Selected articles from Craft Horizons magazine
Related exhibition:
The Good Making of Good Things: Craft Horizons Magazine, 1941 – 1979
March 7 – June 2, 2019
Over the course of almost four decades, Craft Horizons magazine documented and shaped the American craft movement, growing from a newsletter to a respected journal with an international readership. In conjunction with the M’s exhibition, The Good Making of Good Things: Craft Horizons Magazine, 1941-1979, the museum is pleased to offer a curated selection of articles published in the journal’s pages. These articles include exhibition reviews, artist profiles, long-form essays, and letters to the editor with a specific focus on intersections between the M (then called the Saint Paul Art Center) and the craft community.
As the articles showcased here attest, from the beginning Craft Horizons magazine aimed to create a network and a conversation. In its very first issue, the magazine featured an essay titled “What is a Craftsman?” by Richard F. Bach of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Above the article the museum’s editors included a prompt that challenged readers to think critically about Bach’s definition: “How many of our readers agree with him? How many disagree? Won’t you write us your definition for our next issue? … Progress comes from an interchange of ideas, intellectual disagreement and frank discussion. We count on hearing from you.” Over the four decades that followed the magazine’s editors, contributors, and readers continued this conversation, interrogating craft’s relationship with technology and contemporary art, evaluating the merits of crafts education, and forging a new identity for the modern craftsperson.
- Richard F. Bach, “What is a Craftsman?” Craft Horizons 1, no. 1 (November 1941): 20-21.
- Warren and Alixandra MacKenzie, “Letter to the Editor,” Craft Horizons 13, no. 3 (June 1953): 44-45.
- Conrad Brown, “Peter Voulkos,” Craft Horizons 16, no. 5 (September/October 1956): 12-18.
- Rose Slivka, “The New Ceramic Presence,” Craft Horizons 21, no. 4 (July/August 1961): 31-37.
- Dorian Zachai, “Fiber-Clay-Metal,” Craft Horizons 25, no. 1 (January/February 1965): 10-17, 48.
- Helen Drutt, “All That Glitters: Goldsmith ’70,” Craft Horizons 30, no. 4 (August 1970): 42-45, 69.
*Additional copies of Craft Horizons magazine are available on the American Craft Council’s website.
