Full text of "Anneberg Gallery, 1966-1981, and craft and folk art in the San Francisco Bay Area : oral history transcript / 1998"

University of California Berkeley

Regional Oral History Office University of California

The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California

California Craft Artists Oral History Series

Margery Anneberg

ANNEBERG GALLERY, 1966-1981, AND CRAFT AND FOLK ART
IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA

With Introductions by
Jack Lenor Larsen

and
June Schwarcz

Interviews Conducted by

Suzanne B. Riess

in 1995

Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading
participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of
Northern California, the West, and the Nation. Oral history is a method of
collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a
narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-
informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the
historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for
continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected
manuscript is indexed, bound with photographs and illustrative materials, and
placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in
other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material,
oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete
narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in
response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved,
and irreplaceable.

************************************

All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement
between The Regents of the University of California and Margery
Anneberg dated March 20, 1995. The manuscript is thereby made
available for research purposes. All literary rights in the
manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The
Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. No part
of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written
permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University
of California, Berkeley.

Requests for permission to quote for publication should be
addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library,
University of California, Berkeley 94720, and should include
identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated
use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal
agreement with Margery Anneberg requires that she be notified of the
request and allowed thirty days in which to respond.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Margery Anneberg, "Anneberg Gallery, 1966-
1981, and Craft and Folk Art in the San
Francisco Bay Area," an oral history
conducted in 1995 by Suzanne B. Riess,
Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft
Library, University of California,
Berkeley, 1998.

Copy no.

Margery Anneberg, 1997,

Cataloging information

ANNEBERG, Margery (b. 1921) Jeweler, gallery owner

Anneberg Gallery, 1966-1981, and Craft and Folk Art in the San Francisco
Bay Area, 1998, viii, 368 pp.

Seattle background and family; studying jewelry-making, NYC, 1945; Far
Eastern studies, University of Washington, 1946-1957; move to Berkeley and
UC Berkeley library job; contact with northern California designer
craftsmen; establishing home, studio, and gallery on Hyde Street, San
Francisco, 1964; discussion of Anneberg Gallery exhibitions, 1966-1981:
impact of Coptic textiles, announcements and installations, curatorial
scholarship, critical reviews and publicity, mixing contemporary craft and
folk arts, sources and collectors, gallery economics, issue of
authentication; American Craft Council, other San Francisco galleries,
museums; closing Anneberg Gallery and instituting the Center for Folk Art
and Contemporary Crafts; role in beginning of San Francisco Craft and Folk
Art Museum, 1983-1986: board and advisory group, curatorial work, A Report,
exhibitions, catalogues.

Introductions by Jack Lenor Larsen, Larsen Design Studio, New York
City; and June Schwarcz, enamelist, Sausalito.

Interviewed 1995 by Suzanne B. Riess for the California Craft Artists
Series .

TABLE OF CONTENTS --Margery Anneberg

INTRODUCTION- -by Jack Lenor Larsen i

INTRODUCTION- -by June Schwarcz ii

INTERVIEW HISTORY- -by Suzanne B. Riess iv

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION vii

I EARLY HISTORY 1
Family Background 1
Seattle, the City and the Art Environment 7
1945: A Year in New York, and a Class in Jewelry-Making 12
1946: Return to University of Washington, Far Eastern Studies 16
Houseboat Life 21
1957: Entering Competitions, and the Influence of the Henry Art

Gallery 24

Seattle Area Artists and Art Galleries 28

And Some Comparisons with San Francisco 32

II MOVE TO THE BAY AREA 35
Publicity and Exhibitions at the UC Berkeley Library 35
Designer Craftsmen of Northern California, and Issues of

Definition 36
Design Department at UC Berkeley; Richmond Art Center; Pond Farm 41

Jewelry-Making Techniques, and Making a Living 43

1964: Finding a Home and a Neighborhood on Hyde Street 51

III ANNEBERG GALLERY OPENS 55
1966: Coptic Textiles Exhibition with Gordon Holler 55
A Real Gallery, and the First Glass Show on the Pacific Coast 60
More on Coptic Textiles, and the Issue of Scholarship 62
Innocent Beginnings: Announcements, Pricing 68
Critical Reviews, or Lack Thereof 71
Installing the Shows, and Tending the Gallery 75
The Collector Shows: Carolyn West's Guatemalan Textiles 77
The Idea of Showing both Contemporary Crafts and Folk Art 79
Dealing with Physical and Financial Limitations 83
Carl Jennings, Forged Iron 87
More on Guatemalan Indian Textiles Collected by Caroline West 87
Openings, and Building a Collector List 88
December 1969: A Great Port of Entry, and a Show of

Indian Embroidery 91

February-March 1968: Islamic Textile Fragments 95

Contemporary Crafts: Barbara Shawcroft, Lillian Elliott, Others 97

Expertise, and Taste 100

More on Collecting in Guatemala 104

The Child Weavers of the Atelier of Ramses Wissa-Wassef 107

The Benefit of an Exhibition for an Artist 112

May 1969: Nik Krevitsky's Stitchery 114

IV GALLERY CONCERNS AND EXHIBITIONS, 1969-1974 -16
Anneberg Begins Her Slide Record

Summer 1969: Textile Shows; Elaine Henning's Woven Kinetic Forms 118
Mexican Folk Art, and Shipping and Packing Problems

A Logo Evolves from Harry Murphy's Announcements 122

December 1969-March 1970: Cloth of India; Yolanda Woo; Carole

Small 12A

April 1970: Dominic Di Mare and June Schwarcz

June 1970: Nomadic Rug Weaving and Jewelry, and Selling Jewelry 127
September 1970-April 1971: Fiesta Mexicana; Hal Painter; John

Lewis; Diana Chrestien; Paula Bartron

May 1971: Kay Sekimachi 129

June 1971-October 1971: Indian Arts of Peru; Pat Scarlett;

Barbara Kasten; Traditions in Japanese Folk Art; Bedouin

Textiles and Jewelry from Tunisia
Packing and Shipping, and Mexican Folk Art, 1971

January 1972: Andree Thompson 135

March 1972- June 1972: Textile Fragments from Egypt; Arts of

Indonesia; Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand; Thai Silk 136
July 1972: Wissa-Wassef Workshop 139

August 1972-September 1972: Lillian Elliott; Ed Rossbach 140
October 1972: Four Different Things, A Discussion of Integrity

of the Gallery, and Grace Earl 141

January 1973: Dominic Di Mare in a Different Direction 145

February 1973-April 1973: Ron Wigginton; African Folk Crafts;

Fiber Forms 147

Insights into Economics, Tourists, Spending Patterns, and

Appreciation of Craft Art 148

May 1973- June 1973: Katherine Westphal; Hugh Aanonsen 156

September 1973-October 1973: Silk Road; Threads of India;

Thoughts on How Collectors Collect 157

November 1973: Tin Can Craftsmen of Mexico 160

January 1974-May 1974: Lynn Mauser; Young Weavers of San Isidro;

Contemporary Southwest Indian Crafts; Andree Thompson;

Traditional Crafts of Botswana 161

V EVOLUTION OF THE GALLERY, 1974-1979 165
Network to de Young and Mexican Museums 165
Craft Artists and Gallery Exclusive Ambivalence 167
June 1974-October 1974: Pat Scarlett; Trude Germonprez; June

Schwarcz; Curtis Photographs 168

More on Economics and Pricing of Folk Art 170

February 1975-May 1975: Ann Christenson; Lillian Elliott; Jan

Wagstaff; K. Lee Manuel 173

June 1975: Kurdish Wedding Carpets 175

July 1975-November 1975: Guatemalan Weaving; Susan Green and

Barbara Comstock; Indonesian Ikats and Baskets from East of

Java; Dominic Di Mare; Horvath Costumes and Folk Textiles 176

February 1976-May 1976: Susan Wick; Javanese Batik; Carole

Beadle and Gayle Luchessa; Eileen Gilbert Hill 179

Mailing Lists and Bulk Mail 182

June 1976: Tibetan Art and Artifacts, Collected by Moke Mokotoff 183
July 1976: Diana Leon, and a Discussion of Usable Ceramic Forms 183
August 1976-November 1976: Contemporary Bobbin Lace; Zapotec

Rugs; Philippine and Indonesian Baskets, and Abaca Ikats 186
October 1976: The Handmade Papers of Eishiro Abe 188

Collecting in Mexico for the 1975 Christmas Show 190

January 1977: Tibetan Artifacts 192

March 1977: Mats from Borneo 194

April 1977: Traditional Weaving of West Africa 196

May 1977- July 1977: African and New Guinea Sculpture, Uzbek and
Afghan Textiles; Ikats and Batiks from Indonesia; Art of the
Upper Amazon 198

September 1977: Mexican Dance Masks, Ceremonial and Not 200

October 1977-December 1977: Ann Christenson; Chaika Marbled
Paper; Mexican Ex-Voto Folk Painting and Milagros; African,
Chinese, and European Beadwork; Folk Arts of Mexico 202

February 1978: Ceremonial Ikat Weavings and Artifacts from
Borneo, and Reflections on What Anneberg Would and Would Not
Show in the Gallery 204

March 1978- January 1979: Votive Arts of Mexico; Serapes and

Blankets from Northern and Central Mexico; Indonesian Textiles,
Carved Wooden Puppets from Java; More Mexican Dance Masks;
Textiles and Figures of Asia, Africa, and the Americas; Shipibo
Pottery; West African Textiles from Ghana and Upper Volta;
Madhubani Folk Paintings; Candelario Medrano, Mexican Folk
Artist; Antique Japanese Baskets, Kasuri and Stencilled
Textiles 206

February 1979: Borneo Baskets, and a Discussion of Baskets 211
March 1979-April 1979: Tibetan and Mongolian Treasures; Images
of Traditional China, and Discussion of Care and Handling of
Works on Paper 212

May 1979: Korean Folk Arts 214

Decline in Number of Contemporary Craft Artist Shows at the

Gallery 216

June 1979-September 1979: Central Asian Silks; Wissa-Wassef

Workshop; Philippine Baskets 217

VI CHANGES IN FOLK ART COLLECTING AND CONTEMPORARY CRAFT

EXHIBITING 219

Anneberg Gallery Artists Represented in American Craft Council 219
September 1979: Philippine Baskets, and Discovering a New

Collector 221

November 1979-February 1980: Art of West Central Africa; Mexican
Folk Art, Old Tools and Household Implements; Indonesian
Textiles; Beadwork Embroideries and Patchwork from India 224
March 1980: Another Discussion of Mexican Masks 228

April 1980: Quezada Family Potters, Contemporary Casas Grandes 229

May 1980-September 1980: Leo Brereton, and Dance Masks of Java,
Bali, and Madura; Dorothe Gould-Pratt and Turkish Textiles;
Olive Wong, and Weaving and Dyeing of Sierra Leone, and
Developing a Business; Japanese Silk Kimonos, and the Kimono

Market 231

November 1980-March 1981: Dolls from Fifty-Six Countries;
Philippine Baskets; Silk Road Treasures from Afghanistan;
Kilims and Decorated Textiles and Jewelry; Japanese Kimonos

and Haoris 238

April 1981- July 1981: Final Discussion of Mexican Ceremonial
Masks; and Final Show, July 1981, of Folk Arts and Crafts of

Madagascar 242

The Difficult Decision to Close the Gallery 243

VII CREATING THE CENTER FOR FOLK ART AND CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS 247
Summing Up the Development and Demise of the Gallery 247
Anneberg Honored by the American Crafts Council 250
A Tough World for Craft Artists and Gallery Owners 251
The Idea Behind the Gallery, and the Hopes for a Museum 253
Anneberg and Mari Lyn Salvador Get Together 254
Continuing Difficulty Defining Folk Art 255
1972: The Center Exists Legally and Publishes a Newsletter 256
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and a Wish List for a Crafts

Museum 259

Funding and Designing A Report 261
Philosophy in Linking Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts, with

Examples 263

The Magical in Jewelry-Making, and Figuring out Granulation 265

Mastery of Technique Marks Contemporary Crafts Art 268

A Board for the Center 270

An Exhibition at UC Berkeley's Lowie Museum 272

Naming the Center, and the Museum 273

More on A Report 275
California Craft Museum, from Peninsula Stitchery Beginning to

Location at Ghirardelli Square 279

A Meeting of Interests Results in a Museum on Balboa Street 281

VIII SAN FRANCISCO CRAFT AND FOLK ART MUSEUM, 1983-1986 285
Curator's Job 285
Shows: Opening, Reviewed by Albright 287
Thoughts on Staffing with Volunteer Help 289
Shows: Boats, Trains, Cars, and Planes 291
Shows: Schwarcz; Shawcroft; Elliott; Christenson; Mexican Masks;

Arts of Luzon 292

Newsletter Design and Mailing 294
Shows: Haitian Vodou and Architectural Glass; John Turner

Curates Southern Black Visionaries; Textiles of Old Japan 295

Things for Sale, and Catalogues 297

The Early Board, and the Advisory Group 298

Developing the Library 301
Shows: Max Pollak's Collection; Day of the Dead Altars; Little

Black Dresses 303

And More on A Report 307

Summing Up, and Leaving 310

TAPE GUIDE 314

APPENDIX

A. Anneberg Gallery Exhibition List 316

B. Nine Decades: The Northern California Craft Movement. 1907
to the Present, the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art

Museum, 1993 324

C. "San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, A Fact Sheet" 356

INDEX OF ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS 357

INDEX 364

INTRODUCTION by Jack Lenor Larsen

My first memory of Margery Anneberg was indeed in Seattle where
she and Tex Bailey (later Imogen) shared a houseboat on Lake Union, not
far from the University of Washington campus. These ladies had a
reputation of being a little older than we students, of having been
"away," and more cosmopolitan than we. We assumed they had a rather
wild life, but I doubt it. Their parties that I attended were great
fun, but in no way naughty.

From the early fifties on, I was on the West Coast at least once
or twice a year, with more leisure than I have had since. Usually these
trips combined an exhibition of my work someplace, a lecture someplace
else, and visits to our clients and showrooms. I had time to keep up
with friends, Peter Voulkos, Ed Rossbach, and others. There were
exhibitions in those days at the City of Paris, sometimes something of
special interest in a San Francisco museum and, usually, I took time to
go out and see what Margery was doing in her Hyde Street gallery. This
was a very special place an art center perhaps, more than an art
gallerya wonderful admixture of what local people were doing. I do
remember shows of Sekimachi, Westphal, Dominic Di Mare, and Trude
Guermonprez. But there were also ethnographic exhibits which I bought
from. And often interesting small bits, such as the first glass from
Pilchuck and, therefore, a barometer of what was going on.

Margery's interests were large and expansive. Nothing that
interested her seemed not to come into the gallery, and be shared with a
circle of friends. When I recommended Margery to become an Honorary
Fellow of the American Craft Council, I believe my word was "catalyst,"
for she was just that. She brought together ideas, skills, crafts from
around the world, and people. We still need more that can do that more
galleries, more catalysts. And, perhaps, in a way that's somewhat what
I'm trying to do at LongHouse Foundation.

An amusing anecdote was my being in a cab going to North Beach
when I realized I needed to find a men's room fairly soon. Thereupon I
looked out the window to see Margery's gallery, paid off the driver, and
popped in with "Margery, where's the loo?" She looked puzzled, thought
for a moment, then brightened with a response: "Jack, I'm sorry, but I
sold it!" This puzzled me too, until I realized she hadn't' quite
understood my question. It turned out it was the loom she had sold, and
soon all was well.

Jack Lenor Larsen
Larsen Design Studio

June 1997
New York

INTRODUCTION by June Schwarcz

The crafts have always been in limbo. We have had endless
arguments about the definition of "craft." Nevertheless there is a body
of work that has involved the use of materials and techniques not
considered appropriate for the fine arts. These involved fabric and
clay and metal and such techniques as weaving and metal smithing, etc.
There was new and creative work done in the crafts but it received
little or no exposure and certainly little respect.

Many of us who love the best of crafts also love the ethnic arts.
We knew that the vitality of these arts would disappear as western
culture, modern communication, and the effects of the machine age would
alter the influences upon these cultures. Perhaps we share a love of
objects.

Annie opened her gallery to grant an audience for these kinds of
art. There was no other gallery that showed this combination in
northern California at this time.

Although she had very little money, she was determined that
everything would meet her very high standards. High standards in a new
aesthetic form do not necessarily result in a lot of sales, but she had
a wonderful eye and discovered a lot of new talent. She showed the work
of those who expanded the potentialities of materials and techniques to
express personal aesthetics. There were many craftsmen who had their
first exhibition in her gallery, who later became recognized as being
among the top craftsmen in the United States.

Her gallery showed wonderful ethnic arts, much of it no longer
available today, all of it having the vitality of the culture that
produced it. We all wished we could have bought more.

All the time she was photographing and documenting the folk art
she displayed, producing a valuable resource for research in folk art.
In time she was no longer able to continue with her gallery.

Gertie and Harold Parker were interested in starting a craft
museum. They had not had experience in this, but were willing to
provide financial aid. Margery Anneberg was the logical person with her
knowledge and experience to help them. She brought the concept of
combining craft and folk art. Margery had published "A Report" when she
had the gallery in the hope of generating support for the idea of a
craft and folk art museum. It was a publication containing information
about the work exhibited. This publication was continued by the museum.

iii

For those of us who are craftsmen, she gave us an audience. She
helped give the prestige the best of the work deserved. For those of us
who love folk art she brought us delight, stimulation, information, and
the opportunity to own some of the wonderful creations that bring the
spirits of other cultures into our lives.

She has enriched our lives in so many ways.

June Schwarcz
Enamelist

August 1997
Sausalito, California

INTERVIEW HISTORY- -Margery Anneberg

Margery Anneberg has been a central force in the development of
craft art in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in the recognition of folk
art's important kinship with craft art. Her gallery, the Anneberg
Gallery on Hyde Street in San Francisco, had a good long life in a
short-lived business, presenting fifteen years of changing exhibitions
from collectors and artists, spanning the 1966 opening show of Coptic
Textiles followed by Marvin Lipofsky's glass art, to the last artist
show, Ann Christenson 1 s porcelain art in 1977, and the last collector
show, Folk Arts and Crafts of Madagascar in 1981. These varied and
interestingly paced exhibitions constituted an enormous influence on
craft art in the Bay Area.

It is interesting to put the history of the Anneberg Gallery into
the larger context of the work of the Regional Oral History Office.
Since its early beginnings in the 1950s, the office has whenever
possible been documenting through tape-recorded memoirs the history of
all the arts in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among the earliest such
interviews was an interview with Grace McCann Morley, the founding
curator and director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. That
museum, and the San Francisco Art Institute, and the College of Arts and
Crafts in Oakland, all have rich histories that of course are also
linked to the artists and craftspeople of the area. We have been
piecing together the institutional histories as well as the individual
histories .

An important new picture in documenting the area's art history is
provided in this interview with Margery Anneberg. It can be said, as
the current director of the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum J.
Weldon Smith testifies, that Margery Anneberg really was the Founding
Curator of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. She transferred the strong
concept of her gallery into what was the predecessor of the Craft and
Folk Art Museum, and she brought to it the scholarly care and devotion
that she had brought to the gallery.

Margery's original academic interest was in Oriental Studies and
she was a graduate student at the University of Washington in the 1950s.
Ultimately deciding that there was not a promising future for her in
that field, she turned to the greater satisfactions of fine jewelry
making, which had already been an intense part of her life in Seattle,
and in the late fifties she decided to move to the San Francisco Bay
Area to pursue her craft and to support herself with a job in the
Library at the University of California in Berkeley. Several years
later, when Margery felt that the time had come to make another move,

she chose a location on Hyde Street in San Francisco where she could do
her jewelry, and open a gallery.

Regardless of the excitement of that fresh beginning, and the
challenging undertaking, Margery was realistic enough to recognize from
the start that running a gallery would be difficult financially. On the
one hand it was a unique place, but on the other hand, that didn't mean
that it filled a need; it took time for people to see the connections
and the beauty both of the craft art and the folk art--or ethnic art, as
June Schwarcz refers to it in the preceding introduction. In the
meantime, it was with a good deal of sacrifice on Margery's part that
the gallery was even self-supporting. And ultimately the challenge of
managing the symptoms of multiple sclerosis made the physical aspects of
running the gallery impossibly difficult.

Despite all, the gallery was completely satisfying to Margery
because of the artists. And it was the artists, interestingly enough,
for whom the gallery may have been most important. The collectors, both
nascent and knowing, and the Hyde Street and Fisherman's Wharf tourists
and shoppers, were of course pleasantly surprised by what they found in
the little store-front gallery, but for the artists, it was a hands-on
encounter with wonderful examples of basketry, weaving, carving,
rugmaking, and many other techniques from the arts of other cultures,
folk art, rarely accessible even in museums.

When Margery did close the gallery in 1981 she had already begun
planning for a Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts which she
dreamed of as having a library, and publications, and a museum, and a
defined scholarly commitment. She was introduced to Gertrud and Harold
Parker, a couple who shared Margery's enthusiasm for the craft arts, and
who had the financial ability to make a museum happen. Margery accepted
the position of first curatoras J. Weldon Smith says, "Founding
Curator"--of the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum in its initial
location on Balboa Street. Now established at its Fort Mason address
and offering a full range of exhibitions and programs, this museum is
included in any list of top museums of the Bay Area. 1

It should be noted that in its own way Margery's gallery, the
Anneberg Gallery, had been one of the top museums of the Bay Area, which
makes the fact that it was a one-woman effort even more remarkable. The
oral history, taped in two-hour sessions from February through June
1995, is a story told in detail of the exhibitions, the people, and
along the way the successes and the struggles of such an undertaking.
Margery was honored by the American Crafts Council for her work when, in

'Researchers will find at the Craft and Folk Art Museum a complete
archives, including newsletters, organizational records, and a set of A
Record, the publication Margery Anneberg refers to in the oral history.

1979, she was named an Honorary Fellow in recognition of her part in
what is acknowledged to have been "The Glory Years" 2 . Glory years they
may have been, but years of struggle, for galleries and for artists, as
the reader of the oral history will learn reading this memoir.

Margery Anneberg, still living in the apartment above what was the
Anneberg Gallery location, could not collect as much, perhaps, as she
would have wanted of the work of her artists. But the frontispiece
photograph of her in this volume also portrays a favorite work, one of
the carpets from the Atelier Ramses Wissa-Wassef . Out of sight of the
picture are ceramic pieces and other, some miniature, reminders of the
fine and beautiful things that came her way, and with luck passed into
the hands of collectors.

Margery's life, as the reader might suppose, certainly has become
harder as the multiple sclerosis has progressed. But as the reader will
also gather, Margery is, as the expression has it, fiercely independent.
She was eager to do the oral history, recognized the importance of what
she had achieved, and prepared well for the interviews. She also was a
very careful editor of the transcript. For instance, because oftentimes
in the taping we would be looking together at her scrapbooks of exhibition
announcements, the transcript had places where such commentary and page-
turning needed fleshing out in editing. Margery did that, as well as
making sure that all the exhibitions over all the years were noted.

It was difficult to select one or two among the choice of artists
and friends to introduce the Margery Anneberg they knew. We thank
designer Jack Lenor Larsen for his evocation of his old friend Margery
in Seattle. June Schwarcz, artist in enamels, and one of Margery's
longstanding and understanding friends, writes feelingly about what the
Anneberg Gallery meant for artists.

The California Craft Artists Oral History Series, of which Margery
Anneberg 's oral history is a part, was initiated with Tableware and Tile
for the World, Heath Ceramics, 1944-1994, an oral history with
ceramicist Edith Heath. Currently in process in the series is an oral
history with wood turner Bob Stocksdale.

Related interviews are found in the Fiber Arts Oral History
Series. Memoirs have been completed with the late Lilliam Wolock
Elliott, Charles Edmund Rossbach, Kay Seikmachi, Katherine Westfall, and
an interview is in process with Gyongy Laky. Also, from the Regional
Oral History Office's collection of interviews in the arts, the

2 "Modernism: Craft Breakthrough in Northern California, 1950-1975, The
Glory Years," by Ted Cohen, Curator, California Crafts Museum, in Nine
Decades. The Northern California Craft Movement 1907 to the Present. 1993, San
Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum.

vii

researcher is referred to interviews with Ruth Asawa, Raymond
Puccinelli, Jacques Schnier, Rudolph Schaeffer, Ruth Cravath, and two
volumes on the Renaissance of Religious Art in the San Francisco Bay
Area.

The Regional Oral History Office was established in 1954 to
augment through tape-recorded memoirs the Library's materials on the
history of California and the West. Copies of all interviews are
available for research use in The Bancroft Library and in the UCLA
Department of Special Collections. The office is under the direction of
Willa K. Baum, and is an administrative division of The Bancroft Library
of the University of California, Berkeley.

Suzanne Riess, Senior Editor
Regional Oral History Office

Berkeley

January 1998

viii

Regional Oral History Office
Room 486 The Bancroft Library

University of California
Berkeley. California 94720

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I EARLY HISTORY

[Interview 1: February 27, 1995]

Family Background

Riess :
Anneberg:

Let's begin with family history, Margery.

I was born in Carroll, Iowa, on November 29, 1921. That makes
me about seventy-three now, seventy-four--! can't keep track,
[laughs] My father was a dentist, and his brothers were doctors
and dentists. His paternal grandparents had come from Germany,
and his grandmother on his mother's side was Swedish. She had
married one of the Aliens from Vermont, but he wasn't descended
from Ethan, just his Tory brother Levi. So there was English,
Swedish, and German on that side of the family, as far as I
know.

We came out to the West Coast when I was three and a half--
I had two little brothers at the time. My mother had grown up
in the state of Washington, and my parents had married in
Seattle just after my father had gotten out of the army in 1918.
Then they moved to Iowa, where my father's family lived. He had
to finish dental school in Minneapolis, then he set up practice
in Carroll, where I was born. But my mother could never adjust
to Iowa, winters were too cold and summers were too hot, and
there wasn't enough fresh fruit and vegetables, so she decided
she had to move us back to Washington- - that ' s western
Washington, which has quite mild weather.

So a friend gave her an old Essex touring car, and she
packed it up with blankets and camping gear and set out,
stopping first to visit some friends who lived near the South

>## This symbol indicates that a tape or tape segment has begun or
ended. A guide to the tapes follows the transcript.

Dakota border. That was in 1925. My father had been reluctant
to pull up stakes and leave Iowa, but he stayed behind just long
enough to close his practice and then he caught up with us while
we were still in Dedham with the friends.

We went through the Bad Lands of South Dakota, camping by
the side of the road at night, then through Montana to
Washington. I remember my brother Craig, who was only a baby,
rode most of the way in a little hammock slung along one window
in the back.

We stopped off in Yakima, Washington, where my grandparents
were living at the time--my grandfather was a grocer, he and his
three sons had stores in the various towns they lived inthey
moved around a lot. My mother and us kids stayed there a few
weeks while my dad went on to the Seattle area to find us a
place to live. Eventually we ended up in a little old farmhouse
on Maury Island, which is really a small peninsula on Vashon
Island near Tacoma on Puget Sound. They finally rented a small
ranch, just a dozen or so acres, mainly planted in strawberries,
with some gooseberries too.

My sister Ruth Mary was born not long after we moved there.
Mom now had four kids and the farmwork to do. We had a cow, a
couple of pigs, and some chickens. It was a bit primitive, we
had electricity but water came from a pump about forty feet from
the house. Water was a problem on the island then because it
was very far down, and it was before there was technology for
digging deep wells, so wells would go dry after a few years and
people would just keep digging new ones until they found a
reliable source of water. So this ranch was peppered with old
dry wells, like a minefield. They would have a few boards laid
across them and my brother Buddy and I would pull them aside and
throw rocks into the well to hear the splash. Mom had no time
to always be watching us. I guess I learned to live dangerously
at an early agethat stood me in good stead for starting a
craft gallery with no money in the bank, years later.

We didn't even have a radio, so there was very little
stimulation of that sort. But we had a big wind-up phonograph
with a collection of old records, mostly popular songs and comic
monologues. And of course there were the funnies in the Sunday
Seattle Times. We certainly didn't have much in the way of
toys, much less paper to draw on.

Riess: Did your father move his dentistry practice to Seattle?

Anneberg: Well, during those years while my mother ran the farm alone, my
dad was in Seattle trying to find some way to make a living

besides dentistry, which he didn't feel very well suited for.
He really wanted to be a writer, but that wasn't very realistic
since he had this growing family. So after a few years, in
1929, he moved us down to Longview, on the Columbia River, about
fifty miles from Portland, on the Washington side of the river.
He really started practicing again only after we moved to
Longview. He had had a dental practice in Iowa, and his older
brother and another brother were doctors. His mother had
insisted that her sons grow up to be doctors, because she had
wanted to be a doctor herself but she couldn't, because women at
that timeit was very difficult for them to study and go into
that sort of field, unless they had money. Women were supposed
to stay home. So she took it out on her sons. [laughter]

Riess: Did you ever know her?

Anneberg: Only briefly. I was always told that I looked something like
her, but I took it not to be a compliment, because my mother
didn't get along with her mother-in-law very well. But later
on, I saw pictures of her, and she was. really beautiful. I wish
I did look like her. She had great cheekbones that would have
been nice to inherit.

Riess: And you are very young-looking.

Anneberg: I think that's just genes. On both sides of the family we have
skin that doesn't dry up in the summer, so I'm lucky that way.

Riess: Tell me about your mother's background.

