Craft and the Creative Process
June 1, 2001-October 22, 2001
Exhibited in AAA's NYC Research Center Gallery
This online exhibition, drawn entirely from collections in the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art, celebrates Nanette L. Laitman's gift to the Archives for the creation of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft in America, an unprecedented initiative to document the life and work of America's leading craft artists.
During this five-year project, the Archives will record and transcribe 100 oral history interviews with key figures in American craft. The grant will also support a major campaign to collect the papers of prominent artists working in clay, glass, fiber, metal and wood. This project will be realized in association with the American Craft Museum.
The creative process is intrinsically dynamic, collaborative, and evolutionary. It is sparked by the potential of materials, new concepts and information, or even previously rejected ideas. Through the accumulation of papers and other primary records the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art illuminates creative activity from the source of ideas to the final object.
The selection of letters, writings, sketches, photographs, and oral history interviews of craft artists collected here capture the interplay of observations, possibilities, revisions, and solutions that inspired new ways of thinking about clay, metal, fiber, wood, and glass, and ultimately the meaning of craft.
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Craft and the Creative Process
William Wyman, 1966 Apr. 27
Creator: William Wyman
WILLIAM WYMAN (1922-1980), letter to the administration of the Massachusetts College of Art recommending the purchase gas-fired kilns, April 27, 1966, one page. Wyman's plea for basic equipment reflects the growth of ceramics departments throughout the United States in the 1960s.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Draft letter to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1965 Jan. 31
Creator: Michael Higgins
MICHAEL HIGGINS (b. 1908), draft letter to the Art Institute of Chicago protesting their decision not to host an annual craft exhibition, January 31, 1965, two pages. For many years the Art Institute had hosted annual exhibitions of the Midwest Designer-Craftsmen. Writing on behalf of the Illinois Craftsmen's Council, glassmaker Michael Higgins demanded a statement from the Art Institute explaining their sudden lack of support.
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Craft and the Creative Process
M. C. Richards, Union Dale, PA letter to Francis Sumner Merritt, 1972 July 5
Creator: M. C. Richards
M.C. RICHARDS (1916-1999), letter to Francis Sumner Merritt (1913-2000), July 5, 1972, one page. Richards, a renown teacher, writer, poet, and potter, taught English at Black Mountain College from 1945 to 1951 and participated in its summer programs. She also taught at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine. In this letter to Merritt, the founding director of Haystack, she introduced the idea of combining the literary and visual arts in a calligraphy course: "Writing as a Handcraft, or Arts of the Scribe."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Works by Designer-Craftsmen of the Mississippi Basin, 1957
Creator: Art Institute of Chicago
The Exhibition of Works by Designer-Craftsmen of The Mississippi Basin, organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago and Midwest Designer-Craftsmen, 1957, circulated under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. Jurors were Peter Voulkos, John Paul Miller, Margo Hoff, and Dorothy Liebes.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Francis Sumner Merritt letter to Kenneth Quick, 1958 June 9
Creator: Francis Sumner Merritt
FRANCIS SUMNER MERRITT (1913-2000), draft of a letter to Kenneth Quick, June 9, 1958, 1 p. Merritt took an international approach to craft education, bringing artists from around the world to the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. He arranged for Quick, a British potter, to teach a summer session and also organized a traveling exhibition of his work.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts summer brochure, ca. 1953
Creator: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
Haystack Mountain Schol of Crafts was founded in 1950 as a "research and studio program in the arts." In 1953 the school offered courses in pottery, woodworking, block printing, and weaving.
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Craft and the Creative Process
William Harper's comments on two week session at Penland, 1971 Aug.
Creator: William Claude Harper
WILLIAM HARPER (b. 1944), evaluation of the first two-week concentration course held at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina, August 1971, five pages. For Penland director Bill Brown, the creative process was collaborative. He encourage cross-media experimentation and nurtured a sense of community by maintaining an open-door policy at the studios and through his concentration courses and residency program. Brown assessed the 1971 concentration course as "a modest and warm experience of how creative people working together can go beyond objects and egos and begin to make a real life together."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Fritz Dreisbach's comments on Penland's Resident Program, 1983
Creator: Fritz Dreisbach
FRITZ DREISBACH (b. 1941), questionnaire about the residency program at Penland School of Crafts,1983, two pages. The residency program at Penland was a unique two-year program to assist trained artists make the transition from school, to planning, and then operating their own studios. Though glassblower Fritz Dreisbach was never an official resident, he valued the program and wrote in support of it.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Dale Chihuly, Mexico letter to Francis Sumner Merritt, 1972 Nov. 20
Creator: Dale Chihuly
DALE CHIHULY (b. 1941), letter to Francis Merritt, his wife Priscilla, and others at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, November 20, 1972, one page. In 1971, inspired by his teaching experience at Haystack, Chihuly co-founded Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. In this letter, he writes to his friends at Haystack about the second summer of Pilchuck and mentions artists Erwin Eisch, Fritz Dreisbach, and Ruth Tamara, Pilchuck patrons Anne Gould Hauberg and John H. Hauberg, and collaborative projects with Jamie Carpenter.
