Modern Craft and the American Experience

Author(s): Edward S. Cooke Jr.

Source: American Art, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Spring 2007), pp. 2-9
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art
Museum
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Edward S. Cooke Jr.
Richard Marquis, Nora Fanshell,
and Jan Vail, Ceramic Coffee
Pot with Cozy, 1972. Clear-
glazed molded and colored clay
with papier-mâché cozy, 10 x
9 x 7 in. Smithsonian American
Art Museum, Gift of the James
Renwick Alliance. Photo, Bruce
Miller
Margaret Craver, Teapot, ca. 1936.
Silver and Gabon ebony, 5 ½ x
9 ¼ x 5 ½ in. Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, Gift in Memory of
Joyce Goldberg with funds pro-
vided by John Axelrod, Mr. and
Mrs. Sidney Stoneman, Charles
Devens, Mr. and Mrs. Peter S.
Lynch, The Seminarians, James G.
Hinckle Jr., The MFA Council,
and Friends. Photo © Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston
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Commentaries
Modern Craft and the American Experience
In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the word “craft” has often been the
subject of a tug of war between two groups in the United States: enthusiasts who argue
for craft as a nonhierarchical, democratic activity, open to all and necessary in a world
supersaturated with impersonal consumables; and sophisticates who think that “craft” is a
pejorative term, too often associated with kitsch, macramé, stoneware pots, and DIY (do-
it-yourselfers). Some of the latter dismiss craft entirely. Others believe that a certain class
of craft worthy of recognition as art has emerged and should be recognized as superior to
“mere” craft.1
These struggles suggest that we have arrived at some commonly understood notions of
“craft.” But the truth is that this contested landscape of unstable meanings is merely the
latest chapter in a history that stretches back to the 1870s, when the term really began to
be used as a noun to define a broad cultural construction. Since then, craft has been alter-
nately linked to or separated from a number of other subject fields—including decorative
arts, folk art, design, and modern art. Each has its own institutional framework, writers,
and exemplary practitioners, but at times has developed common ground with craft. For
example, in the 1940s important museum shows of American craft and writers such as Allen
Eaton lumped craft and folk art together in contrast to modernist design, whereas in the
1950s curators and writers distinguished craft from folk art and linked it with good design,
idealizing the designer-craftsman.2 Design historian Paul Greenhalgh refers to this ever-
changing notion as a “consortium of genres in the visual arts” and “a fluid set of practices,
propositions, and positions that shift and develop,” but it is also important to recognize that
craft often defines itself not so much as what it is but what it is not, in opposition to other
endeavors.3 Instead of conceiving of craft as a fixed entity, a diachronic perspective (looking
at how things change across time) combined with synchronic theorization (considering the
situation at a single moment in the language of that period) allows a more dynamic and
nuanced consideration that places the practice of craft within American cultural history.
The concept of self-conscious craft, first really articulated by British designer-writer
William Morris in the 1870s and 1880s, was part of a reaction to industrialization and
the seeming abundance of necessities. Before this time, there had been no division of craft
from the trades or manufactures and no specific cultural meaning attached to “handcrafted”
as a category of evaluation. From the seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries,
American craftsmen used whatever technologies they had at hand to produce “neat and
workmanlike” products that satisfied specific notions of acceptability. The economics of
2 Spring 2007 Volume 21, Number 1 © 2007 Smithsonian Institution
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 craft was based on size, cost of materials, and amount of
decoration. Morris, son of a prosperous businessman, em-
braced the crafts in order to put into practice the theories
of social reform popular at that time. He had not appren-
ticed within the trades but rather learned from reading,
interacting with workers, and trying his hand at specific
tasks such as making embroideries, dyeing textiles, and
cutting woodblocks. He then wrote and lectured about
the importance of the joy inherent in craftwork and
the significance of recognizing it as an artistic endeavor
distinct from skilled trades or manufacturing.4
Thus craft was born of the condition of modernity,
and its subsequent practice has been carried out in that
context. Modern education and technology have played
a crucial role in broadening the base of the crafts. Formal
school instruction and published or recorded training
manuals led to a dissemination of craft practice. The
advent of basement shops with electric tools and the
development of such equipment as ceramic kilns and glass
furnaces for personal use also made possible its expansion.

