Reading Craft: “Pitchers of American Life,” an online discussion with author Ezra Shales
The Craft in America Center is pleased to present an interactive online discussion with distinguished Professor Ezra Shales on his new book Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach (2026). The book is available for purchase directly from Bloomsbury or your preferred bookseller.
Shales’ vision of design/craft/art intersecting provides a deliberately provocative strategy to move beyond inherited limitations and prejudices by exploring tactile pleasures and tacit knowledge, as well as the agency of artifacts. This presentation asks if a history of art extracted from our common cupboards might be liberating as it departs from the usual hierarchies of civilization, and digitized images of artifacts far away. How can we make the experience of art/craft/design more accessible and relevant?
To participate in the Zoom discussion, please register.
About the author
Professor in the History of Art department at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Ezra Shales, Ph.D., is the author of The Shape of Craft (Reaktion, 2017) and Made in Newark: Cultivating Industrial Arts and Civic Identity in the Progressive Era (Rutgers University Press, 2010), his dissertation revised for publication. He has written numerous articles and contributed to exhibition catalogs for artists Polly Apfelbaum, Neil Brownsword, Kim Dickey, Shari Mendelson, and Dan Walsh and published in the Journal of Modern Craft and Journal of Design History. He learned more about art while working in New York City’s flea markets, as a museum preparator/art handler, and as a gallery docent for elementary school students at The Brooklyn Museum, than in classrooms.
About the book
Pitchers of American Life: Art Within Reach (Bloomsbury 2026) discusses vessels preserved from ancient indigenous American cultures, those caught in the spiderwebs of antique shops, and common tools used for drinks lurking in modern kitchens. Each chapter interprets a single object as a revealing time capsule, a collective relic that, if regarded closely and with compassion, still resonates with our yearnings for sociability and communion.