Anneberg: On my mother's side, there is English, Scotch, Irish, French.

She was born in Shaska, Minnesota. Her family moved out to the
West Coast rather early, when she was about three. She had an
uncle who was a minor lumber baron in the state of Washington.
He had a little town named after him called Doty. His name was
Chauncey Doty. He was always called Chan.

My mother had wanted to name me Chan, but my father
objected mightily. "That's no name for a girl." He had a
cousin named Channing, so he said that since Channing was a
family name, she could name me Channing. But he thought it
wasn't suitable for a first name, so Channing turned out to be
my middle name. I would love to have been named Chauncey, I
think that's a great name. The name Doty actually goes back to
an indentured servant who came over on the Mayflower, but I
wasn't aware of that until I was in my thirties. Mom never
considered it at all important.

Riess:
Anneberg:

My great-uncle Chan also had a fish cannery in the little
town of Kalama, on the lower Columbia River, where my mother
lived when she was a small child. He was fairly successful in
things like salmon canning and logging, lumber and that sort of
thing.

Riess: There were fortunes to be made, I guess, in the Northwest.

Anneberg: In all the raw natural resources that were lying around

supposedly for the taking. I think that there were. He was
apparently quite a remarkable man. Very energetic, and young-
looking, even when he was old, I understand. So he kept active
for a very long time.

What kind of a person was your mother? Was she artistic?

She was not at all artistic, but she was a great character, and
she had a very buoyant personality. She really ran the family.
She had energy and a great deal of capability. She worked for
my father as a dental nurse, and she had five kids, and she
canned acres of vegetables and fruit and jams of all sorts, and
pickles, and managed to have time to do that on top of
everything else, which I can't imagine in this day and age. You
should have seen it, that basement was full of stuff that she
put up. She was a pretty good cook, too.

Riess: Did she put you to work? You were the only daughter.

Anneberg: I was the oldest, and one of two daughters, but I was the one
who was put to work, yes. I did a lot of the housework.

My mother had a great streak of mischief. She did things
like, I remember one time when there was a bunch of little
neighbor kids playing on our living room floor, and my mother
wanted to get rid of them because it was dinnertime. So she
told them it was time to go home, and they all left but one
little kid, who just went on playing with his cars and trucks.
She said, "Does your mother know where you are?" And he said,
"Oh, sure." And she said, "Isn't it about time you went home
for dinner?" And he said, "Urn, I guess so, maybe." And he went
right on playing.

So pretty soon she disappeared for a while, and before we
knew it, she appeared at a window with her hair down all over
her face and a great, huge butcher knife between her teeth. She
threw the window open and came roaring into the room through the
window. That little kid left like a streak, and we never saw
him again. [laughter]

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

How absolutely wild!

Yes, she did wild things like that.

When you said your father was a dentist, right away I thought
about how dentists work with their hands and small tools, and
often have jewelry-making as a hobby. I wondered if he did.

He never really did, but I learned a few things from him. He
did a lot of his own silver and gold casting of crowns and
inlays. Tex Gieling 1 and I were roommates on a houseboat when
we were both in graduate school at the University of Washington
in Seattle. That was for about eight months in 1949-1950 and we
were both just starting to learn jewelry-making. She was
getting an M.A. in art and she was a lot more serious and better
at it than I was. She later taught jewelry at UC Berkeley and
then at San Francisco State for a number of years, you know.

Anyway, Tex came down to Longview with me for a few days
and my dad showed us how to do lost wax casting in silver. We
made some little wax models and invested them in plaster and
then burned out the wax from the plaster cast. For the actual
casting we melted down silver quarters. It was fun.

Later when I started making jewelry he gave me an acetylene
B-tank and an old quarter-horsepower motor for grinding and
polishing, and a bunch of old tools, mostly dental tools, but
some of them he had modified earlier for some special purpose--
those I could make good use of. All that equipment helped me a
great deal, because I had no extra money for that sort of thing.

Where did you go to school as a young girl?
Vashon Island?

You started out on

Yes, there was a two-room school down the road, and I went to
school there for a couple of years. Then we moved to Longview,
down on the Columbia River.

That's a big mill town, Weyerhauser?

Longview had the world's two largest lumber mills, L,ong-Bell and
Weyerhauser. It had been established just a few years before we
moved there, in 1923, by a very wealthy man named R. A. Long,
who was from Louisiana. He built this pretty town on some
drained swamp land, with some of the principal buildings, like
the high school and the public library, in colonial, ante-Bellum

'Imogene Gieling. Originally from Corsicana, Texas

architecture. Long was a real lumber baron, with extensive
logging operations and this huge lumber mill. The hills around
there were covered with old-growth Douglas fir, and there was a
deep-water port on the river, so the future looked good. A lot
of the people who lived there, maybe a quarter or more of the
population, were from Louisiana or other parts of the South.
The grocery stores stocked things like chicory and hominy and
okra. There were a few black families from Louisiana, too.

So I grew up in a small, Southernlike town, in a backwoods
part of the state of Washington, with a rigid Southern class
system intact, pretty bizarre in lots of ways. People in other
towns around there still consider Longview a pretty snooty
place, rightly or wrongly.

Riess: Was your father there during the Depression years?

Anneberg: Yes, we moved there in 1929, just in time for the Depression.

My father had gone down the year before, when things were really
prosperous, and opened up his practice.

Riess: How did he do then under those circumstances?

Anneberg: Well, he had a large family, and we were about as poor as most
people in town. My youngest brother was born in 1930--I was
eight years old at the time, and the oldest of five kids.

Anyway, my dad set up his practice there and for a time
things looked pretty good, but then the Depression came and
Longview was hit quite hard. He had to take out a lot of work
in trade. Some people paid for their fillings or false teeth
with groceries or eggs or cream and milk. We didn't have many
new shoes, but we always had enough to eat. A lot of people
just couldn't pay their bills, but he would fix their teeth
anyway if it was necessary. So we were not at all affluent.

Riess: You were in high school in Longview. Can you remember beginning
to think about what you wanted to do, and whether you would be
going to college?

Anneberg: No, not at that time. People didn't pressure their kids into
wanting to do something at an early age in those days. It
wasn't like things are now. People didn't get nervous about how
you were going to earn a living in the future. At least, not in
our family. And I really wasn't thinking very seriously about
anything.

When I was a very small child I wanted to be a flier, I
wanted to fly an airplane. Because we had a roomer, a man who

rented a room in our house, who flew. I thought that was just
wonderful. So when I was six or seven, I wanted to be an
aviatrix and meet Amelia Earhart, who was famous at that time.
I never did, though. [laughter] Later on, after I graduated
from college, my mother bought me a one-way train ticket to New
York City. I wanted to go to New York. That was my idea of
adventure at that time. So I went to New York with a friend.

Seattle, the City and the Art Environment

Riess: Where did you go to college?
Anneberg: At the University of Washington.

I had graduated from high school in 1939--by that time we
had lived in Longview for ten years and my parents could think
in terms of sending us to college. It didn't cost much at that
time except for room and board, you know. Tuition was free if
you lived in the state.

My mother had lived in Seattle for a while before she was
married, and she wanted me to go to the university there. She
herself had only gone to a small college in Tacoma for two
years. So she wanted me to go to the university, and I wanted
to go, to get away from Longview mainly. But what I did there
was up to me. It was like being thrown into the water to see if
you could swim. Rather scary, as I recall. It sort of set the
tone for my whole life, I guess. I would just jump off the deep
end time and again, without any real plan or preparation.

Riess: Were you studying art?

Anneberg: No. I was more interested in social sciences. I didn't settle
down until my last two years in college. Well, actually, in my
senior year, all the boys were going off to war, so I didn't
really do any studying at all. It was sort of one big party.
We were really seeing people off that we thought we might never
see again. So it was difficult to concentrate on college in a
serious way, for me, anyway.

I remember I didn't get very good grades, so I stayed in
college an extra year. At that time there were very few boys
around, [laughs] so I got good grades in that year, good enough
to get me scholarships when I later on wanted to go back into
graduate school. So it was a good thing that I stayed around

for an extra year. It was at the end of that time that I went
to New York.

Riess: You say it was a one-way ticket?

Anneberg: Yes. [laughs] Well, she didn't expect me to come back very
soon.

Riess: In what spirit did she send you?

Anneberg: I think that she always allowed me to do whatever I wanted to in
that sort of way. She didn't necessarily encourage me to stay
and do something serious, because she herself had been a very
independent sort. I think that she just took it for granted
that I would somehow or other land on my feet, but that I had to
spread my wings and fly if I wanted to fly. So I went back to
New York.

Riess: What was your idea about New York?

Anneberg: I loved cities. When I was a small child we used to

occasionally go over to Seattle from Vashon Island. We had to
take the ferry boat. It was wonderful, I just loved it.

At that time Seattle was a very different place. When you
got off the ferry--it was a car ferry--and rode into town, there
were totem poles on either side of the street for a little
section and they were real totem poles. They later on, I think,
ended up in a wonderful shop called the Olde Curiosity Shop,
which had really genuine things in it for a long time. I
remember those totem poles. They were not really big ones; they
were the thin kind which you sometimes see in photographs of
Kwakiutl villages on Vancouver Island. And then, as now, a lot
of Indians drifted to the cities, and they sold baskets, I
understand, around Pioneer Square, which is still in Seattle but
it isn't the same as it used to be. One of them was the
daughter of Chief Seattle, Princess Evangeline she was called.
I never saw her, but I was told that.

Riess: Were they considered to be sort of tragic figures, these
Indians?

Anneberg: I don't think that people sympathized enough with them to

consider them tragic at that time. But I'm sure they were.

Riess: Seattle was a big city, but very much the Northwest?

Anneberg: Yes. It was a bustling place, and the gateway to Alaska. It
still does have that feeling of beingthere ' s an excitement

there that you don't experience in a lot of cities, because you
really do feel as though it ' s a jumping-off point, as though
you're as far north and west as you can get before you come to
Alaska. Which isn't quite true, there's Canada, you see, but
people really thought of it as being a frontier place.

It had a lot of bustle and excitement that I just loved
when I got to Seattle to go to school. I used to explore a lot
of the alleys and interesting shops on First Avenue, which was
kind of a slightly sleazy part of town, but it also had some
very interesting things.

One of them was a shooting gallery that had a mummified man
in the window, if you can imagine. He was called Olaf, the
petrified giant, or something like that, and he was supposedly
found in an ice cave in Hudson's Bay. And there he was, seven
feet tall, stretched out in the window of this shooting gallery,
with a little fur loincloth on. He was beautiful. He had this
wonderful long face with hollow cheeks and big cheekbones, and
he looked a lot like the king of Sweden at that time. He wasn't
so far gone that you could see what he looked like. He had a
little knife beside him.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

I don't know what ever happened to Olaf. I heard later on
that he was sold to a place called Playland, which was north of
Seattle and an amusement park, but I never went out to see him
there. I used to go down to First Avenue, though, to see him
every now and then, because I thought that was wonderful.
Nowadays anthropologists would not allow that sort of thing to
happen, because there he probably was, a genuine early
Scandinavianwho knows. I've never heard a thing about it.

Was the Seattle Art Museum a thriving institution then, and
would you have been interested in that?

After the war I came back, and then I did work for a while at
the Seattle Art Museum.

But as a student?

I did go out there as a student before I was in New York, when I
was an undergraduate, and it had a very good Oriental collection
already at that time. It became much better later on. But it
also had traveling shows, and I was very much interested. Yes,
I did develop an interest in art while I was in college.

And the art of the Northwest Indians? The masks?

Anneberg: Well, they had a lot of wonderful carvings besides masks. One
of the most important type of carvings were the dance rattles,
which were intricately carved in beautiful woods, hard, polished
woods. There were also large pieces that were probably used
ceremonially. They were carved out so that they could mix up
giant amounts of food for ceremonial feasts. Those were shown
also, along with masks and rattles and drums and all the
accoutrements.

They did a kind of tapestry weaving called the Chilkat
blanket, a sort of ceremonial cape which is still made for
collectors, made of mountain goat wool and cedar bark, that was
sometimes trimmed with buttons and pieces of abalone shell and
things like that.

Riess: I want to get a sense of how you viewed New York from Seattle.

Anneberg: I don't know. Everything that I read about it just sounded
fascinating and wonderful, and I understood that there were
people there who ate strange and wonderful food, you see.
Growing up as I did in a very ordinary householdwe didn't even
eat garlic--! didn't learn about garlic until I went away to
school, so it seemed quite exotic. A friend of mine had gone
with a boy who was an Italian fisherman, and he lived on his
boat in Gig Harbor, on Puget Sound. She used to tell me that
when she kissed Tony, he smelled like garlic. I thought that
was the most marvelous, romantic thing I could think of.
Imagine !

When I first started experimenting with garlic, I put it in
everything. I just thought it was so wonderful. It symbolized
freedom and emancipation and all kinds of things to me at that
time. I think a lot of people feel that way when they break
loose from the bland Middle American type of diet and start
becoming freer with condiments and spices and things like
garlic.

Riess: American expatriate writers in Paris if you could have, would
you have jumped past New York to Paris?

Anneberg: Probably would have. It didn't come through literature as much
as through interest in various artists.

We had artists in Seattle who were extremely well known
locally. It was an unusual situation, because young people who
were graduating from college and going out into professional
life started collecting art. I don't think that happened in
very many cities.

Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

But we had a lot of good painterspeople like Morris
Graves, Mark Tobey, Kenneth Callahan, Guy Andersonwho were
extremely well known locally, and even more famous nationally
and internationally. We weren't as aware of their outside
importance, but we knew that they were good and we appreciated
them. Anybody who could afford it would start collecting.

There were a lot of people who would start collecting when
they were right out of college, and I knew some who had
wonderful art in their homes. I think one reason is that when
you live in a city where it rains nine months or- -well, it rains
twelve months of the year, but it's really foggy and rainy--! 'm
looking out of my window right now and seeing exactly the same
sort of situation in San Francisco. [laughs] But it's more so
in Seattle. People tend to look inward and feather their nests
and think of collecting.

In northern California it may be foggy and rainy a lot of
the time, but the sun does come out and shine beautifully a lot
in January and February and March, and it almost never does in
Seattle. Even though it doesn't rain hard a lot of the time,
still, the ceiling is very low overhead. It does give you the
feeling that outside is something to get away from, and you look
inward and put things on your walls that are going to nourish
your spirit.

And did you collect anything?

I was too poor, I was a student at that time, so I didn't, but I
knew people who did.

Did you know any of those artists?

No, but I had a very good friend, Denise Farwell, who was an

older woman. She was a friend of Morris Graves, but at that

time Morris Graves was in jail for being a conscientious
objector. This was during World War II.

A hallmark of California paintings is the light. Is there a
prevailing lack of light characteristic of Northwest artists?

Yes, there certainly was. Many of the paintings that you see
from Seattle, at that time particularly, had a mood that was
very diffused and almost murky, and very spiritual in lots of
ways. But color was not present in the same way that it was in
New York painters or the Bay Area painters or California

painters. They didn't use color the same way. They used it
very sparingly, and it was dark and moody.

Riess: Was there an influence of the Oriental collection too?

Anneberg: There was a great deal of influence, I think, on painters,

especially Morris Graves, who actually used images of ancient
Chinese bronze vessels in several of his paintings. Kenneth
Callahan's landscapes were very Oriental in feel, too.

1945: A Year in New York, and a Class in Jewelry-Making

Riess: It sounds like for someone who was majoring in social sciences,
you had your eye elsewhere.

Anneberg: Actually, I switched majors three or four times. And I had a
lot of friends with many different interests. I think I
developed an awfully varied sort of outlook. I started studying
Chinese when I was an undergraduate. That interested me. I
went back to it later on. But 1 never studied art. I didn't
think of myself at all as being an artist.

Riess: It is quite a state of mind, isn't it?

Anneberg: Yes, it is. When I was in New York in 1944-45, my roommates and
other friends were, for the most part, artists. It was a very
interesting time, because there were a lot of European painters
and sculptors who were there to escape the war, refugees of one
sort or another. There were a lot of artists who were quite
available. They taught at the Art Students' League or gave
lessons in their studios.

One of my roommates also was a dancer [Marjorie Herman] and
she studied under Martha Graham.

Riess: Well, you had the ticket. How much of your life did you pack
up? Did you think you were just going to visit?

Anneberg: Oh, I didn't know. No, I didn't take an awful lot with me. I
just took a foot locker and a suitcase.

Riess: And money? How were you going to live?

Anneberg: Oh, I didn't--! supposed I'd get a job, which I did.

Riess: And roommates, did you have anything planned ahead of time?

Anneberg: I went back with a friend, and we were roommates for about six
months. Then she moved on with some other people, and I
acquired other roommates. My close friends and roommates were
almost all from the West CoastSeattle, Portland, Los Angeles.

Riess: What was the job that you got in the beginning?

Anneberg: I just had one job in New York, as a sort of glorified file

clerk at the Office of War Information. That was interesting,
because there were a lot of refugee intellectuals working there,
and there were people from all over the world working as news
gatherers and broadcasting "Voice of America" to various parts
of Europe and the Far East. Even though I didn't earn very much
money at all I really enjoyed it. My job was very
insignificant, but I met a lot of wonderful, interesting people.

Riess: You were talking about artists in New York. I guess they were
also refugees, many of them. Who do you think of? Do you
remember any names?

Anneberg: There was Chaim Gross, I remember. I had a friend who was
living in Greenwich Village. She was from Vancouver,
Washington. Chaim Gross met her, and she looked an awful lot
like some of the people that he painted. She was short and
stocky and muscular, a cute girl. He wanted to use her as a
model. I remember she was not interested in doing that, but I
thought that was kind of funny.

There were others who were not refugees but for one reason
or another were caught in New York or lived there during the
war. One of them was Stanley William Hayter, who was an
important English print maker, and one of my friends studied
under him. And one studied painting from Yasuo Kuniyoshi.

The Art Students' League was kind of an important place for
people to study. There were also jewelers at work in New York
at that time. I began to get interested in jewelry when I was
in New York, I think. I tookvery briefly a few lessons in
jewelry making at one of the settlement houses and learned how
to solder silver using a mouth blowtorch. Now, this seems like
something right out of the Arts and Crafts Movement. In jewelry
you still learned how to do things with metal in a very basic
way.

Riess: Tell me about a mouth blow torch.

Anneberg: Well, you had a little alcohol lamp, which was a squat, round
bottle full of alcohol, and it had a wick in it, and a little
flame that you could adjust to make it hotter or less hot. Then

there was a small blowpipe attached, just a little metal tube-
let's see, how did that work? You blew through the pipe into
the flame, and then that forced the flame out onto the metal.
It was very primitive, but everybody had to learn that way.
That was the way you started learning the rudiments of how to
solder silver or gold.

Later on, when I returned to Seattle, I studied under Ruth
Penington very briefly, and she also taught soldering that way.
Then you would gradually, after you had mastered the rudiments
of soldering silver to silver, then you could graduate to the
oxygen and--no, it was just air and acetylene tanks.

Riess: The fact that you had to learn it from scratch, did that come
out of a value system or an ethos about how things were done?

Anneberg: I think so. It was in one respect getting back to very simple
Medieval ways of mastering techniques. You started from a very
simple standpoint to learn things in a very basic way.

That happened all the time, with ceramics, for instance.
At that time I'm sure that everyone learned how to crush their
own clay and mix their own glazes. You don't necessarily have
to do that today, but pottery still does take you back to very
simple beginnings, because you start with clay, and you add
water, and you turn it on a wheel, and what could be more basic
than that? Even though the wheel now is usually electrified, it
doesn't have to be. People sometimes use a foot treadle to turn
the wheel .

And in weaving, you start with a simple loom very often,
even though now a lot of people skip that part and just work
with textile as a raw material in lots of unusual ways. But
that has only been a very recent trend in textiles.

Riess: The people teaching in the settlement houses, where were they
from? Were they European?

Anneberg: I don't know. I really don't know, because I only took a few

lessons, enough to make one pin, which was a Chinese character,
An, which stood for Anneberg, you see. I was making myself an
initial pin, only using Chinese. So I cut this character out of
flat silver, I remember, and soldered a pin onto the back.

Riess: Do you still have it?

Anneberg: I don't have it any more, I'm sorry. But it was rather nice. I
had to learn how to file, and cut with a small fret sawwhich
is still used in the very same form today by jewelers--! had to

learn how to saw, and there's a trick to learning that sort of
thing, because it's a very fine saw blade that is used, and it
breaks very easily. Then I had to learn to polish by hand,
using several gradations of emery cloth, and finally, crocus
cloth. You could do a pretty good job of polishing by hand that
way.

Riess: Perfectionism must be an issue in jewelry making, doing things
over and over and over to master it. Did this appeal to you?

Anneberg: It must have been something that I didn't find too foreign to my
own nature. I know a lot of people can't stand that sort of
attention to fine detail, and the fact that you do have to pay
attention to very small imperfections and to right them by
polishing and working over the surface of the metal very
carefully. It still must be done, so you do have to have
something in your nature that allows you to stay with it until
it reaches whatever state of excellence or perfection, whatever
you're aiming toward.

Riess: Why were the classes taught in a settlement house, rather than
the Art Students' League, for instance?

Anneberg: I don't know. Probably because it wasn't considered real art.
But settlement houses had craft courses of various sorts. They
did teach weaving and ceramics. They also taught dance and
drama probably.

Riess: Were you encouraged by your teachersencouraged to go on?

Anneberg: No, I don't think that I exhibited any special talent at that
time. And I only took five or six lessons.

But there were interesting things going on in New York.
There was a man who worked in Greenwich Village and had a shop.
I can't remember his name, but he was very well known at the
time. He made jewelry. [Sam Kramer] I believe that he formed
it directly in the metal. I don't think that he was doing
casting. His work was described as "organic." He made things
that looked like amoebas. Now, this was in 1945, '44 and "45,
when I was back there, and his amoeba-looking jewelry was pretty
far out. I thought it was kind of ugly, because it wasn't
terribly inventive or interesting. He pretty much stuck to
amoebas .

But there were inspirations in the painters whose paintings
you could see in the museums, Kandinsky and Miro, people like
that. That sort of thing would appeal to someone who had an
interest in jewelry forms. Alexander Calder's mobiles, they

were enormously fascinating,
wonderful examples.

The Museum of Modern Art had

There were very exciting things at that time in New York.
Solomon Guggenheim's collection was shown in a place called the
Museum of Nonobjective Painting [East 54th St.] and it was very
interesting and exciting. More Kandinskys and Miros. That was
what really stayed with me, not the work of other jewelers
particularly, because I didn't really think that they were that
interesting. The painters certainly were.

Riess: Did you ever think of painting?

Anneberg: No, I never did. I just didn't consider myself an artist at

all. It never occurred to me that I could actually study art, I
never thought of myself that way. 1 drew sometimes, because
people would encourage me to draw, so I did. But it still never
occurred to me to take lessons and become an artist.

Riess: Artists, what did artists look like?

Anneberg: Well, they looked like my friends and roommates, who looked just
like me. There was no difference. It was just a mind set, I
think. It never occurred to me that I was an artist or that I
was capable of doing that sort of thing.

Riess: You stayed in that job throughout the war?

Anneberg: I was there for about a year and a half, I guess. I went to New
York in June 1944, and I left in November 1945. You see, by
that time the war was over.

Riess: I've been reading about the craft movement, and it seems like

that's when it began, with the immigration of European artists,
architects, craftsmen, writers. It sounds like you were seeing
the first wave.

Anneberg: There were a lot of them there at that time who had escaped the
war, but after that I'm sure that they arrived in greater
numbers, since they had the freedom to travel and to leave
Europe. But actually the craft movement began much earlier,
around 1900.

1946; Return to University of Washington. Far Eastern Studies

Riess:

Why did you leave New York?

Anneberg: Well, my job, of course, was over. I think that the OWI was

shutting down in New York, and it was a question of going on to
Washington, D.C., where a lot of people would transfer, and
working for the State Department or something like that. I'd
heard that Washington, D.C., was very hot, so I didn't think
that I really wanted to do that.

My mother asked me if I couldn't come back and help her,
because she and my father had bought some property in Pasadena
and were thinking of moving down there. They wanted me to come
out and live in the little house that they had bought and take
care of my younger brother and sister, who were going to school.
My parents had put them down there as sort of an advance party.
As it turned out, they never did move to Pasadena, but I stayed
for six or eight months in Pasadena, and then I moved back up to
Seattle.

Riess: What did you do in Pasadena?

Anneberg: I didn't do anything. I just waited until I could get out of
there. There wasn't very much going on in Pasadena or Los
Angeles. Los Angeles was still a fairly sleepy town. San
Francisco was really the metropolis of the West Coast at that
time. At least it seemed to me. Los Angeles certainly had no
"there" there. It was a collection of small towns.

Riess: Why did your family move to Pasadena?

Anneberg: I think that it was probably to get out of the fog into the

sunshine. Southern California really had an allure of where it
was all happening. It was mostly just that there was a lot of
activity there, and sunshine, and that sort of thing appeals to
people from a dark and gloomy part of the world. But I couldn't
wait to get out of there. I went back to Seattle and entered
graduate school.

Riess: In what field?

Anneberg: Far Eastern studies, Chinese language and literature and history
and that sort of thing. I stayed in that off and on for quite a
few years. I would stop and go to work for a while, -and then go
back to it.

Riess: What was the appeal?

Anneberg: I don't know, but it certainly was very appealing to me for a
long time. Aesthetically, I was powerfully drawn to it. I
loved Chinese, and it was--I loved the culture, and everything
about it was fascinating and interesting. I got a master's

degree in Chinese language and literature, and I was studying
for my doctorate until I realized that I really was not at all
suited to the academic life. I may have loved studying the
history, the language, literature, and the art, but I didn't
really want to do anything with it, so what was I there for?

I remember that I began to feel increasingly trapped
because I didn't--! no longer saw any of my friends outside of
this academic world. Everybody that I went to graduate school
with, I saw at coffee breaks, I saw them afterwards, I went to
parties with them, I went out with them. They were the only
people that I saw. I missed the sort of people that I knew
before that. I liked them very much, but I missed the--I felt
that I was increasingly stuck in that sort of world, and it
really wasn't my true world, as it turned out.

So I had to make a very serious evaluation of whether I
wanted to stay with that world the rest of my life, or whether I
wanted to get out then. It took a great daring leap on my part
to quit just inches away from a Ph.D. that I didn't want to use.
I don't know whether it was a mistake or not. I can probably,
if I care to, introspect on that, but I just shut my eyes and
took the plunge and left, and came to San Francisco.

Riess: In part perhaps you would look at the kind of work that women
were doing in the field?

Anneberg: There were probably only a very few women in the field at all,
none that I knew of. And it really was difficult for women to
think seriously of careers right after the war, or even before
the war. In the academic world, it just didn't happen very
often. Teachers at the university who were women were usually
in literature, art, or certain fields like home economics,
education, librarianship. But they weren't in political
science, for instance, or architecture, or philosophy. There
were very few women teaching in the Far Eastern Department, and
then only on a very temporary basis, as language teachers. They
were all Chinese.

After I left and came to San Francisco I did apply for a
job with the Asia Foundation and got nowhere. They offered me a
secretarial job. You were not treated in the same way as a
graduate of the department who was a man. They could have far
less training than I had and be snatched up as a valuable
candidate for the job, but I was not taken seriously, and I
didn't takeit's not really entirely their fault, because I

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess :

Anneberg:

Riess :
Anneberg:

wasn't taking myself that seriously. I just didn't really think
of it being a real possibility that I could get a job.

Did you get intimations of that from advisors along the way?

I got very little advice from anyone. The older professors,
Chinese or European, were actually very encouraging, but some of
the younger ones were quite hostile. And if I did get a job, it
would be tough, the same way it would be tough for any man. You
were sent where you could get a job. You couldn't just pick out
a part of the country where you wanted to work, you took the job
you could get, and that could be North Dakota or Kansas or
anyplace, a lot of places where I didn't want to live. That was
another reason why I decided to leave the academic world. You
really were not in charge of your own destiny.

Was there something about the Eastern mind, and an interest in
understanding another culture for you, and until you gave it up
you were very much in love with that other culture?

Yes. It was very hard to give it up, because it took such a
hold over you, it was very fascinating. It was like being
married to something that you couldn't let go of, even though
you knew it wasn't right for you, and it was like a difficult
divorce, leaving that world.

Did you know Chinese or Japanese people in Seattle?
into that culture, or was it always academic?

Did it lead

It was academic for the most part, although I did have friends
who were Chinese or Japanese. As a matter of fact, I had many
Asian friends. Lots of good friends, but most of them were born
here.

Were you fluent in Chinese?

No. The University of Washington, the Far Eastern Department,
emphasized scholarly research. So you learned Chinese from a
written standpoint rather than a spoken language. You learned
it so that you could use it as a research tool, and Japanese was
a similar situation. I didn't learn very much Japanese, but it
was a real crash course. In a year you were up to e"arly college
level, and that was a terribly fast jump. It was really a lot
of pressure, learning a language that fast, and I forgot it
almost immediately afterwards. It didn't stay with me.

A lot of the Chinese has stayed with me, but only
characters, not so much spoken language. You don't really hear
an awful lot of northern Chinese, which is the dialect that you

learn, Mandarin dialect. When you get out on the street, what
you hear is Cantonese, which is almost another language, it's so
different. And in San Francisco, it was similar.

Riess: I wonder whether it was also the Zen, the Buddhist aspect of

Oriental studies that interested you, and how much that has been
part of your life.

