Here, in the mountains of western New Hampshire, a proud tradition unfolds every summer, as it has done since 1933.

The annual League of New Hampshire Craftsman's Fair is a national asset, not just a state asset.

It's the oldest craft fair in the nation.

I still get excited about going to the fair.

I mean, it's still it's a big thing for me.

And I get so, so wound up during the fair that I. I start telling people that, gee, I could do another two weeks of this.

Over nine days.

35,000 visitors will purchase over $2 million worth of fine craftwork from State Juried League of New Hampshire craftsmen.

It's an honor to be a member of the league and a Hampshire craftsmen.

You go outside of New Hampshire and you say you're a member of the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.

People respect it.

They say, wow, that's terrific.

You really must be good at your craft.

They want you to save the league.

And a Hampshire craftsman that's synonymous with excellent craftsmanship, fantastic variety.

It has a history.

I think, first and foremost, of trying to educate the public on good craftsmanship, as well as trying to undertake the mantle of educating the crafts person.

I never thought that I'd be doing this for a living and be able to make money at it.

The best thing to do is just try, you know it's going to be a struggle.

At first it was a real struggle for me when I first started, but if you love it, if you have the motivation and desire, you are going to find a way to make it happen.

The league is sustained by quality and by personal attention that people are the hands on involved in what they're doing here, that it's not factory work.

It's not anonymous.

And I think that's really the basis of the league.

And of the fine Crafts movement to have personality in the work they're doing.

They're doing a great job.

The state of.

New Hampshire began its craftsman's league in 1932 as a way to generate income for its depression era citizens.

Since then, the New Hampshire crafts industry has grown into a state treasure and a model for craftspeople and organizations all over the country.

This is the story of a league of our own.

New Hampshire and the American craft movement.

In 1925, a well-connected summer resident named Mary Coolidge decided to organize a sale of hooked rugs made in sandwich, New Hampshire.

Her mission was to generate income from the local families struggling with the onset of a nationwide depression.

Thus began a shop and tearoom known as Sandwich Home Industries.

It was depression and things were very hard.

Sandwich roads were dirt roads.

Children had bare feet.

Families were quite poor, I think, and she was very much interested in improving things for people.

But she did particularly love all the things that were made locally.

I think she got along with people very well.

That's certainly an impression.

And I knew when she was very well liked, I think, by people who who met her social person.

She was definitely a personality.

And she was on the move.

People in.

The shop and tearoom were popular.

The growing sales receipts drew the attention of a Cooper Ballantine, a craft educator and camp director from Wolfeboro.

Ballantine and Mrs. Coolidge agreed to develop a statewide home industry program.

Two key advisors were brought in.

Royall Bailey Farnham, director of the Rhode Island School of Design, who stressed ideals of art over sales numbers, and Alan Eaton from the Russell Sage Foundation, who had authored a study which described how southern Appalachian craftsmen had organized to preserve traditional skills and market products.

By 1931, the New Hampshire crafts industry proposal had reached the state house.

Jesse Doerr, a close friend of Mary Coolidge and New Hampshire's first woman legislator, had several meetings with Governor John Gil Winant.

I remember Gil and Jesse Doerr talking together about the situation this was depression time.

The situation among the rural people in New Hampshire and the poverty that there was.

And Jesse was telling Gil that so many women had skills with their hands.

Well, mostly it was, knitting and sewing skills, but that they made things which could be sold to their advantage during these difficult times.

When it was sold on the economic and cultural benefits of the budding home based crafts industries.

In 1932, he made New Hampshire the first state in the country to fund a commission of arts and crafts, with Mary Coolidge as the commissioner.

His seed funding was was really, an inspirational move.

Certainly something that, he spoke of his talent as a governor.

He, he recognize that seeing something like that could make a difference not only to the individuals involved, but to the state as a whole.

And that's what you're always looking for as a governor or something that you can leverage, both to benefit individuals and to benefit the state.

And the state commission's first step was to form a league of New Hampshire Arts and Crafts.

Its first director, Frank staples, traveled over 14,000 miles to explain the league's mission.

Within a year, the fledgling league had over 1000 members, with 20 craft groups and ten shops around the state.

I suppose New Hampshire was small enough so that there was a lot of interaction throughout and around the state, and I think it was a kind of people living here and the people who saw a future like Mrs. Coolidge, who saw a future for the women, especially, who needed some kind of an outlet, just the flavor of New Hampshire and the tenor of life here, encouraged people to interact and to express themselves.

In 1933, the league held its first annual craftsman's fair at Crawford Notch, though a modest affair held in a barn.

