Tourists and Trade

Additional Book Details

<p>How two roadside craft shops in upstate New York transformed American crafts into a fine art.</p><p>Finalist for the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Regional category </p><p>Amid the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, in 1929, Clarence Wemett, an upstate New York petroleum merchant, underwrote a craft shop bordering U.S. Route 20 and, a few years later, a different one 15 miles away. At precisely the wrong time for such things to happen, the improbable idea of selling discretionary goods targeted to a consumer market characterized by 25 percent unemployment at a rural highway's roadside achieved traction: the first shop was in business for a quarter century, the second for nearly 40 years. More significant than their surprising longevity is the shops' long-lasting contribution to a nascent, national movement that spans crafts personally created for individual use to the commercial work that sees craft elevated to a fine art-craft objects moved from pantry shelves to museum vitrines and craftworkers from hobbyists to professionals. The roadside shops introduced a business model that, 70 years later, is widely experienced on a very different but equally "super" highway, the Internet, and their story is a chapter in the pre-history of the modern crafts movement.</p>