Arts and crafts revival

Definition The creation of handmade artifacts from clay, wood, fiber, metalwork, enamel, and glass using traditional methods or forms

The uncertainties of life in the 1970’s led many Americans to explore self-understanding and issues of authenticity. Interest in arts and crafts, with their emphasis on personal creativity and everyday life activities, blossomed. In turn, a growing demand for handcrafted objects emerged, a movement paralleled by the rise of public interest in ecology and other antiestablishment movements.

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, craft movements responded to the rise of industrial design and production of consumer products by applying traditional methods and elements of the nineteenth century Arts and Crafts philosophy to the creation of one-of-a-kind artifacts, rather than to objects intended for mass production. The craft revival movements of the 1970’s responded to the expansion of cheap, mass-produced objects by emphasizing the traditional qualities and long-lasting value of craftsman-made work, which were not elements of modern industrial production.

By the 1970’s, the role of arts and crafts in making useful, everyday objects became less and less important, and handcrafted objects began to be found in institutions like art museums and galleries. In addition, college and university programs began to graduate a generation of elite, trained craftspeople—individuals whose creativity was influenced by a curriculum that included art history, industrial design, traditional craft skills, architecture, and mixed-media studies. For example, the Program in Artistry (PIA) was founded at Boston University in 1975. An equally important event was the opening of the Objects USA exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution in 1969. Curated by Lee Nordness, this exhibit of 308 objects from craftspeople across the country toured national museums and abroad. After the show closed, the objects were purchased by the Johnson and Johnson Company and donated to the museums that had hosted the show. The result was the legitimating of craft as an art, and the contemporary crafts movement of the 1970’s was born. The period saw an explosion in exhibitions, museum acquisitions, and publications about crafts and an increase in both craftspeople and craft collectors.

Functional Art Versus Fine Art

In a trend that began in the mid-1950’s and accelerated during the 1970’s, craftspeople began to separate into two different and distinct groups based on their attitudes toward the creation of art objects and their history and purpose. One group was committed to the fashioning of functional, utilitarian objects based on historical models and processes. Craftspeople in this tradition celebrated American folk culture and emphasized the usefulness of what they created. The other group was less interested in producing functional products. Instead, their focus was on the creation of unique objects for special situations. This sort of relationship between fine arts and craftwork is illustrated by Judy Chicago’s piece The Dinner Party (1974-1979). Chicago created a triangular table at which she organized symbolic “place settings” for thirty-nine famous female figures in history. She drew on a community of craftswomen to create the ceramic, glass, and needlework that she designed for each place.

By the 1970’s, many in the arts and crafts movement began to embrace the ideal of aesthetics over the demands of functionality. Movements in fine art and folk art increasingly influenced American craftspeople and their audiences. Artists in a variety of traditional craft media, such as glass, metal, and ceramics, took similar paths. In turn, the creation of functional objects for everyday use began to take second place to the design and creation of expressive works of art for museums, collectors, and institutional settings.

Do-It-Yourself Artisans

Curiously, at the same time that arts and crafts of the 1970’s seemed to be moving toward an increasingly sophisticated partnership with the fine arts, ordinary Americans rediscovered the pleasures of do-it-yourself artistic activities. Popular culture had begun to reflect a national concern that the individual vision and values embodied by traditional American crafts were in danger of disappearing.

Perhaps as a response to this concern, the decade saw an increase in what might be called arts and crafts hobbyists—people who created works of self-expressive and functional art, generally for themselves and their families, in their basements and garages. This movement was in part a reflection of the celebration of all things American associated with preparations for the national bicentennial in 1976 as well as an expression of the persistent American cultural demand for self-improvement and the meaningful use of time. Undoubtedly influenced by the introspection and celebration surrounding the bicentennial and by the stresses associated with the oil crisis and other global economic crises of the period, Americans turned to folk arts and crafts as the embodiment of the “American way of life.” The Foxfire series of books and magazines, which celebrated and preserved the folk arts and crafts of Appalachia, was typical of this movement.

Impact

Arts and crafts activities of the 1970’s increasingly created objects with little functional purpose, beginning a blurring of the boundaries between the “fine” and “applied” arts that continued into the twenty-first century. Paradoxically, traditional craft activity experienced a renewal as Americans reacted against the scale and homogeneity of industrial production and the forces of social disruption. American crafts, like all things American, underwent significant change in the 1970’s. While some traditions continued, others underwent important innovation.

Bibliography

Hall, Julie. Tradition and Change: The New American Craftsman. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977. A well-illustrated examination of the main trends in 1970’s arts and crafts organized by movement and highlighting the major artists and their work. Contains a good bibliography.

Manhart, Marcia, and Tom Manhart. The Eloquent Object: The Evolution of American Art in Craft Media Since 1945. Tulsa, Okla.: Philbrook Museum of Art, 1987. Lavishly illustrated with excellent essays on developments in arts and crafts since World War II.

National Geographic Society. The Craftsman in America. Washington, D.C.: Author, 1975. A celebration of craftwork and craftspeople as fundamentally American. A wide variety of arts are illustrated.

Nordness, Lee. Objects: USA. New York: Viking Press, 1970. A collector of craftwork, Nordness wrote this book to illustrate his sense of a distinction between what he called “production” craftsmen, who produce functional objects, and “nonproduction” craftsmen. This is the first book to focus on American nonproduction craftsmen, whom Nordness felt deserved recognition by the contemporary art world.

Wigginton, Eliot, ed. The Foxfire Book. New York: Anchor Books, 1972. Originally a compilation of Appalachian folk craft techniques and folklore, collected by a teacher and his students, this series grew to fifteen books.