Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture ed. by Andrew Kelly (review)

From the foreword’s reminiscences by collector Allan Weiss to the biographical appendixes, Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture exudes a warm affection for the arts and material culture of the Bluegrass State. The elegantly designed publication includes a catalog of fifty artistic and utilitarian objects made or used in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Kentucky and three essays that offer thoughtful analysis of the works of art. It is clear that this project was born out of the contributors’ passion for a unique geographical area, its people, and their artistic identity, but through clever analysis and the layered contextualization, Kentucky by Design rises to be far more than a survey of craft history.

For the beautifully photographed catalog entries themselves, contributors discuss how given objects held meaning within Kentucky’s historical cultural communities. Authors explore craft, design, material, use, and sometimes provenance for objects including Shaker baskets, Appalachian dulcimers, and an Empire sewing table from the family of Kentucky’s U.S. senator John Brown. At first perusal, the catalog selection seems broad-ranging but perhaps limited in creativity, as it closely adheres to those beloved antiques (coverlets, food safes) that have been consistently celebrated through the twentieth century for their significance in Kentucky. However, it is this very criterion for the selection of objects that elevates Kentucky by Design to its higher scholarly contribution.

More than a survey of Kentucky craft, Kentucky by Design offers the first comprehensive examination of the specific objects from the Bluegrass State included in the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Index of American Design. As adeptly described in both Madeleine Burnside’s introduction and Erika Doss’s essay “Regional Reputations, Modern Tastes, and Cultural Nationalism: Kentucky and the Index of American Design, 1936-1942,” the WPA Index was a New Deal program with the aim to “search for an authentic American style in everyday objects” (p. 1). Regional artworks were locally identified through museums, historical societies, and historians before a Washington, D.C., office coordinated what would be included in the pictorial archive. The WPA engaged unemployed artists to record the color, texture, and form of these American selections, resulting in the Index’s more than 18,000 watercolor drawings today held in the National Gallery of Art. Kentucky by Design pairs these watercolors alongside contemporary photographs in its catalog, clearly showing how these superb WPA artists elevated their task beyond rendering a three-dimensional object on a flat plane. A highlight of this publication, the vivid images show the sensitivity, depth, and emotion of true artwork.

Kentucky by Design successfully serves two purposes. The catalog delivers an overview of celebrated nineteenth-century craft traditions, with rich descriptions of patch quilts, Kentucky salt-glaze stoneware pottery, and a circa 1814 cabinet attributed to Abraham Lincoln’s father. Equally successful and perhaps more notable for the advancement of artistic discourse, the essays elevate this project by bringing antiques into a thoughtful study of twentieth-century modernism. Kentucky by Design does more than admire charming artifacts for charm’s sake, or even for just their own original craft and historical value. The publication makes a thoughtful and perhaps surprising connection between these historic antiques and their widespread inspiration to 1930s modernists in search of a new national modern art style.

A study of this book is certain to be completed with a visit to the companion exhibition of the same name, which will gather loans of many of the catalog’s objects, the wonderful watercolor renderings from the Index of American Design, and a variety of interpretive materials together at the Frazier History Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, August 4, 2016, to February 12, 2017.