A Hundred Treasures

Have you ever known someone with an incredible eye for the natural world, who can pick out details at a glance that few people seem to notice?

My father is like that. My dad grew up in the brush country of South Texas, where patches of dusty chaparral and cactus stretch across miles of ranch land and farms. When we were young, he took us on walks through this harsh country, with his eyes always on the ground. He could spot an arrowhead or a fossil rock after looking at a patch of sandy ground for a few seconds. When he walks in our heavily wooded neighborhood, he is always on the lookout for deer and other creatures. On one of our summer walks, he spotted a hidden space under an evergreen where a mother deer rested with her fawn. (I would have walked noisily by pushing my son in the stroller if my dad hadn't pointed out what was right beside my feet!)

My husband is the same way. He can pick out a four-leaf clover in a small patch of clover while I've just barely registered the mass of color. He can also spot a black raspberry bush growing along the side of the road as we walk or drive by. With his expert eye, he's been a great guide for me on fossil-hunting trips.

I've come to appreciate this way of seeing, and of how each treasure that my dad and my husband finds opens up a whole chain of associations in their personal histories as well as to geological and natural history.

For me lately, it has been finding special vintage books that has given me that thrilling sense of finding a treasure that illuminates a trail of inspiring ideas and connections that lead back into the past. I introduced the book, A Hundred Things a Girl Can Make by Hugo Froehlich and Bonnie Snow, in my last post, and I've included some more images from the book here to give a sense of the artistic connections that the book has opened up for me.

The 1920s saw the culmination of several important trends in art and art education, and this book opens a window to several of them. The clean, geometric lines and nature-inspired motifs of the Arts and Crafts style appear in many of the projects in the book. The authors stress handcrafting as an important skill and give general guidelines about line, forms, and patterns. The instructions are clear but general enough to allow the individual crafter the freedom to head off in her own creative direction.

Related to the Arts and Crafts movement was another movement known as "Art in Everyday Life." This movement showed that art was not limited to fine art--nor to the upper classes--but could be found in the everyday objects that surround us in even middle-class homes. Not only should we appreciate their beauty, but we should also embellish our surroundings to make them more beautiful. Froehlich and Snow show how to adorn even the lowly clothespin with the Arts and Crafts aesthetic. Don't you think they could be seen as precursors to the Martha Stewart Living phenomenon?

The 1920s was also a decade in which Progressive ideas about education influenced how art was taught. American philosopher and educator John Dewey was the leading proponent of Progressive educational methods. Dewey essentially promoted learning by doing and using knowledge and skills to improve students' lives and communities. Influenced by Dewey, art classrooms became more process-oriented and activity-based, with students experimenting with different art forms rather than merely studying and reproducing paintings. Art educators increasingly emphasized self-expression and creativity rather than copying, an attitude that infuses the projects in Snow and Froehlich's book as well.

It's given me a little thrill to uncover all of these themes in this little gem of a book. Many thanks to pearljr., an antiquarian book seller who lists on ebay, for sending me off to explore several very fruitful research strands. So many of the themes in the book influence art and crafts today, and I think it's useful to explore their origins and appreciate the context in which they came about. The book is rich in inspiration for today's creators, and I'll focus in on some specific projects in upcoming posts.