It proved a huge success, with sales over $2,700, and the League of New Hampshire Craftsman's Fair has been held every summer since.

The oldest continuously running crafts event in the United States in the early part of the 20th century.

There were a few craft organizations that definitely were pioneer organizations.

The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen was one of those that, provided a very important program through its, I think, unique marketing structure, with its, annual craft fairs and its regional shops.

Its educational program was also important.

I think they had a sense of their mission, and they definitely recognized the importance of the rich New England craft tradition.

But they also realized it was another era and therefore they encouraged, their members, to, develop new ideas and new concepts, because that was important to developing products for the, stores and fairs.

The techniques have been changed for thousands of years.

It's almost a wiki, which is about 2100 degrees.

And we're going to come over to this thing which is called the anvil, which is what coyote drops and roadrunners head.

We're so far removed from yesterday.

You know, all the techie stuff.

Well, it's still comes down to somebody has to make something and they've always made stuff.

This is a simple example of a railing that, we've made, we've incorporated some of those leaf shapes.

Leaf is a leaf form is a kind of a piece that we use a lot without the blacksmith who actually made the first screw, which was the for the first layer.

This whole thing wouldn't have started.

So the blacksmith actually put himself out of a job because he made the tools that made the Industrial Revolution.

The power hammer that we're working with here is, 1910 two.

Now, you remember on that leaf we did we did virtually the same thing.

We stretched the material sideways.

And that's all I'm really doing here is stretching the material sideways.

But I'm making kind of a foot.

I still enjoy the creative part of making.

But all of a sudden, 30 years goes by and everybody starts to retire.

You're going to go, oh, I'm just getting good.

In 1938, the league appointed David Campbell, a young, Harvard trained architect, as director.

Campbell threw himself into the job promoting the league, stocking the shops and visiting the craftsmen.

We had a very small southwest, just Dave and I was his secretary.

I was born right of education and I did everything I didn't want to do.

He encouraged people to do things, and he found new crafts, people that were amateurs.

By the time he got through them.

They were professionals.

He carried the Crafts League message around the state and began traveling to other parts of the country in search of qualified teachers to bring their fine handcraft work to New Hampshire.

Well, Dave was a real people person to begin with.

I mean, he could relate to anyone really well and there would be an instant rapport.

And he also had a great instinct to sense someone who had talent and could get a real feeling of where they were coming from by visiting their studio or even seeing their work.

He found his first recruits in Virginia, where Potters Ed and Mary Shire had just opened their first studio.

Why?

David Campbell asked us to come to New Hampshire.

I wish I had been here to ask him.

He seemed to think that what we were doing had some problems.

Of course, the things he saw are very crude and very early things.

We're glad you did, I suppose, because that's sort of an assault on a whole new way of thinking about crafts.

Most of the craftsmen came to New Hampshire just in that way, by David, happening in Jerusalem to come pick them, actually.

And made it easier for them to get there and to survive the first years.

Once established, his teachers at the University of New Hampshire, the shires happily discovered that their pottery sold well at league shops and fairs, and our sales from the league were well above what our salary was, which was very low for many of the craftsmen that we knew at that time.

Their sole income was from the League.

You could follow living in crafts.

That was one reason that they brought the giants to the state.

They were very hard workers.

Both of them.

Campbell found another potter and personality in New York City, known simply as Viveca.

She began teaching at the league in 1946.

Meanwhile, just back from World War Two, New Hampshire native Otto Hino had started a trucking business.

A trip through Concord one day would change his life.

And I stop, and there was a restaurant, and we came out of there.

So I said, well, what do you do?

She had clay of great clay on her arm and a dress, a skirt and stuff.

And she said, well, I teach pottery over the lake here.

Otto became Vickers student, and before long her husband and partner, the shires and the heroes became nationally known potters.

At age 92, Otto still works daily in the California studio he shared with Viveca until her passing in 1995.

The league taught me to be a craftsman, so I always remember the league does where I got my stuff and married the teacher.

Was an interesting person.

She would definite when she said something to she mattered, and her job was to go to rich craftsmen and perk up their design so they could sell more and have a good product because she had that.

Plus, what you give away, you keep what you kept.

Keep yourself below my criteria.

You never.

You never worry.

So that's why I not worried about a thing.

In Karl Drew, a refugee from Nazi Germany and a classically trained artist, David Campbell found another craftsman who embodied the league's high standards.

Father, I think, is credited in no small measure with reviving enameling in the middle of the last century because without him, a lot of those techniques would have disappeared.