Anneberg: No, that wasn't part of it. My professors did not have that

sort of orientation. I studied a lot under Helmut Wilhelm, and
he was the son of the great Richard Wilhelm, who was the
translator of the Tao Te Ching. There are other translations
that are popular now and that are equally good, I suppose, but I
think he was the original translator of the Tao Te Ching.

Helmut Wilhelm would never have stressed the Zen point of
view. When I studied the Tao Te Ching from him, he never taught
it from the standpoint of throwing the coins or the sticks. And
he really looked down on using it as a fortune-telling tool.
Although he did show us how to cast the yarrow sticks, and how
it was done, but he warned us that reading the future really was
not the proper use of the Tao Te Ching.

Riess: Oh, that's interesting. What is the proper use?

Anneberg: I'd say he looked on it more as a philosophic book, teaching the
world view of the Taoists, not from a popular religious
standpoint.

Riess: Was there an undercurrent of interest and belief in the wisdom
of the East?

Anneberg: For me and for the other students that I knew, not at all. It
simply did not enter into our outlook at all. It wasn't in
fashion yet. But there was a lot of interest in Zen in Seattle
among artists. I shouldn't say that there was not. I don't
know about Mark Tobey, but Morris Graves was very much
interested in Zen. And the people who were prominent in Cornish
School in earlier times, I didn't know any of them because I was
too young and I wasn't really interested then, but in the
forties I think that there were quite a few people who were
interested in that sort of thing there. I would hear about it
from other people, but it wasn't part of my life.

Riess: After Oriental studies, what did you do next?

Anneberg: Well, I had some friends in San Francisco, so I came down and
stayed with them for a few weeks until I found myself an
apartment .

Riess: This was when?

Anneberg: That was in the end of the year in 1957.

Riess: You were in graduate school for ten years?

Anneberg: Off and on. I think I started in 1946. I left for a few years
to work other places. I was off and on in graduate school until
I left in '57. But I left for periods of time.

Houseboat Life

Riess: And did you continue your jewelry classes?

Anneberg: No, I didn't really. For a while in Seattle, while I was going
to graduate school, I lived on a houseboat, and I had a roommate
named Tex (Imogene) Bailey. Later on she moved to San
Francisco, where she married a man named John Gieling and joined
the Decorative Arts Department at UC Berkeley, teaching jewelry.
After that she was a professor in the Art Department at San
Francisco State until she retired a few years ago. But in 1949-
50 Tex and I were roommates for about eight months, and she was
in graduate school at University of Washington in the Art
Department, getting her M.A. and studying jewelry. So that
perked up my interest again.

She was extremely good, much better even from the very
beginning than I ever was, but I got permission from my
professors to take a course in jewelry making one semesterone
quarter, I think it was. We were on the quarter system. They
said, "Well, it can't really hurt you." [laughter] "It's all
right if you diverge just for this little bit."

Well, it was my undoing. I began to see from then on that
I really wasn't suited for a career in Far Eastern studies,
although I did continue for a few more years. But a different
sort of bug had bitten my ear, and I was really lost from then
on. Working in metal was really captivating.

By this time, it was 1949, I went to live on the houseboat,
which was another very interesting world in Seattle. It was on
Lake Union, which is right in the middle of Seattle. Tex had
bought a houseboat nearby, and when she moved her houseboat to a
smaller body of water that's connected with Lake Union, called
Portage Bay, I moved in with her.

Portage Bay is like another small lake between Lake Union
and Lake Washington. It's bounded by the University of
Washington campus on one side. We lived on the opposite side,
and for a while we would cross the lake in the morning on a
canoe and park it on the other side, illegally, in somebody's
dock, and just leave it on the dock and go to school, and
whatever, attend classes, and then meet again and cross over to
the houseboat in the canoe again.

Tex had decided, shortly after I moved in in the summer of
1949, to remodel the houseboat. She was very good with her
hands, and seemed to know instinctively how to do things. She
must have watched her father a lot, because she knew exactly how
to proceed.

She tore out the front wall of the houseboat. It was a
floating houseboat, as they all were in Seattle. They weren't
on pilings like they are down here. So we had logs underneath
the houseboats, which were put there with a special machine
called a winch--golly , it was a huge thing, it was on a boat-
that would force a log underwater into position underneath a
houseboat. These were nearly all small one- or two-bedroom
houses. And floating on log pontoons, they were constantly in
motion. At first it did things to your balance when you went
onto land. It took a while to develop "sea legs."

It was very difficult to get anything as large as a log
below the surface of the water, so it took an enormous amount of
force. You couldn't do it without hiring somebody who had a
winch. There were professionals who did nothing but attend to
houseboats. When you got a rotten log, you exchanged it for a
new one .

Well, we had a rotten log on one side of the houseboat, but
Tex couldn't afford a new one.

Riess: How are they bonded to each other?

Anneberg: I think they just chained the logs to the underpart of the
houseboat, but I can't tell you exactly how that is done.

Tex's parents came out from Texas to visit when we were
part of the way into the remodeling. What Tex wanted to do was
extend the living room out about six feet, because she had that
much room in a front deck. She just wanted to use that room to
extend the living room, instead of having a front deck. This
put a lot more weight on the side of the house that had the
rotten log.

In addition to which, she had bought a fireplace from a
traveling salesman, and he came and installed it on the side of
the house that had the rotten log, [laughter] so that it dipped
down even further into the water. We had visits from ducks that
would paddle right up onto our deck, and come inside and look
around .

So when Tex's father came out, he figured out a way of
putting a couple of barrels, old steel oil drums, under the
house in lieu of a log. He was able to do that by forcing some
water into the barrels, enough to sink them and get them under--
I mean, not sink them completely, but get them underneath the
houseboat, where he would then tie them on and attach them to
the house. Then, using a siphon, he would get the water out of
the barrels, so that they would then lift the houseboat up on
that side.

It workednot perfectly, but fairly well, although we
still listed a little on one corner. But it was much better
than it was before. We weren't in danger of sinking if the
weather turned bad.

Riess: If the weather turned bad, it seems to me you were in more
danger just canoeing across.

Anneberg: Well, yes. We didn't always do that. We were within walking
distance of a drawbridge across the neck of water between Lake
Union and Portage Bay. It was a wonderful drawbridge. I could
always use that as an excuse if I was late to class. I could
just say, "Well, the bridge was up, and I had to wait."
[laughter] Because the drawbridge was right on the main
thoroughfare, any time a boat wanted to go through they would
have to blow a signal. I think it was two long toots on the
horn. Then the drawbridge would answer, and then they would
raise the bridge and block traffic from going across until the
boat had gone through. And that happened all the time, because
there were a lot of rather tall boats that went through.

Riess: It sounds like a hard place to leave.

Anneberg: It was a bit hard. I've always been nostalgic for Seattle, and
to this day, I think of it as being a very interesting place.
That says something when San Francisco is also a very
interesting place, the whole Bay Area is. But Seattle is one of
the interesting places to live in the United States, I think.
It has a lot of atmosphere of its own.

1957: Entering Competitions, and the Influence of the Henry Art
Gallery

Riess:
Anneberg:

I wonder if we have finished with your jewelry classes.

Riess:

Anneberg:

The class from Ruth Penington lasted about three months. I
afraid that was the last formal instruction I had. I began to
make jewelry on my own, and to enter competitions. The Henry
Art Gallery on the University of Washington campus showed
contemporary crafts in an annual exhibition, and I showed there
for several years. That was interesting, because there were a
lot of very good craft artists in the area. Peter Voulkos was
one of them. He was living in Montana at the time, and one or
two years he entered this same exhibition and showed some of his
pots.

At that time, he was making pots that really diverged from
the ordinary. They were large, rotund pots with a very small
neck opening at the top- -you have to have an opening somewhere
in a pot, or it will explode in the kiln. So instead of having
a vase shape, this was more sculpturalthey were globular
shapes, roundish but not quite round, and then at the top, a
very, very small opening with a dip around it. Some of
Voulkos 's pots from this period are described in Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance 1 . They were quite fascinating and
wonderful at the time. I think they still would be. Lots of
people have imitated those shapes since then, but at the time it
was fresh and exciting.

It's a kind of tour de force to be able to do that?

Very difficult to do, because they were large, yes. So already
he had made a considerable name for himself in the Northwest.
He moved to the Bay Area sometime in the mid- fifties, I think.
By the time I came down here he was already establishing himself
as a real revolutionary in ceramics, exploding the form of an
ordinary pot or a plate by slashing the surface open. It was
very masculine, very thrilling, very gutsy, and lots of people
hated it, because it had never been done before, and they
complained mightily that he didn't "respect the clay."

On the one side, there were people like Anthony Prieto at
the California College of Arts and Crafts who did respect the
clay and who were much more traditional. Prieto did wonderful

'Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An
Inquiry Into Values, New York, Morrow, 1974.

things, but nothing shocking. And on the other side, there was
this rough, raw, Montana artist who punched holes in it and
gouged it and slashed it with knives, and did all kinds of
violence to the clay, and really created a new art form.

Riess: That's interesting, the idea of respect or disrespect for the

material. I guess that's always been one of the canons, or one
of the areas where the contemporary takes off.

Anneberg: When the contemporary takes off, they break all the rules. Of
course, they have to do that. Now it seems ordinary for people
to slash and cut and break the surface of clay, but at that
time, it had never been done before, as far as I know.

Later on, the same thing happened in textiles, when first
Lenore Tawney and then Dominic Di Mare began weaving sculptural
forms. They could be done on the loom or off the loom, but the
point was that they were making something that was not simply a
flat piece, as a wall hanging would be. They were weaving in
three dimensions, using double weave or even quadruple weave,
but that's another story.

Riess: So you exhibited at the Henry Gallery?

Anneberg: Well, I did in the Northwest Annual craft show. They had some
good shows. I remember seeing a wonderful exhibition there of
Japanese folk art collected by a local woman. It was exciting,
the first I had seen of mingei crafts.

Also, before I left, in 1956 or 1957 I believe, they had an
exhibition of West Coast crafts people. This was--I only
remember the jewelry part of it, and it may be that's all there
was to it, but that's the part I'm talking about. It included
the entire West Coast, with people showing from the Bay Area and
from Los Angeles. But it still wasn't a really big show.

Anneberg: I entered that show, and I won either a prize or honorable

mention, against all these people who were much bigger names.
It just goes to show that there were so few people in the arena
at that point that someone as inexperienced as I was could
actually compete. It could not have happened twenty or thirty
years later, when there was much more competition.

I could be wrong about dates and what I entered in which
shows, but I'll find any show catalogues I have and leave them
with you.

Early in 1957 I entered the Henry Gallery's annual
Northwest Annual Craftsmens exhibition, and this time I recall
for sure that I did get a first prize.

Riess: Tell me what you entered.

Anneberg: It was a large necklace and it did get a bit of notice laterit
was published in a book, so I still have a photograph of it. A
friend of mine bought the necklace, so I can see it anytime I
want to. But it was a large collar necklace with a number of
Mexican opals of a very quiet, non-fiery type that I was very
attracted to.

Riess: And it was silver?

Anneberg: Silver and gold, and these Mexican opals in very soft tones of
yellow and gold. So it all had a sort of moonlight sheen to it
of silver and pale colors.

Riess: What was the finish of the silver? Was it worked at all?

Anneberg: No. I cut it from sheet, and forged the edges so they were
raised a little bit, and then I melted gold solder onto the
surface of the silver, and this was something I'd learned from
my former houseboat roommate Tex.

I melted the solder over the surface, which gave the silver
a different look entirely. It didn't look like gold, but it
didn't look like silver either. It had a wonderful sheen that
must have been very similar to electrum, which was the Greek
name for a naturally occurring alloy of silver and gold. It was
in between the two. It looked like moonlight. To me it had a
very fascinating quality, so I used that in the necklace, and
then contrasted that with the soft shades of the Mexican opals.

Riess: Sounds very wonderful.

Anneberg: It did attract some notice. Actually, I had been very

fortunate. Some years before, I think it was 1953, I made a
little pair of earrings for the Henry Gallery show. A photo of
them was picked up by a magazine from Italy, called Domus .
There was a whole page of very small photos of craft and other
things from various places in the world. And my little pair of
earrings in the Italian art magazinethat thrilled me. I think
it was September 1953--I can't remember the exact issue.

Riess: When you talk about shows, I read that the Walker Art Center had
touring craft shows, three years of them Did they come to
Seattle? Harry Bertoia, Margaret De Patta, and so on.

Anneberg: They might have, but not while I was there. I was certainly
aware of Harry Bertoia, but I don't remember ever having seen
any of his jewelry. He did sculpture that looked a lot like
jewelry. It had a jewelry look about it. I believe he started
as a goldsmith, a jeweler that is, and later went into
sculpture. Very nice stuff. Elegant.

work.

Margaret De Patta was very important. I knew some of her

Riess: A later show featured Sam Kramer, Phillip Morton, and Bob
Winston.

Anneberg: Sam Kramer--he was the man who had the shop in New York, the one
who did the amoeba jewelry. And he worked in direct metal, he
didn't cast. I could be wrong, but that's the way I remember
it. It was kind of ugly, actually. I know lots of people liked
it, but it didn't appeal to me. Bob Winston's jewelry I liked
even less. It was very heavy looking. He was one of the first
to popularize lost wax casting for jewelry. I don't know
Phillip Morton's work.

Riess: Ronald Hayes Pearson.

Anneberg: I wasn't aware of him until much later. He was at Rochester,
New York, in the art school there. He was one of a number of
important teachers there. Very widely known and well regarded.

Riess: Ward Bennett.

Anneberg: I don't know about his work.

Riess: Adda Husted Anderson, a Norwegian name. She became president of
the New York Society of Craftsmen. And Paul Lobel, who had
another jewelry shop in Greenwich Village.

Anneberg: I wasn't aware of either of them.

My teacher in Seattle, Ruth Penington, had studied in
Scandinavia, in Denmark. She later was very prominent in the
American Craft Council. Maybe we can next time start with a
flashback to that before I get into northern California and the
people I knew there. And then we could use that to segue into
the Anneberg Gallery here.

Seattle Area Artists and Art Galleries
[Interview 2: March 13, 1995] ##

Riess: Did you know Jack Lenor Larsen in Seattle?

Anneberg: Yes, I knew Jack. Jack was Ed Rossbach's teaching assistant, I
think. He was in graduate school at that time, although he was
teaching.

A good friend of Jack Larsen 's was also a good friend of
mine, and when Jack had been back in New York for a year or so
this friend of mine went back to study at Parson's School of
Design. And he came back and said he thought that in another
year, Jack Larsen would be on top of the textile design
industryhe was already in the industry, with his own design
firm. And he was, you know, on top by the mid-fifties. Within
three years, I think, of leaving Seattle, he was already
climbing very high.

Riess: Ed Rossbach described Jack Larsen and Peter Voulkos as real
producers .

Anneberg: Right. Well, Peter Voulkos was exhibiting occasionally at the
Henry Art Gallery. The Henry Art Gallery on the University of
Washington campus had an annual Northwest craft show that
included Washington, Oregon, Alaska, British Columbia, Idaho,
and Montana. Mostly it was Washington, of course, but then
scattered people from these other areas would also show.
Montana was considered Northwest. Peter Voulkos was from
Montana, and he showed in at least one Northwest Annual craft
show, maybe more, with his large roundish pots with small
openings, beautiful shapes, and groundbreaking at the time.

Riess: Did it include art from Native Americans?

Anneberg: There was no contact, I think, between the two. The first time
I was aware of that happening I think was down here. I remember
there was a Native American potter in a show at the de Young in
1957, coinciding with the first annual ACC national conference,
which was held at Asilomar. I was in that de Young show too.

Riess: Ed Rossbach also mentioned the inspiration of the Cornish
School.

Anneberg: Cornish changed hands or changed directions somewhere, probably
in the 1940s or early fifties. I don't know exactly when it
was. They became less important after that, and they were very

marginal at the time I was there. It really was no longer an
important force, and they no longer had these wonderful people
coming there to teach, like John Cage and Merce Cunningham. But
they did have local people teaching. It wasn't a bad school, I
don't mean anything like that, it just was no longer in the
avant garde, on the cutting edge, and that sort of thing.

Riess: What would have been? The Henry Gallery?

Anneberg: There were always people who were very interested in craft at
the Henry Art Gallery. That was really the only gallery that
showed it at all.

There were only two privately owned art galleries in
Seattle at that time, if you'll believe that. They were very
good galleries. One of them was run by a woman named Zoe
Dusanne, who was legendary. She was from New Orleans, I think
they called her a mulatto. She was very glamorous and very
strong-willed. And she had Morris Graves in her stable, so to
speak.

She had a beautiful little house on a hill in Seattle that
later was bulldozed when they cut a freeway through Seattle, and
they sliced off part of the hill that she was living on. She
was right .on the top of the hill, close to a steep cliff of
crumbling sandstone or something. They just cut away that
escarpment, that part of the hill, and her house went, because
it was in the way. Which I always thought was so awful of
Seattle to do that, to cut a highway through the middle of that
really wonderful residential area, with small, interesting
places to live, like Zoe ' s house. Morris Graves had done the
landscape gardening. And he designed a patio in front of her
little house, which was the entrance.

She hung pictures in what would have been her living room,
but it was a very modern house--! should know who designed the
house, but I can't remember right now those architects' names
who were prominent at that time.

Riess: The one that was destroyed was a modern house?

Anneberg: Oh, yes. It was a beautiful little house. Rather tiny, because
I think she- -I don't know where she slept. It may have had one
bedroom, and the entire living room was gallery.

She showed contemporary painters and sculptors, she didn't
show craft or anything like that. But it was a very important
little gallery. Well, she did have a case with some of my
jewelry in the hallway for a month or so, but it didn't sell.

She gave me a little lecture on how I should jazz up my jewelry,
give it more style (make it more like costume jewelry), and she
gave me some rather nice old dress buttons to work with. Of
course I never did.

Later on a man named Otto Seligman started a gallery in his
apartment. So you can see, there were no real art galleries.

Riess: And are you talking about the fifties or forties?

Anneberg: These are 1950s, when I became interested enough in art

galleries to be aware of that sort of thing. Otto Seligman did
show craft, mainly pottery. He showed Mark Tobey, and Mark
Tobey and Zoe Dusanne did not get along. So- -[laughs] there was
a lot of rivalry--

Riess: So there had to be two galleries in town.

Anneberg: Yes, so there was room for two.

Riess: And he had pottery and craft, you said?

Anneberg: Yes, and I had some jewelry there for quite a while, maybe for
about a year before I left. He had various potters. Very good
ones. He had excellent taste. He had been in France, and his
ex-wife had had an art gallery in Paris. When they moved to
Seattle he was the one who ran the gallery, but it was her
contacts in France that helped him get a lot of things. I know
that he always had a lot of good original prints of European,
French artists particularly.

Riess: If there were so few galleries, where would collectors have
gone?

Anneberg: People collected local artists, and they weren't very much
interested in the outside art world. They bought paintings
sometimes from artists themselves. The galleries had not yet
become really important sources, except for big names like Mark
Tobey, and Morris Graves, who already had representatives in New
York, and a handful of others. But most people probably bought
from artists and bought out of shows that were presented at the
Seattle Art Museum, places like that.

Riess: That would have been like the equivalent of the San Francisco
Art Association shows here?

Anneberg: Well, San Francisco used to have similar annual shows of local
artists. There was a big annual painting and sculpture show at
Seattle Art Museum. It was called the Northwest Annual. Mark

Tobey and Morris Graves always exhibited, and all the big
painters from the Northwest exhibited in this show. They did
not consider themselves above it at all.

Riess: Were they juried shows?

Anneberg: Juried shows.

Riess: And the artists set their own prices?

Anneberg: Yes. It was also a show where you could go and see the

established artists, local artists, and you could also see up
and coming new artists. It was a wonderful annual show. People
in Seattle really seriously collected local artists. It was a
very different situation than you found probably anywhere else
in the country.

Riess: Were crafts particularly appreciated there, do you think?

Anneberg: I think in the same way, they were, although they weren't nearly
as prominent.

Riess: And by crafts--we have to establish what you think when I say
crafts. Do you think the whole range, do you think weaving,
pottery, jewelry?

Anneberg: Yes, I do. And I also consider them to be serious work, not

street work at all, not the sort of thing that you began to see
after the sixties down here and elsewhere. These were people
who were serious studio artists, craftsmen. They had a certain
following at the time I left, especially the ceramic artists.
Weaving was never as important up there as it was down here, but
the ceramics people were. I mean there were not as many people
involved in weaving. Ed Rossbach and Jack Larsen didn't stay
around long enough.

There were some weavers who were very important though.
There was one who specialized in casement fabrics. She got big
commissions for office buildings and I think public buildings in
Seattle. People were already giving big commissions to local
people. When a building needed a piece of sculpture or wanted a
painting or window curtains, casements, they would naturally
think of local craft people first.

Riess: They would think of artists rather than off the rack?

Anneberg: Probably that wasn't really true, but there was a significant
number of them that did think in terms of handmade objects.
This is something that I noticed after I came to California that

did not exist down here. I had a show shortly after I started
the [Anneberg] gallery of a potter named Bruce Anderson, who was
very prominent locally. He's no longer living. When I
advertised that show I immediately got calls from Seattle,
calling up saying, "Is anything left?" And ordering things over
the phone.

Riess: That's extraordinary.

Anneberg: Another time there was a showlet me see, who was it? I can't
remember who it was right now, but I did get calls from Seattle,
and it was at the opening. The person also asked, "Is anything
left?" Now, in Seattle, a show would be sold out immediately.
Not down here. I hadn't sold anything yet. So I had to be
rather careful about what I said, you see. Like, "Oh, yes,
there are a lot of things left."

Riess: You would have had that person on a mailing list, or they would
just know it through art news type publications?

Anneberg: I don't remember how that worked. I did have some people in

Seattle on my mailing list, of course, and they probably found
out that way.

And Some Comparisons with San Francisco

Riess: Well, what is the general truth about San Francisco?

Anneberg: It's hard to sell things here, and it's always been hard. I

don't know if it's changed a great deal, but I know that local
collectors were not then, and probably not even today, as
important as corporate collectors. Businesses buy art work from
galleries. Many galleries make special presentations to
representatives from local corporations of work to decorate
their offices. I know that they do buy from galleries. But I
don't know that there's such an important market in local
collectors.

Riess: And are we talking about crafts?

Anneberg: Corporations buy textile arts mainly--like weavings. Things for
the walls.

I never made that sort of presentation [to corporations],
because I just couldn't handle it. I ran the gallery all by
myself.

Riess: There's certainly money in San Francisco, and there's lots of

enthusiasm for modern art, as evidenced by the new San Francisco
Museum of Modern Art.

Anneberg: Yes. But it's never been a really great collecting area. Now,
things change over the years, and I haven't been in the gallery
business for over ten years now, so it may not be so wise for me
to make such a strong statement about that.

Riess: When you look back to painters like Park and Bischoff and

Diebenkorn, you would think they would be the equivalent of
Graves and Tobey and that people would be snatching them up.

Anneberg: How many people do you know who have these painters in their
collections?

Riess: But I never figure that it's people I know who would have them!

Anneberg: In Seattle, you would figure it was people you knew. At least,
when I lived there, that was true. Young people right out of
college, people just entering professional life or business, and
beginning to seriously buy things for their homes, would think
of collecting in Seattle.

Riess: Was the price structure different in Seattle?

Anneberg: Well, it may have been, a little. Things have gotten much more
expensive now for everyone, and it may not be true any longer
that young people can start collecting early like they could
when I was up there. But it was a significant difference I felt
when I moved down here--I just didn't see that happening here.

Riess: Didn't you say last time we met that you thought that a painting
really brought life and color and some very essential qualities
to life in such a fogbound, rainbound area?

Anneberg: When you live in a dark and rainy area where light doesn't play
the role that it does down here. People all notice the
difference in light when they go up there, because it's dim,
it's diffused, and it's darker.

Riess: So art really fills a need up there.
Anneberg: I think it does.

Just to show you another thing about light, Mark Tobey went
back to New York in the mid-fifties and he was there for almost
a year. Otto Seligman told me Tobey just had the most wonderful
feeling about New York when he went back there. He had always

painted in Seattle, and his paintings were- -you probably know
them- -the palette was very subdued. Well, in New York he was
doing drawings and paintings with very bright colors. I don't
know if people know very much about that period. But I saw some
of them at Seligman's gallery after he returned.

Mark Tobey always felt that people in Seattle didn't
appreciate him. He didn't know what it was like, you see, to
live elsewhere. In New York, of course, they had heard of Mark
Tobey, and they lionized him, he was an important artist. He
felt that he was appreciated more in New York than he was in
Seattle. Well, of course that probably was true. New York
always is a better market than anyplace else. But Seattle in
itself--! don't think that artists really appreciated how good
they had it, because they hadn't tried living in Los Angeles or
San Francisco or Chicago or Washington, D.C., or Boston, or
anyplace like that.

But the way his palette brightened up after that. There
were these reds and yellows and greens and blues, and it was as
though he'd just come out into the sunlight for the first time.

Riess: Actually, I don't much think of light in New York.

Anneberg: I don't know that light really has that much to do with it

there, but you do get brighter summers and springs, and in the
fall there is more light. In Seattle, the dark weather closes
in on you rather early. Maybe it was mainly the bright lights
and the excitement of the place.

Riess: What about the influence of just being in a larger art

community? Don't you think artists are influenced by other
artists?

Anneberg: Yes, definitely. And that's one of the things about New York
that's always been so good for artists. They are very
productive, living right in the city, because they do have the
stimulation of other people, other artists, galleries, museums.
It's very stimulating.

Riess: Did you think about opening a gallery in Seattle?

Anneberg: Oh, no, it never crossed my mind. It didn't at all. I had

started making jewelry rather seriously in what tiny amount of
spare time I had. I mean, I felt serious about it. I was
selling a little here and there. I didn't really know what I
was going to do, I was just anxious to leave.

II MOVE TO THE BAY AREA

Publicity and Exhibitions at the UC Berkeley Library

Anneberg: I won't go into all the reasons why I wanted to leave, because
that really gets outside the sphere of our subject. When I got
here I got a job in Berkeley, but I lived in San Francisco. I
wanted to live in San Francisco--that was really the point of
moving down here- -because I had friends in San Francisco, and I
loved the city. I really didn't try terribly hard to get a job
in the Far Eastern field. I just looked for any job. But I
got a job at the UC Berkeley library, so eventually, after a
year or so, I moved over to Berkeley.

Riess: And your job?

Anneberg: I was in charge of library publicity. I edited the in-house

newsletter. There was a certain amount of publicity that went
out into other places, like the campus publicity office. I did
exhibitions, library exhibitions and things like that. And
then later on--see, I think I probably worked there about eight
years all told--after about six years, I think it must have
been, I went onto half time, because by that time I was trying
to make jewelry a little more seriously.

And then I left my publicity job and I was put into the
Morrison Library reading room, which is a very nice,
comfortable job, just checking out books and things like that.
But I still was in charge of exhibitions, and the Graphic Arts
Loan Collection publicity, and doing the calendar and posters
for their annual exhibition in the Morrison Room, where all the
students could check out prints.

Riess: Was that the beginning of the Graphic Arts Loan Collection?
Anneberg: It probably had been going a year or so by then.

Riess: Did you have anything to do with organizing that, or inspiring
that?

Anneberg: No. I can't really remember what I did. I know I did the

poster, and probably a catalogue of some sort, a list. But I
still did the library exhibitions.

Riess: You learned to do exhibitions in the library?

Anneberg: As a matter of fact, I think it probably was the first time I
did exhibitions.

Riess: Did this bring you into contact with people in the arts? I'm

trying to understand your network, Berkeley, San Francisco, and
how you made your way.

Anneberg: Well, the job at the library didn't really have anything to do
with it. It just got me used to thinking in terms of
exhibitions, and the discipline of putting an exhibition up.
It was really concerned with books and the library, it was
nothing like an art show.

Designer Craftsmen of Northern California, and Issues of
Definition

Riess: Who were the friends in San Francisco, people in the arts?

Anneberg: Well, I had gotten to know a number of crafts people because I
was showing at the Richmond Art Center in their annual, and
also showing with the Metal Arts Guild. The Metal Arts Guild
put up an exhibition at the San Francisco Art Festival every
year. The art festival used to be quite wonderful, as far as
the craft people were concerned. It was much better showing
local crafts, serious local crafts, than it was local painters.

Riess: This is the one at the Civic Center?

Anneberg: At the Civic Center. It used to be extremely good for that

sort of thing. And we got good reviews by the art critics. I
remember they always noticed how poorly represented the fine
arts were, and how good a show the craft artists put on. So
there was a lot of contact with other craft people through
that, and I got to know quite a few.

That's where I met Lillian Elliot I think for the first
time, although she probably got involved in Designer Craftsmen

of Northern California as well. That was a group that was very
lively at the time. I met a lot of people through them.

Riess: The Metal Arts Guild, is that what jewelers belong to?

Anneberg: Yes. It is not as important now as it was then. But it still
does exist, and there are still a number of jewelers, meaning
goldsmiths, involved in it. I think it was more of a force at
that time because it was the organization through which you
could show your work at the arts festival, and other places
too. I remember at least two MAG shows at the Legion of Honor,
and one (it was either MAG or Designer Craftsmen of Northern
California) at the San Francisco Museum of Art (now Museum of
Modern Art) in the 1960s or early seventies.

