Byrdcliffe - by Nancy E Green (Hardcover)

About the Book

This book is the story of the first years of the Catskills Arts and Crafts colony, the artists who visited, and the artistic community they fostered.

Book Synopsis

Byrdcliffe was, and remains, a place of haunting beauty. More than a century ago, it was established as an Arts and Crafts colony in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. Craftsmen, writers, and musicians came, lured by the atmosphere of creativity amid like-minded people. Furniture, pottery, paintings, metalwork, and textiles were all made there, and the people themselves became an interwoven part of the fabric of the place. This book is the story of the first years of the colony, the artists who visited, and the artistic community they fostered.

Illustrated with 200 images and featuring essays by noted scholars in the fields of American art history and the Arts and Crafts movement, this book traces the origins of Byrdcliffe as nothing less than the cultural nucleus of one of America's most legendary small towns. Edited by curator Nancy E. Green, this catalog accompanied a 2004 exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Review Quotes

Furniture, metalwork, paintings, photographs, pottery, textiles, and works on paper are illustrated in this book. Seven essays tell of the people and products of this Woodstock colony founded by British-born Ralph Whitehead and American Jane McCall in 1903, and dedicated to the ideal of a simple creative life in a healthful, beautiful setting.

Woodstock generally conjures up thoughts of the famed rock festival of 1969, but the first generation of artists came to Woodstock in 1903 when the Byrdcliffe Arts colony opened to become a utopian setting for artistic creativity and an important center for the Arts and Crafts movement in the United States.

About the Author

Nancy E. Green is The Gale and Ira Drukier Curator of European and American Art, Prints & Drawings, 1800-1945 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, where she has curated many exhibitions and written extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century fine and decorative art. She is the coauthor of Arthur Wesley Dow and American Arts and Crafts.