Tradition builds the future out of the past. Craft shapes nature into culture. Traditional crafts record the twisted flow of time and the continual alteration of the physical world.

Traditional crafts depend entirely upon individuals who answer a personal call to creativity while serving society through the reconstruction of the environment. At work in a web of connection, the creator of craft is surrounded by problems. The young potter who has lost direct contact with the old practitioners of his trade and must push on unguided by deep knowledge, the woodworker whose local market has died and who must learn to respond to whimsical new ...