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Craft and the Creative Process
"Once Upon A Time A Man Named Peter Voulkos", 1962 Feb. 3
Creator: Bernard Pyron
According to Clayton Bailey this “fable” refers to a Voulkos workshop held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in February 1962. More than 100 ceramic students and their professors came from a five-state radius to see the workshop in the tiny University of Wisconsin ceramic studio. Bailey wrote: "It was my introduction to California ceramics, and it gave me the idea of moving to California to seek my fortune as a teacher and artist. I remember those questions and the responses Voulkos made. He made a very strong impression on me, and I patterned myself after him as a teacher and an artist. (I was a graduate student and student assistant in ceramics at U.W. at the time.) The idea of breaking the rules, of trying to be funny were reinforced in me through the Voulkos workshop experience."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Robert Arneson letter to Barbara Fendrick, 1975 Dec. 2
Creator: Robert Arneson
ROBERT ARNESON (1930-1992), letter to dealer Barbara Fendrick, December 2, 1975, two pages. Arneson writes, "I can't predict what works are going to get done and how they are going to look. Everything is chance in ceramics."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Michael Lucero letter to Patti Warashina, ca. 1983
Creator: Michael Lucero
MICHAEL LUCERO (b. 1953), letter to Patti Warashina, undated, one page. On the verso Lucero finds inspiration in holidays: "Yesterday I finished building my clay pieces over at N.Y.U. - now for the firing, glazing, etc. They will be done in time for Halloween - (Jack-o-lanterns). I'm interested in holidays and their popular symbols- I'm thinking of my Thanksgiving pieces - I'm pretty thankful for all the good things I have."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Erwin Eisch letter to Harvey K. Littleton, 1964 Feb. 25
Creator: Erwin Eisch
ERWIN EISCH (b. 1927), letter to Harvey K. Littleton, February 25, 1964, regarding his upcoming trip to the United States and glassblowing demonstrations. Eisch expresses his kinship with Littleton and their mutual understanding that "the craftsman and the artist must be in one person." In an interview conducted by the Archives of American Art in 2001, Littleton remarked, "Erwin Eisch was absolutely unique. And he wanted to be an artist. He had no limitations.... I saw his work and I realized that he was doing what I wanted to do - play with the glass, to make forms that had no other reason for being than that he wanted to make them. Function was something to be used or not used. Totally free. Free with glass."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Juliana Busbee letter to Harvey K. Littleton, 1957 May 27
Creator: Juliana Busbee
JULIANA BUSBEE, May 27, 1957 letter to then ceramicist Harvey K. Littleton (b. 1922), regarding Littleton's upcoming visit to Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove, North Carolina. Jacques and Juliana Busbee founded Jugtown Pottery in 1921. Busbee writes: “Remember the work done here is as it was two hundred years ago.”
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Craft and the Creative Process
Glass Workshop Report, 1962 June
Creator: Toledo Museum of Art
The Toledo Museum of Art hosted two important glass workshops in 1962, one in March and the other in June. The stated purpose of the two-week workshop in June 1962 was "to introduce the basic material, the molten metal, to the artists and craftsmen-to design and test equipment which they might construct for themselves-to investigate techniques for the artist working alone-to look with this knowledge at the glass of the past and present-to look at educational possibilities within the secondary, college and university systems." The workshop was staffed by Harvey K. Littleton, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Art Education at the University of Wisconsin; Norman Schulman, ceramics instructor at the Toledo Museum; Harvey Leafgreen, retired glassblower, Libbey Glass Company; Nils Carlson, a glass lamp worker at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan; and Millard Rogers, Rudy Riefstahl, William Hutton, and Charles F. Gunter all from the Toledo Museum of Art. Dominick Labino from Johns Manville Company assisted with the glass chemistry. The report includes staff and participant statements, as well as technical data regarding color and glass formulas.
