When first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton invited the press and the American people to see the astonishing diversity of the White House Collection of American Crafts last year, the reaction was universal enthusiasm.
Seventy-six contemporary crafts artists, working in glass, fiber, metal, wood and clay, had created 72 masterworks for the show. Scattered throughout the public and private rooms of the First Residence, set like jewels on tables, on sideboards, under portraits, they looked perfectly at home with the Chippendale and Duncan Phyfe furniture. Naturally. Although those 72 pieces were modern in feeling and design, they were tributes, too -- to the unbroken line of artists who have made beautiful things to be used stretching back to prehistory.
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. isn't the only address that's showing off American crafts. Take a look at all those perfect rooms in Metropolitan Home, Country Living and Architectural Digest. Interior designers, architects and ordinary people are combing museum shops, crafts fairs and galleries in pursuit of that special piece that will make a house a home and an office a showplace.
They fall in love with the ordinary objects of everyday living transformed by the artisan's imagination. They want to take those handcrafted wood cabinets, glass panels, ceramic platters and fiber hangings home, and live with them. The contemporary crafts movement has prompted a passionate union between the maker and the user.
That's the view of Barbara Tober, incoming board chairman of the American Craft Museum in New York. "The artist's hands are there to invest daily life with beauty and pleasure in the work for everyone who uses these things," she says. "Sunday, I served salad in bowls by Wendy Williams and Patrick Dougherty, two contemporary crafts artists. People were charmed. 'Look at those faces!' they'd say. 'Where did you get that?' I love the idea that the artists create these pieces to be used. It's not vitrines full of artwork. It's alive for every day."
Ms. Tober has been collecting since the early '70s, and has seen the crafts market steadily improve in quality and prestige. In the beginning, there were few galleries and fewer museums willing to display American crafts, she says. Now there is no dearth of shows, and the work of crafts artists is bringing big sale prices at the auction houses.
Ginny Tomlinson, owner of the Tomlinson Craft Collection, the venerable Baltimore crafts shop, has noted the latter trend:
