Two exhibitions feature complementary views of crafts...

Two exhibitions feature complementary views of crafts of the past and present.

The San Diego Historical Society’s “New Vistas: American Art Pottery 1880-1930” (at the Museum of San Diego History in Balboa Park through Sept. 13) offers a beautiful and informative glimpse at the ceramics of the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts movement.

Adherents of the movement advocated a return to hand-crafted decorative and functional objects in reaction to the new dominance of machine-made goods and industrial modes of production. They believed that hand-made works affirmed the self-worth of their creators and improved the quality of life of their users.

Pottery workshops and studios established throughout the country in the late 19th Century produced bowls, vases, pitchers and tiles in this spirit, attempting to elevate everyday experience by imbuing these objects with beauty, honesty and integrity. The 75 pottery items in this show exemplify the success of their efforts.

More than 25 of the works were made by the Rookwood Pottery Co. of Cincinnati, the most prominent of these pottery establishments and a leader in the art-pottery renaissance. In shape and surface design, several of the vessels betray a strong Japanese influence that echoes contemporary trends in painting.

For the most part, the shapes of the objects remained modest and basic, reflecting the movement’s moralistic predilection for simplicity and purity. The surface decorations exhibit more freedom, ranging from matte green to lustrous mahogany, unadorned to elaborately painted or modeled. George Ohr’s idiosyncratic crinkly-walled vessels and Louis Comfort Tiffany’s bowl in the shape of joined octopus tentacles provide refreshing respites from the graceful but predominantly staid style.

The show, organized by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Services from work in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, is supplemented by a selection of art pottery made in San Diego workshops. Though the city never became the art-pottery capital of the United States, as predicted, its workshops, especially the Valentien Pottery Co., produced an assortment of high-quality designs.

Valentien’s geometric, floral and animal motifs in low relief and muted tones are akin in simplicity and elegance to works on display by the American Terra Cotta and Ceramic Co. (Teco), which were said to be “pleasing to the eye and soothing to the nerves.” The Historical Society has also reconstructed an Arts and Crafts period living room for the exhibition, to illustrate a total environment comprising such comfortable, soul-satisfying objects.

Contemporary crafts on display at the Wita Gardiner Gallery (535 4th Ave.) through Sept. 5 demonstrate how much more broadly defined the craft arena is today than it was 100 years ago. The new work in fiber, metal and glass by artists featured in the American Craft Museum’s 1986 exhibition “Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical” situates itself in the middle of a continuous debate over the distinctions between fine art and craft.

The uniformity of purpose of the Arts and Crafts movement has dissipated, and function is no longer a requisite of crafts. Many of the contemporary works derive their form from functional objects, but have only implied use, as in Therman Statom’s glass chair. One consistent link between the craft of the past and the present, as seen in these two shows, is the emphasis on technical skill and beauty. Materials are used expressively and distinctively, as if speaking for themselves as much as for their shapers.

As during the Arts and Crafts movement, crafts today are often vehicles for an aesthetic of simplicity and honesty, but just as often they manifest personal statements, humor, narrative and myth. With only one exception--Jarmila Machova’s “Last Days (King Maker)”--all of these intentions coalesce under the general craft tradition of creating objects pleasing to both the eye and spirit.

Much of the work in this show achieves this combination subtly and exquisitely. Lia Cook’s pressed weavings mesmerize with their undulating waves of color. Marvin Lipofsky’s organic, shell-like glass forms, with their muted, frosted skins and smooth interiors, beckon the hand inside to explore their fluid inner folds.

William Morris (who happens to bear the name of England’s major proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement) presents several extraordinary glass sculptures. In “Stone Vessel,” figures harking back to primitive cave paintings float within a deep blue-black ground sparkling with luminous golds and greens, while a clear glass surface ripples over the forms, as if a wave over painted rocks.

Wearables such as Arline Fisch’s delicate woven gold pieces, K. Lee Manuel’s painted “Feather Collars” and the other jewelry, glass and fiber pieces in the show all make an immediate appeal to the sense of touch as well as sight, reasserting the basic definition of craft as something by and for the human hand.