RADICAL CRAFT: Arts Education at Hull-House, 1889-1935

“I began to feel that instead of talking, it would be a great deal better to make something myself, ever so little, thoroughly well, and beautiful of its kind.”
-Ellen Gates Starr, Hull House Bookbindery, 1900

Radical Craft highlights the role of craft and art education in the early days of the Hull-House, bringing together threads of radical making and community building through bookbinding, textiles and ceramics practices in the early 20th century. The Hull-House, a social settlement founded in Chicago in 1889, emerged as as a leader in the fields of social reform, public health, art education and civil rights. The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum continues this legacy with exhibitions and programs that connect this history with our contemporary moment. As part of the exhibtion and corresponding catalog, JAHHM commissioned TWM to design and produce a limited edition of blankets and bookwraps featuring the above quotation from Hull-House co-founder Ellen Gates Starr.

The bookmark and blanket integrate a repeating line of text to create a pattern that emphasizes the repetitive nature of industrial production and the handmade quality of the textiles themselves. The bookwrap, designed in collaboration with exhibition/publication designers HOUR Studio, doubles as a scarf or table runner, inviting viewers to engage with the sentiment expressed in the text in a tactile way.

In tandem with the exhibition, TWM refurbished and reactivated several historic looms from the Hull-House collection, including a Dutch counterbalance loom used by Susanna Sorenson, longtime weaving instructor at the Hull House. TWM was on site at the museum for several events over the course of the exhibition, leading weaving workshops and demonstrations, contributing to an ongoing lineage of craft practice and social engagement.

Installation images courtesy of Sarah Larson/Jane Addams Hull-House Museum