The Distant Past
 The Recent Past
 The Twentieth Century in Canada
 The Saidye Bronfman Award for Excellence in the Crafts

Some early crafts were "mysteries", that is, more or less sacred rites with mysterious happenings at their centre, carried out by people with special gifts — and the grace of the gods. The art of the blacksmith was a "black art" in more than one sense, and the smelting of or from Mother Earth involved a mysterious transformation. Myths have grown up around such arts in many countries.

The earliest civilizations demonstrate a clear distinction between simple utilitarian objects — clay bowls and pitchers, carrying baskets, storage boxes — and objects of great luxury and refinement for use in palace and temple — crowns, reliquaries, shrines. This distinction is still with us. Monarchies and religions have declined in influence, but luxury is far from dead. We may regret the lack of ceremony and sacrament, public and private, but we still have chains of office, the Speaker's mace, and medals of honour. Luxury today often includes objects declared to be "art", that is, unique works with a purely aesthetic function.

Traditionally, in most societies, craft techniques were taught to apprentices or simply passed down from father to son, mother to daughter. Many of the makers of works for sacrament and ceremony formed tightly knit groups of family or clan, which later developed into the well-known guilds of medieval times. But over the centuries the era when city air meant freedom from rural bondage passed, and free-spirited craftsmen made their way outside the sway of the city-bound guilds. The guilds that remained became stultified closed shops. The industrial revolution sealed their fate; the guilds transformed themselves into craft-based trade unions, or became backwaters of pomp, livery, tradition, gold watch chains and annual dinners. Traditional craftsmanship, such as it was, lingered on as a cottage industry or was placed in the service of the machine: cutting cog-wheels, forging new tools or making elaborate moulds. Not until the revolts of Ruskin, Morris, the Jugenstil and the Sezession did the picture begin to change.

Apart from objects for sacrament and ceremony, much of what we now call crafts meant essentially utilitarian objects that were a pleasure to handle and possess: they did more than simply fulfil a useful purpose. In David Pye's words, they had been sujected to "useless works", meaning work that was unnecessary for their efficient functioning — fine polishing, for example, and decoration of all kinds. Of course, the human body itself has always been regarded as an object to be decorated, whether with jewellery, tattooing, scarification or woad. Alas, the late-Victorian penchant for overloading every object with curlicues, strap work, rosebuds and acanthus leaves, derived from every conceivable historical period, brought the decorative arts into disrepute, they became the over-decorated arts. But we do well to remember that many of the greatest artists of earlier epochs, the Renaissance for example, did not hesitate to turn their skills to the design of costumes, scenery, goblets, tapestries and triumphal arches. In fact, many of them, like Ghiberti, Verrocchio, Botticelli and Brunelleschi, actually trained in the guild of goldsmiths.

The 1960s and early 1970s saw a great increase in people producing crafts for a livelihood, professionals in fact. These were the hippie years of opting out, moving back to the land — and the consequent production of countess numbers of candles and strings of glass beads. The more bizarre manifestations have passed, but the theme of voluntary simplicity remains, and may well become even more significant in the future. The number of hobbyists is still increasing, as people have more leisure time at their disposal. But, as the following essay reminds us, a self-taught hobbyist like William Hazzard can develop extraordinary skills and become a professional.

Like almost all other art forms, crafts have become internationalized. The speed of communications means that anything new is transmitted round the world in a very short space of time. Unfortunately, the transmission is all two dimensional, purely visual, and often with little idea of scale. We find a rapidly increasing number of specialized magazines, many devoted to the crafts. All of them depend heavily on colour illustrations to grab the attention of the reader, but these pictures are just as two-dimensional as the television screen and the film clip. Yet crafts are essentially three-dimensional and tactile, another quality that is almost impossible to convey in pictures. Inexperienced craftspeople try to interpret and transform these two-dimensional pictures into new three-dimensional forms with results that can sometimes be fruitful, but are too often unfortunate.

Not only are depictions of finished objects transmitted by magazines, and particularly by slide shows, but processes are disseminated as well. Thus, techniques such as batik or plangi (tie and dye) that were once restricted to particular regions are now common everywhere. Demanding techniques, like niello and mokume in metalworking, for example, are also being explored. Quilting, once thought of mainly in connection with rural quilting bees tied to traditional designs, is being used in extraordinarily imaginative ways. Only a very few craft techniques in Canada seem to be restricted to small areas: ceinture fléchée weaving is one that comes to mind.

Many techniques have specific groups devoted to their cause, a tradition that dates back to the guilds. In fact, the earliest documented craft associations in Canada date back to the seventeenth century. Earliest of all was the Confrérie de menuisiers de Madame Saint-Anne (1658), and by the time of Frontenac there were at least ten guilds of wood-carvers in New France.

