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It's a New Age for Old Crafts
| Article
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15866 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
2,199 Words |
| Author
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Gail Greco
Gail Greco is the author of the just-released Bridal Shower
Handbook (Wallace-Homestead, 1988). |
Inside an old, rustic mill tucked amid stalwart evergreens in the piny Berkshires, the scent of melting wax melds with the crisp mountain air. Inside the restored nineteenth-century post-and-beam grist mill, crafters are rhythmically dipping wick after wick to form candles similar to those made by early American settlers during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On a busy day, some six thousand candles will be shipped to stores nationwide. At the Mole Hole in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, they're doing things the old-fashioned way, yet earning a twentieth-century living.
A similar atmosphere pervades the workshop of a South Texas couple who carries on the centuries-old craft of broom-making, using materials (such as broomcorn) that they grow on their land. Bobbe and David McClure of Edinburg, Texas, labor over household brooms and whisk and hearth sweepers, at times filling orders for major distributors. They work with the sort of handmade tools that were used in the olden days.
Craftspeople such as the McClures abound as a renaissance of handmade goods continues to flower in this country. Crafts made in the old style as well as those made in a more contemporary fashion (which are often innovative and entirely new products) are all in demand. Indeed, during the last five years, the craft industry has flourished in the mass marketplace to the tune of some $1 billion a year, according to the American Crafts Council (ACC) in New York. Old-time crafts account for a large part of that figure.
"A large portion of our thirty-five thousand members earns a living at crafts," says Carol Sedestrom Ross, president of American Crafts Enterprise (ACE), the marketing arm of the ACC. The membership represents all sorts of crafts, including some of the more traditional--blacksmithing, quilting, tinsmithing, weaving, and pottery.
It 1965, only 60 exhibitors displayed their wares at the ACC crafts show. Today, according to Ross, "We have between 6,000 and 7,000 crafters applying for our 2,500 exhibitor spaces." Growth is shown in the continual increase in sales at some of the bigger crafts council shows. Gross sales are running 22 to 28 percent higher than each previous show.
In addition to the many juried craft shows the ACC holds nationwide, Ross says the council encourages members to sell their works at galleries and shops as a means of continuing to educate the public about crafts. "For too long, Americans have believed
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