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Craft and the Creative Process
The First Annual Whitewater Ceramic Invitational, 1968
Artist statements and biographies from THE FIRST ANNUAL WHITEWATER CERAMIC INVITATIONAL, Whitewater, Wisconsin, 1968, seven pages, mimeographed. The exhibition, curated by Steven Kemenyffy, was one of many in the late 1960s that sought to expressed the vitality and freedom of ceramics in the United States. Participants included Ron Brown, Ruth Duckworth, Tom La Dousa, Dan Lowery, Kemenyffy, Ian Nelson, Tom Potter, Donald Reitz, Paul Solner, Ken Vavrek, and William Vokolek.
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Craft and the Creative Process
"Open Letter to Bernard Leach", 1953
Creator: Marguerite Friedlaender Wildenhain
Wildenhain rejected Leach's idea that a country has one “taproot” of tradition. She argued for a more pluralistic approach: "America cannot have just one expression, it forcibly must have as many forms of expression as total life has....if you want the crafts to remain alive and perhaps even to grow roots again in our civilization, give them freedom, education, and good creative experimenting."
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Craft and the Creative Process
Study for Geranium, ca. 1966
Creator: Janet Shook LaCoste
JANET SHOOK LACOSTE (1912-1984) and VIRGINIA CARRINGTON, Geranium, needlepoint design, ca. 1966. In the 1960s, Janet Shook LaCoste and her associate Virginia Carrington sparked a needlepoint revival with their original "needle paintings"that they distributed through their gallery and studio in San Antonio, Texas.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Print from the series Ossabaw Inspirations of Land and Sky, 1964
Creator: Marianne Strengell
MARIANNE STRENGELL (1909-1998), photograph of a tree on Ossabaw Island, 1964, part of her sources material for her textile designs. Below, "big plaid" upholstery fabric sample, mohair and synthetics, hand woven, 1963. Strengell taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1961, where she rose from instructor to department head. She created original textile designs for car interiors and commercial airlines. A pioneer in the use of synthetic fibers, Strengell drew inspiration from patterns in nature.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Maria De Conceicao with Joyce Tenneson, ca. 1980
Creator: Maria da Conceicao
"Maria De Conceicao with Joyce Tenneson whose photographs will illustrate Maria's upcoming show at the American Center in Paris in April. "Sao" as Maria is known, previewed her fashion at the Fendrick Gallery in Georgetown last evening where the work of this unique artist is presented.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Ring designs, ca. 1942
Creator: Arthur J. Pulos
Silversmith and industrial designer, Arthur J. Pulos taught design for several years at the University of Illinois and at Syracuse University, where he also chaired the Department of Industrial Design. He founded and managed Pulos Design Associates.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Notes on color from a lecture by Rudolph Schaeffer, 1926 Sept. 30
Creator: Doris A. McMillan
DORIS A. MCMILLAN, a student of RUDOLPH SCHAEFFER at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, kept notes on Schaeffer's classes, September - November 1926. Renowned teacher of design and color, Rudolph Schaeffer (1886-1988), was the founder and director of the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design, first in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1926, and later in a rambling Edwardian mansion on Mariposa Street. The school attracted teachers and students from around the world and established San Francisco as an international center for design. Combining the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement and Asian Art, he practiced and taught a philosophy in which beauty and utility coalesced. Schaeffer retired in 1983. The school closed in 1986.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Marjorie McIlroy's Diary entries, 1958 May 4-10
Creator: Marjorie McIlroy
MARJORIE McILROY, diary entries regarding her husband potter Frans Wildenhain (1905-1980), May 4 - May 10, 1958, 2 p. Born in Leipzig, Germany, Wildenhain studied at the Bauhaus with Josef Albers, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Max Krehan, Gerhard Marcks, and Moholy-Nagy from 1923 to 1925. He had workshops in Putten, Holland, and Amsterdam before immigrating to the United States in 1947. After spending three years at Pond Farm Workshops in Guerneville, California, Wildenhain became an instructor at the School for American Craftsmen at the Rochester Institute of Technology. After his divorce from Marguerite Wildenhain in 1955, he was married to Marjorie McIlroy until her death in 1967. His third wife was Elisabeth (Lili) Wildenhain.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Bernard Leach letter to Warren MacKenzie, 1961 Sept. 25
Creator: Bernard Leach
Leach describes his travels in Japan with potter Shoji Hamada and philosopher Soetsu Yanagi. In 1949 the MacKenzies studied with Leach in England at Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall. After living with Leach for two years and absorbing his methods, they returned to the United States. Warren MacKenzie lectured at the University of Minnesota and they established a pottery studio in a farmhouse. Warren threw pots and Alix decorated them. She died in 1962.
