In Good Hands

The Canadian Handicrafts Guild broadened the definition of art and the artist in Canada. Linking decorative arts with home arts and handicrafts, the Guild consistently showed them together at annual exhibitions at the art gallery in Montreal and formed a permanent collection documenting old and contemporary crafts. The Guild women combined creativity and philanthropy, voluntarism and an entrepreneurial spirit, education and concern with quality, in a movement that provided income and recognition to craftspeople and a craft legacy to Canada. In Good Hands is alive with the interplay between art and social history, and the issues this dialogue raised at the time and those we bring to it now constantly overlap. It deals with noblesse oblige and the era's patronizing attitude to cultural difference, but shows how the Guild consciously fostered an inclusive national feeling by exhibiting and selling crafts of all Canadians on an equal footing. It also draws a much broader perspective of women's roles in shaping our culture than has been the norm in Canadian art history.

Ellen Easton McLeod has her MA in Canadian Art History from Carleton University. She lives in Ottawa.