Vera had managed to survive in New York by producing enameled specialty items for department stores.

Transplanted to New Hampshire, grew up and his wife Gertrude found the retreat in safety they had dreamed of since fleeing their war torn homeland.

I think the landscape took him, completely, the mountains, the flora and fauna, because he was a naturalist by nature.

And then, I think also very taken by the character of the people.

He was very drawn to the Yankees because they were self-sufficient.

They were, strong, isolated people who had a huge respect for one another but stayed out of each other's way.

And that was immensely appealing to someone who had lived through the build up to Nazi Germany.

A father was one of the very few who was classically trained, so by the time he came here, he was one of the most academically equipped people who arrived, who was also a craftsman, a very high level craftsman.

And I think that that enabled him to embody a set of standards which others wanted also to embody, but didn't perhaps have the academic basis to articulate what it was.

These standard were.

Jack was certainly one of them, was set the standard for me, and it influenced me greatly.

And he had just quality, which both he and Dave Campbell shared.

When I when I think of the two men, I kind of see them, you know, side by side.

They had this quality where.

You just wanted to emulate the highest standards that they reflected.

Father became the first New Hampshire living treasure to go from a penniless immigrant to a living treasure over the course of his lifetime.

I think was quite a feat.

By the end of the 1940s, the league was bustling with sales at the Craftsman's Fair and at league shops.

League classes filled up as well, thanks in part to the GI Bill for returning veterans and the aspiring craftsmen coming to New Hampshire from outside the state.

The league at that time was was one of the prominent, craft organizations in the country.

When I first came to the league in 1949, I was hired, to the amusement of David Campbell, since I wanted to learn how to make pottery.

I was hired to be the stock boy at the league, which meant that I picked up, the craft ware and put them in boxes and put them on the truck, and the truck was taken to the shops.

Well, most of the back room was Shire Pottery without any doubt.

The presence of, people like that and Mary Shire and the people like that were, guiding lights and stars for younger people coming in that the fact that they were successful and that they, had a recognized following and collectors bought their work, they were admired, was important for young people to see.

Campbell received another earnest young visitor who dreamed of having some kind of a career in the handcraft field, though he wasn't sure what.

He wanted me to come and work at the league for a year and during that time be exposed to a lot of the crafts.

The league was relatively small when I joined, and as far as producing craftsmen, I would say there were no more than maybe two dozen and I could, with a little effort, I could probably name all of the this was this was back in the era when people were there, were making a living with their crafts, but they were eking, eking out a living there.

Was that feeling that you were kind of a pioneer, you know, a little because at that point, the universities, for instance, the colleges did not give degrees for at the craftsmen level so that, you know, you were happy to trade information, you were happy to trade materials, you were happy to to encourage in any way you could.

It was a viable, vibrant thing that that we experienced in New Hampshire.

Driving Campbell around the state on league business would lead Gordon Keeler in a new direction in fine crafts.

We ended up mostly talking about the future of crafts work.

Crafts were available, what is needed in the league, and the best of all was he said that, the league had just lost.

There were only would turn there and, he would that I consider taking a good journey.

I made hundreds of errors initially, which were all learning processes and, probably those errors cemented themselves in my brain more so than they would have if I had been taught to do something.

But little by little, things got better, and the pieces became to look more and more graceful, and more and more flew it.

And better design, better form.

Over 50 years later, Keeler and his son Jeff are celebrated winters.

There would bowls are signature items at league shops and fairs, and we have divided the entire process approximately in half and we zig frogged.

So Jeff does pretty much all the training.

Now, all of that, I do all the finishing, I do all the heavy work out there with the planks and Jeff the glory.

Jeff gets the fun part, making chips fly.

But but you know, he deserves handcrafted.

Studio furniture was another craft David Campbell sought to promote through the league, a furniture maker near Hanover named Walker.

We'd shared his vision and he was extremely helpful.

And, to all of us.

And, we were talking about a more advanced but a spiritual aspect.

So, all the, the material giving something to the craftsmen.

And he said, that's the difference between wood and plastic and getting nothing back from the plastic but the of living, vital material.

And that influences you.

It's a kind of an natural idea, but I believe in it thoroughly.

I think that environment, including the things you do it work with, is very important for your well-being.

In the 1950s, David Campbell began talking with the American Craft Council in New York City.

The council's founder, Eileen Osborn Webb, thought that what the league had achieved in New Hampshire could serve as a model for a National Crafts movement.

She was originally motivated to create an urban market for rural craftsmen, and very quickly, I think she understood the need for education.