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Laurin Hovey Martin, Charger,
ca. 1904. Copper, 20 ⅞ in. wide.
Yale University Art Gallery, New
Haven, Connecticut, Gift of
Matthew Robinson
Maurice Heaton, Dish, ca. 1930.
Glass with enamel glaze, 14 in.
wide. Yale University Art Gallery,
New Haven, Connecticut,
Henry P. and Leslie Wheeler Fund
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Distribution and marketing as well as production have been affected. Some makers have
chosen to sell their goods through channels such as department stores, galleries, and websites
rather than working for friends or in face-to-face markets. The choices seem endless, and
indeed contemporary economics and technology have touched most craftsmen since Morris.
Even the weavers and chairmakers of Appalachia, marginalized by many scholars as self-
taught folk artists hermetically sealed off in the hills, made work for urban markets in
the Northeast and were thus part of mainstream production and distribution systems. Such
contexts argue for the appropriateness of the term “modern craft,” in which the term refers
not to a style of craft but to the work’s creation within the modern condition.5
Such a reconceptualization of craft as an invention of modern society permits a long view
of craft practice as it has existed and functioned within a network of social and cultural rela-
tions. Several developments in the history of modern craft stand out: the product and the
subject have both been consciously theorized in print and lecture; notions of class associated
with apprenticeship and working with one’s hands were dispelled and the joy of making was
embraced by men and women not of the working class but of the middle and upper classes;
women’s work expanded to media such as carving and metalworking, and traditional female
media such as needlework opened up to males; objects acquired moral meaning based on
their workmanship and sensitivity to materials rather than simply on their style or form.
While such features of craftwork have been commented on by scholars working on specific
time periods such as the Arts and Crafts movement or the early studio crafts movement
of the postwar period, there has been little effort to synthesize the many narrowly focused
regional or media-based studies and to develop an overarching interpretative narrative of
the craft discourse over the century. Descriptive narratives and stylistic contrasts rather than
interpretative analysis and attention to cumulative layering have characterized much of the
balkanized literature on modern American craft.6
To reintroduce craft into the historical narrative of U.S. material culture, it is necessary to
see the possible connections between scholarly issues and the staple of most craft literature—
the idealizing biographies of key figures that make up a hagiography of craft. It is essential
that scholars not simply research and write about iconic makers, objects, and events but rather
engage in the interdisciplinary analysis of makers, objects, audiences, and connecting systems
(training, marketing, distribution, collecting) in light of underlying ideas and concepts such
4 Spring 2007
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 as labor, consumerism, value, gender, class, identity, and politics. A number of themes lend
themselves to a new consideration of modern craft within the American experience.

Idealism and Commerce. Much of the literature on craft seems to privilege idealism over
commercialism, yet the tension between the two is part of modern craft’s heritage. Morris
spoke and wrote about the need for a single person to be designer, maker, salesperson, and
shipper, but in fact his own firm was a business, with a specialized workforce (some of whom
were even subcontractors), variety of tools and equipment, and separation of production and
sales. The romantic notion of the solitary craftsman lovingly making single objects one at a
time remains central to our understanding, but it is ultimately a myth—a fiction that denies
the economic realities of craft practice. Makers employ a variety of means, embracing new
technologies to make and sell their wares. A fuller, more accurate accounting of this spec-
trum will relocate craft practice within a wider variety of cultural and economic activities.7

Process versus Product. The self-consciousness of modern craft has also led to a struggle
between those who privilege the process and those who give priority to the product. During
the Arts and Crafts movement, the former consisted primarily of amateurs eager to lose
themselves in meaningful work without concern for time or sales, while the latter tended to
be architects interested in the unity of design. After World War II, studio craftsmen depend-
ing on their work for a livelihood placed greatest emphasis on process, demonstrating at
craft fairs and stressing their dexterity to distinguish themselves from the uniformity of mass
production. Like the term “craft,” “craftsmanship” is a cultural construct. It is not a technical
term that describes a specific set of tools and methods of work but a flexible concept that
takes its meaning from historically specific contexts. In different time periods or locations,
an emphasis on process had different socioeconomic meanings, and it is important to track
who is championing what process, what they see as the opposing value, and why they are
making this stand.8

