A Fine Line: Studio Crafts in Ontario from 1930 to the Present

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian Studies at
Concordia University and an avid outdoor recreationist. She is also the
author of The Mountain Is Moving: Japanese Women’s Lives, Kurlek, and
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Hom

A Fine Line offers a comprehensive and well-illustrated study that
places individual fine craft designers and makers in the context of the
craft movement in Ontario over the past seven decades. Patron and
activist Joan Chalmers calls it “the Bible of our past and present
makers of beautiful things.”

The book begins with a glossary of some 40 organizations active in the
field, perhaps the best known of which is the Canadian Guild of Crafts
(CGC, Ontario). The author proceeds to a detailed chronology of major
events in Ontario’s craft development from 1931 to 1998. Her preface
and the first chapter, “Defining Matters,” set the stage for the
main text: four long chapters that each cover 15 or more years.

Crawford defines her chosen field as follows: “The task of a
chronicler involves pinpointing definitive moments; probing the
evolution of attitudes and ideologies; looking at significant work,
exhibitions, markets and education; analyzing the genesis of craft
service organizations; and exploring the web of relationships between
makers, patrons, consumers, and governments, all the while looking for
triggers and asking why events unfolded as they did.” No easy task.

Crawford’s extensive endnote references, a study in themselves, are
particularly useful. A section titled “Movers and Shakers” provides
brief biographies of some 40 major figures in this broad and varied
field. Both color and black-and-white photographs are included; the
volcanic layering in a bowl by Daniel Crichton and the multiple reds in
an ox-blood-stoppered porcelain vase by Harlan House are among the many
images that reflect the rich possibilities of color and texture.

Crawford came to Toronto from Nova Scotia and has worked for the CBC
and the BBC. While working for the Ontario Crafts Council, she traveled
widely to record the voices of Ontario’s craftspeople. A Fine Line,
her first book, is thorough and insightful.