And after she established America House, which was a retail outlet in 1939, she began very quickly to look at education for the artists as well as education for the public, which was really the beginning of instilling this appreciation for the handmade.

With Mrs. Webb's financial help, they were able to build an educational program, which alerted the public, to the desirability in a crash.

And with a result that it just took off.

In 1956, the American Craft Council opened the Museum of Contemporary Crafts, the first museum in the country devoted to fine crafts.

Designed by David Campbell, the museum would prove the crowning achievement to a career that ended with his passing in 1963.

He transformed it into really a gem.

It was a beautiful contemporary space that was ideal as, small but, personal for showing, changing exhibitions.

And what was so significant is that it put craft in a museum context, which was very important then and is very important today.

At some point as an artist, you have to say, why am I doing this?

Or is this meaningful in terms of the world?

Some people are doing art because they want to express this emotion or that emotion, but I'm just trying to put these things in people's lives.

I wanted to smile.

My theme is joy and delight, because I'm trying to put things into people's homes and make them happy that they live with every day.

When you go, every time you use it, you get some pleasure out of it.

And his stories about the kids at the hospitals.

I've gotten letters from parents whose kids were at these hospitals, writing to me saying how much the chairs they're helped their kid.

If I can make people just a little happier by giving them a little more pleasure in their daily lives, for me, in terms of what my art should be about, then that's my little part in healing the world.

In 1963, Joe.

Petty became the first craftsman named to direct the League.

His mission was to focus on the growth of the crafts industry in New Hampshire.

I could see very quickly that that my slot in the league would be to help at a craftsman's level, to increase the number of craftsmen who could be, folded into the buying program.

All of this to ensure outlet for craftsmen and income for the league and income for the craftsmen.

In 1964, the state of New Hampshire approved the Mount Sunapee Ski Area in Newbury.

New Hampshire is the new and permanent home for the Craftsmen Fair.

First Lady.

Lady Bird Johnson joined the throngs of visitors to the paper.

Most found their way to blacksmith Joe Tucker, whose Forge on Wheels became a classroom every summer.

Look like anything?

Do you get?

A little round in here.

You're sure you have no patience?

You want to try this?

You take off your jacket.

Can you imagine anything you want to make?

You have it.

Have a mental picture up.

I'll start something and you can finish it.

All right.

You just poke it right off the mat until it be just right.

Come on.

Yeah.

Look at me.

That's it.

How do you get all, dimples in there?

It ain't easy, but.

The annual Craftsman's fair proved the ideal stage to introduce more and more people to the New Hampshire craftsmen.

Your following like to know you personally.

The fair was a jump off point for establishing a lot of relationships with people who would come back year after year.

They would be aware of the shops in the state they wanted.

They wanted contact.

They wanted to human contact with the maker.

The whole the whole system, is enhanced when when the personality of the maker can be developed.

In 1968, public television film crews brought the work of New Hampshire craftsmen into living rooms across the country.

New Hampshire and Hopkinton.

Is is a fine place to live.

I think that the climate for craftsmen is very good here because for 30 years they had the League of Arts and Crafts, so people are aware of the work of craftsmen and what craftsmanship means.

I do think that sometimes that they don't realize that to be a craftsman or to be potters is, as Otto and I are, that it is a, a really a full time job, and that we are employed even though we're self-employed and that we work regular, hours.

I don't want to be known for any special style of furniture.

I just want this to be my own statement of the way things ought to be.

I think it looks better when you get to the finish point than you would imagine when you put the oil on it.

Then you bring out the grain in the wood.

Wish you could, in a visual because it's not yours.

It's part of the wood.

And you feel like you kind of cooperated, I think, with something else then.

And, you carried it to a certain point, and you develop it like, sort of like developing a picture of your.

It's really exciting to break open the mold and find what you've made.

Oh, maybe what you didn't make, but just to look at it and then just start cutting away the unwanted spruce and to finish it.

And sometimes you find something that you, you really didn't expect.

There's something about it that really reflects the personality of the wearer.

Because our interest in weaving was developed through the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, we have found over the years that we've made a good many friends among the craftsmen, we've been enthusiastic about the whole program that they have in this state in order to encourage and instruct other craftsmen.

In fact, we've had many very fine craftsmen moved to the state of New Hampshire because they were interested in the program which we have here.

The tumult of the 1960s and 70s brought a new kind of applicant to the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, one seeking a lifestyle as much as a career.

In 1972, over 200 craftsmen came to be juried.

They were idealists, I guess you might say.