The Urban-Rural Conundrum. Much writing over the past century has drawn out a
distinction between “craft” as a rural-based, traditional, and staid endeavor and “design” as
an urban-based, progressive, and sexy field. Yet case studies demonstrate that a number of
craftsmen such as Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Garry Knox Bennett, and Lenore Tawney have
consciously decided to practice in urban environments and interacted with a wide variety
of artists and designers. Others worked just outside city centers or relied on urban clients.
Rather than perpetuating urban-rural polarities and the romantic notion of pastoral craft,
it is more profitable to draw inspiration from the work of Raymond Williams, who argued
that city and country were interrelated, and to chart the ways in which craft networks might
help flesh out the connections in different regions or at different times.9

Past and Present. For many critics, craft is intrinsically conservative or resistant to change.
Such a perspective seems to have emerged from a misreading of William Morris. Those
who portray him as an anachronistic romantic emphasizing the techniques and styles of
fourteenth-century England have not read him carefully. He did not dismiss the machine,
only its misuse or abuse, and he did not lovingly seek to re-create the past. Rather, he un-
derscored the study of the past as a way of learning principles that could be used to develop
an expanded field of craft production with an intelligent, cumulatively based perspective.
He stressed the regenerative aspects of craft practice and believed that artisanal socialism,
by accommodating a widespread desire and ability to make and enjoy objects, would serve
as the basis for a new social economy. Craft does not necessarily have to be reactionary; its
roots in social interaction provide flexibility that allows it to embrace new technologies and

5 American Art

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Wendy Maruyama, Vanity,
2006. Pau ferro with liquid
crystal display, digital video,
42 x 16 x 16 in. Collection of
the artist. Photo, Dean Powell /
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem,
Massachusetts
Ed Rossbach, Reconstituted Com-
mercial Textile, 1960. Printed
cotton plain weave, discharge-
printed, tie-dyed, encased in
polythylene film tubing, and
plaited, 35 ½ x 35 in. Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, Daphne Fargo
Collection. Photo © Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston
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practices in the adjacent art and design realms. It is essential that we recognize modern craft
as evolving and open-ended and not preserved as a museum artifact in an inert state.10
The Affective Presence. Within the past fifty years, writers about modern art have
emphasized conception (the necessary ingenuity of the artist), while those discussing craft
have often focused on perception (the desirable aura of the object). Most considerations
of craft objects tend to point to the particulars of an object’s affective presence, that is, its
ability to satisfy the audience aesthetically through tactile and visual qualities. Currently
many craft supporters talk about an object’s haptic power—how the handling of an object
elicits certain emotions and memories. Such a notion is far different from the moral
power of an object. This shift may have some grounding in the link between modern craft
and therapy, a strong facet of craft descended from the Arts and Crafts movement (both
Marblehead Pottery in Marblehead, Massachusetts, and Arequipa Pottery in Marin County,
California, were founded as sanatoriums) through World War II (Margaret Craver Withers
taught metalworking to battle-shocked veterans) to contemporary reform (New Hampshire
prisoners are learning furniture making). The pervasive view that craftwork is a pleasing,
enjoyable activity and the craft object is a feel-good talisman has colored critical thought
on the subject. Often the tactile and affective qualities of craft are depicted as mawkish,
while the cerebral and rational aspects of modern design are held up as heroic, but both
fields combine attention to conception and perception. The polarity is a false one imposed
by institutions and critics who set up protective disciplinary barriers. Furthermore, decon-
structionist theory allows us to recognize that there is no single unequivocal meaning for
any object, but a wide variety of possibilities that attain primacy because of exterior, often
unacknowledged, contexts and relations.11
Craft as Politics. Much of the early philosophy of craft was oriented to a political
agenda of social reform, such as Morris’s notion of artisanal socialism, Walter Crane’s and
Richard Riemerschmid’s turn from elitist easel painting to the design of domestic goods, or
Oscar Lovell Triggs’s linking of craft consciousness to labor reform and “the new industrial-
ism.” But starting in the first decade of the twentieth century, many Americans turned
away from the political foundations of modern craft, focusing instead on the commercial
and aesthetic aspects of the Arts and Crafts style. This shift meant that the political thrust
of practice was largely restricted to school curricula or individuals, subjects that have not
been objects of focused analysis. Within this vacuum, proponents of modern design as-
serted their role beginning in the 1930s as guardians of the political meaning of quotidian
objects, arguing for design’s ability to improve the lives of the lower classes. At the same
time, small shops such as Rowantree Pottery in Blue Hill, Maine, and individuals such as
Helen and Scott Nearing used craftwork to promulgate political beliefs about purposeful,
socially responsible work, but their role in this discourse has been overlooked by scholars.
In the postwar period, other Americans discontented with the impersonal sense of big
business looked to craft for personal satisfaction within a bureaucratized world, becoming
“gentle revolutionaries,” resisting the banalities of suburban life. In the 1970s the feminist
movement also politicized craft activity. But much of this more recent political agenda was
individualized, becoming more noticeable only in such collective action as the Fiberworks
Center for Textile Arts in the San Francisco Bay Area or New Hamburger Cabinetworks
near Boston in the 1960s and 1970s. In many of these cases, the practice was the primary
political act, while in examples such as Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party the process and the
objects each played roles in political commentary. Because of its genesis as a social critique,
craft has always had a subversive potential, particularly in regard to industrial capitalism, but
this facet has rarely received any sustained critical attention. A closer look at the political
6 Spring 2007
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 aspects of craft over the century should help integrate the centrality
of modern craft within a number of American critical traditions and
reform movements.12

