[silence] Arts and Crafts

[Daniel Wolf]

I cannot help with the question about Don Sample, however the subject of  
the Californian Arts & Crafts movement is an interesting one, and one I  
have thought about at some length.

The phrase "Arts & Crafts" refers here to two related but distinct  
movements. The first was the well-known professional movement in  
architecture, the decorative arts, and to a more limited extent in gallery  
arts inspired by the British model, but soon marked by local styles, in  
particular the "craftsman" (or "mission") furniture and the Batchhelder  
tiles. Californian styles looked not only to international, and in  
particular, British, models, but also to colonial Californian and Asian  
influences.  My own great-grandmother's house in Paso Robles was a typical  
Arts and Crafts bungalow, of white plastered adobe, red tile roof, with a  
mixture of decorations as much Asian as European.  The second was a  
popular movement for homemade decorative arts, and Cage's mother  
presumably had a shop specializing in this market; it is often overlooked  
the extent to which the professional movement trickled down into amateur  
activities in every area from bookbinding to ceramics.  While the US has  
hobbyists everywhere, it was truly on the west coast that the movement  
became an essential part of the lifestyle, and the geographical setting  
was especially ripe for admixtures of Asian and European elements.  There  
was even amateur arts and crafts architecture: the house I grew up in, in  
the Russian neighbohood Claremont, was one of a number of houses built and  
designed by the owners themselves during the depression years, and  
assembled from local rock, torn-up chunks of pavement, and other materials  
salvaged from earthquake remains; the houses incorporated either "mission"  
or more anglophile elements. This do-it-yourself attitude was a real  
presence in the schools, community recreation programs, and private  
courses, and it's not difficult to recognize its presence in the working  
attitude of both Cage and -- perhaps even more so -- Lou Harrison (who is  
explicit about is debt to Morris, even setting Morris's Rapunzel). I would  
even go so far as to associate the music pedagogy of Cage's Aunt Phoebe,  
with whom he collaborated, with this attitude.

Daniel Wolf
Frankfurt