At that time the de Young Museum and the California Palace
of the Legion of Honor, even the San Francisco Museum of Art,
had shows every now and then featuring craft. It's hard to
think of them doing that today. There was a woman in charge of
decorative arts, it was called, at the de Young, Dr. Elizabeth
Moses, and she was a very interesting and influential person.
She was very much interested in the craft people. She knew a
lot of them, and I remember showing there several times with
one group or another, even after she died. Graeme Keith
succeeded her and continued her policies.

Riess: Tell me more about the Designer Craftsmen of Northern
California. What did they do for their members?

Anneberg: Well, at the time I knew them we just occasionally showed at
these museums, and let me see, what else did they do? Well,
for instance, in the opening summer of the Mendocino Art
Center, they supplied most of the teachers. I did a two-week
teaching stint that summer.

Riess: Did it have an organizational structure, a president, a vice
president?

Anneberg: Oh, yes. Yes, and we had regular monthly meetings. They were
quite lively. A lot of good artists belonged to it.

Riess: What kinds of things would they discuss?

Anneberg: Things of current interest, exhibitions local and national, we
would show films sometimes. And I remember endless discussions
on how to get rid of the term "craftsmen" and ally ourselves
more with the art community, the mainstream art community, and
what should we call ourselves instead. It just got to be so
boring in a way, because any meeting could disintegrate into

bickering over getting rid of the name "Designer Craftsman,"
which was what people calledwhat we called ourselves at that
time. The very fact that you used the word "craft," you see,
put you down in the art community.

Riess: Why "designer" craftsmen?

Anneberg: Well, that meant that the person who made the object also was
the designer. That really indicated that you were more than
just a production potter, for instance, or someone who was more
commercial, that you were a serious designer.

Riess: And a designer is an artist?

Anneberg: Well, yes, I would think so, yes.

Riess: But they couldn't call themselves "artist" craftsmen.

Anneberg: Well, that was one of the things that was endlessly discussed,
you see, that nobody could quite come to a--we couldn't ever
quite agree upon a name that would be a substitute. The craft
world couldn't quite bring itself to use the term "artist," yet
once we began to claim that title, and people like me started
galleries and tried to get recognized as a legitimate part of
the art world, critics and museums closed ranks and came down
on us pretty hard.

Riess: So the Designer Craftsmen. What about the American Craft

Council? Did it have a local chapter? Would that have been a
different group of people, or how did that fit in?

Anneberg: No, it didn't have a local chapter as such. For a while they
had a local branch of the museum, you remember, when
Ghirardelli Square first opened up. Museum West, I think it
was called.

Riess: With traveling shows?

Anneberg: Mostly from New York, yes.

Riess: Did they exhibit local crafts people?

Anneberg: Well, that was the thing. They didn't really do very much for
the local community, and for that reason it was not supported
very well. So they eventually had to give up on it. If they
had concentrated more on doing something for the local
community I think it would have been much better supported.
But they didn't get a good membership out of this area because
of that.

Riess:

Annebergi

Riess:

Anneberg:
Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Was it important for you and for other local crafts people to
read American Crafts magazine?

Yes. At that time it was called Craft Horizons, and it was the
magazine in the whole country for the craft movement.

A movement has

It's interesting you say "the craft movement."
that political connotation.

What else, craft community? I don't know.

Movement is probably correct, that you felt like an alienated
group, perhaps.

Yes, I think so. And we also felt that it was emerging, that
it had not yet assumed its rightful place or a significant
place in the art community. And it still is struggling to be
recognized. It's not very much different.

In my notes from the Diamonstein book 1 , she says that debate
still recurs. Some consider themselves artists and consider
that to be the guideline to how their work should be exhibited.
Others are happy to be identified as craftsmen. When you think
of the debate, what people do you think of on the sides of it?

I don't really know any longer. But I know that some people
probably do not really want to be thought of as part of the
craft world. They want to be considered "fine artists."

Does that have to do with the monetary part?

Prestige, probably, more than anything. But when it comes
right down to it, craft artists never have been really accepted
by the fine arts establishment. They still want to call you
artisans, you see, or crafts people, not artists. Artisans is
probably as high a rank as they would allow. I myself think
that "artist" is the right word. I never could understand why
they held us to a different standard. Why should a fourth-rate
Sunday painter be considered an artist, more of an artist than,
say, Trude Guennonprez?

One thing about living on the West Coast is the strong
influence from Japan where crafts are highly valued. How did
that figure?

'Barbaralee Diamonstein, Handmade in America, Conversations with
Fourteen Graf tmasters , Abrams, 1983.

Anneberg: I don't know, but I never felt that the Orient was as strong an
influence down here as it was in Seattle, strangely enough. I
think that people didn't put such a hard and fast dividing line
between the twofine art and craft--in Seattle as they did
down here, as they still do.

Riess: If in Japan the tea bowl was the highest art it would seem

there would be a natural alliance with that whole philosophy.

Anneberg: They simply never had the strict dividing line between the two
in either China or Japan. But the concept of what is art is
different in every culture. In China, it really started with
the brush, and the brush is allied with literature. Literature
is artpoetry, things you write with the brush, and out of the
brush comes painting, and painting was often done on ceramics,
you see. That elevates ceramics to the art. I keep wanting to
say "the arts," because that really is more of a Western
concept. But they never really looked down on craft the way
people from the nineteenth century on did in Europe.

This is a fairly recent phenomenon, of dividing craft from
art, even in Europe, you see. So it's something that's really
very difficult to struggle with. It's hard to form these
definitions in your mind when they are really unclear from one
culture to another you can't quite make the same analogies.
In Japan they didn't have the same feeling about
decorativeness, things that were decorative and things that
were not decorative. That's one of the problems in Western
culture, because the craft people are considered to be more
interested in decorativeness, you see.

Now, I say there's nothing wrong with that. In Japan, they
wouldn't have that sort of feeling, that it was somehow or
other not as good to be decorative, because they would paint,
for instance, on screens. Certain screen painters, like Korin,
were very important painters in Japan. Their work was very,
very decorative, and it was high art, too. And the same thing
would occur in ceramics, you see. That can be very important
art in Japan, but it's never quite considered in the same way
in the West.

Riess: And it could also be functional and still be art.

Anneberg: Well, there again, they didn't put that line down the center,
you see. One of the reasons craft is looked down upon in the
West is because it has its basis in functionality, in
usefulness. They don't mind that in the Orient, you see. In
Asian countries they didn't worry about the difference between
functional and non- functional.

Riess:

That history you were certainly versed in from your studies,

Design Department at UC Berkeley; Richmond Art Center; Pond
Farm

Riess: What about the efforts over the years at Berkeley to include
the craft arts, otherwise known as the Design Department, in
the university? And the several places where it might have
ended up. Was design, design and crafts, better accepted and
integrated at the University of Washington than it was at
Berkeley?

Anneberg: I think so. Ceramics was always a part of the Art Department
in Seattle. Although weaving got shoved off into the Home
Economics Department in Seattle, strangely enough. Ed Rossbach
taught in the Home Economics Department. But that was just a
matter of structure in the university, left over from an
earlier time.

Riess: That must have been a hot debate, what academic value to give
to crafts.

Anneberg: Yes, I think that was a problem. When they got rid of the

Design Department at Berkeley--! wasn't involved in that, but I
seem to remember that the problem was that the University had
to stay clear of any discipline that--hmm, how can I put it?
If you were actually making things, that wasn't good. But if
you were just thinking about them or designing them, that was
all right. It had to be more scholarly, you see, otherwise you
got into the actual workings of it. The pot shop, Peter
Voulkos' ceramics department, could exist all right, but I
don't knowI think eventually they had to get rid of that too.
Maybe Voulkos' stature was what preserved it so long.

Riess: In 1964 Marvin Lipofsky came to teach glass-blowing in the
College of Environmental Design, but that only lasted three
years and then he went to CCAC in 1967.

Anneberg: That's right, yes. My first craft show was with Marvin

Lipofsky and his students, and that was in the winter of 1966-
67. That studio had probably been in existence only a couple
of years, because it was very new, before it was discontinued
and Marvin set up a glass studio at CCAC.

Riess: How did the Richmond Art Center fit into things in terms of
exhibitions of crafts?

Anneberg: Richmond Art Center had the only regularly scheduled craft
show. It was an annual open competition for the whole of
northern California. It was the place to show in this area for
many years.

Riess: And who would have juried that?

Anneberg: They picked a panel of jurors from the local community. I
remember they put me on the jury one time to keep me from
showing every year, [laughs] I always won a prize, though not
always first, and they were getting awfully tired of that, so
they put me on the jury, and that kind of broke the pattern. I
stopped entering about then.

But yes, we got to know each other largely through these
things like exhibitions at the Richmond Art Center. I met a
lot of people that way. It was a much smaller group, you see,
at that time. We weren't as scattered around. We did know
each other.

I should mention too that the California State Fair at
Sacramento also had an annual juried art exhibition with a
craft section.

Riess: What about the street fairs? Grant Avenue?

Anneberg: I think for some people Grant Avenue was quite important.

Riess: Did you do that?

Anneberg: I never did, no.

Riess: Was that a different group of people, the ones who would do
street fairs?

Anneberg: It must have been. But I think some pretty good craft artists
did display there. I don't recall that in the early sixties
they were as prominent, as important, as they were before in
the fifties. But Grant Avenue I know was quite a good fair for
a while.

Riess: Had you heard of Pond Farm before you came to this area?
Anneberg: No, I knew nothing about things like that.

Riess: Were there things like that, in fact, in the Seattle area,
artists' communities?

Anneberg: No, not that I know of.

Riess: When you came here Pond Farm had passed its peak probably.

Anneberg: I think so, yes. I knew of Victor Ries, but he was teaching

jewelry and silversmi thing in the area. My friend Tex Gieling
studied under him for a while, a few months.

Jewelry-Making Techniques, and Making a Living

Riess: When you got here, did you continue to study with anyone?

Anneberg: I never did really study with anyone, except briefly with Ruth
Pennington. I just worked on my own. I figured things out for
myself.

Riess: Was Craft Horizons a way of learning about new things that were
going on?

Anneberg: Yes, it was very important. There would be good articles on
jewelers and other people who were doing interesting things.
John Paul Miller, who was doing 1AK gold granulation, was
featured in an article. Everyone was trying to figure out how
he did it. I think I figured it outI'm quite certain I know
how he did it, though I don't know if that's within our scope
here .

Riess: Go ahead. But it reminds me that you have to be able to afford
to do jewelry. There's a certain investment in materials.

Anneberg: No worse than other things, like weaving. Weaving is a

considerable investment, and materials in weaving cost just as
much as they do for jewelers, perhaps even more.

Riess: So the stones and the metal are not something that you'd think
twice about?

Anneberg: Well, of course, they do cost money, but so do weaving

materials. It's the equipment, tools, and machinery that can
run into money, but I got by on very little.

Riess: And you knew that you had an outlet. You were successful?

Anneberg: There was a good outlet in San Francisco. Nanni's, it was
called, owned by Nanni Hendersonshe was a German Jewish
refugee who did very well in San Francisco. She established
this little shop for contemporary jewelry, handmade

contemporary jewelry, and it was a very important outlet,
especially for local jewelers.

Riess: Where was it?

Anneberg: Downtown on Grant Avenue off Sutter. She showed everyone, all
of the best jewelers in the area. It was an extremely
important place.

Riess: What is the difference between a shop and a gallery in this
case?

Anneberg: Well, it was a tiny little hole in the wall. She didn't have
room to be a gallery. But she had cases where your work was
prominently displayed.

Riess: And it was only jewelry?

Anneberg: Only handmade contemporary jewelry, mostly from local people,
although occasionally there would be someone from other areas.
So it was a good stimulation for local jewelers and at the time
I don't think there was anybody else who regularly showed
jewelry.

Riess: Could you have been a jeweler full time rather than working
part time at the university arranging exhibition cases?

Anneberg: It would have been pretty hard to earn a living full time as a
jeweler, although there were people who managed it. I was
never very good at that sort of dealing with the business
aspect of becoming a full-time crafts person. It would
inevitably mean getting pretty commercial.

Riess: A name that comes to mind is Peter Macchiarini on Grant Avenue.
How would you describe what he was doing?

Anneberg: Well, he was commercial in that he had to meet the demands of

the marketplace, so he couldn't spend time competinghe didn't
enter the Richmond Annual, I don't think so anyway.

Anneberg: There was a very fine woman jeweler who was a cousin of Yul
Brynner. Her name was Brynner, but what was her first name?
Nena. She did very well. She was a good friend of Dr. Moses,
too. She later went back to New York and set up a nice little
shop, I think with her cousin's help. [laughter] Near the
Museum of Contemporary Crafts and the Museum of Modern Art.

And she did quite well in San Francisco, I remember, before
relocating to New York.

Riess: You sold your things through Nanni Henderson and at art shows?
Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: And did you at the same time develop some collectors of your--
or did Nanni develop them?

Anneberg: I think Nanni probably did. She sold my things very well. I

wasn't aggressive enough to charge terribly high prices, so she
sold them as fast as they came into the shop, as a rule. She
tried to discourage you from selling to private customers,
although I did after I moved back to San Francisco in 1964 and
set up my studio on Hyde Street.

Riess: When you think about jewelry-making, just thinking about it
now, was it wonderfully pleasurable when you were doing it?

Anneberg: Yes, it was. It was very exciting.

Riess: You were starting to talk about gold granulation.

Anneberg: I was always interested in experimentation and doing something
different. It was just that I was not schooled in traditional
techniques very well, so I taught myself everything. I learned
a lot by reading tool catalogues, and how to use certain tools.
I'd order the tool, and I'd figure out how to use it, you see,
and that led to some new enrichment in my vocabulary of
techniques. And I read all the books I could find on jewlery-
making, including old ones.

I did that sort of thing rather than study under someone
else and learn their techniques, learn how to do it from
someone else. So I really worked out things for myself, and it
was always very interesting to me and very exciting to start
doing something that nobody else was doing in quite the same
way.

I think my work was probably quite original in' lots of
ways. I never considered myself a really skilled jeweler or
goldsmith as far as technique was concerned, although I was
serious about improving my technique as much as I could.
Today, there are lots of good places to learn serious jewelry
techniques right here, people teaching in various colleges and
universities, and there is a school of jewelry downtown. I
can't remember the name of it, but it is a serious school for
professional, commercial jewelers and stonesetters .

Riess: Part of the old idea, the idea of Pond Farm, is of being

apprenticed, so that you did learn everything that your master
knows .

Anneberg: That was an older European idea, yes.
Riess: So that had basically died out?

Anneberg: I don't really know. I suppose it did. I know that people
would want to apprentice with me from time to time, but I
simply couldn't handle it, because I never had a large enough
studio to be able to have somebody else underfoot all the time.
And I was always terribly busy trying to make a living, to do
my own work and run the gallery.

I was either working part-time and doing jewelry part-time,
which left me no time at all to deal with somebody else, or I
was running a gallery and doing jewelry on the side. I just
couldn't handle the time aspect of it. It takes a lot of time
to have somebody else around, showing them what to do.

Riess: How did you handle your day? Are you most productive in the

morning? How did you balance the time to be doing the jewelry
at the time of day that you wanted to be doing it? Could you
choose?

Anneberg: Well, in those days, 1 was a lot younger and I could stay up at
night and work, and it didn't bother me as much, you see. I
worked on weekends, and in the evenings otherwise, when I could
find time.

Riess: As you went about your day at Berkeley or wherever, was your
mind full of ideas, were you sort of constantly creating
things?

Anneberg: I don't remember. I suppose it happened.
Riess: Did you draw before you started?

Anneberg: I never worked very well from drawings. I would do rough

sketches. I would get an overall feeling, impression of what I
wanted to do. I would make a very quick drawing of the entire
thing, but not detailed. I just tried to capture the shape and
the idea of what I had in mind.

I would often sit down and think about it for a while, and
try to clear my mind completely and get into a meditative
state. Then when I got up from that I would make a quick
drawing that very often had the impression or the look that I

was after. I wanted to put down the expression of a feeling,
or look that I had in mind. Then I'd work out the details as I
went along. The drawing was really just a rough sketch.

But sometimes I'd have to draw out details in order to get
in mind exactly how something would work, because it can be a
real engineering project, when you try to figure out how a
necklace will function on a neck and a pair of shoulders. Or
what clasp to use, or how a bracelet will work on a moving
wrist. There are a lot of little problems that have to be
worked out in just the way one link goes into the next one, and
how it will drape on the human body. And the clasp, of course,
is another problem.

Riess: So you found yourself doing more large pieces?

Anneberg: Well, I liked to do large pieces. I also did a lot of earrings
and pins and bracelets. I didn't limit myself to just one
thing, but I made a lot of bracelets for Nanni. She liked that
sort of thing. I didn't make things just because she liked
them, but I was probably influenced by the sort of thing that
sold well, because she would often say, "Have you got any more
of those wonderful bracelets?"

Riess: What were the wonderful bracelets?

Anneberg: It was a combination of silver and gold and etching that I was
rather known for for a while. I did a lot of etching on
silver--! was interested in surface texture, so the etching
would give me a certain texture--! was after a feeling or
impression, and a texture rather than a design that etching
could produce.

I never knew what to call this combination technique that I
did in silver and gold, because nobody else had ever done it in
quite the same way, I'm sure. But I would first texture the
metal with etching, leaving plain areas that I could solder
gold onto, and in the plain areas I would melt gold solder over
the surface. That's something I saw Imogene Gieling do at one
point, and I started experimenting with it. When you melt gold
solder, you can heat it up to a very high temperature and it
will just flow, or you can tease it with a small tool, over the
surface of the silver, wherever you have applied flux. It
produces a wonderful look that is somewhere between silver and
gold.

The Greeks had a natural alloy of silver and gold that they
called electrum, and it has a wonderful in-between look,
between silver and gold. When you melt gold solder over the

surface of silver it produces a very shiny, reflective surface,
like moonlight. Then I would sometimes apply a very thin gold
sheet, pieces cut out of a thin gold sheet, and that can be
part of the surface design, you see. You're forming a design
almost like you're painting on top of the metal.

Riess: Not as thin as gold leaf, though?
Anneberg: Not that thin. No, just a very thin sheet.

Then I would also make a textured gold sheet that was
something no one else did. I would melt gold in a crucible and
let it pour onto a piece of transite, which is a sort of very
hard asbestos. I would put this little piece of transite in a
large kettle, so that the gold wouldn't splash out and get onto
the floor or onto me and burn holes in things. I would prop up
one side so it slanted and then pour the gold from the crucible
onto the piece of transite, and with luck it would flow down
the transite, and as it solidified, it would wrinkle up.

It was very difficult to get it looking just right, the
right sort of thinness and the right sort of wrinkled texture.
There was no way I could control it. I would simply do it by
trial and error. Sometimes it would take me a half an hour,
and sometimes it would take me hours and hours and hours, or
days and days and days before it was right.

Riess: Collecting it and remelting it?

Anneberg: Yes. So it was not something I could teach to someone else. I
could show them how I did it, but their eyes would glaze over,
because it just meant repetitive trying after this effect.
Whenever I got a thin piece of textured gold that was just the
way I liked it, then I would save that. Then I could cut out
little shapes and things from that texture.

Now, it was very porous, and that was another problem.
Silver and gold themselves are sometimes difficult to solder
together, because silver tends to lower the melting point of
gold. When you have a porous piece of gold, your chances are
very high of that gold simply disappearing on you, just rolling
up into a little ball instead of soldering. So I would have to
paint the top of the little piece of textured gold with yellow
ocher, which would prevent it from accepting too much of the
heat from the blowtorch. Then there is a problem of keeping
the yellow ocher from contaminating the flux that you have to
apply to the solder. And so on.

Riess: How did you know about the yellow ocher solution?

Anneberg: That was a traditional technique that you often have to use to
protect the top of a piece of gold or silver from the effects
of the blowtorch.

Riess: Have you always had places with studio space, or how have you
managed that?

Anneberg: I always worked somewhere in my apartment, in the kitchen or
part of a bedroom or a back porch or something, wherever I
could safely set up a little studio corner. I've never had a
really serious studio in my life. I never have. [laughs] In
Berkeley I had an extra bedroom, that was the only place I ever
had a whole room for a studio. But it was still pretty small.

Riess: Getting back to the materials, is there something about looking
at the gold and the stones and the silver, that they have
within them something that inspires you? Like Michelangelo
seeing the form in the marble?

Anneberg: Oh, do you mean, would you start with the stone and get
inspired by the stone itself?

Riess: Yes.

Anneberg: Very often, that's true. You fall in love with a stone, or the
look of a stone, or the color, yes.

There were several outlets, stone dealers downtown who
dealt mostly with manufacturing jewelersthat is what you call
the jewelers who do commercial work, who supply the traditional
jewelry stores. They're the people who know how to do all that
intricate soldering and repair work, and stone setting. There
are lots of them in little cubbyhole offices all over the
Phelan Building downtown, and I got to know a number of them,
because they're often very good at what they do.

Riess: You got to know them because you were interested in how they
did what they did?

Anneberg: Oh, yes, and sometimes they were diamond setters that you had
to have do your diamond setting, although I learned how to do
that too. But there were stone merchants in the Phelan
Building and places like that. Some of them I would visit
every now and then so they got to know me.

Riess: They would call you when some delicious thing came in?

Anneberg: No, but they wouldn't think that you were not a very serious
person when you came into their store. I wasn't buying

expensive stones, but they would still treat me with a certain
amount of respect.

But mostly I bought stones from dealers who came around to
me. One was a Mexican, very Indian- looking and extremely
entertaining. He would regale me with stories of how the
Japanese had cornered the market on the best grade of Mexican
opals, and boosted the prices out of reach by always paying
more than top dollar for the best "rough" just as it emerged
from the mine, no bargaining. At that time Japanese women
would only wear pearls or opals, nothing else in stones. It's
different now, of course.

I bought Mexican opals and Colombian emeralds from him. He
had a fascinating story of how he bought smuggled Colombian
emeralds. I don't remember exactly how it went, but I have a
picture in my mind of him ordering his emeralds from someone in
Colombia by phone, and then they would hire someone to smuggle
them out. He would sit on the veranda of some hotel and wait
there with a cool drink in his hand for some poor Indian to
stagger out of the jungle with a gunny sack on his back and
come up to him with a bag full of emeralds. Of course that
wasn't quite it, but he did sit at the hotel and wait, you get
the idea. How could I resist that?

But mostly I bought from Murray Cohn, who would come in and
slap his leather case down on the counter and open it up, and
it was full of little folded papers of gemstones. I bought
mostly jade, ocean pearls, and sapphires from him. I was a
real gemstone junkie, I bought more than I ever needed. A
friend of mine was there one time when he came in. "Oh, they
don't weigh anything," he'd say when I'd ask how much some
little rubies or something were. Then he'd take out his little
carat scale and start weighing out a dozen or more. After he'd
gone she gasped, "I can't believe it. You were buying rubies
and sapphires as though they were carrots or beans--how do you
know they're even real? Aren't you afraid of being taken?"

And it was true, I'd just say, "I'll take this and that and
that." You get so you can tell, you develop a feel for the
real thing. I was never worried, and besides, Murray was
absolutely reliable. I never bought from anyone I suspected
was dishonest, or a little weird.

1964: Finding a Home and a Neighborhood on Hyde Street

Riess: You were doing your jewelry and you were selling it, and had a
part-time job. Why did you decide to open a gallery?

Anneberg: I think it all started when I got evicted from my little house
in Berkeley because I had too many cats. [laughter] When I
moved in the landlord said I could have one cat, but she
eventually had kittens and more kittens. At one point, he
realized that I had one mother cat, and I don't know how many--
I had something like six kittens, and I hadn't gotten rid of
all of them. So he got terribly upset, and told me to get out.

It took me quite a while to find another place to live,
because I wanted to continue to be able to make jewelry. So I
stayed with a jeweler friend of mine up in the Berkeley hills
for one summer. She let me stay in a room in her basement,
where I continued to make jewelry. Her husband built a big
outdoor cage for my cats. I found homes for three of the
kittens, but I ended up with three cats. And I looked all over
Berkeley and Oakland and San Francisco and couldn't find a
place to live. I didn't want to move in someplace and then get
evicted for being a fire hazard so I always told them up front
about being a goldsmith, and using an acetylene torch, so I
didn't get very far.

Finally I just gave up, and I went--I was invited to a
house party on Lopez Island on Puget Sound, north of Seattle.
So I went up there with Tex Gieling and her husband, and while
I was there I met an old friend of mine, Hal Painter, who was
also visiting the same people.

Hal had this place on Hyde Street in San Francisco that I
had always admired. He was a weaver, you see, and he had his
weaving studio on Hyde Street between Beach and North Point.
It was quite a large place, and he mentioned to me that he was
moving to Santa Rosa, so I said, "Oh, really? Who's moving
into your studio?"

And when he said, "No one yet, do you want it?" I shouted,
"Yes!" He promised to tell the landlord I was interested. The
only problem was the landlord really wanted a man in there,
somebody who could deal with any sort of plumbing or electrical
emergencies that might come up and not bother him. So he
thought that a man would be better. But Hal said he would put
in a good word for me and maybe the landlord might consider me
instead.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg:

So that's what happened. I waited around forlet's see,
that was Augustit wasn't until the first of November that the
landlord finally decided I would do.

Did you have to demonstrate your plumbing abilities first?

Well, no, but [laughter] the landlord certainly had no
abilities there, and he just didn't want to be bothered with
it. The main reason was that he didn't know what to do. He
was a very nice man, but he didn't want to spend any money at
all on repairs.

I moved in the day that Hal Painter moved out, right around
the first week of November, 1964. Hal left behind a room full
of odds and ends and old papers and miscellaneous things that I
had to have carted away. He sort of gave up on the place.
Because when you live somewhere for fifteen years, as he had,
you acquire an awful lot of stuff. There were a lot of things
that he just left behind for me to deal with, so I spent a
couple of weeks getting rid of it all.

I continued to hold on to my part-time job at the library
in Berkeley for most of the first year I was there, but finally
I relinquished that.

The space offered me a place to live and a place to make
jewelry. I hadn't really thought of much beyond that, but I
immediately saw that I had better try to have some sort of
place where people could come in and buy things, so I did kind
of fix up an area that I could make into a little shop.

And it was zoned for that?

Yes.

Had he used it in that way at all?

It was sort of a studio, people could come in and look around.
He had a number of big looms that were right in front near the
door, and people could come and watch him work. He did a lot
of commissions, I think.

Riess:

Was Hyde Street a good location in 1964?
this direction?

Were people coming

Anneberg: It certainly was not yet much like Fisherman's Wharf. It was
still a little local neighborhood. There were a couple of
lumberyards right down here on Beach Street, and a Dr. Pepper's
bottling factory. The Buena Vista was the only bar and

restaurant. It was already famous for Irish coffee but it was
mostly a neighborhood sort of place. Truck drivers would stop
there.

There was a little branch railroad that went right down
Beach Street, across the cable car lines, and when it held up
the cable cars, the drivers would get really mad. [laughter]
It went out to the Kodak processing plant, at the end of Beach
Street, right in front of the Fontana Apartments. That big,
low building down there was the Kodak plant. So the train went
that far, and back again, because I think that they were
probably the only business that really needed the train.

Riess: Were there any intimations of developing Ghirardelli Square at
that time?

Anneberg: Ghirardelli Square was just being developed. It had one little
small area open at the time I moved in. It probably opened
about the same time that I moved over from Berkeley.

Riess: Design Research was there, I remember.
Anneberg: It opened that first year I was on Hyde Street.

Riess: This is my way of asking whether you had really thought about
the practical aspects of having a shop on Hyde Street?

Anneberg: No, I'd neverit just sort of evolved, because I had all this
space, and I really wanted to cut loose from the library. It
cost me an awful lot in time, you see, just to go over and
back. It was really rather ridiculous, because all I was doing
was making the money for my rent. But if I had had any
business sense at all, I would never have opened a shop,
because it was totally irrational. [laughs]

Riess: Did you have any advice from anyone?

Anneberg: I wouldn't have taken it if I had had any, because I figured
nobodythis was a unique situation, nobody else had had just
this sort of experience, so why should I take their advice, you
see.

There were several little theaters in the neighborhood at
that time. The Playhouse Theater was right across the street
on the corner of Beach and Hyde, across from the Buena Vista,
and there was another one around the corner on Beach. Eliza
Pietsch, who worked in the rare books department at the UC
[Berkeley] Library, was the costume mistress for the Playhouse.
Even before I moved in, she had inveigled me into sewing

costumes occasionally, so I was already kind of involved in the
Playhouse, which was right across the street.

And Dirk van Erp's son had a silversmithing studio across
the street. His famous father had established the place. It
was right across the street on Hyde Street, but there was quite
a bit of property in the back with a little house and a
workshop, and trees, and quite a lot of grounds around it
before they built more buildings over there.

Anneberg: There was a woman who was a potter who had a little studio down
on Beach Street. It was at the end of this vacant lot you can
see from my window. In the middle of that vacant lot there was
a little house, an old farmhouse, that was part of her
property. Then on Beach Street, there was a little shop area,
and she had her pots in the window there.

She had the house rented out to a couple of men, and
unfortunately, it burnt down. I can't rememberit must have
burnt down at the end of '64 or maybe '65. It was very tragic,
because it was an historic farmhouse, and it completely burned,
and no one ever knew why. They had gone out for Thanksgiving
dinner someplace across town, blocks and blocks away, and the
house burnt while they were out.

Riess: An interesting neighborhood, it sounds like.

