The American Craft Council’s first national conference was Asilomar in 1957. We wrote about this conference when we first started digitizing and making these proceedings freely available. Now, we have our first three conference proceedings searchable and available to read. It is interesting to see our earlier themes, in preparation for our upcoming conference, “Present Tense,” in October 2016.
Asilomar had an assigned theme for each of the three days of the conference. There was a panel chair for each of five panels: ceramists, enamelers, metal workers, textile workers, and woodworkers. The chair then presided over the discussion. On Wednesday, the theme was “The Socio-Economic Outlook,” Thursday’s theme was “Design: Its Importance and Relation to Techniques.” On Friday, the final day of Asilomar, the theme was “Professional Practices.”
In 1958, “Dimension of Design” was the theme of the conference held in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Following keynote speakers, panels discussed discipline and freedom, vision and individual response, and external pressures on creativity; three panels for each topic.
The theme of the 1959 conference in Lake George, New York was “The Craftsman’s World.” “Conferees … came to grips with the issues of educational needs, the purpose of the craftsman’s product, the challenge of society and his role in it, the place of the craftsman in industry, architecture, interior design, and the problems of quantity production.”
Fast forward to October 2016, and our 12th national conference of the American Craft Council will be held at Kaneko in Omaha, Nebraska. Please join us for a series of moderated conversations between prominent intergenerational representatives in the field of contemporary craft to locate the place of craft in our contemporary moment.
Throwback Thursday is a weekly series highlighting visuals from the American Craft Council Library's Digital Collections database. Check back on Thursdays for more.