Vintage-culture queen Suzie Millions doesn’t care for inflatable rooftop snowmen. But she won’t say ugly things about this latest, homogenous trend in holiday decor. Instead, she quips gently: “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
Millions’ handsome tome, The Complete Book of Retro Crafts: Collecting, Displaying & Making Crafts of the Past (Lark, 2007), is dusted all through with the local author’s gentle wit. Referring to her burnt-matchstick-encrusted picture frames, Millions writes that she liked the look of raw match heads better—unfortunately, she “couldn’t figure out a way to defuse them.” In a chapter about scouting out objects of interest to showcase in “Pill Bottle Shrines,” she assures the reader that “finding holiday figures is like finding gummy, indiscernible objects in fruitcake—the thrift world is littered with little wooden ornaments, tiny plastic deer and choruses of singing angels.” Elsewhere in the book, she confesses that her childhood vacations were often spent in the gift shops of state prisons, where her grandfather could indulge his passion for buying velvet paintings.
Not every collector of kitsch can claim such a winning bloodline. But for most people, writes Millions, craft styles of the past conjure up memories of “family and childhood and ... simpler times.”
Simpler times have returned
Early on, the book notes that examples of trained workmanship shouldn’t be confused with the homemade, often clumsily assembled craft projects so evocative of their respective time periods: “High crafts, exquisite objects labored over with great skill and dedication, are not retro crafts, regardless of [their] era.”
Instead, from roughly the mid-1930s through the Watergate era, the will to hobby was more a means than an end; it emphasized therapeutic process over perfect product.
Most notably in the 1950s and ‘60s, “crafts were thought of as art for Everyman,” writes Millions. For kids, making gifts for their parents was an integral part of the curricula in school and at camp. Crafting was also, adds the author, “routinely included in rehabilitation programs for people recovering from injury, illness, and emotional stress, even those being rehabilitated from antisocial behavior.”
In a chat with Xpress, Millions laments the current absence of everyday art from most young people’s lives. “Everybody used to have art class—now it’s no longer a given. There’s budget cutting, and [the] ‘No Child Left Behind’ [program], all this emphasis on other things. Nowadays, not everyone is exposed to crafts like people of my generation were.”
Starting in the ‘80s, she reckons, “people became more disconnected from art.” Although she says that “the value of a homemade gift” has never been too far out of fashion, Millions remembers the phony glitz of the “Dynasty and Dallas years, when people looked down on things that were handmade.”
But about a decade ago, the burgeoning green movement began to rearrange that perception. Collectives like the Church of Craft, founded in 2000, hooked into the grassroots push to DIY. Today, quirky-art sections show up in even the chain bookstores: Books-A-Million on Tunnel Road currently features Crafternoon, Son of Stitch ‘n’ Bitch and other hip releases in a prominent end cap. And the current, unprecedented recession may prompt even more folks to forsake retail therapy and rediscover the myriad joys of the craft table.
“One of the things that’s so cool about retro crafts is you don’t have to obsess about making them. You don’t have to go to the craft store and buy all new things and spend a lot of money,” Millions explains to Xpress. “You can recycle refuse, use stuff you just find around the house.”
The Big Crafty, part 2: More glittering evidence that craft is back
by M.M.B.
To get a hands-on feel for the trend, visit The Big Crafty, a local consortium of artisans who don’t hang appalling price tags on their painting, sculpture, fiber art, jewelry, glass, wood and metalwork. Based on the wild success of its debut event earlier this year, The Big Crafty will be reprised with a holiday expo intended to further trumpet Asheville’s version of the national indie-craft scene. (Naturally, craft celeb Suzie Millions will be there; she tells Xpress she’ll be exhibiting her “teacup cuties”—think dinnerware and found objects fused into mini-shrines of high whimsy.)
“It’s a tremendous movement,” remarks Big Crafty co-founder Brandy Bourne in a recent e-mail. As proof, Bourne cites the national “Buy Handmade” pledge, whose push has “attracted hundreds of thousands.” Locally, she reveals, “even with space for nearly 100 local crafters, The Big Crafty [exhibitor] waiting list is long and growing daily.”
She has an idea why. “Going handmade can be an economical choice, and people turn to craft in troubling times,” says Bourne. “It was that way in the Great Depression and in the economically difficult 1970s. ... I think it has something to do with being industrious and thrifty—having control over something when the wider world may seem out of control.”
Hosted by Asheville Art Museum, The Big Crafty (complete with a raffle, music and refreshments) happens Sunday, Dec. 7, from noon to 6 p.m. at Pack Place. Free admission. Find out more at http://www.thebigcrafty.com. For more on the buy handmade pledge, visit http://www.buyhandmade.org.
And lo, there were “Reinbeer,” the most delightfully scrappy holiday project featured in Retro Crafts. One can’t be a microbrew snob and make a Reinbeer: Only aluminum will do. (Millions uses recycled Miller and PBR cans.) A template printed in the back of the book helps the crafter form and fold the body of the Reinbeer, and pipe-cleaner antlers, googly eyes and a holly-berry nose complete the beast.
No template is needed to create another retro Christmas craft—the “Perky Pinecone Elf.” The project is inspired by similar ornaments that were exported en masse from postwar Japan and remain highly collectable. Millions’ elf is finished with little more than a Styrofoam-ball head, a holly-berry nose and pompom hands. However, its origami-paper hat is clearly a touch of her personal genius.
She admits that she has “always had a different mindset, always felt on the fringe of things.” But if a new season of retro crafting is dawning—well, the more the merrier. As the author notes in her book: “It’s a great way to share time with family and friends.” Everyone can join in, she adds. “No one [is] too young or too old.”
Or too clumsy. In the last chapter of Retro Crafts, Millions points out that “creating and collecting retro craft can be a soulful, endlessly creative connection to your roots [because] it allows you to enjoy the excitement of being creative without imposing any fun-killing expectations on the results.”
The Complete Book of Retro Crafts is available locally at Asheville Art Museum, The L.O.F.T., Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe and Barnes & Noble.
[Melanie McGee Bianchi is a stay-at-home mom and freelance journalist.]
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