Crafting a Continuum: Rethinking Contemporary Craft

by Peter Held (Editor), Heather Sealy Lineberry (Editor), Gordon Knox (Foreword)

The Arizona State University Art Museum is renowned for its extensive and notable craft collection and features international acquisitions in wood, ceramic, and fiber. This book, edited by the museum's curators, uses the ASU collection to explore the idea of craft within a critical context, as both idea and action. Crafting a Continuum begins with the genesis of the craft collection and relates it to the historical development of craft in the United States and abroad, exploring both anthropological and cultural concepts of the field.
Peter Held and Heather Sealy Lineberry present photographs of the museum's objects alongside essays by distinguished scholars to illuminate historical and contemporary trends. Sidebars and essays by writers in the craft field offer a broad overview of the future of contemporary craft.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 14, 2013

About the author

In the course of Peter Held’s impressive three-decade career as a museum director and contemporary art curator, he has organized more than 200 exhibitions, including seven national traveling shows. Held is the author of numerous articles on contemporary art and craft and is the editor of, and an essayist for, 10 books on the subject.

Acknowledged as a national authority on modern and contemporary studio ceramics, he has received three of the highest accolades possible within the field: the Ceramic Lifetime Achievement Award from the Friends of Contemporary Ceramics (2007); the Smithsonian’s James Renwick Alliance Distinguished Educator Award (2014); and the National Council for Education on the Ceramic Arts Honorary Member Award (2014).