Who Said What: Ada Louise Huxtable

Ethel Stein preparing a warp, photo by Tom Grotta

What has set handcrafts apart, and always will, is the individual vision and extraordinary skill of those who create a unique, material work that can range from the practical to the abstract. The union of that vision and skill has an emotional charge lacking in impersonal articles of mass production, delivered with an unapologetic emphasis on the delight of the thing itself. That kind of direct, pleasurable response is almost totally lacking in the gloom and grunge of the arts today.

“Coming in from the Cold,” Wall Street Journal, December 22, 2011.