Word: craftsman
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Above the doorway of the big modern building in Santa Fe, N.Mex. is lettered an appropriate motto: "The art of the craftsman is a bond between the peoples of the world." The building is Santa Fe's new Museum of International Folk Art, and both museum and motto are the gift of a wealthy Chicago art patron named Florence Dibell Bartlett, who has spent 20 years collecting the folk art of 50 countries. On her travels, she noticed that most of the ancient crafts seemed to be dying out. Collector Bartlett decided to build the museum as a showcase...
When the museum opened last week, visitors could see just how well the craftsman's art links the peoples of the world. One display of shoes showed the common ingenuity of the world's cobblers: a wooden Dutch shoe for the wet lowlands, a cool leather sandal for Arabia's hot sands, a warm quilted-cotton boot for Manchuria's bitter winters. Wooden manikins wore beautifully embroidered costumes from the Andean highlands and a fascinating suit of woven palm-fiber armor made for a South Sea island warrior. There were tiny statues, ceremonial masks, hoes...
...notable weakness of most contemporary art has been the decline in artistic craftsmanship. Among the exceptions to the rule is a lanky Santa Fe potter named Warren Gilbertson, 42, who combines the artist's soaring imagination with the craftsman's practical knowledge of his tools. Last week he was demonstrating the fact anew with a series of glowing vases, cups and bowls which looked extraordinarily like China's classic Sung dynasty Chien-yao ware (better known by its Japanese name: Temmoku...
Gilbertson's success as an artist craftsman results partly from his diligence as a student. He first studied ceramics at Chicago's Art Institute and at Carnegie Tech. Later he got a master's degree at New York State's College of Ceramics. Not content with formal training, Gilbertson also sat at the feet of Pueblo Indian squaws to learn their pottery methods. Then he crossed the Pacific and apprenticed himself for two years to Kon-jiro Kawai, a ceramist much honored in Japan...
Antonio Frasconi, 34, seems a paradoxical fellow. He has happy brown eyes and a sad black mustache, an air of contentment and a sighing voice, a habit of absent-minded wandering and a craftsman's power of concentration. Says he: "An artist must be aware of the comic strip as well as of the serious side of life." Frasconi divides his time between Southern California (where "everything is wide open") and Manhattan ("it's all concentrated like a sardine can"). He sketches constantly in street and field "There is so much going on," he sighs, "so much material...