100% Handwoven.

What is craft?

Craft is a confusing term. Alex Langlands (2017:9) – as what he calls cræft – is “’knowledge, power, skill’… a sense of ‘wisdom’ and ‘resourcefulness.’” Glenn Adamson (2021:3) takes the very broad approach to craft: “Whenever a skilled person makes something using their hands, that’s craft.” I like that definition and the “big tent” allowances that it gives. Certainly there is plenty of overlap with craft, art, and folk art. Art tends to be evaluated on artistic merit and expresses emotion. That isn’t to say that craft can’t achieve the same, but it may not be evaluated the same as art. Craft is typically thought of as consisting of textile arts, woodworking, metalworking, pottery, and glassworking.

I see craft as made up of three components: (1) skill, (2) process, and (3) community.

First, there’s the skill or the wisdom of craft. This is KNOWING how to make something often through apprenticeship. Then, there’s process. The steps and materials needed to go from concept to final product. Cornelius Weygandt, my favorite Pennsylvania Dutch author, wrote so romantically about his encounter with skill at a Pennsylvania Dutch pottery as follows: “After we returned from the house to the pottery, the potter shaped a crock on the wheel to show us his art. His hand had lost none of its cunning though he had lived beyond the allotted span. The crock took shape as if by magic under his practiced touch, and was lined by his thumbnail as is by machinery… He has pride in his craft, and pride in the fact that he is, in part of the “Dutch” country at least, the last of the old potters. It is the old redware that he makes, out of just such clay and in just such shapes as it has been made for two hundred years.” The last of the old potters means that sometimes craftspeople have to apprentice with long-dead generations and learn skill from books, other cultures, or from the craft objects themselves so that traditional methods continue.

This is the actual DOING of craft. If you really want to immerse yourself in the process of craft, you need only go to Doylestown where the most famous champion of process Henry Chapman Mercer established his museum. Mercer was skilled and eccentric and odd. He collected decorative objects, like fraktur of course similar to what you see here, but he also collected the tools needed to get to the final object.

Lastly, community binds together skill and process. Craft is never done in isolation, but as a shared experience. It might not always be about gathering around the quilting frame, but it’s about sharing in tradition with others and sometimes previous generations. There’s a common Pennsylvania Dutch saying that I often heard from folk artist Peter Fritsch: Hock dich wennich, schunscht nemmscht mei Ruh mit. Sit down a while, otherwise you’ll take my peace and quiet with you when you leave. You never just pop in quickly to a Pennsylvania Dutch household. You sit and you visit. That’s how community is forged --- through watching, doing, and visiting. And you can readily imagine and see the community behind Pennsylvania Dutch folk art and craft.

It’s also in this space that the individual craftsperson learns how to innovate the traditional craft. And the result of skill and process bound by community is the creation of objects that have life. They are wholly unlike those turned out by machine. Handmade objects, according to Frances Lichten, are replete with infinite subtle variations of color, form, texture, and inimitable patinas of time and use. And this is what draw us into uncovering the stories behind folk art and craft.

Why is craft important?

Craft is an integral part of the Pennsylvania Dutch story, but also of the American story. Glenn Adamson’s (2021) new book on Craft does a fantastic job of tracing America’s historical ties to making. Our revolutionaries were craftspeople, like Benjamin Franklin the printer or Paul Revere pictured here not on horseback but as a silversmith. And of course, the most famous craftswoman of the Revolution --- Betsy Ross. Maybe she made the first flag --- the evidence is shaky --- but she was an amazing entrepreneur, working as an upholstery craftswoman for over 50 years, finally retiring at age 76.

But that rich tradition wouldn’t last long beyond the Revolution, when a new Revolution --- the Industrial one (1760-1840) began. Its focus was based on mass production in a factory with machines taking over for individual handwork. The result was cheap products. We somehow romanticize this as American ingenuity at its finest. But for the mill girls in Lowell, Massachusetts ---  working fourteen hour days in dangerous working conditions --- it was hardly romantic. The same with the assembly line --- a Model T reduced to just 45 steps and done in 93 minutes --- that’s more American ingenuity! But, as Adamson shows, what Henry Ford so cleverly covered up was that the workers were so dissatisfied with the soul-sucking concept of the assembly line that he had to hire more than 52,000 workers in the first year just to keep his workforce steady at 14,000 people. In the years between the industrial revolution, the assembly line, and today, we’ve become so far disconnected from our intimate ties to making with our hands.

Our desire for immediacy and quantity over quality has pushed craft to the margins of the American story. But it’s not just the craft and its folk art that fades away, we’ve also lost the skill --- the wisdom of creating, the process --- knowing HOW to make something, and the community --- our ability to connect with each other meaningfully. And with the movements of industry globally, we’ve become a country that does not (and, worse, maybe cannot) produce itself what it requires. This was no where clearer than at the start of the pandemic, when we suddenly needed masks and everyone with a sewing machine --- myself included --- was conscripted to make them. We had to dig deep into craft during a national crisis --- and I’m willing to bet that this won’t be the last time.