Craft and Identity. In a scholarly world reoriented by cultural

studies and globalization, it is no longer sufficient to use craft prac-
tice and products as a means of charting or illustrating the diffusion
of cultural traditions in the tradition of historic geography as it was
practiced half a century ago. Rather, we should pay attention to
how craft, either in its production or consumption, has been used
as an active agent in the preservation, adaptation, transformation,
or appropriation of one’s own culture, the critique of social prac-
tice, or the provision of exclusionary boundaries between groups.
The manner in which Pueblo potters began to use their ceramic
traditions to meet the tourist trade as well as the East Coast urban
art market is just one example. Contemporary makers in the past
decade, showing in exhibitions and thereby reaching a visual audi-
ence rather than selling directly to clients, have also begun to use
their work as a means of commenting on their ethnic or racial iden-
tity within a multicultural America. Material culture plays a promi-
nent role in the structuring and negotiation of everyday life, and it is
essential that craft as a subcategory of material culture be considered
in this way. Related to this call for multiple points of view is the
need to go beyond the exceptionalist concept of American craft to
embrace an awareness of craft in America—that is, the relationship
between what is locally produced and what is imported.13

The Embedded Object. Rather than borrow from critic Clement

Greenberg’s formal consideration of the autonomous object, a
construction of the cerebral emphasis of the discourse on modern
art, those seeking to unlock the meanings of objects by understand-
ing them within a definition of modern craft should remember
that every object is an embedded social product in which formal
complexity or technical expression is not simply a reflection of values
but is often an active agent in articulating relationships or attitudes.
The purpose of the object goes far beyond a simplistic notion of
function. The myth of function, like the myth of the handmade,
has had a profound impact on the limited interpretations accorded
to craft. While craft objects may serve commonly understood
utilitarian roles, as nonverbal forms of human expression they also
function as aesthetic decoration, tools of communication, direction,
and intellectual engagement, and assertions of identity. One needs
to understand the individual object as well as its family of associated
objects in order to understand the cultural context.14

