Revivals! Diverse Traditions, 1920-1945: The History of Twentieth-Century American Craft

In the economically troubled interwar period, American crafts saw the ascendance of the Colonial Revival style, whose partisans venerated and preserved an Anglo-Saxon past and celebrated American nationalism. Cataloguing an exhibit at the American Craft Museum in Manhattan, where Kardon is director, this handsomely illustrated volume unearths a craft counterculture that flourished, parallel to Colonial nostalgia, in African American, Hispanic and Native American communities in Appalachia. New Deal federal support for craft colonies, guilds and educational programs is documented. Native American textiles, silverwork and clothing, the Hispanic craft revival in New Mexico, Puerto Rican lacemaking, African American quilts, coiled-grass baskets, ironwork and ceramics and the impact of church-sponsored settlement schools on Appalachian vernacular styles are illuminated in 14 essays by curators, art historians and craftspeople. (Dec.)