A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects

In A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects, Robell Awake has gathered stories about Black craftspeople whose contributions to American art history have long been overlooked. An accomplished chairmaker himself (famously crafty actor Nick Offerman is among his many fans), Awake is acutely aware of the lack of information about the people and objects he writes about: The bulk of the scholarship about Black artisans exists because of only a small handful of historians and folklorists. That deficit makes its presentation here, in carefully researched essays and elegant illustrations by Johnalynn Holland, indispensable. A chapter about quiltmaker Harriet Powers incorporates the significance of astrological events to the Black oral tradition, and another about dressmaker Ann Lowe details the complex relationship Lowe had with one of her clients (she made the gorgeous and heavily photographed wedding dress Jacqueline Bouvier wore when she married JFK). Other chapters examine not only individuals but entire concepts, as in “Black Architecture and the Hidden History of the Front Porch.” The Southern staple of a front porch, Awake explains, comes not from the European settlers, who were clueless about hot climates, but from enslaved Africans. “Understanding the front porch as a distinctly Black architectural tradition challenges deep-seated assumptions about the diffusion of skill and knowledge in early America,” Awake writes. “Black people, whether enslaved or free, have long been portrayed as the recipients, not the bearers, of innovation. Nothing could be further from the truth.”