These themes merely suggest the richness that lies within a broader
interdisciplinary notion of modern craft. Three of the essays that
follow in this issue of American Art explore in greater detail the
ways in which topics such as attitudes toward time, conceptions of
work space, and commodification all cast raking light on the craft

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Rude Osolnik, Vessel, 1987. Baltic
birch plywood, walnut veneer,
11 ½ x 12 ½ x 12 ½ in. Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston, Gift of
Daniel and Jesse Lie Farber. Photo
© Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Mary Histia, Jar, ca. 1930.
Earthenware, 10 ½ x 13 x 13 in.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential
Library and Museum, Hyde Park,
New York
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practice to invigorate a broader cul-
tural consideration. Such idea-driven
essays demonstrate that modern craft
can be mined in new and informa-
tive ways. A fourth essay offers an
introduction to some of the primary
resources, all of which are awaiting
scholarly attention. This collection of
essays is one of several related efforts
that should help problematize the
field of modern craft and open its
artifacts, makers, and audience to the
larger discourse on American culture,
setting higher expectations for craft
historians and inviting other disci-
plinary scholars to explore the theory
and practice of craft. The Center
for Craft, Creativity and Design in
North Carolina has just finished its
second annual round of grants for
craft research, supporting exhibition
and publication projects as well as
individual research, and has commis-
sioned a textbook tentatively entitled
20th-Century American Studio Craft,
to be written by Bruce Metcalf and
Janet Koplos. That volume, inspired
by the pioneering book on British
craft by Tanya Harrod, should appear
in 2008. In the same year, Berg Publishers will publish the first issue of The Journal of
Modern Craft, “the first peer-reviewed academic journal to provide an interdisciplinary and
international forum for the rigorous analysis of craft.”15 The sum total of these initiatives
should help recover the history of craft and its theories and provide a fuller picture of
America’s visual and material culture in the modern era.
Notes
These essays were inspired in part by the thirty-fifth anniversary this year of the Renwick Gallery of the Smith-
sonian American Art Museum and the twenty-fifth anniversary of the James Renwick Alliance. The Alliance has
supported more than twenty fellowships to study craft and its history at the Renwick Gallery since 1988.
1 For example, see Carol Vogel, “In New Name, Museum Goes Contemporary,” New York Times, October
2, 2002; Carol Kino, “Labels: The Art Form That Dares Not Speak Its Name,” New York Times, March 30,
2005; and Dennis Stevens’s website, www.redefining craft.com.
2 For a good view of the period in question, see Glenn Adamson, “Fine Distinctions: Museum Collection
of Studio Craft in the Twentieth Century,” in An Inaugural Gift: The Founders’ Circle Collection (Charlotte,
N.C.: Mint Museum of Craft + Design, 2000), 9–22. Among the important period writings that shed light
on these changes are Allen Eaton, Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands (New York: Russell Sage Foun-
dation, 1937) and Handicrafts of New England (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1949); An Exhibition of
Contemporary Crafts (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1944) and Contemporary New England Handi-
crafts (Worcester, Mass.: Worcester Art Museum, 1943); Don Wallance, Shaping America’s Products (New
York: Reinhold, 1956) and Designer-Craftsmen U.S.A. 1953 (New York: American Craftsmen’s Educational
8 Spring 2007
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 Council, 1953); Marcia Manhart and Tom Manhart, eds., The Eloquent Object: The Evolution of American
Art in Craft Media since 1945 (Tulsa, Okla.: Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987); and Skilled Work: American
Craft in the Renwick Gallery (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998).
3 Paul Greenhalgh, “Introduction: Craft in a Changing World,” in The Persistence of Craft, ed. Greenhalgh
(London: A & C Black, 2002), 1.
4 The term “craftsman” is used here to maintain the etymological link to “craftsmanship”—as a historical
term, not as a gendered term. For the different craft values of the colonial, early national, and antebellum
periods, see Robert St. George, “Style and Structure in the Joinery of Dedham and Medfield, Massachusetts,