They wanted to come some place where they weren't harassed, where they could live cheaply, where they could live on the land.

And so they came to Vermont and New Hampshire in droves.

And if they found a piece of clay, they made a pot.

And if they found a hide, they made a belt.

And they were all weavers, and they were doing macrame and things like that.

I went in with a handful of spoons in 1972, I think, and two ladies were running the league, Ruthie Burt and Merle Walker.

I didn't even know I was being jury.

They wanted to know how many and how much, and they supported me for two years.

Once a month I just go down and sell them all my spoons and my children were born and we ate.

You could feel the expansion taking place, and there were more and more craftsmen to deal with.

It became a matter of concern when people were coming into the state producing various forms of crafts which did not meet the traditional standards that we, you know, had established, hoped to encourage, and more insisted on.

I remember a woman calling me up one time, and saying, my boyfriend is thinking about going into woodworking.

Would you please tell me about it?

And, people who had no conception or interest in a particular craft might undertake it, thinking they were going to remake their lives or something.

All of the expressions, the openness, the lifestyle, living the return to nature, had an important effect.

And the craft movement was very central to that, because I think it fit into that, that whole area of finding oneself and doing something that one enjoyed.

Thank God that everyone who came in, who took classes or came into the state was not an accomplished craftsman because there just wouldn't be room in the state.

I think they trusted that I would improve, so they let me in the lake because I doubt I could get in now, making what I made back then.

I got a little the people on the jury bought everything that I had submitted, but I got a note back saying, is there any way you can make these figures so the herring won't fall off?

I always try to think outside the box.

So the 70s was perfect.

60s and 70s were perfect for me.

I have had people send me photographs of tables covered with 300 finger puppets, and you almost want to say, don't you think this is a little excessive?

I wish I was like the Indian women and I went out and dug each little batch.

But I do order a ton of clay when I make these big pieces there.

They're a lot stronger.

If I go to the beach and get beach sand and wedge it into the clay.

I like raku because it's very physical.

Where I didn't have glaze on, it turns it black, but where I put things in the in the glaze, it clusters a little bit because of the comb.

There we go.

I like all the banging around in the fire and the kiln popping and the slightly dangerous.

I'm a sort of a coward, so it seems very dangerous to me.

And it's pretty safe being in the driveway.

And I don't think I'm really going to catch the neighborhood on fire.

I just love to see the way the pieces come out.

And if see if I'm going to be surprised by some of the luster, and to see if it's even more beautiful than I could have imagined.

And this is one of the round ones that I make, and it was a sculpture that I made of my grandmother, my mother as a child, and my uncle Kelly and I over the years have done many sculptures about my grandmother.

She, she and Jerry Williams are the two people I featured the most in my artwork of people I've known.

I guess because they were both older than I am.

I love them, they they care for me.

So I've just done tons and tons of artwork about both of them.

A woman came up to me at the fair and said, buying your works just like eating yogurt, you have to get used to it, but once you're used to it, you've got to have it.

And that's about as critical as anyone's ever been.

How did I begin?

Well, I trained racehorses for years at Rockingham Park, and I needed a new pair of chaps, and there was no one there to make them.

So I borrowed money from a father.

I bought an antique machine, bought a couple hides.

I made myself their chaps and went from there.

Dion, Lewis, Paul.

And I'm a leather artist.

I do everything by hand.

I buy full hides of leather.

I cut it by hand.

I'll glue two pieces together.

And then I take it all and I go through and make the hole.

And I stitch with two needles.

Go once or twice around the needle.

So you have it.

And not individually not.

And every single stitch.

So if some reason, like if you make it a harness in a stitch broke here or here, it would still stay together.

But when you do it on a machine would come apart.

This is basically dying craft, and there's only certain type of people that like this type of leather work.

I just need to do this longer and I think down the road.

Yes.

So we're making a living.

By its jubilee anniversary in 1982, the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen had become a multimillion dollar industry.

Faced with a skyrocketing demand for membership and access to its markets, the league placed a renewed emphasis on standards.

Since its early years, membership in the league has been determined by the standards and judgment of the league jury and the beginning.

I met with a jury and I learned to write those letters, and sometimes I wrote them in a timely fashion, not a personal.

I would turn down.

I have been on a few juries over the past years, and there was some, so there's some pretty alarming things that would kill me.

And it took a great deal of diplomacy.

During people is a very political finger candy.

And so it was in a, a desire to treat people fairly that I wanted something written.

And we thought something should be written.

And then if I'm a juror, I can evaluate work, and test it against those guidelines.