Anneberg: Yes, and there were artists living in this neighborhood.

III ANNEBERG GALLERY OPENS

1966; Coptic Textiles Exhibition with Gordon Holler

Anneberg: The way I got started with the gallery was that a friend of
mine that I knew at UC Berkeley LibraryGordon Holler--had
gone to Egypt as the photographer for an archaeological dig in
Cairo. It was a University of Chicago dig. They were
excavating the ruins of Fustat, which was the city that was
there before Cairo was built. Fustat was an Islamic city in
roughly the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, somewhere around
that period.

Fustat had been the industrial and art center of Egypt. By
industrial, I mean they made armor and swords and ceramics and
--it was the production center in Egypt. The Crusaders wanted
to capture Egypt, you see, but it was mostly desert so they
would have to capture Fustat before they could possibly hold
Egypt, because Fustat was the supply center.

I think it was the third Crusade. They got as far as the
Nile River, and they were camped across the river from Fustat.
They were ready to cross and capture the city, and the people
of Fustat set fire to the city, leveled it to the ground, and
moved away. So the Crusaders were never able to capture Egypt,
or any of North Africa.

The palaces of the caliphs--the rulers of Egypt at that
timewere north of Fustat, so eventually they began to build a
town around the palaces. It was called something like Cai-eeh-
ro, and that became the city of Cairo, which eventually spread
and enveloped the site of the former city of Fustat.

I believe the British excavated Fustat in the 1920s, and
they did a pretty good job of looting whatever was left. But
they never bothered with the underground cisterns. Now, Fustat
was a very modern city for its time. The Arabs were great

engineers. In fact, a lot of the arts of agriculture and
medicine, as well as engineering, were introduced into Europe
through the Arab world. Fustat had several- story buildings, up
to seven stories, apartment houses with hot and cold running
water, or at least running water. They also had flushing
toilets, and a good sewage system, and all kinds of things that
Europe hadn't begun to have.

There was nothing left of Fustat above ground by the time
the University of Chicago went in there. The reason the
University of Chicago was there at all was that the city of
Cairo was going to build some housing projects in this vast
several-acre cleared space that was the former location of
Fustat. It was right in the middle of Cairo. The cisterns
underground had never been excavated, they had just filled in
with rubble. The sewer pipes for the housing project were all
laid out ready to be buried.

A cistern is a large underground tank, usually for holding
water, but in Fustat some may have been used as underground
refuse pits, because a lot of broken pottery and other
discarded items were found there. And over the years the
rubble from the destroyed buildings above had filled them up.
They found quite a few things that were archaeologically
important by just digging out the cisterns. So the University
of Chicago got the city of Cairo to hold up on building this
housing project until they could get in there and finish the
excavation.

In Egypt it gets so hot during the summer, you have to take
a break from excavating during the hot months of the summer.
So Gordon came back from the dig--I think he was sent back to
get some supplies or something in mid-term, or else it was at
the beginning of summer, I can't really remember. He looked me
up on Hyde Street, because we were good friends. I had already
moved in, and I was selling jewelry, mine and a friend's, and a
few antique items. I had this little shop set up. He asked if
I'd like him to get me some Coptic textiles, because he knew of
a real good source in Cairo, an almost unlimited source.

I said I would, and I ended up giving him my rent money for
that month, and I borrowed a couple of hundred dollars from
another friend at the library and gave it to him to buy Coptic
textiles when he went back to Egypt. When he returned the
following year in--when was it? I moved to Hyde Street in
November of 1964, so this was 1965, it must have been. When
Gordon finally came back with the Coptic textiles it was the
beginning of summer, 1965.

He had a whole bunch of Coptic textiles, some of which were
filthy dirty, they had just been dug up. Because what would
happen is that the fellaheen would be plowing in the fields--
these are peasants or workers on the farmsand they would run
into shallow graves. In Egypt, nothing really rots. It just
dries up, because the weather is so dry, and they hardly ever
have anything like rain.

During the Coptic period a person would be buried just
strapped to a board--! don't think they were mummified any
more. They didn't do very much in the way of preparing the
body. They would just wrap it in layers and layers of
clothing.

Riess: And depending on wealth or rank, the wraps might be more or
less beautiful?

Anneberg: Yes. At that time, you see, Egypt was a colony of Rome, and
there were a great many Romans living there, as well as a
number of Greeks, because the Greeks had occupied Egypt before
the Romans got there.

Riess: I shouldn't let you give me too much of this history because
the tape will come to a sudden end. [tape interruption]

You wanted to show the textiles at the gallery.

Anneberg: Yes, and I didn't know anything about them, you see. I got all
these unprepared textile fragments, and I had to do something
with them.

Riess: But you knew there was a market?

Anneberg: Well, it would be great to sell them. I had a couple of Coptic
fragments myself, and I knew that my friends would love them.

Riess: You said they came back filthy dirty.

Anneberg: Yes, well some did, and they obviously needed some sort of
preparation. So I sent away to the Textile Museum for any
information they had on preparing Coptic textiles. '

Riess: In Washington?

Anneberg: Washington, D.C. I knew that they had published some articles
on the subject. They sent me some literature, and I got access
to some of their publications in the de Young Museum, or at
least I could look at them over there in their library. They
did not yet have a textile conservation program over there, so

I had to figure out how to clean them myself, which I did.
it took me a long time to even dare to start doing that.

But

I think I started working on them about eight months later
after I got them. I eventually set up a little system in my
kitchen with a cookie sheet and some plastic screening, which I
ordered from a company in Georgia, I think it was. I had to
set up a system where I could properly clean the textiles
because you can't really wash them, you see. You have to do it
in about a half -inch of water at the very most.

They have to be sewn in between two sheets of rather stiff
plastic screening, and then lowered gently into water which has
a very special kind of detergent that's absolutely pure it's
used for washing very fine machine partswhich I got from a
representative of I. G. Farben in San Francisco. I wrote and
asked them if I could buy a pound of their detergent and that
was like asking General Motors for a pound of car parts or
something like that. [laughs] They sent me a year's supply of
this stuff, free. They were kind of interested in the project.

I did eventually manage to get the textiles clean, and then
I mounted them. We displayed and sold them behind glass, cut
to fit each piece, but unframed, just tacked to the walls.

Riess: How big were the pieces that you were working with?

Anneberg: They were fragments mostly, all the way from about two by three
inches up to eight or ten inches, or even more. I didn't just
have Coptic textiles, incidentally, that was the interesting
thing about it. Some of them were early Islamic textiles,
which are rarest of the rare and very difficult to find
anywhere. [See continuation of story in Interview #3]

Riess: When people heard that you had these, the Textile Museum in

Washington, the people at the de Young, wasn't it an issue of
then getting them for their museums?

Anneberg: I don't know that they were really museum quality, but I didn't
even think about that. I was getting them ready to put up on
the wall in my little shop, which I called The Jewelry Shop.
It wasn't the Anneberg Gallery yet.

Riess: You didn't think they were so rare that they should go straight
to another vault?

Anneberg: It never occurred to me. [laughs] No, they weren't that rare,
they just weren't really available on the market.

Riess: Another question, were they very beautiful, or just
interesting?

Anneberg: They were both. I had never done anything that interesting in
my entire life. I was thrilled. It made you feel as though
you had participated in actually making them, when you got down
to trying to preserve them and clean them. You were touching
and handling them, and then mounting them with invisible
stitches onto a piece of linen. You see, I didn't want a
single stitch to show to the naked eye. I was using just
needle and thread, ordinary thread. So I got really good at
that sort of thing.

By the time it was mounted it was a lovely little show. I
can't remember how many textiles we had, but there must have
been fifty, sixtyquite a number. No, there were about thirty
early Islamic textiles, so there may have been close to a
hundred in all.

Riess: [reading from announcement] Ancient textiles from Egypt,

Greco-Roman, Coptic, Early Islamic, collected by Gordon Holler
[October 1966] .

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: Did it sell out?

Anneberg: Not completely, but we did a wonderful business. You see, we
sold so many of them that I immediately, like any innocent,
presenting a successful first show, thought, This is great,
we'll start a gallery, that's what we'll do with all this
space. So Gordon and I decided we would have a gallery.

Riess: How did you announce the first show, and did you get newspaper
reviews?

Anneberg: We worked up a little mailing list with all my friends and all
Gordon's friends and people that we thought might be
interested. We notified the newspapers, who weren't the least
bit interested in that sort of thing. But a lot of people
came. We had a nice opening, we sold a lot, and we' were very
encouraged by this many sales.

That show took place October 10 to November 5. We held it
over a little bit longer than that, because we didn't have
another show set up to follow it. We hadn't even thought of
having another show after that. It just occurred to us that if
this was such a great success, that we should do more of it.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Was he a financial partner with you at that point?

No, neither one of us had a cent to put into it. What Gordon
did was come over and help me with the work. And we had to--it
took us a long time to figure out walls that you could nail
things into, because we didn't have proper gallery walls. For
the Coptic textile show we put up large plywood sheets onto
which we nailed burlap, and then we had to paint the burlap,
which we found soaked up gallons and gallons of paint before it
looked like a gallery wall. We managed a fairly good small
room.

A Real Gallery, and the First Glass Show on the Pacific Coast

Anneberg: Now, when we decided we would make it into a real gallery, that
was another whole thing. We had to have a name for the
gallery, and we had to have a little bit more room. So we
opened up a larger part of my space there, that I had really
been living in, and moved me partly into the back room. We
made a moveable wall which partitioned off an old stove, and I
put my bed next to the stove, so I was sleeping behind a
partition in the gallery. [laughter] Then I had my jewelry
studio that I had set up also, behind another partition.

So the gallery sort of gradually grew out of this makeshift
situation.

Riess: And storage is such a big issue in a gallery, too.

Anneberg: Well, you see, it just sort of grew. We had the back room for
storage. There was another room, you see, way in back. But we
did have to make walls that looked like a gallery, that
functioned like a gallery, so it took us a while to get all
this ready. But we worked like crazy for a month, and I know
it was very, very difficult, because we opened the second show
on November 28. That was glass from Berkeley, Marvin Lipofsky
and his UC students.

Riess: Did he come to you?

Anneberg: No, I knew Marvin. Where, I can't remember, but probably

through Designer Craftsmen or something like that. So I asked
him if he'd like to have a show. I really asked Marvin if he
would like to have a show. He said, Well, he'd have a few
pieces in the show, but what he'd really like to show was the
work of his students, because he had this newly set up glass

studio at the University. [reading announcement] Yes, it was
at the University of California Department of Design. I'd kind
of forgotten where, because a short time later he went to CCAC.

That was, I think, the first glass studio on the Pacific
Coast. Small glass studios outside glass production factories
were only very recently possible. They were only made possible
through the development of small glass furnaces. This small
furnace was something that Harvey Littleton in the Midwest had
invented. Marvin had studied under Harvey Littleton. So
Marvin had set up the first glass studio on the Pacific Coast,
I'm sure, at the University of California.

This was the first glass show, as far as I know, on the
Pacific Coast. I think that is what Marvin said. It was
certainly the first one in this area. First showing in a
gallery of contemporary studio glass.

Riess: So did that meet with the same kind of success?
Anneberg: Well, it wasn't bad. But we didn't sell very much.
Riess: What kind of things was he doing? Or his students?

Anneberg: They were doing vases there weren't very many shapes that
people were doing in those timesvases of various sorts,
candlestick holders, some goblets. It was really in the very
early stages of glass, you know. It was fairly primitive by
standards today, but there were some very nice things. Marvin
had a few small pieces, and one or two rather large pieces.

Riess: Did he have his idea of how they should be exhibited, or did he
let you be the professional in this case and light it yourself?

Anneberg: We set the show up ourselves.

Riess: I was wondering, in the beginning when it was kind of a new

thing for you, whether you could be easily overwhelmed--! don't
know whether Marvin Lipofsky was overwhelming --but by the
artist saying just exactly how he would like to have it done.

Anneberg: I think probably there were some things that he had some

opinions about. I just don't remember. For the most part I'm
sure he left it to us. It was a lot of work, after all. Who
wants to get involved in a huge glass show? I remember that
Gordon and I would stay up almost all night long working on
these shows. It was terribly difficult for two people with
such limited experience.

Riess: And the weight of the materialsperhaps glass began to mean
that you had to have different cases or something like that,
because it would be heavier?

Anneberg: We did have to build a lot of cases, and fortunately at that
time, right across the street on Hyde Street, there was a
little cabinet maker's shop- -workshop, not a store. He had all
the kind of saws, circular saws and things for cutting plywood.
Then there was a lumber yard around the corner on Beach Street,
and we went down there and got these big sheets of plywood,
took them to the cabinet maker's, where he cut them down into
the sizes we wanted. Then we would take them across the street
to the gallery and build our cases.

I don't remember whether we had plastic tops for any of the
cases at that point or not, probably not. But we built a lot
of cases and painted them. We got everything ready for the
glass show to open on November 28 [1966], It was an insane
amount of work. I don't know how I lived through it.

Riess: And Gordon was doing nothing else?

Anneberg: Gordon was kind of out of a job, you see, because he'd just

gotten back from Cairo, and he was looking for work really. So
he wasn't working anywhere at the time. He had a little time
on his hands.

Riess: You said you had to have a name for the gallery.

Anneberg: Yes. He didn't want his name on it. We couldn't have it be
Anneberg-Holler Gallery, because there was another gallery
downtown of a very similar name. Heller Gallery, something
like that. It just sounded a little too evocative of the other
gallery, so Gordon didn't want to use his name. Besides that,
I suppose he figured he would probably be getting a job and not
staying with it too long.

So eventually, by process of elimination, we decided we had
to just call it the Anneberg Gallery. I was very reluctant,
because it's scary, having your own name on a sign outside.

More on Coptic Textiles, and the Issue of Scholarship
[Interview 3: March 20, 1995] ii

Riess:

You wanted to finish with the Coptic textiles.

Anneberg: Yes. You asked me how the Coptic textiles were originally
used. They were decorations on a costume. In Egypt, the
Romans were there for quite a period of time. There were a lot
of I suppose army people, for one thing, and their families,
and administrators, petty bureaucrats and all the trappings
that go with colonial government. They wore tunics, Roman
tunics .

Now, these have not survived in Rome, because the weather
is damp a good deal of the year, so if they were buried on
somebody they wouldn't survive very well. But in Egypt many of
them did survive extremely well because of the very dry climate
where, as long as you kept them out of the river, they simply
would not disintegrate easily. They could be buried for long
periods of time and come out fairly fresh-looking.

I don't know exactly what the situation was, but a lot of
these textiles coming out of Egypt now or in the last twenty,
twenty-five years thirty years now I guesswere from the
Fayum, which was a large agricultural area north and west of
Cairo. Fellaheen, farmers or farm workers, I suppose you would
call them, they would dig them up.

I don't know how they managed to dig them up or why. I
don't know how they were buried. I know that many of the
burials were without coffins or sarcophagi or anything like
that. They simply strapped the deceased to a board, but he was
firsthe or she or the child was first wrapped in all of its
clothing, layers and layers of it, and scarves and whatever,
just to protect the body. Then it was strapped to a board, and
buried that way. Many of these have recently turned up under
the plow.

Gordon had bought the fragments from a dealer in Cairo
named Mohammed. That's all I know about him. Mohammed had a
lot of Coptic textiles that people would just bring into Cairo
and sell to him. They still had the dirt of the field on them.
Others came from various other sources.

Mohammed also had, which was even more interesting, a lot
of early Islamic textiles. He was apparently good friends with
the woman who was in charge of the Islamic Museum in Cairo, and
every now and then she would simply bring some in to Mohammed
and sell them to him, I don't know which. There were so many
that perhaps some they weren't terribly interested in keeping,
perhaps they had a lot of the same type. So a lot of these
Islamic textile fragments would come out of the back door of
the Islamic Museum.

It's very difficult to get hold of early Islamic textile
fragments, because they don't dig up their own graves. It's
too recent in history, it's still like their ancestors, so they
are not digging them up, and they're certainly not selling
textile fragments. It just isn't done. But many of these were
found in earlier digs which probably the British, and maybe
some Americans, I don't know, had done. They were trying to
get down to Pharaonic material, and there might have been a
grave on top, or a group of graves, that were Islamic, and then
underneath that there may have been some Coptic materials, and
farther down Pharaonic.

Well, in their haste to get down to the good stuff which
they thought must surely be thereif this was a continuously
occupied site that they knew was very ancient, they figured
they could probably get down to some good early Pharaonic
material if they just dug through these layers that were of
lesser importance. So that's how come, I'm sure, there was a
certain amount of the Islamic material dug up, that eventually
landed in the Islamic Museum. Very little early Islamic
material ends up on the market. That's why people aren't as
familiar with it as they are with the Coptic textiles.

So when my friend Gordon came back with the textiles that I
had asked him to bring me, he wasn't quite sure that I would
like them all, because he said, rather hesitantly, that he'd
brought back twenty or thirty early Islamic textile fragments
as well as the Coptic ones. Almost a fourth or a fifth of the
materials that he brought back were early Islamic. When I saw
them, I was very impressed. They were really wonderful and
quite different.

Riess: I can imagine that anyone buying these would be intrigued with
the background. But I still don't have a real sense of why
this was beautiful, and why you knew there was a market for
this, and why it was anything other than old and rare.

Anneberg: Let's see, what was my thinking at the time? Coptic textiles
are just plain fascinating. They don't need any introduction
to most textile artists, or to people interested in decorative
arts or design. It may be that both producers and afficianados
of craft are especially interested in the historical background
of craft. Perhaps it is because technique is so important to
craft, at least at the present stage.

Also, Coptic textiles just aren't around, you can't expect
to come across them occasionally in ethnic arts shops. They're
far rarer than pre-Hispanic Peruvian textiles are, which have
also survived due to an extremely dry climate.

And of course, the people that I would have on my mailing
list were mostly other crafts people and people who were
interested in that type of thing. I knew that they would go
over very well indeed, and that we could sell them easily.

Riess: I would think that other crafts people would be ill able to
afford to buy anything.

Anneberg: Oh, well, they were very cheap. We had no idea what to charge
for things like that. They were quite cheap.

Riess: So your investment in them in the first place was very little,
and you sold them for very little too?

Anneberg: It wasn't very much. I don't think that the whole bunch cost
us more than $400 to start with.

Riess: And did you think of them appreciating in value? I'm trying to
understand you as a businesswoman.

Anneberg: Well, I was never much of a businesswoman, so let's forget that
part. [laughter]

Riess: Back to your mailing list, you got in touch with other
craftsmen when you were opening the gallery?

Anneberg: Yes, just everybody I knew, and of course, they were mostly
people involved in crafts.

Riess: Did you gets your shows reviewed? Was that show reviewed so
that a different group of potential buyers would appear?

Anneberg: Well, this goes into another story entirely, so let's talk
about reviews later on. No, the show wasn't reviewed.

Riess: All right. What I was trying to do is figure out how you
spread the word.

Anneberg: Well, Gordon knew a few people, and he concocted a mailing list
of about 100 or 150 people, and I must have had several hundred
names that I could work up. So we just put the twcf together,
and sent out an announcement.

Now, to get back to the textiles themselves, they were
small medallions, and portions of longer strips which were part
of the costume, the tunic that was worn in Roman colonies like
Egypt as well as in Rome. They were an integral part of the
textile that the tunic was made of, which was very often linen.
In Egypt they had lots of linen and some wool. These tunics

Riess:
Anneberg:

were like large oversized t-shirts decorated with tapestry
medallions and tapestry strips.

And the medallions would be woven, or embroidered?

They would be woven into the material of the tunic. I don't
know that much about weaving, so I can't tell you how it was
done, but these were tapestry medallions, tapestry weave, but
they were an integral part of the tunic--they weren't just sewn
on. They did use some embroidery in the Greco-Roman style, to
pick out details.

And did they retain their color?

Yes, the color was intact, pretty intact. But these that I
weren't very colorful. For the most they were woven with
natural wool, brown, black, and cream-colored.

got

There was often a small medallion right at the shoulder
point, like an epaulet, and from the medallion partway down the
arm there would be a narrow strip. Within this narrow strip
there would be more small medallions.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Let me see, I could show you some examples, and next time
I'll get them out and show you. They might have a vase, an
urn, or something. Out of this urn there would grow some
trailing vines, which would loop together. And then within the
vine, there would every now and then be a small medallion which
the vines would have crawled around. So this gives an
opportunity for a lot of lesser medallions.

Besides the Greco-Roman designs, mythological figures and
that sort of thing, there were Celtic-style geometric,
interlaced designs, and there were water birds, fish, lions,
and hares, and flowers, and dancers, and portraits.

Stylized portraits or real portraits?

I have no idea. They might have been. We don't at the present
time know. There were several types of Coptic designs that may
have reflected different periods. I tend to think some types
existed simultaneously, so you can't always date them according
to style. Everybody wants to know exactly what dates these
things were, and goodness, you can't really do that.

Was there an effort to differentiate styles?

Well, there are lots of books on that, and they certainly do.
The Greco-Roman style I mentioned reflects more Greek,

Classical influences I have one with some female figures that
are holding spears, so apparently these are Amazons, you see.
And there might be Neptune, or Cupids, things like that that
reflect a Classical style, which the Romans would certainly
have still found very attractive, too, which would reflect the
Greeks that were in Egypt before them. The Romans took a lot
of their inspiration for designs from the Greeks I'm certain.
But there were also things that probably were more distinctly
Roman .

Riess: Margery, this is an overwhelming and fascinating exposition.
If I just wandered into the shop it would be this that you
could tell me, this kind of background, that would be what
would be so fascinating and would convince me that I needed to
have one of them. You must have had to do a lot of
interpretation for people.

Anneberg: Well, people certainly wanted to know as much as they could
about the textiles, and I had them in my hands before we put
this show up for about eight or ten months. I'd handled them,
I'd had a chance to clean them and mount them, so I became very
involved with them, and I read everything that I could find in
the library in a language that I could make some sense out of.
I don't know enough German to be able to read much German, so
as I recall, it was mostly in English and French. I read
everything I could, and found out as much as I could in order
to answer questions as to what the designs were all about.

Riess: You said you did research at the de Young, but did you get any
other help from their curators?

Anneberg: I did. Graeme Keith was head of the decorative arts department
at the de Young, and I did ask him if I could take a look at
their Coptic materials, and also use the library there.

It was through the de Young Museum library that I found the
Textile Museum journals, and so I was able to get information
out of those journals, or at least know what to ask for if I
wrote back to the Textile Museum. I know I got copies of some
of them, so I must have gotten those through the Textile
Museum. I don't recall right now. But I read others that were
in the de Young Museum library. I also looked at their Coptic
textile materials, which were in suitcases and not well cared
for, because they didn't at that time have the funds to deal
with them.

Innocent Beginnings; Announcements, Pricing

Riess: If you were thinking of running a gallery and this were your
first experience, you would already know that you were in hot
water, because it sounds like it took practically a year to get
the show ready.

Anneberg: Well, innocence, you know, takes care of an awful lot of

things. I probably have never been the type of person who
likes to take orders from somebody else, and so whatever I
really felt strongly about, I was going to do anyway. It
wouldn't matter if somebody tried to discourage me, and several
people did in a way, I suppose. I was asked, "What on earth do
you know about running a gallery?" And I would answer,
"Nothing, but who knows anything about running a gallery before
they start?"

Anyway at that time I wasn't really starting a gallery, I
was just having a show. But after that show was so very
successful, I decided it would probably be a nice idea to start
a gallery.

Riess: You showed me last time some of your announcements. I was

struck by how beautifully designed they were, and I wondered if
you designed them, and if you would talk about that. They're
all so different.

Anneberg: Well, most of them I did design. It was sort of trial and
error, I didn't know anything at all about it. I went to a
number of different printers at first, because I had to find
somebody I could work with within my budget, which was very
tiny.

Riess: Not Grabhorn or any of the fancy presses?

Anneberg: Nothing like that. There was one that I used once- -I don't
want to mention too many names of printers, because for one
reason or another it was often difficult to work with them.
Some of the announcements were provided by the exhibitor.
Marvin Lipofsky did his own poster announcement.

I made up different types of announcements for different
artists, which is how it worked out. The artist would usually
supply me with a photograph. I would just ask them for a good
black and white eight by ten photograph, because at that time,
I wasn't taking photographs myself. Gordon was a very good
photographer, but if the artist had a good black and white, we
used that. And if not, I asked them to get me a good example

of the work, something that would photograph well in black and
white, and have a certain amount of design punch to it. Not
something too subtle. So they would very often bring over a
piece, Gordon would photograph it, and we'd get as good a
photograph as we could ahead of time.

Riess: I see that the announcements were not consistent. So when you
received the announcement, it wasn't instantly recognizably
"Anneberg Gallery."

Anneberg: No. It took a while to achieve a distinctive look. At first
they were different every month, a different type of thing.

Riess: Every month? You were changing exhibitions every month?

Anneberg: I changed every single month. It was a nightmare. But I knew
that I could only hold people's interest for so long, and this
was after all a gallery that had a clientele spread very thinly
over the entire Bay Area. They had to make a special trip into
town. Now, they weren't going to do that unless they were
wildly interested in coming, and you could usually only hold
that interest for a week or so, and then it would peter out.

Riess: And was it the opening night that was really the most
important?

Anneberg: Very often it was. Not always, but very often. And it was
difficult, I thought. I soon discovered it was going to be
difficult to make my rent every month, and although the rent
was not very steep, still it did have to be paid, and I had to
eat, and a few things like that. So I figured the only way to
solve this problem was to have a different show every month.
Anyway that was my thinking, and that was the way it continued
throughout the history of the gallery.

We gave ourselves only about three days to put a show up,
and that meant taking down the previous show, packing it up,
and getting the new show set up and opened. And it was a
nightmare.

Riess: I'm sure. And with a variety of people, some of wh'om perhaps
had never exhibited before.

Anneberg: Yes, that's right.

Riess: How did you contract with people? What was your commission?

Anneberg: It was usually 40 percent for the gallery, 60 for the artist.

Riess: And did they set the prices, or did you?

Anneberg: I always asked them to please set the prices. Sometimes I had
to go over them with the artist. They would just bring
everything over and say, "I couldn't price them," and then we
would sit on the floor in the gallery for hours, going over
every single piece and pricing it. Sometimes people would
already have things priced, and sometimes it was totally
unrealistic, in which case we didn't do so well.

But most artists were pretty good about that. The younger
they were, the more difficult, because [laughs] they very often
have not been out in the world long enough to know that people
aren't just dying to collect their work.

People who had recently moved here from the East Coast were
also very difficult, because they had an idea of the West Coast
based on hearsay, you see, and they thought that the streets
were paved were gold out here. They weren't [paved with gold]
on the East Coast either, but they did sell their work.
Perhaps only to relatives and good friends, but all the same,
they had sold it. And then they came out here and expected to
sell it in the same way, and very often that was not the case
at all. For one thing, they would be totally unknown. Maybe I
just saw their work and liked it and asked them if they would
like to have a show. But sometimes they carried this
unrealistic view of what would sell and what wouldn't with them
from the East Coast.

They also didn't realize that San Francisco is a
notoriously bad art market. At that time, anyway.

Riess: You talked about your primary mailing list being other

craftsmen, but you must soon have acquired other kinds of
mailing lists?

Anneberg: Well, we did. We put everyone on the mailing list who wanted
to be on it in those days, and we just left a sign-up sheet in
the gallery. If they signed the sheet and put their address on
it, they were on the mailing list. In those days, postage was
cheap and so was paper.

Riess: And how about announcements in newspapers and in journals, and
other storefronts?

Anneberg: We could only hope that we would be put up on bulletin boards
and things like that.

Riess: Well, for instance, something like Artweek. if there was an
equivalent of Artweek. Did you advertise?

Anneberg: I would simply send the announcement to them, and they would

list it in their listings. There were several places where you
could get listed. One was in the papers, the pink section of
the San Francisco Chronicle, or whatever it was at that time,
the gallery listings. Also the San Francisco Examiner. I had
to fight with them in order to get the gallery listed at all,
because they immediately saw that I was not showing paintings
and sculpture, and whatever it was that I was showing, it
wasn't art from their standpoint. They wanted to avoid listing
anything that they thought was just a shop putting up a little
show.

Riess: Ah, interesting.

Anneberg: So they kind of put me in that category. I had to get on the
phone and insist that I be included in the art list. I said
that I was running the gallery just like a regular painting
gallery, only I was showing craft, I was showing weaving-
things in other media. I think I would put it that way.
Weaving, for instance, ceramics, wood, iron, and things like
that, that may or may not be sculpture as such, but I had a
regular gallery and I changed the shows monthly. It was not a
shop, not primarily a shop. So they did start listing it.

Critical Reviews, or Lack Thereof

Riess: That is interesting, that re-education was part of your job.

Anneberg: I didn't have much time for it, to re-educate them. But it was
a constant uphill battle, and at first I thought surely as they
got to know the gallery they would start reviewing it, but they
never did. I wasn't alone in this. I think craft galleries
all over the country since that time have had a great deal of
difficulty getting reviewed, because the establishment art
world does not consider it art, and still doesn't to' this day.

I got I think about three reviews in the fifteen years that
I had the gallery.

Anneberg: Alfred Frankenstein, who was the chief art critic for the

Chronicle at that time, set down certain standards, and one of

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

them was that you do not review craft shows of any sort. It
had to be painting or sculpture. Now, when I showed the work
of Carl Jennings, forged iron, it was pretty difficult for them
to see what this was all about just from the look of the
announcement. I did send them announcements regularly, and
even a photograph of some of the work that was in.

