Aileen Osborn Webb and the Origins of Craft's Infrastructure

Abstract

In 1939, Aileen Osborn (Mrs Vanderbilt) Webb was looking for a way to sell country crafts in New York City. Webb had already for some years been marketing country craft to tourists through her upstate New York tearoom to help alleviate local poverty. The struggle between the goals of the American Handicraft Council and Webb's consortium of rural craft organizations would result in today's American Craft Council. This article examines the development of these goals as a function of the forces that shaped Webb's work, plus the nature of organizations that influenced her ideas. Crafts marketing was paramount in Webb's plans. Other elements of craft's infrastructure that also claim her as their creator— American Craft magazine, the Museum of Arts and Design, the School for American Crafts, the World Crafts Council—were handmaidens to her overarching goal of creating a viable market for craft artists. Today, craft is a major international industry, the early success of which originated in many individuals' desire to help craft workers find better markets and improve their designs. Others before Webb had set the story in motion, but she was the one who saw the opportunity to promote craft on a national stage and had the money to do so.