I have been a juror in photography for a number of years, and now I'm in mixed media.

I like to pride ourselves on the fact that we actually sit down with the person, whether we jury them into the league or whether they need to do some more work, and we actually work with them to help them along so that their craft can become part, you know, as a one juror, when people come in and they say, well, I, you know, I need to, you know, I need this shortcut so I can make a living doing this.

You know, I try to, you know, all of us as jurors try to convince them that working at the highest level, that there is a market for that there are people who care about about having work that's done right by the jury.

Experience was good.

People were very supportive, always offering constructive criticism.

It's a good group of people, a lot of diverse, a lot of diverse opinions about the emphasis on business or art.

But, there's a commonality to to make things that, our first week, when I was juried by Judge Blackstone, I asked him for lessons at the time because he was critiquing the work.

And he says, well, I don't give lessons, but I or what I'll do for you is I'll give you the forum for this little spot at sandpiper, and you go home and you carve it.

I use polymer clay and make these evening bags that are essentially little sculptures.

This material is so new that actually I had been the teacher of the jurors here in the league, so they didn't have much problem accepting me right away.

You work on your pieces in your workshop, in the solitude of your your hand and your shop space, and then it's like a coming out ceremony.

You take 3 or 4 pieces and you sit them down, or you or you set them up for three very highly qualified craftspeople to pick apart.

And it's as if you are standing naked before and, and then they are commenting on not your piece, but you as a person.

That's how I took it.

I have a lot of empathy because I too had to go through it, and I recall my emotional place and I worked very hard to make it a comfortable environment, a learning environment.

And there are so many ways you can tell an applicant that you've almost hit the mark.

But here's what you can do.

And then it's a joy to say, hey, you know you're in.

The League introduced the living With Craft exhibition at the 1980 fair to showcase the craft, were judged best of the year by juried members.

That means someone who has really worked to, show their own individuality.

I think that's what what I look for in craft work.

Someone who takes the process and brings it forward into something that is not necessarily never been done before, but something that will be a two to for us.

So people are going to look at in awe and say, wow, look at that.

Visiting the exhibition had a profound effect on a young cabinetmaker.

When I walked into that exhibition, it just blew, blew me away.

The I just thought, my gosh, I've got so far to go.

These guys are these guys are masters, and I'm on the beginning of that road.

Today, Terry Moore is recognized as a New Hampshire furniture master whose work is a perennial choice at living with craft.

I'm building a table that's going to be included in the Craftsman's Fair at the living with Craft Gallery, and this is the top for the table.

And it's a pretty complicated the nearly up.

And most of my work involves working with veneers of some kind.

This happens to be highly figured fiddle back mahogany.

And this is a sunburst pattern.

So all these different wedges go from a wide point here to nothing in the center, and then the center in layers laid on it.

You know, people living in I.A.

or New York City, you they can go into a store and they can buy a table or they can, but they're not buying a piece of an individual.

They're buying a production piece that has absolutely no personality.

You can see the finished product as far as the base is concerned.

It's all sanded and ready for, multiple coats of lacquer.

I pour my heart and soul into my workmanship, into my pieces.

It's an expression of who I am as a person.

And therefore when someone recognizes the quality and they desire my work, it's it's basically what they're saying is we we like what you do.

And, so that personal interaction is vital.

They buying a piece of me investing in a piece of me.

I do more than so I design embellish.

I'm Mary Alice Dalton and I have been juried since 1980.

You know, I have very good handwork, that type of thing.

But everyone has a sewing machine in their house.

And so sometimes I feel like it's not taken that seriously, because when I did start, there were numerous dressmakers around, basically women who stayed home to take care of kids, but they would do sewing on the side.

And I have seen as the kids have aged and the kids are going to college, there aren't any women around anymore who do this kind of work.

You.

I'm working with all cottons now, and after working for 20 years in women's clothing where you're working with silks and they're all the fabric talks to me, which sounds kind of silly, doesn't it?

But certain fabrics will work in certain designs, and the designs just come from my head.

Basically, I have pride in what I do, and I know I'm excellent at what I do.

Since the days of the local craft groups, the league shops around the state have evolved.

Now called retail galleries, the shops continue to sell juried work and provide craft education.

The educational programs that they offer have been the greatest draw for people.

And then, of course, the quality of the craftsmanship and the quality of material that's in the shops makes a big difference.

Let's see what you got.

I can bring it here and then I can bring it down to Concord or Sandwich or any of the other shops.

And because I'm state juried, they will take it and it sells.

