuck River
.

The Renwick Gallery

Main article: Renwick Gallery
The Renwick Gallery, at the Smithsonian

In 1972, the

Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, it provided a distinguished setting for American studio craft objects in Washington, D.C.

The Year of American Craft

In 1992,

National Museum of American Art
in 1995.

Types

Notes

  1. ^ Timothy Anglin Burgard, The Art of Craft: Contemporary Works from the Saxe Collection, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1999 at 13
  2. ^ The Corning Museum of Glass. "Decades in Glass: The '60s."

Sources

External links

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