1635–1685,” Winterthur Portfolio 13 (1979): esp. 24–25; Edward S. Cooke Jr., Making Furniture in Pre-
industrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press, 1996); Stephen Victor, “‘From the Shop to the Manufactory’: Silver and Industry, 1800–1970,”
in Silver in American Life, ed. Barbara McLean Ward and Gerald W. R. Ward (Boston: Godine, 1979), 23–
32; and Michael Ettema, “Technological Innovation and Design Economics in Furniture Manufacture,”
Winterthur Portfolio 16, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn 1981): 197–223.
5 One of the first scholars to propose the idea of “modern craft” rather than “contemporary craft” was Bruce
Metcalf in “Contemporary Craft: A Brief Overview,” in Exploring Contemporary Craft: History, Theory and
Critical Writing (Toronto: Coach House Books and Harbourfront Centre, 2002), 13–23. On the continued
impact of Morris, see Edward S. Cooke Jr., “The Long Shadow of William Morris: Paradigmatic Problems of
Twentieth-Century American Furniture,” in American Furniture 2003, ed. Luke Beckerdite (Hanover, N.H.:
Univ. Press of New England for the Chipstone Foundation, 2003), 213–37. On Appalachian craftsmen, see
Michael Owen Jones, Craftsmen of the Cumberlands: Tradition and Creativity (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky
Press, 1989); and Jane S. Becker, Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930–
1940 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1998). For a strict accounting of the term “modernism,”
see Christopher Wilk, ed., Modernism: Designing a New World (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2006).
6 For examples of publications with a longer-term, interdisciplinary view, see Pat Kirkham, ed., Women
Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2000) and Tanya
Harrod, The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999).
7 A helpful revisionist account of Morris is Diane Waggoner, ed., The Beauty of Life: William Morris and the
Art of Design (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003). On the American fiction, see Mary Douglas, The
Craftsman as Yeoman: Myth and Cultural Identity in American Craft, Haystack Institute Monograph (Deer
Isle, Maine: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, 1994).
8 For example, see Edward S. Cooke Jr., “Arts and Crafts Furniture: Process or Product?” in The Ideal Home,
1900–1920, ed. Janet Kardon (New York: Knopf, 1993), 64–76.
9 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973).
10 See David Pye, The Nature and Art of Workmanship (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968); and Tanya
Harrod, “Paradise Postponed: William Morris in the Twentieth Century,” in William Morris Revisited: Ques-
tioning the Legacy (London: The Crafts Council, 1996), 6–23. Lydia Mathews, in “Homespun Ideas: Rein-
terpreting Craft in Contemporary Culture,” Practice Makes Perfect: Bay Area Conceptual Art (San Francisco:
Southern Exposure, 2005), 6–14, details the fit between new technologies and concepts of craft in the early
twenty-first century.
11 See Robert Plant Armstrong, Affecting Presence: An Essay in Humanistic Anthropology (Urbana: Univ. of
Illinois Press, 1971).
12 See Oscar Lovell Triggs, Chapters in the History of the Arts and Crafts Movement (Chicago: Bohemia Guild
of the Industrial Art League, 1902); Eaton, Handicrafts of New England; Helen Nearing and Scott Nearing,
Living the Good Life (Harborside, Maine: Social Science Institute, 1954); Olivia Emery, Craftsman Lifestyles:
The Gentle Revolution (Pasadena, Calif.: Craftsman Design Publications, 1977); The Goodfellow Review of
Crafts (July/August 1982); and Edward S. Cooke Jr., “Coming of Age in Boston: New Hamburger Cabi-
networks and Studio Furniture,” Art New England 11, no. 1 (December 1989/January 1990), 10–13, 49.
On Chicago, see Amelia Jones, Sexual Politics: Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party in Feminist Art History (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1996).
13 For example, see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domes-
tic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981); and Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture
(New York: Routledge, 1994).
14 A helpful text here is Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).
15 On CCCD and the new journal, see the following websites: www.craftcreativitydesign.org and www.
bergpublishers.com/uk/moderncraft. Harrod’s Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century offers an exemplary
template of modern craft history.

9 American Art

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