Recently, the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft generously donated their library materials to the American Craft Council Library. The boxes were treasure chests to open - full of books, exhibition catalogs, and magazines. Here are a few of our favorites.

Cutting the Mustard is the autobiography of Miles Burkholder Carpenter, a folk artist from Virginia. He started carving small animals and figures in the 1940s, progressing to carving sculptures in the late 1960s. The art world discovered Carpenter in 1972, when he was 82 years old. To see some of his work, see the works owned by the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

American Contemporary Furniture is a beautifully and creatively photographed book with regional divisions of furniture makers.

The Unicorn Tapestries is published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, richly illustrated and scholarly, and enjoyable to the layperson. The imagery in the tapestries is both secular and religious, and this book explores it all.

Revivals! Diverse Traditions is subtitled The History of Twentieth Century American Craft, 1920-1945. It covers a wide range of craft traditions: African-American, Appalachian, Hispanic, and Native American. This time period was a juxtaposition of poverty and the American Dream - Native American reservation art to fine silver objects.

In 1974, 10 local artisans, including Warren MacKenzie, Peter Leach, and Judy Onofrio, founded the Minnesota Craft Council, which lasted for 33 years. The final treasure from the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft is the first two issues of The Craft Connection, which was a quarterly publication started in 1975. “Farmart is fineart” indeed!

A weekly shout out to the printed word, From the Stacks highlights what's new and what's loved in the American Craft Council Library.