[looking at announcement] Now, you see this announcement
has a rather abstract look, but it was a detail from--I don't
remember what, it might have been a garden gate or something
like that. Carl had a number of different large pieces,
hanging lamps, gates, and various lighting fixtures that were
quite enormous.

Well, the reviewer came to see the show. I don't recall
him identifying himself when he did come. But he wrote a
review that started out to the effect that he had thought it
was a sculpture show, and then he got there and found out it
wasn't, but it was pretty good anyway. So he did write a small
review in the paper. I didn't care what he thought; just the
fact that he came and wrote it up was wonderful. But it
stopped there.

Another time a show was reviewed because the artist,
Jacquetta Nisbet, was married to the man who edited the Sunday
magazine section of the Examiner at that time. So Arthur
Fried, the Examiner art reviewer, came and reviewed it. That
was wonderful, and it was a very flattering review, and just
like it should be, but it stopped there again.

Did you get new people coming to the gallery from the reviews?

I don't know. I have no idea. It's hard to say. But it means
a lot to a gallery just to be reviewed. Not all galleries get
reviewed every single time, of course.

I was doing a very serious job of presenting craft and folk
art in this unusual- -well, it was unusual for a gallery at that
time. I was probably the first person that I know of who was
just showing craft, and not painting or sculpture along with
it. I was showing craft in a gallery setting, a serious
gallery setting. I was trying to do it the same as a gallery
would that was showing paintings.

Is that what you mean by a serious gallery setting?

Well, I was seriously operating as a gallery. I was putting
out announcements once a month, sending publicity out to the
newspapers, with an eight-by-ten black and white glossy, and

Riess:

Riess :

Anneberg:

Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

they had no reason not to [review], except for the fact that it
was their policy not to review this sort of thing.

And yet the crafts movement was certainly alive and well and
going on all around.

Anneberg: Well, who knows what the reasoning was or still is.

I have noticed over the years that when an art critic does
review a craft show, which sometimes happens if it takes place
at a museum, and they have to seriously consider it, they often
don't know what to say about it, because it doesn't fit in
historically with fine art as they know it. I feel that craft
is a parallel type of art, which has only recently, in the last
thirty-five years perhaps, begun to be lifted out of the shall
I say the realm of the useful object? Sometimes it can be
useful, I'm not saying it's no longer useful, that's not true
at all, but it's also something that can be regarded
aesthetically on its own merits without reference to
functionality. So you have to look at it with different eyes,
perhaps, than you do a painting or a sculpture, and they don't
know how to look at it .

If they've been trained as critics they need a context, some
way to compare it to other things.

Yes, they do need something to compare it to, and that's very
difficult. It is only fairly recently that people have started
criticizing craft properly, I think, and not just constantly
comparing it with painting or sculpture, the historical fine
arts .

Do you think it might be also true of how photography is
reviewed, that photography has presented the same kinds of
problems?

Well, photography at least has a format very similar to a
painting, and it has subject matter very often that is similar.
I think it can be reviewed by a person who has a painterly eye.

I guess I'm thinking of photography as a craft.

Well, however it happened, photography very quickly took its
place in the fine arts. They really have not had the uphill
struggle that things in the craft media have had.

Yes. And you're saying that it really hasn't gotten that much
better in this thirty-five years?

Anneberg: I don't really think it has, no. Newspapers still do not as a
rule review craft shows, although they may publish a photograph
now and then. I would occasionally have a photograph
published, even though they didn't come out to see the show.
They might publish a photograph, and that was very nice. If I
sent them an interesting photograph that perhaps tied into
something that looked more like art to them.

Like for instance, one time I scheduled a show of kinetic
sculpture, large fiber sculptures that were hung from the
ceiling, and moved. I didn't realize it at all, but a show of
kinetic sculpture had just opened at the San Francisco Museum
of Art, now the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and here I
came out with a kinetic craft sculpture, textile sculpture
show. So of course, it got a photograph printed in the paper,
but no reviewers came. The pieces were activated by clockwork,
motors taken from electric clocks, which sometimes weren't
strong enough for the job, so some were always breaking down.
But there were always pieces in the museum show out of order
too.

Riess: The director of the San Francisco Museum of Art, Grace McCann

Morley, I think of as having had an extraordinarily open vision
of the role of a museum. Did you have any contact with her?

Anneberg: I can't remember if she was still alive at the time that I
opened the gallery.

Riess: Yes, she was. But I guess she had left the museum at that

point. [Morley resigned from the San Francisco Museum of Art
in 1958, and was replaced by George Culler.]

Anneberg: However it happened, there was less and less interest in craft
as such after she left.

Riess: Dorothy Liebes and people who had been highlighted at the

Treasure Island show, you would have thought that would have
created a context for interest in the crafts.

Anneberg: Well, they were still tied to things that were very useful, and
there was the whole issue of decorative art versus fine art,
you see. And Dorothy Liebes 1 work was designing and making
rugs, area rugs, and carpeting, and window curtain casements,
draperies, that sort of thing, as well as other useful objects.
It was very flat, and highly decorative, and certainly wasn't
something that they could look at the same way they looked at a
painting.

Installing the Shows, and Tending the Gallery

Riess: A practical question, when you talked about having your shows
once a month I wondered if that meant you had to repaint the
gallery, reinstall furniture, cases, or could you deal with
your shows with the existing furniture that you had?

Anneberg: I very quickly found that you had to simplify things as much as
possible. When Gordon Holler was still helping me, we were
kind of working together, he would come down on weekends from
the Peninsula, and we would work late into the night. It was
horrible, because we would both be totally exhausted by opening
night. We didn't yet know how to simplify things, and Gordon
was a great perfectionist. Everything had to be absolutely
perfect, which meant that the walls did indeed have to be well
renovated every time, all the little holes plugged up and a new
coat of paint.

Later on, I found that I couldn't always manage that.
Sometimes if it didn't really need it and I could just put
things over the old holes that were there before, that's what I
had to do, because I couldn't manage it when I was doing things
all by myself.

And lighting, too. As the years went by, you must have changed
your lighting systems.

Oh, it was always very primitive. I did find that incandescent
lighting was much better than fluorescent, so I stuck to that.
But we always had to get up there on ladders and redirect the
spotlights. It had to be rearranged for every show to a
certain degree, because things on the wall or in the middle of
the room have to be highlighted.

Of course, in time, if you direct a very hot little
spotlight on something, it will gradually droop and get out of
focus, so at various times during the course of two or three or
four weeks you would have to get back up on the ladders and
redirect the spotlights. And also, we had to fix up the cases
if they were dirty or got smudged, and the plastic tops had to
be polished for every show.

Riess: And did you go to a printer to have labels made for the art?

Anneberg: No, it would rarely have been possible to get a list of things
for the show far enough ahead of time. And again, I didn't do
things the way regular galleries would, because I found out
that what I had to do was to sell a certain amount in order to

Riess:

Anneberg:

make my rent. It was difficult to do that if you were as
discreet as a regular painting gallery was and just had a list
that you would give to a customer if they asked to see it. I
had to put the price of everything right out so that they could
see it close to the object. This wasn't the way a painting
gallery would normally do it, but it was the way the Anneberg
Gallery had to do it, I felt. So I typed those up on my
typewriter, and we would stick them to the wall with double
stick tape or something like that.

Riess: That's interesting. It reminds me, some art galleries, where
you walk in off the street, the receptionist barely raises her
head. They size you up to see whether you look like someone
who should even be given the price list, or whether you're just
drifting through.

Were you there in the gallery all the time?

Anneberg: I was sitting there all the time, yes. I was usually the only
person there, and I would talk to most people if they wanted to
talk, about whatever it was I was showing. Very often, people
would have a question or two, so we'd strike up a conversation
about it. Sometimes I found myself giving regular lectures.

Riess: Don't you think that is very important in the sale, actually?

Anneberg: I think it was, and I didn't realize it at the time, but I
probably sold quite well in certain cases, compared with
exhibitions that the same artist or collector might have had
elsewhereprobably because it was a smallish gallery and
intimate surroundings, and because it was a fairly friendly
atmosphere, I was there to answer questions, and the price was
right there beside the object.

If something was sold, I usually asked them if they could
leave it and pick it up at the end of the show so that it
wouldn't kind of destroy the look of the show. If they bought
something I would put a red dot on it, and collect part of the
price, and then they could pay the rest at the end of the show.
Sometimes, very often, they would leave it for a few weeks or
even months before they finished paying for it.

Riess: Did they try to bargain with you?

Anneberg: Yes, that often happened, especially fornot for the artist
shows, but for the collector shows.

The Collector Shows: Caroline West's Guatemalan Textiles

Riess: What do you mean by the collector shows?

Anneberg: The folk art, which would be a group of things collected by

someone, perhaps in the country of origin, or perhaps here. It
usually happened that I would have a show of things that had
been collected in the country of origin by the collector. That
collector would then bring them to me to show and sell.

Sometimes I would schedule a show before someone went off
on a collecting tripit soon got around that that was the sort
of thing I might do, so sometimes we would sort of arrange it
before they left that they would be collecting for a gallery
show, and when they got back, a certain number of pieces, you
see, would have to be set aside for the show, enough to fill
the gallery.

Riess: I'd be interested in what sort of people would put on the
collector shows.

Anneberg: I think the first one that I ever did was of Guatemalan Indian
textiles with Caroline West [October 1967]. It was just a year
after I had opened that I had that showing. And that may have
been the first folk art show that I had since the Coptic
textiles. In between, I had a number of artist shows.

Riess: I am reminded of how common it was then to take a VW van to
Guatemala and bring things back.

Anneberg: But this was even before people were doing that.

Caroline West was a woman in southern California. She had
been collecting Guatemalan textiles-- [telephone interruption]
Carolyn West found out about the gallery through Trude
Guermonprez. Trude had brought her around one time to see the
gallery, and it was a time when I wasn't there so it was
closed, but I remember that Caroline said later that Trude had
taken her down hoping that I would be there and that she could
see the gallery. But they could only look through the window
and see whatever it was that was up.

Trude had said, "Now, this is the in place to show, and if
you bring your things to San Francisco, you have to show them
here." I thought that was terribly flattering, because it was
the first year that I was in business, but Carolyn did get in
touch with me.

I had never seen Guatemalan textiles before, so it was an
eye-opener, and I thought they were marvelous. [For further
discussion see page 88.]

Riess: Did you exhibit the Guatemalan textiles as textile pieces, or
as clothing?

Anneberg: Most of them were costume pieces, huipils, or they were things
that they would use for various purposes, pieces of cloth that
were highly decorated which they used to hold things or carry
things in.

Riess: Unlike what very soon became the case, that they were pieced
onto clothing.

Anneberg: Later on people did start doing that sort of thing. Later on,
it wasn't a matter of very many years, it's true people would
simply bring their vans down to Guatemala and go into a village
and load up. But they wouldn't have been very carefully
selected by a discerning eye, and Carolyn was a wonderful
collector. She collected things that were in use and being
designed and made at that time, at that particular time in the
late 1960s. Very few of them were older pieces.

Riess: Did you have to go through a process of --well, not washing
maybe, but you did mount them and frame them?

Anneberg: No, these were large pieces, and so they were just hung on the
walls as you would a wall hanging, something like that. Some
people would buy them to wear, and some would buy them just to
look at. But we sold quite a few.

This first show was textiles in general from Guatemala.
Later on, Carolyn would have a number of different types of
shows. She would collect in Peru one year, and there were
different types of Guatemalan textiles. One year we had a show
that was only Guatemalan ikat-- there were several places in
Guatemala that specialized in them. One particular village did
almost nothing else. They wove large ikat skirt lengths for
the women, and then they would be traded throughout Guatemala,
but they came from this one center for dying, indigo dying, and
they had wonderful designs in ikat. So I had an entire show of
that sort of thing.

Ed Rossbach used that show as a final exam. He just sent
his students over to see the show and write up answers to the
questions that he asked on the show itself. So I had a lot of
students sitting around on the floor with their little pads of

paper, writing about the show. Ed had sent them over, and this
was their final exam. [laughter]

The Idea of Showing both Contemporary Crafts and Folk Art

Riess: When did you make the connection with Ed?

Anneberg: I had met him in Seattle many years before, and I had known of
him up there because various friends of mine were in the art
department at the university. After he came down here, we had
a mutual friend, Imogene Gieling, who lived in San Francisco,
so I became better acquainted through her.

He came to the Coptic textile show and bought a piece. So
did a lot of artists. They weren't all people in textiles
either.

Riess: This was the first direct exposure to Coptic textiles for
people in the field like Ed Rossbach, perhaps?

Anneberg: I don't know if it was the first or not. They'd certainly seen
them in books, and many of them may have traveled and seen them
in museums in Europe or Egypt even. But it was probably their
first chance to see them in a gallery show where they were all
for sale, because everything that I showed really had to be for
sale.

tit

Anneberg: I'm sure it was probably the first chance a lot of people had
to see Coptic textiles right there before their eyes. And
while these weren't all museum quality, they were pretty nice.

Riess: I think we should go chronologically through your scrapbook of
announcements .

After the Ancient Textiles from Egypt, Greco-Roman, Coptic,
Early Islamic [October 1966], you had Marvin Lipofsy's show
[Glass from Berkeley, Marvin Lipofsky and His Students,
December 1966]. Glass was clearly a craft art?

Anneberg: Well, yes, I think it was. It was something that up until then
had been only possible in an industrial setting, because the
glass furnaces were very large and weren't at all movable.

Riess: But is it also the idea that glass was useful vessels, not
sculptural forms?

Anneberg: Yes. Marvin had a few sculptural pieces. He had quite a large
one in the window. As I recall, it was somewhat phallic-
looking, and I think that he came over and put it in the window
hoping to get a reaction out of me, but I [laughter] didn't
blink. I left it there.

Riess: But the fact that they were free-standing sculptural forms, you
couldn't have convinced a reviewer that this was sculpture?

Anneberg: Well, I didn't have time to go down there and beat them over
the head or anything like that. Nobody picked up on it, no.
Marvin probably was not well known enough at the time. I think
he was known of, but probably didn't have the stature that he
did a few years later, because this was right after the glass
studio was first set up at Berkeley. And very little of the
student work was sculptural.

Riess: Next, Larry McClary, Drawings and Sculpture [February 1967].

Anneberg: Yes. Larry McClary I believe was teaching at that time at the
California College of Arts and Crafts. He had a lot of black
and white ink paintings, and some in crayolas, like children's
drawings. That was one of my few departures from an all-craft
show, but Larry's work was partly constructions and partly
paintings and drawings. It was very wild and funny and free,
and I loved it.

I wasn't really too worried about what I was showing at the
time, it was just that what I understood and responded to
happened to be craft, so that's what I was interested in
showing. I also wanted to give the crafts the same respect
that other art forms got, and I knew the value of being able to
see your work on the wall.

I knew how wonderful it was to get away from your studio
and see them in an exhibition setting. It just looked like
somebody else's work. You could really stand off and look at
it in a totally different way. And I saw no reason why craft
artists couldn't have this experience the same way painters and
sculptors did.

Riess: There were two things going on in the gallery, the showing of
collections of folk art, as in the case of the Guatemalan and
the Coptic, and also being the champion for craftsmen.

Anneberg: Traditional and folk crafts, and contemporary crafts by
artists.

Riess: But in the case of the individuals, you had a mission. As you
spoke I could tell you would go to the barricades for these
artists.

Anneberg: Well, yes. I did feel that way. It also seemed to me that the
crafts and the folk crafts, the folk arts, went together. I
didn't feel that I had to explain it, either to myself or to
other crafts people, because we all sort of understood that
this was a source of inspiration for them, and it was the root
of what we were doing in lots of ways. It may have come from a
primitive society and it may not, it may have been a very
highly sophisticated society. But the fact that they were
crafts gave them a sort of ancestral linkage to the modern
craft, contemporary crafts. I don't know how to explain it,
and I didn't try to go into it too deeply.

Riess: Was it a usual juxtaposition? In New York there was the
American Crafts Museum. Is it linked with folk art?

Anneberg: No, I linked it myself. I later found out that in southern

California a similar thing was starting. Edith Wiley's place,
The Egg and the Eye she called it, and it was a restaurant that
specialized in egg dishes--it was up on the balcony, and then
down below she had the shop. That was the eye part, you see,
so it was The Egg and the Eye.

This name was taken from a popular booklet's see, it was
a first person narrative called The Egg and I that took place
in the Pacific Northwest, and it was something that we all
knew 1 . That was where Ma and Pa Kettle came from, and they were
characters in this saga of a young woman who was newly married
and moved out to the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula in the
state of Washington. Everybody knew the title, so it was a
sort of pun.

I didn't know about Edith Wiley's efforts, her beginnings
down there, and I don't know who started first. Anyway, I
started completely independently with the same idea here. I
was showing contemporary crafts, and I was showing folk crafts.

Riess: At the American Crafts Museum were they juxtaposing folk with
contemporary craft, do you know?

'Betty McDonald, The Egg and I, Lippincott, 1945.

Anneberg: Not so much, but I think perhaps they didn't consider it out of
place. I don't know that they were collecting for their own
collection or not. Occasionally I think they did, over the
years, begin showing and even collecting some traditional
crafts from various places.

Riess: And folk crafts would be published in the craft magazines?

Anneberg: Occasionally, yes. Because just as the painters in Europe
found inspiration in African sculpturenow, that wasn't
considered too great a leap once they started doing it. After
Picasso took his inspiration directly from African sculpture,
and so did Gauguin and various other artists, we didn't think
that was so unusual, you see. It had already been done there.

Riess: Then people collected African sculpture after that.

Anneberg: Of course, yes. And I'm sure it didn't seem at all unusual to
the people who visited the Anneberg Gallery that I would be
showing both. It might have seemed unusual to some who were
kind of on the outside, but not someone who was already
immersed in the craft world.

Riess: The reason I brought it up as two different directions that the
gallery was going, or two separate emphases, was that in one
case you were really mothering, if you will, artists like
Lipofsky and McClary, because a gallery owner is a kind of
motheror would you reject that notion?

Anneberg: In some respects, that was true. You did have to, when you
contacted an artist, you had to make sure that artist was
actually going to come through with the show as they had
promised. So sometimes you had to be on the phone pushing them
and giving them encouragement throughout the months, you see,
until they got the show ready.

More often than not, they were already pretty much ready to
show. They had a body of work, and if I scheduled them for
three months or more in advance, say, then they would have time
to make a few more pieces in addition to the ones that I
probably knew about.

Riess: They would show you what was going to be the show?

Anneberg: Very often they came to ask me for a show. Or sometimes I
would get in touch with the artist, and I would ask them to
bring some things in to show me, so I could get an idea of what
they looked like. I didn't have a car, and here was this whole
big Bay Area where people would be scattered around, living in

Marin County or Berkeley or Oakland or San Francisco maybe, or
down on the Peninsula, and I simply couldn't get around to
seeing an artist. I did as much as I could, but no more.

Dealing with Physical and Financial Limitations

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:
Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg;

I don't know if I should mention this or not, but I also had
some physical problems. About three or four months after I
started the gallery I had a multiple sclerosis attack, and it
was diagnosed for the first time. I had previously, about
eight years before, had a first attack, so they were able to
compare the two and see definitely that it was MS. They very
often can't diagnose it until you've had repeated attacks, and
they can locate a pattern.

It was very trying, putting up shows and laboring under
this difficulty.

I can imagine,
so long ago.

I didn't realize that you had your first attack

I had the first attack only a year after I first came to San
Francisco from Seattle while I was working at the UC Berkeley
Library. It was mainly in my upper body, my arms and shoulders
and neck. It affected my hands a lot, and I couldn't make
jewelry for at least a year. The second attack affected also
my legs, so it did make life very difficult. I was forced to
simplify things as much as I could.

Because you had chosen a life that was very physical, in fact.

Yes, it is. Gordon was still helping me on weekends. He
hadn't gotten a permanent job yet, so he was able to come up
and continue helping put the shows up and keep the gallery
looking great. He was a great help. It was wonderful to have
somebody helping, because you need to make a lot of decisions
by yourself. It's a great burden for one person.

It's hard to stand back. You can't stand back unless someone
will show you by holding things up.

Yes. Especially when things are big and heavy, you need help
with them.

Riess: Who did you have after he left?
assistance.

You must have had some

Anneberg: Well, very often it was just the artist or the collector,

because I didn't have anyone on a steady basis. Good volunteer
help is hard to come by. They are very often willing, but
inexperienced in putting a gallery show up, and they don't know
the time pressures that you're under. You have to have it up
by a certain time, or else. It really does have to be up and
ready, all the labels have to be typed and on the walls, and
everything has to be ready by the time the doors open at seven
o'clock on the appointed evening, and people come in. You
can't just have it half up, or no labels. So everything has to
be ready, and it's a lot of pressure.

No matter how willing to help the volunteers may be, it's
sometimes very difficult to work with them, because they don't
understand these things. Very often you just need time to look
at things and think, and it's hard to do that around someone
who is there for action. They're there to help you put
something up on the walls, and it's hard for them when I need
to think for ten or fifteen minutes sometimes.

So I didn't have regular volunteer help. I had to make
things work by myself. After about a year Gordon found another
job, so then I no longer could lean on him, and I had to do it
by myself.

Riess: So that affected your willingness to take on some shows?

Anneberg: Oh, yes, it did. And there were lots of very fine people that
I just couldn't show. For one thing, the gallery didn't have
space. It was a very small gallery. I may not have had high
enough ceilings for some work. I know there were some very
good artists who approached me with ideas for shows and wanted
to show, and I just couldn't do it . I was awfully sorry about
it, but I just couldn't.

Riess: Could you say to them, would you say to them, "Yes, that's

fine, you'll have to install the entire thing?" Or did you not
want to give over some of that?

Anneberg: Very often they were perfectly willing to just let me face all
that myself.

Riess: I mean, if it were difficult for you, even the fact that there
was a space and an announcement would be a lot for a lot of
artists. Did they ever just install it themselves?

Anneberg: Sometimes the artists would insist upon it, and sometimes they
would offer to help, or I would ask them if they could. So it
worked out.

Riess :

Anneberg:

I should think that they should and would,
the beginning know that you had MS?

Did the artists in

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess :

Anneberg:

I kept it very low-key, because I didn't feel that it was
something they had to be involved with. In a way, it was a
kind of case of denial on my part, but the only way I could
deal with it was to try to go ahead and operate as much as I
could as though I was just anybody else.

[looking at scrapbook of announcements] Lillian Elliott, Wall
Hangings. [May 1967] Was this very early in her career?

It was fairly early. I had known her for some time because we
both belonged to the Designer Craftsmen of Northern California.
I had first become aware of Lillian's work when she showed a
small fabric collage at the San Francisco [Civic Center] Art
Festival in about 1960. It won a prize, first prize in
textiles I think, and caused a sort of sensation. People in
the crafts that is some of them found it really outrageous
that anyone could just tear up pieces of cloth that way and
paste them together and win a prize. It doesn't seem so
outrageous today, but it did then. Anyway, I admired her work
and considered her a real artist, so I wanted to get her to
have a show. I was really happy when she agreed.

And what is Luminous Impressions? [June 1967]

That was my friend Imogene Gieling, who had been teaching for a
few years at San Francisco State College, and this was a show
of her work as well as that of her students. She designed and
had the announcement printed up.

It was difficult for me to have shows like that because I
wasn't really set up to show jewelry--! didn't have locked
cases, for one thing. It was difficult, and I didn't try to do
it again. I never showed jewelry as such, contemporary craft
jewelry anyway--! did show some ethnic jewelry it was just too
dangerous. Gold and silver, I knew that it was too easy to
lose things and have them stolen.

And is there more to it than that? Is it that jewelry is more
like a shop?

Not for me. I would have been happy to have jewelry shows
every now and then, because there were some very good jewelers
in the area, and I myself was a goldsmith.

Riess:

Why didn't you get locks put on the cases?

Anneberg: Well, for one thing I was the only person in the gallery. And
lockable cases are much more complicated than the simple ones
we had made here. I just couldn't afford them.

Riess: So you couldn't defend your territory.

Anneberg: I was a sitting duck, and it wasn't comfortable at all for me
to be protecting a whole room full of jewelry. I was the only
person there.

Riess: And at night also, that's right.

Anneberg: Yes, the whole thing. And the insurance and everything about
it was difficult. I couldn't have done it.

Riess: And was that not an issue with other shows, the assessed value
of other shows?

Anneberg: Well, it was harder to steal something large. And in general,
I probably had less problem with theft than a lot of places
did. I did have some things stolen, yes.

Riess: But not break-ins?

Anneberg: Never break-ins. It was always done under my very nose, by

people who knew how to do it, or when my back was turned or I
was occupied elsewhere with another customer.

Riess: What kind of insurance did you carry?

Anneberg: Very often I didn't carry any at all, because it was hard to
get that sort of insurance. I did have a policy for a while
that protected gallery shows, but it was very difficult to get
that sort of thing. And the kind of insurance that you would
have to have was so terribly expensive, I couldn't afford it.
I figured if I did have some losses I'd make them up out of
pocket, and it would end up being less expense than if I tried
to carry expensive insurance.

Riess: Did you have contracts with your artists?

Anneberg: No, I didn't. It was just a handshake sort of thing. It

wasn't something that--I guess I was just feeling my way, and I
always felt that I was learning how to do it, to the very last.

Carl Jennings, Forged Iron

Anneberg: I mentioned C. Carl Jennings. This was a very special show
[August 1967]. Carl was the son of an old-fashioned
blacksmith, so he learned ironworking early, and grew up with
it. But he was also an artist and graduated from the San
Francisco Art Institute.

It's wonderful to watch him at work, his concentration and
authority at his forge, which is in a large shed about seventy
feet from his house. And the house is wonderful, a round house
on the top of a little hill near Santa Rosa, with stained glass
windows, beautiful stonework and wrought iron everywhere. He
he built it entirely himself, made the windows too.

This was the first time he had shown anywhere, except at
the San Francisco Art Festival, with the Metal Arts Guild.
Unfortunately it was before I got a camera, so I don't have
color slides, but Gordon took some black and whites. He had a
large hanging lantern in the window, and several chandeliers,
wall sconces, and a beautiful garden gate--he used to do a lot
of commissions and various smaller things like candleholders.

He always gave me credit for getting him recognizedhe
later became well-known nationally, and was made a Fellow of
the ACC in 1988--but I think he would have become recognized
anyway, he was so good. His work is very individual, quite
different from any other wrought iron I've ever seen. He's in
his eighties now.

More on Guatemalan Indian Textiles Collected by Caroline West

Anneberg: I should say more about the second folk art show I had, the

first under the name of the Anneberg Gallery. (After this for
many years I had a balance of contemporary craft and folk art
shows.) It was a sort of landmark because it was I think the
first time that Guatemalan textiles had been seen in a shop or
gallery in this area. One of the first times they had been
shown anywhere, probably. They just hadn't been seen.
Collectors had some, but they hadn't been on view to the
general public. They were a real eye-opener for me.

Gordon Holler, who was sort of my partner for the first
year, didn't respond to them at all. He was a painter, and
used to dealing with fine arts or antiquities. He could manage

to handle craft shows, but these he considered just plain bad,
he really couldn't see them, and couldn't understand why I
would show them. And they were really very good. Caroline
West was an exceptionally good collector.

But another person who had reservations was an early
collector of Guatemalan textiles, Max Pollak. He hated the
bright colors of the aniline dyes that they use now. They were
already using these new dyes back in the forties and fifties
when he was collecting, but he managed to find quite a lot of
older pieces that people were wearing or still using. They
were old and fadedhe couldn't stand these newer bright-
colored ones. To him they were just garish. He was very
small, barely five feet, but very dapper. He carried a bamboo
walking stick, and when he went around the markets looking for
textiles he would surreptitiously lift up women's skirts with
his cane--they usually wore several, like petticoats--to see if
they had on an old, faded natural dyed one. Then he would
bargain for the old skirt instead of whatever it was they were
selling.

So when Max Pollak came to see this show he just walked
around and sneered and bemoaned that they just weren't making
things like they used to. You know, I've noticed that some
people think that each new development or change in folk art is
a corruption of what has gone before. But folk art is
constantly changing, it only stays fresh that way, otherwise it
stagnates and gets lifeless and boring.

Openings, and Building a Collector List

Riess:
Anneberg:

Then you had what you called A Christmas Exhibition.

Yes. That was probably the very first year. I just invited
some local crafts people. In a few cases, friends. There were
a lot of different people.

Why don't you mention anyone that there's a story about.

Oh, dear. I just asked a lot of people to put in a piece or
two in this Christmas exhibition, so it's a mixture. It was a
big group show, ceramics, glass, enamels, jewelry, sculpture,
wall hangings, wrought iron, water colors, weaving, and wood.
Several people and their husbands who happened to be making
something interesting--! just had a lot of different things.

Riess :

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Carole Beadle, and Mary Ellen Cranston-Bennett. Those were
both weavers. Earle Curtis was the husband of Merry Renk, and
he worked for the Heath Pottery in Sausalito, he was a master
potter. Helene Durbin was a weaver. Lillian Elliott. Richard
Cause was a friend of Gordon's, who taught at Foothill College
in Los Altos. Ida Dean Grae was a weaver. I admired her rugs.
John Gieling was the husband of Imogene Gieling. He had some
nice marine-looking macrame. Hal Painter was the weaver who
was here in this place before I moved in. Carl Jennings was
the wrought iron man. Bob Stocksdale. Let's see, did I have
Kay Sekimachi? No, I didn't.

