changing times...

A friend alerted me that two landmark craft galleries have been severely shrunk in size. I guess it's a sign of the times. Appalachian Spring Galleries in the Washington, DC area appears to be down to one location, as is the Real Mother Goose in Portland, Oregon. Both of these galleries have been of huge importance to those who make beautiful and useful things.

I had sold a few boxes at one time to the Real Mother Goose, and my boxes were sold through Appalachian Spring Galleries from around 1993. I remember the date I began supplying them with my work because it coincided with the election of Bill Clinton as President and an awakening to objects made in and from Arkansas, a previously unknown state.

Part of the problem may be that the owners of craft galleries have aged in the same way craft producers have aged, and without as many young people being involved in making beautiful and useful things without digital assistance, the following for fine crafts has been reduced as has been an understanding of their value.

“...persons not manually trained, generally regard the products of manual labour at less than their real value. They think it much more difficult to solve a mathematical problem than to make a table. It is not an easy thing to make a parcel-pin or a pen-holder with accuracy, and when students have done these things they will be the better able to estimate comparatively the difficulty of making a table or chair; and what perhaps is of still greater importance, they will become qualified to decide between what is good and what is bad work.”–– Otto Salomon

The skilled hand will reach toward beauty created by skilled hands. The object shown above is what happens when a common useful object meets the imagination of a first grade boy. It becomes a useful robot.

Make, fix and create. Encourage others to learn lifewise.