A Measure of the Earth: The Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets was published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art in the fall of 2013. Both book and exhibit celebrate a major gift to the Renwick: 105 contemporary baskets by 63 makers, collected over several decades by Virginia businessman Stephen Cole and his wife, Martha Ware. What makes the gift unusual is that the baskets represent not the kind of highly interpretive studio work many of us associate with the Renwick, but a revival of historical traditional American forms. Even more surprising, and sure to delight many folklorists, is that while a few baskets from other social groups are included as well (the collectors having focused more on basket characteristics than on makers), the revival featured here has been accomplished largely at the hands of a population normally overlooked by art circles: back-to-the-landers of the 1960s and 70s.
Among other significant issues, that population and its artistic intentions and experiences are well discussed in the book’s essay, a forty-six-page text that precedes a complete photographic record of the baskets and an exhibition checklist. Nicholas Bell, the essay’s author, is the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator of American Craft and Decorative Art at the Renwick. Drawing upon interviews with the basketmakers (some by telephone, some in person) and a broad range of scholarly writings (including key folkloristic ones), Bell describes the two primary creative commitments that the makers hold in common, which in turn attracted the collectors to acquire their works: to use only undyed native materials that they harvest themselves, and to strive to make “proper” baskets—excellent forms that are useful. Beyond those commitments, Bell discusses the makers’ larger goals, in which making baskets is part of a lifestyle dedicated to value-based choices about contemporary society, the environment, and the best way to live one’s life. In this, he suggests, these makers are motivated to practice their art less in order to connect with a historic past, although they respect it greatly, than to relate to the land in a manner fundamentally different from the milieu in which they came of age.
For folklorists, a salient feature of the volume is that it opens with a foreword by Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus at Indiana University, who addresses the phenomenon of revival by distinguishing what he sees as several varieties (rather than one, consistent form) in which it has occurred. He then compares the example afforded by these baskets to revivals of pottery around the world, such as the robust one currently underway in North Carolina. In a mere two pages, Glassie offers sharp insights and a strong frame to help further our thinking about revival’s complexities.
An exceedingly handsome book, A Measure of the Earth deserves a paragraph devoted to its properties as an object. First to be said is that, as Bell states in crediting the photographer Gene Young, who produced the color plates (one for each object in the collection), it contains “what are surely the most stunning photographs ever taken of baskets” (19). Those photographic plates, grouped together from pages 68 through 182, are supplemented by other, contextual images that appear in the front section of the book, interspersed throughout its foreword, preface, and essay. Showing such things as stands of yet-to-be-harvested basket materials, artists at work in various stages of the basketmaking process, and baskets in use, these photographs are so beautiful that I assumed that they too had been produced by Young, until I read that they were taken and provided by the makers and their families. Printed in Italy on high-quality paper and bound in a 9 3/4” x 11 3/4” format, the volume is a pleasure to hold, to read, to study, and to own. It will surely appeal to a wide audience, from scholars of such disciplines as art, material culture, folklore, and American Studies to admirers, collectors, and crafters of baskets.
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[Review length: 664 words • Review posted on April 23, 2014]