Nik Krevitsky, who was well known for stitchery. Kay Lane
was another jeweler. Marvin Lipofsky. Jacquetta Nisbet, she
did printed wall hangings. Merry Renk was a famous jeweler.
June Schwarcz was famous as an enamelist. Her husband Leroy
had some small carvings in bone. Andree Thompson was a potter,
she did charming cups and teapots. Quite a bunch of people,
wasn't it? A lot of them were well known.

That's wonderful.
these things?

Did you provide wine and cheese for all of

Yes, and that was interesting. When I first started the
gallery, galleries commonly had champagne openings. I didn't
really feel that I was quite up to that sort of thing, but I
did have wine that was regular bottled wine, it wasn't jug
wine. [laughter] And later on, I got a little bit more
realistic and served jug wine, but still, I went out and bought
some real wine glasses, glass wine glasses, and the same bunch
of glasses lasted me the whole fifteen years that I was in
business. I never resorted to styrofoam cups or anything like
that.

It sounds like things didn't get too rowdy, then.

They didn't get too rowdy, no. And I didn't break very many
either. But I found out that you had to serve white wine,
because red wine stained, and there was a certain amount of
sloshing and spilling that always went on, and white-wine just
didn't show.

I should also mention that while it's important to give a
nice reception, you don't want to throw such a good party that
people forget about the show, and that things are for sale.

Did this show sell out?

Shows never sold out that much. [laughs]

Riess: But this was Christmas shopping time.

Anneberg: You were lucky if you sold some pieces. I can't remember how
well this show sold. But probably not terribly well.

Riess: I keep persisting in finding out who--.
Anneberg: How I built the clientele?

Riess: Yes, who collected, who had the money, and how you got them
here.

Anneberg: I sold things mainly to other people who are craft artists.
They were my chief customers, and people who had some
familiarity with what 1 was showing, and who were interested in
that sort of thing.

I came to have a feeling about people who came in. They
were a good, safe, comfortable bunch of people. I didn't have
to worry about them stealing things, because they were people
who were kind of familiar with this sort of thing, and they
weren't coming in just off the street. They made a special
attempt to come over. I don't know who it was that I might
have trouble with, but they weren't people that I would
normally have on my mailing list.

Riess: When you say that craft artists were your chief customers I
think to myself, They are the last people who could buy it.

Anneberg: They were the people who were interested in this sort of thing.
If you want something, you manage to find the money.

Riess: So you sold really affordable things?

Anneberg: It was very affordable, yes. And they were often objects, you
see. Objects that people would be interested in living with.

Riess: But the thing about use is that ultimately, at least now, the
way you would decide that it was a piece of art is if it were
too valuable to use it.

Anneberg: Well, I suppose so, but very often something becomes art after
the fact. It may not be a piece of art really to start with,
but it looks like art, it smells like art, it walks like art,
so is it art? Yes.

A perfectly functional piece of folk craft, for instance,
often becomes art when taken out of context. In a gallery it
no longer seems related to function, it's just something to
look at.

Many people were beginning to collect folk art at about
this time. It was very cheap to fly to far distant parts of
the world. It was becoming easy to travel. Air travel was
becoming possible for people of very moderate means, or people
with almost no means- -you could still get up enough money to
fly to some strange part of the world, you see, and you could
get there in a matter of hours, or a day or two.

If you had even a small amount of money, you could collect
while you were over there, and then you could bring it back,
and in order to make up the cost of your trip, you might want
to sell the pieces that you've collected, or most of them.

I got some fairly goodsome very good shows from people
who were just beginning to collect in that sort of way. I was
lucky, I think, in starting a gallery at that particular time
in history, because many folk cultures had not yet disappeared,
or at least things were still available in the country of
origin, in Afghanistan, in Turkey, in Iran, in Morocco. They
were still full of wonderful things. When people would go over
there and collect, they would bring back marvelous things that
you never see today.

December 1969: A Great Port of Entry, and a Show of Indian
Embroidery

Anneberg: I had so much ethnic jewelry, wonderful pieces from various

parts of the Middle East and the Afghanistan-Turkey area, just
marvelous things that you'd die for today. They were coming
out of these places in quantity for the first time. And San
Francisco happened to be one of the great ports of entry for
this sort of thing, from the Far East and from India.

Riess: But I thought you were saying that they were being brought back
by collectors. So that sounds like a different idea?

Anneberg: Some were first-time collectors, some were experienced. But if
a person has a good eye it makes little difference.

Riess: Why did you say that San Francisco was one of the great ports
of entry?

Anneberg: Well, I don't know why I said that, but it was one of the great
marketplaces. I know that this sort of thing landed in San
Francisco in great quantities, for whatever reasons, and at the
point that I started showing this sort of thing it wasn't being
shown in New York or Washington, D.C., for instance, yet. They
just didn't--! think that it happened first on the West Coast,
in Los Angeles and in San Francisco, and maybe it also arrived
in the Midwest, in Chicago and in places back there, but I know
that at first it just hadn't been seen yet too much in most
parts of the country.

Riess: That's interesting.

Richard Gump, when he could no longer get things from the
Orient during the war, went to Mexico and started bringing
things back for Gump's "Discovery Room." But once they created
the market and interest here they [Gump's] needed quantity, and
needed duplicates. And folk artists in Mexico weren't
interested in going into manufacturing.

Anneberg: Right.

Riess: So there's something about discovery that spoils the market.

Anneberg: Sometimes it does, and other times it didn't. I was very much
afraid of that at first, because the people that I knew who
brought things out of Mexico also were down there a great deal
of the time and had a business down there, and they could go
around to various places and buy things.

And at about that time, some time in the late sixties or
mid-sixties, the Mexican government stepped in and started
buying folk art in Mexico, and setting up stores down there
where you could go and buy the things. They had stores set up
in a number of places that were geared toward the traveler and
the tourist, so that the tourist could go to these places and
find great things from all kinds of scattered villages that
would be hard to get tothe transportation wasn't that good.

Riess: That's interesting, isn't it? They were noticing these things
disappearing across their borders.

Anneberg: Yes, and I don't know how it got started. That's another
story. But it was done under the aegis of the government.

I was afraid, and many people were afraid, that it would
drastically change the character of Mexican folk art, but what
it actually did, I think, was save a number of villages that
would probably not have continued making things. Because they

Riess:
Anneberg:

made things for themselves and for the few tourists, meaning
people from other parts of Mexico who would travel there and
buy things. This is a very precarious sort of thing.

They might not have continued making a lot of things, but
even so, Mexican folk art changes very much from one year to
the next. A person who makes things in one place may die, or
go into some other business, you see, and stop making them. A
number of families, for instance, who make things, maybe the
generation following isn't interested in carrying on the family
mask carving or whatever it is that they were doing.

Did you have someone bringing collections from Mexico for you?

Yes. So we gradually started doing that at Christmastime,
which was a great time for Mexican folk art. Mexican folk art
had not been seen very much up here. The first exposure that a
lot of people had to Mexican folk art, was at my Christmas
shows .

Riess: It's so remarkable. Alexander Girard's collection is so great.
Do you think he was just starting about that time too?

Anneberg: No, I think he had been collecting for some time. He bought

things in many different ways. I don't think he always went to
Mexico himself.

Riess: What about Cost Plus? What can you say about their buying
policies, and whether that kind of reinforced what you were
doing in the gallery, or kind of undercut it?

Anneberg: They bought a lot from Vivian Burns, and Vivian Burns was a
woman here in San Francisco who went down to Guatemala and
Mexico and various places and bought in quantity, or she would
have villages make up a certain item, certain costume, dresses
or skirts or whatever it was, in certain sizes and colors, and
this was the first time that had been done, as far as I knew.
Cost Plus was one of her main outlets. She also had later on
set up an outlet of her own, called VBI. Vivian is no longer
around, she died some years ago, and I don't think VBI lasted
too much longer after her death.

Actually, the founder of Cost Plus was a very good
collector. So he set up a special arts and antiques section of
Cost Plus that was quite good in the 1960s.

Riess: When you said San Francisco was a great port of entry I thought
of Cost Plus.

Anneberg: It was one of the things, yes. At first, in their first years,
they had wonderful things from all over the world. You could
find good folk art there. But for the most part, I think that
the shows that I had were very often people's first
introduction. I had a show of Indian embroideries that was a
little bit before things that I had seen of a similar sort at
Cost Plus.

Riess: With the inset mirror pieces?

Anneberg: Yes, that sort of thing, the mirror cloth. [laughs] Well, it
was the first time I had ever seen it. Baku Shah, who had
brought a show to--I think it was the de Young- -was an art
historian and he did a lot of collecting and research on Indian
embroideries and costume and other Indian folk art. He was a
friend of June Schwarcz's. She had introduced him to me, and
we had concocted the idea--! had asked him if he could get some
things for the gallery for a show, and so we arranged for him
to send things from India.

So over maybe a year he sent things a little at a time,
which I would save up for the show [Cloth of India, December
1969]. Among them were some appliqued pictures of village
scenes and gods and goddesses, by an eccentric, untraditional
folk artist he had discovered, named Sarojben. They were so
different from the rest that I showed them first, in a separate
exhibition [Sarojben, July 1969]. All these would arrive in
little cloth bundles, held together with stitching instead of
tape. For some reason the Indian postal regulations demanded
that things be sent in these little stitched-up cloth bags
instead of boxes. The address was written right on the cloth,
and the stamps stuck on the cloth. Pretty strange.

It was just fine, except that you couldn't have anything
that would be destroyed by being pummeled around in a little
cloth bag. For instance, he sent some folk paintings once, and
I was very distressed at finding them all crumbled up, because
they had been painted on cloth, with a crude sort of gesso
background. There was no structure to these little bags, so
anything that was packed in them that couldn't stand that sort
of thing was destroyed. The folk paintings were a complete
loss, nothing but a lot of crumbs.

But it was very exciting to see these things from India for
the first time.

February 1968: Islamic Textile Fragments

Riess: Early Islamic Textile Fragments from Egypt [February 1968].
Was this a new collection from Gordon?

Anneberg: That was a second show, and no, Gordon did not go over to get
those. By this time Gordon was teaching at Foothill College.

We were very anxious to go back and get some more. Now, at
the time I wasn't really certain that I would have a gallery
for too long. I didn't have any long-term plans one way or the
other. Gordon and I had the idea we'd like to go into the
antiquities business eventually, but neither one of us had very
much money so we were just sending out feelers and trying to
figure out how we would manage this.

Riess: You mean as importers?

Anneberg: As importers and collectors, something like that. Because we
were both very much interested in old ceramics from that area.

I had several shows very early on of what might be
classified as antiquities.

Riess: The Coptic textiles, and this.

Anneberg: Yes, that sort of thing, and there were a few others. But we
had to rely on finding somebody else who was traveling to
Egypt, because Gordon had no contacts to just send us things
from Egypt at this particular time.

Well, this didn't turn out too well, because as it happened
it was I think a student of Gordon's or somebody that he knew
at Foothill College who was going to Egypt. We gave him some
money and asked him to contact Mohammed, Gordon's dealer
friend. Gordon sent along a letter of introduction to Mohammed
explaining the situation and what he wanted.

We gave this man, this acquaintance, thorough instructions
on how to do it. You did not just walk in there and" plunk down
your money and ask for the goods, and expect to get anything.
You had to observe Arab rules of etiquette, which meant sitting
down in a very leisurely fashion, and drinking tea, and
talking, and sharing all the preliminaries in a leisurely
fashion. Then you could get around to the business at hand,
and then you might get somewhere.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess :

Well, it turned out this man wasn't really at all
interested in doing that. He felt that it was enough that he
managed to find the place at all. Luckily he got a taxi with a
driver who knew where to go. He had the taxi wait while he
plunked down the money, showed Mohammed Gordon's letter, and
said he'd be back in a few hours to pick up the textiles.
Well, Mohammed was not impressed, and he was not convinced that
this was for real. For all he knew, it was something else
entirely. He didn't know for sure that this was a genuine
letter from Gordon, for instance. And the man didn't behave
the way you should behave .

So what he did was, sure, he gave him some textiles, but
they weren't at all what we had hoped they would be. They were
fragments of embroideries, knitting and felting, from a later
periodmaybe 15th, 16th centurythan the first group of
Islamic textiles. We were disappointed, but we mounted them
and had a nice show out of it anyway. There were a few pretty
good pieces, but it was really of more historical interest than
anything else.

Later on we did still have hopes that we could get back
there somehow or other and get some more Islamic textiles from
the earlier periods like we had at the first show. But
unfortunately the Japanese got there before we did. They
somehow or other found out about Mohammed's stash of Islamic
textiles. They had lots of money, and they didn't bargain.
They simply went there and bought them all. All the good
stuff. We heard about it later.

So that may have happened before this, and it may have been
that all he had left were some that they had not gotten around
to, because the textiles we got were later in time than
anything they would be interested in. And not of such good
quality. The Japanese always sooner or later got on to a good
thing. And if it was something they were interested in, they
had the money and they would simply go over and buy them. No
bargaining.

And so they've disappeared from sight?

They disappeared, and are no longer available in Cairo, as far
as I know, except for maybe the occasional piece in an antique
shop.

And are they visible in Japan, I wonder, or did they go into
private collections?

Anneberg: They probably went into private collections.

Riess: That's so very interesting. And this idea that you and Gordon
might go into the antiquities business, what happened about
that?

Anneberg: Well, we never quite had enough money to make the trips that we
needed to. And the Middle East heated up at about that time.
There was war and things that made it too chancey. We just
couldn't do it.

Riess: Did you ever travel there?

Anneberg: No. For one thing, my physical condition made it very

difficult even to travel around San Francisco. I just found it
very hard.

Riess: Did you have periods of complete remission, or not?

Anneberg: The way it worked with me, I would gradually go into remission
over a period of years. So I did gradually get a little
better. Eventually I would have another breakdown, and it
would start all over again.

Contemporary Crafts: Barbara Shawcroft, Lillian Elliott, Others

Riess: Now, what is this? [looking at announcement]
Anneberg: That was a large ceramic piece.
Riess: Rita Yokoi [May 1968].

Anneberg: Rita Yokoi. She had been married to a Japanese American, but
she wasn't Japanese herself.

Riess: What sort of work was this?

Anneberg: It was about three and a half, four feet tall. It was a large
ceramic vase-like piece.

Riess: Now, this looks like another textile fragment.

Anneberg: That was Carole Beadle [June 1968] who was teaching at that

time I think at California College of Arts and Crafts. It's a
little off -loom weaving.

I designed most of these announcements so that if someone
put them up on a bulletin board all the information was seen at

one time. You wouldn't have to take it down from the bulletin
board and turn it over onto the back to get the hours and the
time.

Riess: This next show is by Barbara Shawcroft [July 1968].

Anneberg: Barbara Shawcroft. She later became very prominent in the
textile field. She just walked in off the street one day,
showed me her slides, and I gave her her first show in this
area. She teaches at University of California at Davis.

Riess: In the book I bought at the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Nine
Decades, they refer to the glory years, 1950 to 1975, at
California College of Arts and Crafts. Trude Guennonprez and
Marguerite Wildenhain and Victor Ries all taught there as well
as at Pond Farm.

Anneberg: Well, I only knew Trude. I knew her fairly well because she

came into the gallery a lot, and she had a show at the gallery.

Riess: And Edith Heath and Eunice Prieto and Jacomena Maybeck, also
all ceramicists. Did you have shows of any of them?

Anneberg: No. They were before my period.

Riess: And Kay Sekimachi came in 1956, and Barbara Shawcroft and

Lillian Elliott and Carole Beadle are the next group, according
to this.

Anneberg: Well, I showed all of those people.

Riess: And then since the 1970s a hybridization, expanding definition
of whatever the art is, referring to Viola Frey doing figures
in ceramics. Did you have any shows of Viola Frey's?

Anneberg: No, I didn't.

Riess: And any early work from Ron Nagle?

Anneberg: No. I don't think that he was too much involved with the craft
world. I think he was more of a sculptor, even though his
objects were cups.

Riess: Cups.
Anneberg: Cups.
Riess: Is that because he took charge of defining himself?

Anneberg: I think he did, yes. I don't think he considered himself part
of the craft scene. I wouldn't have had the nerve to ask him,
because of that.

Riess: How about Nance O'Banion?

Anneberg: Well, she was involved with the people at Fiberworks. I can't
remember exactly when Fiberworks started up. They had a small
exhibition space, one small room, and they gave regular shows.
I think by this time there was also the Allrich Gallery in San
Francisco, Louise Allrich. She showed paintings and fine arts
as well, but mostly she was interested in textile arts. She
showed a lot of people like Lia Cook, who did very large
pieces. A lot of the Fiberworks faculty showed at her gallery.

Riess: Okay. So we were talking about Barbara Shawcroft.

Anneberg: She did large free-standing figures, woven and stuffed, and I
had two shows of those figures. The first was this one in the
summer of 1968, when she brought in three or four large
figures, and I showed them and some small wall pieces. She had
been living in Mexico with her husband, and they had just moved
back to the United States. I thought her work was very
interesting, and I was impressed with her, so I wanted to show
them.

Riess: This seems like it's getting into the realm of things that
would be very hard to sell.

Anneberg: Yes, I don't think we sold a thing. [laughter]

Riess: You couldn't have afforded to do too many of those shows.

Anneberg: She had a show later, and we sold some things out of it. But
she was a very interesting artist, her work was special.

Those figures [in brochure for 1969 show]--I can't remember
now whether they were partly woven on the loom, but I believe
so. They were quite extraordinary, though, because they were
not quite lifesize, but they were very large.

Riess: They are a big naked man, woman, and child. And multiracial?

Anneberg: Let's see. There was a black or very dark brown man, a white
woman, and a green child. I can't remember whether there were
ever more than three. I think she just made those three large
ones. I showed them one summer for a short time, and then I
showed them again later on, along with a lot of other things.

100

Oh yes, by that time she had added two more figures an old
woman, I think it was, and a large Buddha-like one.

I thought they were extraordinary, and her vision of making
these figures the first man and the first woman and tying them
in with the Hopi world view which she was interested in at the
time. She called that show The First People of the First World
[November 1969] .

Riess: Now we should go back, if we're doing this chronologically, to
Bruce Anderson, Ceramics [September 1968].

Anneberg: Yes. 1 Lillian Elliott had had a show some months before this,

but when Bruce Anderson scheduled a show, she suggested that it
would be nice if she brought in some of her weavings and hung
them as background to the pots, because they would look nice
together. She didn't want her name advertised as part of the
show, she wanted to give Bruce all the credit, focus it on his
pots instead, so that people wouldn't be coming to see the show
for her weavings.

Bruce was a marvelous potter. A production potterplates ,
bowls, cups, saucers. But he also made vases, compotes,
casseroles, things like that. They were strong, simple,
absolutely straightforward shapes, with absolutely perfect
matte glazes in a range of browns and brownish greys.

He went to Cornwall every summer, he and his wife, to see
Bernard Leach. I think he studied under Leach.

Both Lillian and I bought a lot of his dinner ware, because

if you went down to his studio in Santa Cruz, he would sell to

crafts people for half price. It's such a privilege to eat
from Bruce Anderson plates.

Expertise, and Taste
[Interview 4: March 27, 1995]

Riess: So much of what you were showing was being seen for the first
time. You must have been besieged by questions, as you sat
there tending the gallery.

Anneberg: That's right, people kept asking me questions. I never felt as
though it was idlewell, it was idle curiosity, but what's

101

wrong with that? But I never felt as though it was frivolous,
because they really wanted to know.

It was my position, I always felt, to give them whatever
answers I could. A lot of people on the outside didn't feel
that it was necessary to answer their questions, or provide
that sort of information. So I always had to dig as much
information as I could out of the collectors who brought folk
art to show at the gallery. I didn't have time to spend a lot
of time researching in the library, so I don't know where I got
the information. A lot of books seemed to find their way into
the gallery, but 1 didn't have time to go out to get
information.

Riess: And a lot of the questions maybe were questions that hadn't
occurred to you to ask until they were asked of you, maybe.

Anneberg: That's right. And now that I think of it, there really was

very little published on folk art from anywhere in the world.
It's become more common in the last twenty, twenty- five years
to publish in those fields. But it never used to be at all
necessary, from a commercial point of view, for publishing
houses to put out books like that, because they didn't feel
they had the audience. It's really been fairly recently, I'd
say, that that has happened.

Riess: And do you think the impetus is from universities, in other
words, scholarly?

Anneberg: I think it's more on a popular level. So much became available
in that short period when travel was very cheap and people
could get around to other parts of the world. They started
seeing it, and they started bringing it back. The demand
followed soon after. And also, I don't know why, as I was
trying to explain last time, a lot of it was coming in to
certain cities like San Francisco and New York, Los Angeles
perhaps, and it sort of crept out into the rest of the country
from these entry points, I think.

It's really very difficult to say why it suddenly happened,
but it became available. In the countries of origin people
were selling, they were getting rid of old things and turning
to a more modern way of life in all parts of the world. Some
say they were becoming Americanized. They were adopting this
culture that was really an international culture, contemporary
culture, and shedding older ways, especially the younger
people. A lot of the really good things were still being kept
in families and in old collections, but many things were simply
no longer being used, so the markets were full of them.

102

When people were traveling a lot, going over there a lot,
they would see these things in markets and buy them. So
collections were formed here from people traveling. It was
easy to get, very easy.

Riess: How about the question of taste? I guess when you're talking
about folk art, you don't think about an issue of taste, you
just accept a folk art or craft for what it is? You don't make
distinctions?

Anneberg: Between good and bad?

Riess: Between kitsch, for instance, and high art, between good and
bad, yes.

Anneberg: No, I never thought of that. There were things that I

particularly didn't like, but they had nothing to do with
whether it was good or bad, it was just that I didn't happen to
appreciate it or didn't happen to respond to it aesthetically.
And I tried very hard for the most part not to let that
influence whether or not I was showing it. If I generally
liked what was coming out of Afghanistan, for instance, I
didn't turn my nose up at certain types of embroidery that I
didn't respond to, because somebody else might.

On the other hand, I would avoid having too much of certain
things that I personally didn't respond to. And I might have
been right, you see. I may have, in the long run, but people
don't really make that sort of distinction.

Riess: We're so influenced by some historical sense of what's right
and wrong and good and bad within our own cultures.

Anneberg: Well, now, I do make a lot of distinction in certain ways. For
instance, there are certain kinds of folk art that I really
don't think are going to be considered good in the long run,
and other types that I just personally don't respond to, and
sometimes I don't know the difference, you see. I don't really
know whether I'm not responding to them because they're not
good, or whether it's just a matter of personal taste.

Riess: What about little Japanese dolls, for instance, the Girl's Day
dolls?

Anneberg: Girl's Day dolls? I don't respond to those at all, but I do
respond to the true folk art so-called toys, which are really
mostly temple souvenirs. Now, those are wonderful, and there
are very few of them that I would think are not very good. I

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had quite a large collection of Japanese temple souvenirs and
folk art toys, so-called.

Riess: So is it partly the age, that they are older folk art?

Anneberg: You mean whether or not they're good? No, not at all. They're
just not making very much of that any more, so you're lucky if
you find older pieces. The collection that I had was 1950s and
sixties for the most part. I had acquired it from various
other people and in shops in San Francisco during the sixties.

When I decided to sell it, I put it up for sale at a local
shop that specialized in Japanese folk art and antiques. I was
amazed at some of the things that people rushed right in and
bought immediately. They were often things that I didn't think
were especially interesting, but other people did. So I can't
always say whether or not my own taste is perfect, you see. I
don't necessarily--! don't think about whether or not it's
good. Whether or not I have good taste doesn't matter to me.

Riess: But by having this shop and choosing what you will show you
become a tastemaker, don't you?

Anneberg: I don't know. I don't think that I'm a tastemaker. But what I
do is contribute to people's sum of knowledge, so that they can
form their own judgments about things. If they see things in
the gallery, that may be all they know about something, or it
may be one of their main sources of information. I don't know.

Riess: I wonder if this also was the time in America when people
started collecting American folk arts?

Anneberg: American folk art--it always seemed to me that the time to

collect it was twenty years earlier, at any particular date.
Even in 1945 I thought, If I'd only started collecting Shaker
furniture ten years ago! Now it's too expensive. In 1945,
imagine. I was back in New York at the time, you see. Well,
it's just that I had no money to buy it at the prices that you
could buy it then. You could maybe buy a Shaker chair for
fifty dollars, or a hundred dollars, which is nothing compared
to today, but it was a lot of money then.

Riess: The interest in folk art of other cultures, did that predate an
interest in folk art of our own culture, do you think?

Anneberg: No, I think people were first interested in American folk art,
on the East Coast at least. There was a lot of interest. But
I know that it became suddenly almost impossible for the
ordinary person to collect after the Bicentennial, because that

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brought a lot of focus to American things and American folk
art.

There was a local collector, Joan Watkin, whose husband
Malcolm was curator of folk art at the Smithsonian, who had
quite a large collection of American folk art, and she and I
got together on the possibility of having an American folk art
show. She was planning to go around in a van or something and
collect in the Northeast, and then maybe drive out with it, or
have it shipped back. But all of a sudden, you see, she
realized that it was impossible to buy things, because
everybody had swooped down on the Northeast and all the
auctions and the barns and everything else, and the antique
stores and the junk shops, and they were cleaning it out, right
around the time of the Bicentennial, because there was so much
interest.

Then there was that big Rockefeller collection that was
auctioned off in New York. After that prices went up
dramatically.

American folk art since then has beenit's had its ups and
downs, I'm sure, as far as prices go, but in general it's been
out of sight for most people. Before that, I think that you
could go around and form a fairly decent collection if you were
serious about it, even on a moderate income. Lots of people
have formed very good collections on very modest income. If
you really want something, you'll go ahead and buy it somehow.

More on Collecting in Guatemala

Riess: Here is Caroline West, with Indian arts of Peru [November
1968].

Anneberg: She was primarily the Guatemalan weavings collector.
Riess: At your shows was everything for sale?

Anneberg: Yes. Everything has to be for sale in a private gallery. I
made an exception to that rule occasionally, but for the most
part, that was the case.

Now, Caroline West collected primarily at this time in
Guatemala, but later also in South America and in North Africa.
She had only two or three shows here from Guatemala, and then
she decided to stop collecting there because of this phenomenon

105

of young people going down with their vans and backing them up
to a village and just shoveling in the folk textiles, buying
them indiscriminately in large quantities. She felt that the
market was going to very shortly be flooded, and she just
thought it was time for her to turn to other things.

Riess: What was her background? How did she know what she was up to?

Anneberg: Well, I suppose you learn by doing, like a lot of people do.

She had a good art background. I know that she had gone to the
[San Francisco] Art Institute, or whatever it was called
earlier. [California School of Fine Arts]

She was a little older than I, but young enough to be able
to withstand the rigors of going into distant villages and--
collecting is hard work, you have to be pretty healthy and
strong to do it. That's why most of my collectors were fairly
young. It always seemed to me--at first it seemed to me that
you really had to have some age on you in order to have a good
eye developed for collecting. Sometimes that comes with
maturity. However, I was later proved wrong in this, because
it was surprising how often a very young person would just
naturally have a wonderful eye for collecting.

Caroline was a very interesting collector. Her Guatemalan
collection was quite extensive. She showed it only a few
places. I think that she sold a lot to people who just knew
she had the collection. But she showed it here, and at The Egg
and the Eye in Los Angeles, she had a few shows there. And a
couple of other places in the Southwest, I don't know just
where, but someplace in Albuquerque maybe, places like that.
I'm just not certain what galleries she was involved with.

Riess: That means that she would have to divide her lot in four?

Anneberg: She probably started here, with the shows at my gallery. I

think that she also had some shows at The Egg and the Eye that
she collected specifically for. Now, she wouldn't nearly sell
out an entire show, because there was just so much stuff
involved, she couldn't possibly do that. Not in San, Francisco.
But she still thought that we did as well here as anywhere--!
always sold quite well. After showing here, or in Los Angeles
as the case might be, she would have a show elsewhere, in
southern California or the Southwest.

But she still ended up with a very choice collection of
Guatemalan things which she eventually gave to what was then
called the Cultural History Museum on the campus of the
University of California at Los Angeles, UCLA.

106

Riess: As a study collection?

Anneberg: No, they had--I suppose it was partly a study collection, but
it was a regular museum collection. Now that little museum is
much larger and it's called something else, they've changed the
name. But she had to round out her collection in certain areas
that were missing, so she went down with the textile curator,
Pat Altman, and collected more from the villages at much later
date.

Riess: For the museum?

Anneberg: Yes, for the museum, some time in the late seventies. But her
collecting in Guatemala ended for the most part in the late
sixties. And it was in the early seventies that the phenomenon
of large quantities of Guatemalan textiles coming into the
United States and showing up in shops and all kinds of places
took place. Much of it was very good, but some was mediocre,
not well collected.

Riess: And this kind of raid on Guatemala didn't affect the crafts
people there in a negative way?

Anneberg: I don't know. I have no idea. It's hard to say what is

negative, because sometimes what they really need is money.
They need that sort of cash. They are desperately poor in most
of those villages, and overtaxed and oppressed in many ways.
So who am I to say that it was corrupting for people to go down
and spend money in these villages and buy the huipils off their
backs?

At the time I thought that it was corrupting, but now that
I look back on it, I'm not at all certain that any of this made
a bit of difference. What did make the difference was the way
they were oppressed down there by the government, which we now
know was incredible, and it's still going on. Many of these
little villages have been completely wiped out. There isn't
much being produced today.

