Choosing Craft explores the history and practice of American
craft through the words of influential artists whose lives, work,
and ideas have shaped the field. Editors Vicki Halper and Diane
Douglas construct an anecdotal narrative that examines the
post-World War II development of modern craft, which came of age
alongside modernist painting and sculpture and was greatly
influenced by them as well as by traditional and industrial
practices.
The anthology is organized according to four activities that ground
a professional life in craft--inspiration, training, economics, and
philosophy. Halper and Douglas mined a wide variety of sources for
their material, including artists' published writings, letters,
journal entries, exhibition statements, lecture notes, and oral
histories. The detailed record they amassed reveals craft's dynamic
relationships with painting, sculpture, design, industry, folk and
ethnic traditions, hobby craft, and political and social movements.
Collectively, these reflections form a social history of craft.
Choosing Craft ultimately offers artists' writings and
recollections as vital and vivid data that deserve widespread study
as a primary resource for those interested in the American art
form.