Modernism and American craft

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1996 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The years covered by this exhibition encompass the Great Depression, the growth of totalitarian regimes in Germany and Russia, and the cataclysm of World War II. Adolf Hitler denounced "degenerate" abstract art and the influential Bauhaus was dissolved. In Russia, art came under official control beginning in 1921. As a result of the political and social climate in Europe, artists, architects, and craftsmen sought refuge in America, where they found not only new technologies but also a receptive audience. A watershed in the advancement of modern design was the international exposition held in Paris in 1925, which introduced the moderne, or art deco, style. Neither Germany nor America exhibited at this fair. Herbert Hoover, then secretary of commerce, did not believe that Americans could meet the fair's mandate of introducing inspired and original products. Instead, he sent a delegation of more than one hundred members of trade organizations and art guilds, who, under the leadership of Charles R. Richards, selected four hundred objects for a traveling exhibition that began at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City the following year. As a result of that show department stores and museums around the country began to promote modern design.

To encourage economic recovery from the Great Depression, manufacturers seduced potential buyers with innovative product and packaging designs, creating a real niche for industrial designers. The machine became both a powerful symbol and the means by which modern design reached the widest possible audience. In the 1930s the term industrial art began to be applied to both machine-made and handmade objects, denoting their usefulness, not the way they were made. Streamlined and geometric forms, so much an aesthetic of the machine age, could be created by both methods. However, in the same decade craft was elevated to the realm of art, accompanied by the proliferation of craft schools, which were generally directed by accomplished and highly trained artists, many of them European. Josef and Anni Albers, for example, were instructors at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, while Eliel Saarinen taught at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy founded the New Bauhaus in Chicago in 1937, and the School for American Craftsmen was established at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

In furniture making, wood was the material of choice - a preference that grew out of the arts and crafts movement. By the 1930s inexpensive plywood was introduced and its immediacy made it more popular with consumers than the chilly look of tubular steel. Plywood could be bent into angular shapes or sinuous biomorphic forms. At the same time individual craftsmen, primarily on the West Coast, were designing innovative, one-of-a-kind pieces of furniture that demonstrated the cabinetmaker's enduring reverence for natural wood.

The evolution of glass design mirrored that of furniture in that industrial design co-existed with the studio-glass movement. The glass of this period united a fine sense of the material with superior workmanship and design. Both industrial designers and artists were hired by glass manufacturers to create luxury and everyday objects for every level of society.

Manufacturers of household ceramics divided the production of each pattern between the designer, the potter, the decorator, and the glaze technician. By contrast, studio potters were responsible for all stages so as to create unique objects. Craftsmen discovered American Indian pottery, and were fascinated by its geometric decoration, which they used as a point of departure in the decoration of their wares. Indian motifs were also a source of inspiration for textile designers. As with objects made in other mediums, tapestries, carpets, furniture textiles, and the like were both hand-crafted and mass-produced for popular consumption. Weaving was an integral part of the curriculum in most of the American craft schools.

Silverware designers were slow to abandon the revival styles so popular in the 1920s for more modern ones. The leading proponents of modernism were the European immigrant silversmiths, although American craftsmen such as Janet Payne Bowles dared to cross traditional boundaries and created highly personal and unusual pieces. In more mainstream production, silverplate became an inexpensive alternative to sterling silver. Aluminum was used to fashion decorative accessories in the latest style. Steel and bronze, sometimes in combination with other metals, were often employed for gates, doors, and architectural ornaments.

The period documented by this exhibition confronted designers, craftsmen, and manufacturers with economic challenges that can in part be held responsible for inspiring them to produce some of the most innovative objects made in this country during the twentieth century.

The catalogue of the exhibition was edited by Janet Kardon and co-published by the American Craft Museum and Harry N. Abrams. It contains contributions by ten other scholars and has 304 pages, 90 color plates, and 167 illustrations. It may be obtained for $49.50 (hard cover) or $29.95 (paper covers) plus $7 for postage and handling from the American Craft Museum Store, 40 West 53rd Street, New York, New York 10019-6112.