The new work is selling very well.

People are interested in the new place.

It's fresh, it's different.

I was just amazed at what the league did for me, as far as me being able to make a living in New Hampshire, I started putting my work out in all of their galleries in it.

It just it really took off for me.

It was a very all the gallery owners loved me because I was helping them pay their bills, and they were really helping me pay my bills and stuff, so everything really clicked with me in the league along the way.

Teaching crafts to all age groups remains a core function of the retail galleries around the the right community.

Can you do that with this hand in hand over, we have a fabulous education program.

We have a five year studio.

We have a clay studio and a jewelry studio.

So the intent in Hanover really is to get people into the franchise by learning how to do these things, and that they can then appreciate what the craftspeople are doing.

I'm passionate about education, teaching the next generation, mentoring, apprenticing with, with the next generation, having them come in.

And that's sort of an old world way.

And teaching in a contemporary way is extremely important.

And we have one youngster whose parent recently commented to me, she the youngsters taking classes here for a while, kids clay classes here for a while.

And she commented to her mother that she only wanted handmade mugs in their house, which, you know, there's an appreciation of the handmade objects.

In Exeter, Potter Kit Cornell did so well in her gallery clay classes that the league helped her purchase a kiln for her studio, so there's a bowl.

Hopefully it will survive all of the processes that are yet to come.

Known for her beautiful and functional, where kid is celebrated as a teacher and an advocate for craft education in the schools.

Education to me is is absolutely crucial.

I want there to be a next generation of potters to see young person really connect with the process of working with clay is is inspiring to me as as an artist and as a crafts person.

And I encourage them in every way I can and try to help them create opportunities for themselves that will allow them in what is a much more difficult environment now, to be a professional craftsperson.

In the tradition of early league potters, Kit takes her students outside to find Clay in the community.

We found a place where a retirement home is being built and we went to the job, supervisor and asked him if we could have some of the the clay, and he said, please take it all.

This Exeter clay is extremely fine grained.

You can work with it.

You can have it for no charge whatsoever.

Children have the experience of finding it themselves and knowing that it's a connection for them.

With their earth.

This is my kiln yard.

I work in schools that don't have kilns, so I either help them set up a kiln in a program, or I've fired work in my own kiln just as a way of getting them started and connected to the importance of of having clay and in school curriculums.

The League supports groups organized by particular crafts like the guilds of old.

These artisans host their own events for educational or marketing purposes, combined with slacks with an elasticized waist and 100% cotton 5500.

I start the bidding at $4,000, and this is the last furniture object.

So for each fall in Portsmouth, the New Hampshire Furniture.

Masters auction attracts a standing room crowd of serious collectors.

I have this is where the rubber hits the road for us furniture makers.

I'll find out at the end of the night if I've made any money or not.

To the lady at 9500.

Going once, going twice.

Sold for 9500 to the lady.

Thank you.

They are masters of what they do.

They are absolute masters.

And, these are pieces that you can live with.

And people are actually that I know are actually building collections of furniture made by these craftsmen.

They're making a point of buying one piece by each, each each craftsman.

They might get a set of chairs from one craftsman, a table from another.

Look at the quality of this.

This drawer right here.

Just right.

So smoothly.

It's as good as any 18th century piece that I look at on the Antiques Roadshow or on any and any of the PBS programs.

Hey, Parker.

How's it going?

Good.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming to my open house.

Sure.

So what's new?

Collectors play a vital role in every craftsman's career, regardless of the medium.

Do you see my new print?

I haven't yet, it's, just finished.

Valley Light.

It's looking at Mount Washington in a veil.

Parker Potter found his passion collecting prints by league juried printmakers such as Bill Mitchell.

The best advice to starting a collection is to take advantage of something like the craftsman's Fair, where you can meet the people who make the things that you are interested in.

Because the best part of a collection is having the story behind the objects.

The great thing about the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen is that the jury system guarantees you don't have to think a bit about the quality of the piece you're looking at.

The jurors have taken care of all of that, all you need to do is look with your eyes and feel with your heart.

And if you love it, you should buy it.

I'm very much fed by the reactio when I see them touching the pieces and looking at the pieces.

And you can kind of read the whole story right in, in their expression and, and, particularly when they come up to you and say, we would like to own this.

The league began its fall open Studio tour weekend so that the general public could meet the craftsmen at work all around the state.

Good morning.

My name is Jane Belshaw and I'm a textile artist.

My medium is fabric.

I paint on fabric and stitch it into various decorative items.

And welcome to my studio.

