Clay

Rather than looking to big corporate employers like Walmart for economic stability, could more rural communities in the U.S. welcome a slower growing, more sustainable economic partner?

As U.S. student debt balloons to $1.75 trillion nationally, calls for loan forgiveness and low-cost or free college tuition programs are getting louder. Sound impossible? Kentucky’s Berea College has been tuition-free since 1892 — and offers an education in craftsmanship to boot.

Craftsman Jack Mauch, still in his 30s, is already creating breathtaking examples of craftsmanship in everything from furniture-making to ceramics and metalwork. If this kind of range is what it takes to become a master artisan in today’s world, God help the rest of us mere mortals.

A Dutch archaeologist finds artisans and thought leaders who are redefining craft, skill and, ultimately, the real meaning of a knowledge economy. A Craftsmanship mini-documentary.

A Dutch archaeologist finds artisans and thought leaders who are redefining craft, skill and, ultimately, the real meaning of a knowledge economy: a short film presented by The Craftsmanship Initiative, in collaboration with The Centre for Global Heritage and Development.

The National Sculpture Society’s executive director, Gwen Pier, has found that Fred Brownstein—the marble sculptor profiled in our Winter 2023 feature, “The Sculptor vs. The Robots“—is being joined by more and more sculptors who love doing figurative work. “There has been a swing back,” she says. In the 1950s, there was a rebellion against figurative…

A gastro-scientific investigation of why cooks believe food tastes better (note: much better) when it’s cooked in a ceramic pot. Tour guide: Paula Wolfert, the legendary queen of American clay-pot cooking.

Many cultures have enjoyed the playful freedom that one feels after donning a mask. But no place has taken it to greater extremes, both elegant and diabolical, than Venice. A tour of the world of Venetian masks, and the annual Carnival mega-party they have inspired.

Among the different Indigenous cultures represented by the Southwest’s Native American tribes, some of the richest history of craftsmanship has been, and still is, practiced by the Pueblo Indians. For some of these artisans, the inspiration for carrying on came from an early artistic pioneer: a rebel painter named Pablita Velarde.