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Craft and the Creative Process
An address to the New York Herald Tribune Forum, 1953 Oct. 19
Creator: George K. Nakashima
GEORGE NAKASHIMA (1905-1990), typescript concerning his design philosophy, “One Man's Answer,” delivered at the New York Herald Tribune Forum in New York, October 19, 1953, 4 p.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Michael Higgins, 1956 Oct. 5
Creator: Michael Higgins
Letter from artists ROY GINSTROM and MICHAEL HIGGINS, Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Midwest Designer-Craftsmen to the editor of Time magazine, October 5, 1956, protesting the magazine's review of the opening exhibition of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Higgins and Ginstrom take issue with Time's description of arts and crafts as "the plain cousin of the fine arts".
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Craft and the Creative Process
American Craftsmen exhibition catalog, 1955
Creator: Dept. of Art and the Illini Union at the Univ. of Illinois
Catalog of the exhibition American Craftsmen, 1955, the fourth such exhibition sponsored jointly by the University of Illinois' Department of Art and the Illini Union.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Address for the Festival of Contemporary Art, 1951 Apr.
Creator: Arthur J. Pulos
Arthur J. Pulos taught design for several years at the University of Illinois and at Syracuse University, where he also chaired the Department of Industrial Design. He founded and managed Pulos Design Associates.
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Craft and the Creative Process
"Contemporary Living" exhibition at Wisconsin Union Gallery, 1952 Feb. 23 through 1952 Mar. 25
Creator: Wisconsin Union Gallery
Installation photograph taken at the “Contemporary Living” exhibition, Wisconsin Union Gallery, February 23–March 25, 1952, showing furniture and fabrics designed by Knoll.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Design for a silver teapot, 1911 Nov. 4
Creator: Arthur Stone
Arthur J. Stone, a leading silversmith, was trained and worked in Sheffield, England, and Edinburgh, Scotland, prior to coming to the United States in 1884. He was one of the last silversmiths in America to train apprentices to carry out designs in hand-wrought silver. In 1901, Stone set up a workshop in Gardner, which operated under his name until its sale in 1937 to Henry Heywood, a Gardner businessman, who renamed it The Stone Silver Shop, and later, Stone Associates. Heywood died in 1945. His sons Henry, Jr. and Jerome ran Stone Associates until 1957.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Jewelry notebook, 1943
Creator: Arthur J. Pulos
Silversmith and industrial designer, Arthur J. Pulos taught design for several years at the University of Illinois and at Syracuse University, where he also chaired the Department of Industrial Design. He founded and managed Pulos Design Associates.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Notes on color from a lecture by Rudolph Schaeffer, 1926 Sept. 9
Creator: Doris A. McMillan
DORIS A. MCMILLAN, a student of RUDOLPH SCHAEFFER at the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design in San Francisco, kept notes on Schaeffer's classes, September - November 1926. Renowned teacher of design and color, Rudolph Schaeffer (1886-1988), was the founder and director of the Rudolph Schaeffer School of Design, first in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1926, and later in a rambling Edwardian mansion on Mariposa Street. The school attracted teachers and students from around the world and established San Francisco as an international center for design. Combining the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts Movement and Asian Art, he practiced and taught a philosophy in which beauty and utility coalesced. Schaeffer retired in 1983. The school closed in 1986.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Sample of Big Plaid, 1963
Creator: Marianne Strengell
MARIANNE STRENGELL (1909-1998), "big plaid" upholstery fabric sample, mohair and synthetics, hand woven, 1963. Strengell taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1961, where she rose from instructor to department head. She created original textile designs for car interiors and commercial airlines. A pioneer in the use of synthetic fibers, Strengell drew inspiration from patterns in nature.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Ossabaw Island dead tree, 1964
MARIANNE STRENGELL (1909-1998), photograph of a tree on Ossabaw Island, 1964, part of her sources material for her textile designs. Below, "big plaid" upholstery fabric sample, mohair and synthetics, hand woven, 1963. Strengell taught at Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1937 to 1961, where she rose from instructor to department head. She created original textile designs for car interiors and commercial airlines. A pioneer in the use of synthetic fibers, Strengell drew inspiration from patterns in nature.
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Craft and the Creative Process
Photograph of Fritz Dreisbach at Pilchuck, 1971
Dale Chihuly and Jamie Carpenter at Pilchuck Snapshot with note from glass artist DALE CHIHULY (b. 1941)to Francis Merritt, director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, referring to the founding of Pilchuck Glass School, June 1971. On the verso Chihuly writes, "Howdy. Things are going just fine. I'm very happy with the students and the shop -I think I'll be doing it again next summer. My only problem is that I spent about $3000 over the grant, but it's a good cause to go into debt for (how I got to blow lots a glass, which I'm doing)."