What I love about working with fabric is it's soft, it's pliable, and it allows me to treat it like a canvas.

So to speak.

And then I get to embellish it further with stitching and sewing.

So it becomes almost three dimensional in that way.

And there's something very home and hearth about fabric.

I just love it for that reason.

I do know a couple of people that were strong in the crafts field and the state of California.

Is that oh, good for you.

You're moving to New Hampshire.

The league is there.

I knew New Hampshire had this craft history, but it was just amazing.

And what I find is that the general public really honors the field of craft.

And the crafts person, unlike I've experienced in other states.

This is a tote.

It's from the Canterbury chip carry, a design that they made for collecting their widgets.

It has a steam, that retro candle, perfectly straight gray red oak and that a band for a demo.

And and I do this dovetailing for a demo.

Okay, that's really all it needs.

They're a little pop right out there.

Moment of truth.

Here you can see how snugly that pulls in.

That's the way it's supposed to go.

And this one here happens to be birdseye maple.

I do them almost all in cherry.

I just go and just take like whole truckloads of cherry.

So I just take everything like the sawmill has, and then I just process it and it tells me what it wants to be.

You know, I just pull out a pile of it and go through and sort it, and I pull out all the pieces I want to be coat racks and then all the pieces that, you know, want to be totes and trays and, pieces that want to be turned.

And hopefully I get to turn in plates and bowls and the pieces that want to be, tables and hope I'll get to doing tables.

I have to produce.

I have to come out and make something every day, because that's what I've done all my life.

I've been making baskets, actually, most of my life.

My name is Sharon Duggan, and I make black ash swamp baskets.

In the early 80s, I discovered a shaker basket at an art show and I decided this is what I wanted to do with my life.

And I've been working in ash now for, gosh, 21 years.

The ash baskets start with the black ash law, and the whole length of the log is repeatedly pounded until you crush the early spring growth between the layers and you can peel those layers off the tree so you end up with these long strips of splint, and they are in turn peeled one or more times, which gets the splinters satiny finish, and I sand the backs of the splint off.

And depending on the thickness, the width, the quality of the splint, I slice it overnight down to a 64th of an inch.

After that, the base of the basket is pinned onto molds, and I weave the body of the basket from there, which is what I'm doing here.

I've learned so much trying to transcend the material into just something that speaks to people.

That's something they can feel.

By demonstration is going to be basically around how we make this little leaf earring.

My name is Tom Huebner and I'm a juried craftsman.

In jewelry.

I picked the leaf.

And because, like many artists, were very inspired by nature and natural forms that occur in nature, this hammer is just going to put some veins in the leaves more or less.

See?

It comes in 20 gauge wire, which is a little thinner.

It's better, you know, easier to go through.

And again, you know, I had gone to graduate school in educational television when I was young and sort of searching for an occupation.

I've been doing this for about 30 years.

Of course, the internet is the newest way for league members to maintain contact with their market, whether nearby or around the world.

I have a very extensive website that I put together myself.

I learned how to build a website, and it's not a shopping cart type of website, but it's an education and all that website and lots of information about how I make things.

And I just this winter I did a blog.

It's a way of of really sharing what it's like to be a craftsperson.

As the snowy slopes of Mount Sinai be return to summer green, the League of New Hampshire.

Craftsman's Year comes full circle.

Soon the parking lots will fill up.

And Gordon Keillor will sound the horn to open another session of the annual League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.

Visitors will again delight in the beautiful displays of fine craftwork, and the craftsmen will delight in displaying.

And in 75 years of tradition, of which they are today's proud representatives, we've enlightened a great public.

We've invited them to the the beauty and functionality of crafts.

And I think New Hampshire has been generally large, and it was a guiding force behind this.

The presence of art or craft in our lives is so important, both personally and culturally.

That kind of presence needs and the infrastructure here locally, regionally, nationally, internationally.

So organizations like the league really plays a very significant role in the presence of art in our lives.

Why that has done for me is given me a cadre of people that I just love and adore.

They're they're very, very special people down in front of me.

There have been people before, all of us who have really helped to, to make this organization as strong as it is today.

But I see the future as exciting to me.

It's education.

It's all about not only continuing to educate the crafts person and bringing in additional people to this, to this world of craft as a lifestyle, but also of the public, and letting them slow down a little bit, understand the beauty and the significance of owning a piece of fine handcraft, and to have them be in your home.

And you can look at that on your table and say, I know who that is, and I appreciate all the work that went into that piece.

And oh, look at the beauty it brings to my home.

That's that's grand.

It's grand.