In 1900, the Montreal branch of the Women's Art Association of Canada was concerned at the decline and threatened extinction of traditional crafts in the province of Quebec. The craft movement was started by women, and was run by women for many years; such men as were involved were mainly figureheads — lawyers, senators, or holders of similar respectable positions in society. The inspiration was William Morris, since many of the women retained close links with the United Kingdom. In fact an exhibition of Canadian crafts was sent to the Home Industries and Arts Associations' show in London in 1905. In all, seventy-seven such exhibitions were dispatched between 1905 and 1910 including shows to London, Dublin and Melbourne.

In 1904, the Women's Art Association turned over their assets to what would become, in 1906, the Canadian Handicrafts Guild, later the Canadian Guild of Crafts. In 1910, a representative of the Guild travelled on a lecture tour to western Canada, and the immediate result was the establishment of Guild branches in Edmonton in 1911, Vancouver 1912, and Winnipeg 1913. In 1916, the first branch was established in the Maritimes, in Charlottetown. This guild published the first guide to home dyeing, making it available in French and English.

After taking steps to revive crafts in Quebec, the Guild became interested in Doukhobour crafts, which they bought and sold as early as 1904. They also began to work with native peoples in 1907, and in the 1930's they held exhibitions of Inuit works in the McCord Museum, Montreal. In 1933 the Guild helped to defeat a proposed revision of the Indian Act which would have prohibited Indians from wearing their traditional dress, a revision the Guild helped to defeat.

Promotion was not ignored. A brochure on Canadian crafts was produced in 1906 for distribution on steamships on the St. Lawrence, and by 1931 the government of Nova Scotia was in the business of selling crafts on Cunard boats that called at Halifax. The Guild established special prizes, including one with the help of architects in Quebec for summer cottages that used Canadian crafts in their interior design. In 1939, Ryerson Press made a film in colour of the first major crafts fair held on Saint-Hél&eagrave;ne Island in Montreal.

The Guild was not alone, even if it was a pioneer. Many independent associations were set up — Cape Breton Home Industries in 1927, Mount Allison Handicrafts in 1932, Charlotte County Cottage Crafts and North Lanark Weavers Guild in 1934, Victoria Island Arts and Crafts Society in 1927, Regina Arts and Crafts Society in 1942, and so on. Little remains of many of these associations beyond a few lingering memories. Foreshadowing the provincial associations of today, provincial branches of the Guild were established in Manitoba (still going strong) and Alberta in 1928, Saskatchewan 1929, Prince Edward Island 1933, Quebec 1935 (also still in existence), and Ontario 1936.

The Depression of the thirties made great demands on all craft organizations, which provided moral and financial support to their members as well as a variety of educational programmes. The Searle Grain Company in Winnipeg undertook to train weavers; in the Maritimes the cooperative movement was well established under the sponsorship of St. Francis Xavier University; in Alberta the Guild produced radio programmes on craft techniques. Later, the Second World War, like the First, brought demands for skilled craftspeople to take part in occupational therapy programmes.

It is ironic that, even as the great surge in craft production began in the 1960s and early 1970s, the influence of the older associations was declining or was spent. It took only a few years for much of the work of the associations to be forgotten; it has taken many more years to re-establish their programmes. For example, in 1938 the Percé Handcraft Committee set up a dental clinic for its members; we have not yet re-attained that level of service, despite the establishment of many new provincial and media-based craft associations during the past fifteen years. These associations are determined to use new and innovative means of providing services to craftspeople.

In 1977 the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation decided to establish an annual award to be given over the next ten years to outstanding Canadian practitioners in the crafts. The Award was created to honour the eightieth birthday of Mrs. Saidye Bronfman. Peter Swann, the executive director of the Foundation at that time, whose interest in Canadian crafts goes back much farther than 1977, was invaluable in helping to bring the Award to fruition.

The Canadian Crafts Council, the successor to both the Canadian Guild of Crafts (national) and the Canadian Craftsmen's Association, was chosen to administrate the Award at its inception, and has done so ever since.

A selection committee was established comprising five people: the President of the CCC, a past recipient of the Award, a director or officer of the CCC, and two others chosen at large. The selection of the recipient is made through the slides they submit, since no other method is practicable in a country as large as ours. Ideally, the Selection Committee ought to be able to see — and touch — such essentially visual and tactile objects. But this would mean incurring astronomical costs to either ship the Committee around the country or bring a range of works by the candidates to a central point, assuming that it could be done.

The criteria established for the Award state that the principle requirement is the excellence of the work — and excellence is intended to cover all aspects of aesthetics, creativity, innovation, technical mastery and so on. Secondly, the recipient must have made a substantial contribution to the development of crafts in Canada over a significant period of time. The monetary value of the Award, which is now $20,000, makes it one of the most generous and important awards granted in Canada today.

Starting in 1977, the Award was to be given for ten years, but the Bronfman Family Foundation generously agreed to extend it for a further ten years. The results of the family's initiative and the excellence the Foundation recognized and encouraged are to be found in these pages and in the works acquired for the Museum's collection.

For current information on the Award, see Saidye Bronfman Award.