The Art and Craft of Writing

Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. These can be sub-divided into handicrafts or "traditional crafts" (doing things the old way) and "the rest". Some crafts have been practised for centuries, while others are modern inventions, or popularisations of crafts which were originally practised in a very small geographic area.

Most crafts require a combination of skill, speed, and patience, but they can also be learnt on a more basic level by virtually anyone. Many community centres and schools run evening or day classes and workshops offering to teach basic craft skills in a short period of time. Many of these crafts become extremely popular for brief periods of time (a few months, or a few years), spreading rapidly among the crafting population as everyone emulates the first examples, then their popularity wanes until a later resurgence.

The contributions by U.S. women to the fields of art and crafts have been significant. Throughout our country's history, women artists have been innovators of style and leaders of movements, blazing a trail for others to follow. Though they often have faced societal disapproval, inadequate educational opportunities, and exclusion by art historians, their determination has only been strengthened by these obstacles, making their achievements all the more meaningful.

Early U.S. society allowed few women outlets for personal expression; therefore most women turned to crafts as the only accepted means of creative expression. These women, largely anonymous, still left us a window into their world. Since no written history ever focused on the lives and experiences of women, crafts became a communication of sorts, through which women told their personal stories (Chard , 329).

Hundreds of years before European settlers arrived in this land, Native American women had been creating striking examples of art and crafts: ceramic pottery for storage, woven basket trays for religious ceremonies, intricate embroidery for clothing, and blankets for warmth. Their bold use of color and abstract design is still appreciated and appropriated today.

As the United States began to grow and prosper, a demand for art grew out of the desire of merchants and landowners to have a tangible record of their wealth. Women artists were active in both portrait styles of the day. One style, adhering to formal European aesthetics, was represented by artists such as Henrietta Johnston; the other, a naive country style, unaware of art theory altogether, can be seen in the charming watercolors of Eunice Pinney, Mary Ann Willson, and of Deborah Goldsmith—one of the few itinerant women artists.

Crafts at this time also mirrored the country's increasing wealth. Women of the upper classes now had leisure time to create intricately embroidered bed hangings, petticoats, and seat cushions, as well as woven coverlets and stitched quilts.

The greatest challenge facing women artists as they entered the nineteenth century was the lack of proper education. Young ladies' academies, where craft skills such as embroidery were taught, flourished at this time, but true art education ...