Craft
An American History
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- US$15.99
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New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A groundbreaking and endlessly surprising history of how artisans created America, from the nation's origins to the present day.
At the center of the United States' economic and social development, according to conventional wisdom, are industry and technology-while craftspeople and handmade objects are relegated to a bygone past. Renowned historian Glenn Adamson turns that narrative on its head in this innovative account, revealing makers' central role in shaping America's identity. Examine any phase of the nation's struggle to define itself, and artisans are there-from the silversmith Paul Revere and the revolutionary carpenters and blacksmiths who hurled tea into Boston Harbor, to today's "maker movement." From Mother Jones to Rosie the Riveter. From Betsy Ross to Rosa Parks. From suffrage banners to the AIDS Quilt.
Adamson shows that craft has long been implicated in debates around equality, education, and class. Artisanship has often been a site of resistance for oppressed people, such as enslaved African-Americans whose skilled labor might confer hard-won agency under bondage, or the Native American makers who adapted traditional arts into statements of modernity. Theirs are among the array of memorable portraits of Americans both celebrated and unfamiliar in this richly peopled book. As Adamson argues, these artisans' stories speak to our collective striving toward a more perfect union. From the beginning, America had to be-and still remains to be-crafted.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Curator Adamson (Fewer, Better Things) puts artisans and their craftworks at the center of the American story in this erudite and immersive account. Defining craft rather broadly ("whenever a skilled person makes something using their hands, that's craft"), Adamson covers roughly four centuries of history, from the German and Polish craftsmen sent to train unskilled colonists at Jamestown to contemporary "maker spaces" and 3D printers. He highlights the work of female, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian-American craftspeople, including Gullah basket weaver Lottie Moultrie Swinton and Dave the Potter, a South Carolina slave who etched short verses into the clay vessels he made, and argues that in today's atmosphere of deep polarization, craft can help bridge social divisions by providing common grounds for mutual respect. Adamson also notes links between craftmaking and the "utopian impulse" in America (Shaker furniture, Amish quilts), critiques the "top-down" structure of the Arts and Crafts movement in the U.S., and dissects Martha Stewart's "positioning craft achievement as an ever-receding horizon" to be sought but never attained. With lucid prose and exemplary research, Adamson brings intriguing new details and unusual perspectives to even the most familiar story lines. The result is an elegant, detailed, and functional history worthy of its subject.