Riess: It's interesting that the Guatemalan government didn't take it
on as an industry.

Anneberg: I don't think they were ever at all interested in preserving
Mayan culture.

Riess: I mean getting in on money that was going into the villages.

Anneberg: [laughs] I suppose they didn't think it was a significant

amount. They probably had no idea how much, and had no way of

107

keeping track of it, because most of the time when people go
down and buy like that, they either don't have to pay a duty or
somehow or other evade it.

Riess: What about Peru? Was that brand-new for you?

Anneberg: I think that was. Caroline West was a wonderful collector.
She had a really good eye and bought marvelous things. From
this trip she brought back a wide variety of things, from
beautiful wool ponchos to potato sacks, also beautifully
decorated but extremely sturdy. I have one hanging on my wall.

Riess: Now this group exhibition? [Christmas 1968] Textiles: Carole
Beadle, Mary Ellen Cranston-Bennett, Crane Day, Helene Durbin,
Lillian Elliott, Trude Guermonprez, Jacquetta Nisbet, Sonja
Pimentel, Helen Wood Pope, Kay Sekimachi, Barbara Shawcroft,
Cynthia Sterling Williams, Sally Wittman. Ceramics: Bruce
Anderson, Ed Cromey, Walter Dusenberry, Tom Edwards, Patricia
Oyama, Andree Thompson, Al Widenhofer, Rita Yokoi. Metal: Carl
Jennings, Kay Lane, Merry Renk. And enamels, June Schwarcz.

Anneberg: It's a wonderful combination of people who are not very well
known and people who are extremely well known. I had
forgotten..

Riess: Was Kay Sekimachi well known at the time?

Anneberg: In craft circles, she certainly was. All those people who are
well known today were well known then.

Riess: I was thinking perhaps this was a first showing for some of
them.

Anneberg: No, I don't think that particularit may have been for some of
the others that are not so well known. I don't remember. It
was a very large group show. I didn't normally have large
group shows, but that was something special for the Christmas
season.

The Child Weavers of the Atelier of Ramses Wissa-Wassef

Riess: Then next you had tapestries from the Atelier of Ramses Wissa-
Wassef [January 1969]. And we talked about the piece you have
here on the wall, but after the tape was turned off.

108

Anneberg: Ramses Wissa-Wassef was an Egyptian architect who had the idea
that if you gave unlettered village children- -unlettered, I
don't really know if that was the case entirely, but simple
village children who had no contact with the outside world, and
certainly no art educationif you gave them materials to work
with and set them loose, they would prove to be artists just
like city children or anyone else.

His great experiment was to set up a real art studio for
children in this village. It happened to be a Coptic village--
Dr. Wissa-Wassef was a Copt himself.

Anneberg: Harrania was a weaving village, with a number of rug

manufacturing workshops, meaning handmade rugs, hand-woven on
looms. Many of the children were employed as weavers in this
village.

Riess: There was a tradition of the children being put to work?

Anneberg: Yes, children employed as weavers. I don't remember hearing
exactly whether there were grownups also weaving rugs. But I
understood that there were many children, and others who would
recite the--I don't know enough about it to be able to tell you
just how they did this, but some would recite the pattern of
the rug and the children on the looms would weave it.

Riess: So they were really automatons.

Anneberg: I don't know about all of them, but this did happen in the

commercial workshops. So very often the children in the Wissa-
Wassef atelier were at least familiar with how a loom worked
when they arrived there, but not all of them. I think that
they were shown the rudiments of how to weave.

Now, the weaving that was done in the Wissa-Wassef workshop
was done not on regular floor looms, but on simple stationary
frames that leaned against the wall. On my tapestry [looking
at 3' x 5' piece on the wall of Anneberg 's living room] the
weft goes up and down and the warp goes sideways, from left to
right. You see the fringe that's on the sides, that is warp
fringe

Riess: So when they were working on it--?

Anneberg: They were working on it sideways. It would lean against the
wall, and the design would be sideways.

109

Riess :

Anneberg:

And was there was a pattern,
through this?

or were they imagining their way

Riess:
Anneberg:

Oh, no, there was no cartoon or design made ahead of time. The
children were encouraged to simply weave what they wanted to
however they wanted to do it. They were taught how to dye the
wool, the wool that was used for the weft, they were taught how
to dye it with natural dyes, so all that was part of their
education in this workshop.

But as far as the content of the rug, I think they were
quite possibly encouraged to do natural scenes, like trees and
flowers and the natural surroundings, and people. I think they
may have been steered away from modern things like automobiles,
trucks, airplanes, because I don't recall ever seeing them in
work of the Wissa-Wassef studio, which seems a little odd
because certainly they were in contact with things like that.
Harrania is very near Giza, which is a suburb of Cairo. But I
don't think that they were in general instructed as to just
what to depict in their weavings.

And was the idea that they would have careers as weavers?
I think it. was hoped that they might when they grew up.

Many of these children started quite young--! certainly
remember seeing some rugs that were very small and obviously
woven by a very young child some of them may have started when
they were six or seven. Later on they became eighteen, twenty,
in their twenties, even late twenties, as they hung on and
stayed with the workshop. So then some of the works became
quite sophisticated in some ways, but they still had a folky
quality, because they were untaught in any other way, you see.
They just learned by doing in their own particular way.

How did you come to see the Wissa-Wassef workshop weavings?

Let me see. I had a contact who was a nephew of Wissa-Wassef ' s
widow- -Sophie Wissa-Wassef I think her name was. She directed
the workshop after Wissa-Wassef died. This nephew of hers came
to study in this country, and he brought over some of the
weavings from the workshop, which were sort of his bank account
that he would sell from time to time. I had an Arab friend,
Etel Adnan, who lived in this area, and she was acquainted with
this man. She introduced me through letters to him. So he
would send me a few tapestries every now and then. I would
simply get them unannounced in the mail.

110

It was wonderful to see what he would send, because they
were of such an enormous variety. Some of them were almost as
large as a rug, four by five. And then there were long, narrow
strips. One of them was Nile scenes, of the reeds and flowers
and the river, and it was just a wonderful flowing depiction of
all these plants and ducks and water birds. It was a wonderful
thing, but a very awkward length. However, somebody fell in
love with it and bought it, fortunately.

There was another horizontal one of the life of Christ in a
sort of comic-strip format, with simple stick figures. The
Copts are Christians, you know.

Riess: You told me how you ended up with this rug hanging on your
wall. Maybe you should tell on tape, because it's a good
example of some of the problems of galleries. And would you
describe it?

Anneberg: It's about three feet high, and about five feet long. It's a
scene of an oasis, and it's a very classic example of an oasis
in that there are large trees. I don't know what kind of trees
they are, but they have a lot of seed pods. There are several
large birds, very large black birds, about four of them sitting
in the trees.

In one opening in the canopy of leaves there's a very hot
red sun with orange sunlight all around it, which contrasts
with these green trees that have a brownish bark, and twigs and
branches. Then, not as tall as those trees, there are date
palms, and underneath the date palms there are other plants,
and herbs, flowers, and various other things.

In an oasis there very often is a hierarchy of plants, from
very tall trees down to very small herbs that grow underneath.
It's almost like a rainforest, you see, because you have a
canopy up above, and then down below where it's very cool and
there is almost no sunlight, you have the water source and
other kinds of plants growing in this dark, cool underneath
part of the oasis. And you see, there's a man and a boy, and
they're bringing their animals to be watered. The man is
riding on a mule, and he has a cow--he is holding the reins to
the cow. The boy has some goats and another mule.

So you have animals, people, and flowers, and trees, and
birds, and a hot, hot sun at the very top. It's very colorful.
And it smelled wonderful when I unrolled it from the big
packing tube that it came in. It smelled like cinnamon, I
think it was, and cloves, so they must have put spices in with
it, back in the village, to protect it against moths. That is

Ill

one of the traditional ways of repelling moths. For a long
time, I would catch a whiff of spices whenever I passed it or
shook it out.

Anyway, I hung it up in the gallery, in the shop part which
was behind a partition, not in the regular gallery where shows
were being presented. A woman came in who admired it very
much, and she considered buying it. Over a period of weeks she
would come in every now and then and look at it.

Finally, when she had almost decided to buy it, she brought
a tape measure and started measuring it to make sure that it
fit. She was worried that it wasn't going to fit in her living
room. And this kind of annoyed me. I think the reason it did
was because I really wanted it myself, and the thought that she
was making her decision based upon whether it fit in her living
room, and not whether or not she just had to have it, upset me
enough so that I- -well, I didn't say anything that time. She
was going to go home and take the measurements and see if it
fit in her living room.

At that time, Joyce Hundal, a collector from Los Angeles,
was in the gallery. She had brought with her the next show.
She had collected it in Turkey and Iran and Afghanistan. She
had been watching this whole thing, and as soon as the woman
left she asked me for my claw hammer, and then got up on a
ladder--! had it nailed to the walland undid the nails. Then
she rolled it up and said, "Now, you take this to the back
room! This is your bank account. If you really want
something, you buy it."

This is something that I did very little of, because I just
couldn't afford it. I had to make my rent, and I had to pay
bills, and so I was always forgoing buying things myself,
unless they were just inexpensive little things. For the most
part I just couldn't collect the wonderful things that came
through the gallery.

Riess: "This is your bank account" also implies that you should buy it
now because it's going to be worth more later.

Anneberg: I think that's what she meant. Well, that wasn't really what
influenced me, I just loved it, and I still do. I've had it
hanging in my apartment ever since.

Riess: That's a great story. That's a happy ending.

112

The Benefit of an Exhibition for an Artist

Riess:
Anneberg:

Howard Kottler, Decal Plates and Ceramics [February 1969]?

Yes. Howard had his own announcement printed, but roughly in
the same format.

His special thing was decals. He used them in a wonderful
way, on plates that he may have made himself, or he may have
bought for that use, I can't remember now. But it was the
entire look and the way he did it that was important, his use
of decals. Sometimes they were photographic images, and other
times commercially purchased decals.

Were they witty?

Yes, very funny, and different. I thought it added a little
spice to the gallery's usual offerings.

Maybe there was beginning to be a kind of new humor in craft
art, such as there was in collage and assemblage?

Well, that's true, and it probably is something that didn't
occur in craft before the late fifties. Before that, it was
more oriented toward useful objectsweavers wove place mats
and potters made plates, that sort of thing. By the late
sixties many of them were branching out into things that were
totally frivolous and just lots of fun, but also very good.
Ceramics is a natural medium for humor.

Howard Kottler is no longer living. He was a very good
artist, and he was doing something different from that being
seen around here. He was from Seattle, one of the few I showed
who lived outside northern California. I tried to concentrate
on local artists because I always felt that they needed a place
to showthere weren't many opportunities to show their work.
Being an artist myself I knew the problems they had. If they
were doing good work, they liked to see it shown somewhere.

Aside from the fact that it's great publicity for your
work, it's also important to be able to see your work at a
distance, outside your studio, to be able to put it up on a
wall or on a stand and get back and look at it. You can never
have that experience in your own studio, unless you have a huge
studio, and very few craftsmen do. It's usually a smallish,
cluttered space. You just don't get that feeling.

113

Riess: When you looked at an artist's work, did you try in hanging it
to make a statement about where they were going, or would you
just put things where they pleased you aesthetically?

Anneberg: I think the latter. You don't have time to think about

anything else. When you're putting up a show you make it the
best possible presentation that you can do, that you can
accomplish, given the limitation of the gallery space and
materials you have to work with, and how much time you have for
putting the show up.

Riess: I remembered that Albert Paley, a metalsmith who was

interviewed in the Diamonstein book, said something about the
consistency of an artist, which "...may not be apparent until
the work is viewed retrospectively." He was very interested in
this idea of the insights that a show gave an artist.

Anneberg: I think an artist often can get an idea of where this work that
he's showing at that particular time, where that is in light of
his continued development. You know what I mean?

Riess: Yes.

Anneberg: An artist may be concentrating on a particular form at a

particular time, or an expression of certain images. To see
where that fits in in his overall work of the last five years
or longer, perhaps his lifetime, that's something that you can
get from a gallery show. And it is interesting, Lillian
Elliott, who had several shows at the gallery, she every now
and then would call me up--she did this two or three times and
ask me if there would be a little space of time after I had
taken the current show down when she could bring some weavings
over and just tack them up on the wall so she could stand back
and look at them.

I welcomed that opportunity if I had enough time so that I
could give her, say, Saturday night. I would take the show
down right after the gallery closed on that Saturday, and
before I had put the new show up, and while I was probably
still repairing the walls, Lillian would bring over a few
things just to be able to see what they looked like hanging up,
because she didn't have enough space in her house to really
hang them and then back up and look at them from a distance.
So that was fun. I could see some of her latest work.

Riess: Don't galleries always want the the latest body of work?

Anneberg: Yes, I think so, very often. That's usually what is available.
If an artist has enough work for a show, it's very often his

114

latest work. That's not always true; sometimes I had shows
when a person would put in older work as well as some newer
things. And it didn't matter to me, as long as it hadn't been
shown a lot of places. I didn't really care about that too
much, because there were so few places that a person could show
anyway, it didn't really matter if people had seen a work
before. They probably wouldn't recognize it, seeing it in a
different context.

May 1969; Nik Krevitsky's Stitchery

Riess:

Right. Now, Nik Krevitsky, Stitchery. [May 1969]

Anneberg: Oh, now that was interesting,
a Calif ornian at all.

He was from Tucson, Arizona, not

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

I wanted to show some embroideries, embroidery was
something that a great many textile artists did. There were an
awful lot of embroiderers, especially down on the Peninsula for
some reason, not necessarily in the East Bay or in San
Francisco. There were a lot of people who did--I should call
it Stitchery, not embroidery but Stitchery. And a lot of them
wanted shows. I was hard pressed to find one that really
appealed to me as being stronger than the others, and if I
chose just one of them, then I would have my doors beaten down
by all the others wanting shows too.

I really was avoiding the whole matter, and yet I did feel
that I should be showing some of what was being done in the
Stitchery field. And then I thought of Nik, who was quite well
known nationally. He limited himself to one particular stitch,
he didn't use a lot of different stitches, so that really set
his work apart at that time. I think it is called couching, a
large over-and-over stitch in which he could get a lot of color
in certain areashe could almost paint with thread.

What would be the dimensions of these pieces?

I think they were probably something like two by two and a half
or three feet.

So they're definitely wall pieces.

115

Anneberg: They were wall pieces, yes. They were very good, and it was a

good expression of an artist doing a certain type of work and

perfecting it, becoming very adept at it so that it was really

an expression of what he was all about.

Riess: That begins to be a definition of a craftsman?
Anneberg: Well, I don't like to get into those distinctions.

Riess: It would be hard to imagine that an artist would like to hear
that what he had done was perfect his craft.

Anneberg: I'm not talking about the craft, because the craft was a small
part of what Nik was all about. He was expressing himself in a
certain way, and he happened to be using stitchery as a medium.
It could have been paint or anything else. In many ways, he
was indistinguishable from a painter or a person using any
other type of material.

I should point out that I never mentioned the word "craft"
in any gallery announcement. As far as I was concerned, they
were all artists, and it didn't matter what they used as
materials. That is not generally the point of view of people
who identify themselves as fine artists. But it doesn't matter
to me what material they're using. Look at the people who do
collage! They use anything that they pick up off the street.
It doesn't matter to them what they're using.

The fact that people sometimes use traditional craft
materials, yarns, and things like a potter's wheel or a loom,
that puts them on a lower rung as far as most people in the
fine arts are concerned, because they're not using an easel,
and painting stretchers, and canvas, and paints.

Riess: I was picking up on the idea that he [Nik] become very skilled
in doing something, and the notion of skill and repetition.

Anneberg: Well, just like a painter is using over and over again canvas
and oil paints or acrylics. He doesn't branch out and use a
lot of different things. And very often his technique is very
limited, using only a certain kind of brush, or a palette
knife, or his hands, or whatever.

Now, many people doing stitchery have a great repertoire of
different kinds of knots and stitches that they know how to do,
and they'll use them in abundance in their work, and that's all
right too. But I liked the way Nik expressed himself with only
one stitch. Maybe there was more than one, but it looked like
it was only one.

116

IV GALLERY CONCERNS AND EXHIBITIONS, 1969-1974

Anneberg Begins Her Slide Record

Riess: It would be wonderful if your album included a photograph of
the work of each of these artists. The next archivist who
deals with this will have to make it their business.

Anneberg: Yes. I have an awful lot of photographs, too. Many of them I
have deposited with the Craft and Folk Art Museum Library.

I should mention that I acquired a cameralet ' s see, when
was it? In about 1969, something like that. Before that I had
no camera. I just had to rely on friends, or sometimes upon
the artist to supply me with a photograph. After I got a
camera I meticulously, religiously, photographed every object
in every show, at enormous expense and time and exertion on my
part .

Riess: Slides?

Anneberg: Yes, I took color slides. It was an obsession with me. I had
no idea what use I was ever going to put them to. But it was
just something that I felt that I had to do once I started
doing it. I felt that these things I was showing were so
fleeting and it would be wonderful to be able to have a record.

Riess: And that set of slides is at the Craft and Folk Art Museum?

Anneberg: I made sets from each show and deposited them there. It's not
complete, some of them I still have.

Riess: But that's a great document, isn't it?

Anneberg: Yes, it is. And especially of the folk art, I think, as well
as the crafts people, because much of that is simply no longer
available at all.

117

Riess: Well, that's an important footnote.

Anneberg: Yes. For a short time I developed a series of slide groupings
that I could sell, and I sent out a little announcement, like a
catalogue, listing all that I had available, and teachers and
people like that would buy these sets of slides. So for
several years, that was a little business on the side.

Riess: Would you advertise it through the crafts magazines?

Anneberg: No, I just sent out these fliers to my mailing list, as a

matter of fact. I picked up a lot of teachers and people all
across the country who might want slides on some of these
subjects, like African weavings from certain areas, or Japanese
peasant baskets, or whatever.

Riess: What kind of a camera did you use?

Anneberg: I bought a Pentax. It was a 35-millimeter camera.

Riess: And did you have a tripod and flash, or how did you light your
things?

Anneberg: Most of the pictures I tried to take in natural light as much
as I could, because it gave a better idea of the color. I
would set up a little system in my front windows, or take it
outside and tack it to the door [laughs], over the door
outside. A lot of things were very large, so that I could just
tack them up out there. It was pretty strenuous and difficult
for me physically to do.

When I first startedand Gordon Holler was quite a good
photographerwe photographed all the Coptic textiles by just
taking them outside and laying them flat on the pavement and
photographing them there. When I was doing it I very often
photographed small things that same way. I would just put down
a big sheet of white poster board or something like that, and
lay a small textile on it, or a piece of pottery or whatever,
and photograph them outside in full natural light. Or
sometimes it would be more diffused. I would just photograph
them in the window, especially three-dimensional objects,
ceramics and things like that.

Riess: Well, that adds another dimension to the things you had to do.
It sounds very difficult.

118

Summer 1969; Textile Shows; Elaine Henning's Woven Kinetic
Forms

Riess: Now, more Indian Textiles from Guatemala, Caroline West [June
1969).

Anneberg: That was the one which also included, as I say on the

announcement, "an extensive collection of jaspe weavings."
Now, jaspe is a Spanish word, and I'm not certain, but I think
it was a particular term they use in Guatemala for ikat, the
technique of dying the pattern in the yarn before it's set up
on the loom.

There was one particular village that did a lot of that
type of weaving on the floor looms. The men would do the
actual weaving. I don't know whether women were involved in
the dying process or not. I don't know if I ever knew. But
that village specialized in the wrap-around skirts that women
wore all over Guatemala, so that they would weave them for
villages all over the place, not just in their own village.

Now, this [Sarojben, Cloth Applique Paintings, July 1969]
was one of the shows sent by Baku Shah from India. He had
learned about a woman named Sarojben from a small village in
Gujerat, the state where he lived and did most of his
collecting. Sarojben was a very ordinary village woman, but
unusual for India in that she was a bit eccentric, I would say.
She did things in a very individualistic way, whereas that's
almost unheard of, especially in villages. You do things the
way they have been done for centuries and centuries. For years
and years, and generations after generation, you would do
embroideries or applique in the traditional manner, and depict
gods and goddesses only in a certain way.

In this particular village they did a great deal of
applique, but Sarojben 's work was very different, it had no
relation whatsoever to traditional forms. The subject matter
might be the same, but the way she went about it was entirely
original. Very abstract looking. Sometimes her work packed a
real wallop as far as design went, it was wonderful.

Riess: In this announcement you pack a lot of information on Sarojben.

Anneberg: Baku just told me a little bit about her. I say here that
she's the wife of a mill worker in this village in Gujerat.
She was the wife of Chaturbhai, a mill worker. She was his
fifth wife, though his third marriage was not to a woman but to
a tree, to avert the fateful number three.

119

Sarojben had been making patchwork quilts and applique
chair seats out of rags when Baku Shah saw them and asked her
to make some for him. She had started to do this sort of
thing, and I think she probably had been selling a few. But
Baku really discovered her. She began to do more freely
constructed pieces for use as wall hangings, and cradle covers,
and just little pictures for their own sake.

Riess: Bow many layers of cloth would that be?

Anneberg: Oh, it was nothing at all like the applique molas you may have
seen from the Cuna Indians of Panama, which are layers and
layers of cloth. These are just straight applique, one
background and then applique over that to form the design.

I say in the announcement, "With the enthusiasm and delight
of a child at play"--which is quite different, you see, from
the approach that is traditional--"with the enthusiasm and
delight of a child at play, she fills the applique paintings
with gods, birds, animals, and people of the village at their
daily activities, working, dancing, worshipping.

"Sarojben herself fetches water from the village well in an
earthenware jar on her head, does the family washing, cooks for
hours each day, sews for her husband, herself, and her
children. In addition, she sometimes does work for people in
the village, for which she gets in exchange grain, vegetables,
or pots. With her first money for the applique hangings she
bought a sewing machine, and later she was able to rent a
better house for her family. Now she is going to buy two
golden bangles." [laughter]

You see, at first she bought necessary things, and now she
was going to buy something for herself.

Riess: Knowing all of that, you enlisted in the cause of selling her
work. [laughter]

Now, Elaine Benning, Woven Kinetic Forms [August 1969].

Anneberg: I think I may have mentioned last time that there was a show of
kinetic sculpture on at what is now called the Museum of Modern
Art, and I didn't realize that it was on at the same time as
this show, which was woven kinetic forms. When I scheduled my
show, I had no idea that the other was in the offing.

Elaine Benning, who did these, used old alarm clock
mechanisms. She used genuine clock works, electric clocks, and
she plugged them in all over the gallery. These little

120

Riess:
Anneberg:

mechanisms were inside the weaving, so that certain parts of
the weaving would turn or move up and down. Mostly they turned
because the clockwork mechanism was a circular motion.

They were always breaking down, of course, but I must also
say that the kinetic sculptures at the museum downtown were
always breaking down too, so you'd go in there and some of them
weren't working, or they weren't all working at any particular
time, and that was the same way with this show. It was an
imperfect idea, but it was very popular, I guess, at that time,
with two shows on at the same time in San Francisco.

They were also internally lighted.

Oh, yes, that's right, some of them. Because since they were
already mechanized it was a small matter to hook up a light
globe inside.

Mexican Folk Art, and Shipping and Packing Problems

Riess: Fabrics and Figures of Southern Mexico, from the collection of
Fred and Barbara Meiers [September 1969].

Anneberg: They had a business in Guadalajara of manufacturing tableware,
ceramics, so they already had a packing system set up, packers
and a way of shipping, which was very nice, because they would
collect folk art, carvings and things like that, a lot of them
from the Guadalajara area, but some from farther south in
Oaxaca as well. And they collected a lot of textiles and
things like that. Because they were already set up for
shipping, things could arrive in regular packing crates.

They also would not be unpacked at the border, like most
things normally are. They would be sent directly up here, and
gotten through the customs without having to be ransacked. Very
often at the border customs officers do things in such a hurry,
they simply open up a crate, fish around inside to find a
representative piece, and then stuff it all back and nail the
crate together again, so that it arrives imperfectly packed and
in countless pieces. Even with good packing a lot of pieces
are broken.

Riess: In San Francisco did you have to meet the customs people?

Anneberg: I didn't ordinarily have to do that. There were a couple of
times that I did, but never with this particular collector.

121

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

The scale of this looks very large. Was it?

Some of these were quite large.

This is a figure of a shepherd and sheep. How large was this?

It must have been at least two feet high for the shepherd, and
the sheep maybe ten or twelve inches high. It was pretty big.
It could have been bigger than that, I just can't quite
remember that particular one. These are by Manuel Jimenez. He
ordinarily made smaller animals and figures. In his younger
days he was a santos carver.

You know, this is a perfect place to talk about the appeal of
folk art.

Mexican folk art is particularly appealing, and the carvings
are just--they have a certain appeal that is hard to describe.
It's playful, it's very humorous sometimes. I had things that
were just downright funny, and sometimes kitschy funny. They
were wonderful. [laughs] It's very hard to explain, but
Mexican folk art has a very special quality that you just don't
find elsewhere in the world. It's a lot like American folk art

too, in some ways,
quality.

American folk art sometimes has that

The cow, carved, painted, etc.

Yes, certain things. People love pigs, they love cows. There
were all kinds of animals depicted in these Mexican carvings.
Sometimes it would just be an animale--sort of an indefinite
animal. You couldn't tell what it was supposed to be, a dog or
a horse or what. It was just a sort of an all-purpose animal,
hard to say what it was.

I don't know where it comes from. It partly comes out of
the Indian heritage, but it also must have some roots in
European culture as well. I think sometimes you can see that
same quality in Portuguese folk art, which is of the Iberian
peninsula, that whole area. I think that Portuguese folk art
has a more primitive look, a less commercial or less schooled
look than Spanish does. It's quite possible that some of that
is an antecedent of Mexican folk art. There must have been a
great many Portuguese priests in the early times who brought
things over with them to Mexico.

But earlier Colonial work that has survived doesn't have
this particular look, so I really don't know what kind of
statement to say about how it got there. There's just a

122

certain- -you can tell when something is from Mexico. You can
just tell that it's from Mexico. It has a certain look that is
distinctive.

Riess: Now, Berber Weaving and Jewelry from Morocco, collected in the
Atlas Mountain region by Caroline West [October 1969].

Anneberg: Yes. That was a wonderful show. A lot of things that probably
are not available today again. She was collecting in the right
place at the right time. I remember the marvelous contemporary
rugs from that show.

And this next one is Barbara Shawcroft, it was her second
show. The announcement has a detail from a large tent woven
off-loom, a woven tent that she set up in the middle of the
gallery. It was braced from the ceiling, and-- [laughs] I
remember it was very appealing, because you could get inside
and you could walk through it.

Riess: It was called The First People of the First World. According
to Hopi mythology- -"the first world, a world in which people
were pure and happy."

Did you sell this work?

Anneberg: We didn't sell very much out of that show. [laughs] Probably
like most things that I showed of contemporary artists, it was
rather new, and there weren't collectors for that sort of thing
yet in the area. It was very difficult to show. Since then
she's become very well known for her large architectural
pieces. Here she included some figures she'd shown the year
before, and added some new ones.

A Logo Evolves from Harry Murphy's Announcements

Anneberg: I should say something about these announcements. You notice
that at first there were all different sizes, shapes,, and
styles in the announcements. I would just design something new
for every person that seemed like it fit in with their work,
something that was within my means. So it always turned out
different every time. It hadn't occurred to me yet to
standardize them and make life easier for myself.

I had also been through a number of printers, because it
was very difficult to find a printer who could do things
cheaply enough for me, and yet be consistent and have things--

123

Riess:

Anneberg:

have the ink dry by the time I wanted to send them out! There
were all kinds of problems I had with printers, so I kept
trying a different printer every few months.

Finally- -well, I think that I may have been going through a
little bit more prosperous period at this particular time, but
I saw a sign on a door on Columbus Avenue, "Harry Murphy and
Friends," and it turned out to be a design studio. I went up
and knocked on the door one day and talked to Harry Murphy. He
turned out to be a bit more expensive, I think, more than my
pocketbook could handle. He was a very, very good designer.

Just to see what it would be like, I asked him how much
announcements would cost, if he were to do them for me. I
guess he knew that I couldn't afford his price, but after a few
minutes he said that he'd like to do some announcements for me
if I would give him free rein to do whatever he wanted to do,
not what I wanted him to do. He would charge me only half
price for them, but he would be able to use them to enter
design competitions, it would be his little project. So we
agreed that for a year he would do my announcements. I could
make corrections on the copy but I was not to interfere with
the design.

I supplied him with the information, basic information, and
a few photographs. His style was folded in threes, three
square spaces, front and back. He used super-graphics, very
simple blown up graphic designs that would suggest the kind of
lookit wouldn't be necessarily taken from any design in the
photographs, but it might just be a suggestion. There was also
room for about two or three photographs

Now here, for [the announcement for] Barbara's work, he
used a flattened Mbbius strip. That's what that is. He also
used that for some stationery I had him design for the gallery,
envelopes and paper. But that flattened Mobius strip idea was
interesting, because he entered this particular one in a design
competition and exhibition on the East Coast, and so a lot of
people saw it. And it apparently was picked up by some
environmental group and used as an international symbol for
recycling.

It still is.

It was almost exactly the same as my design. So I'm pretty
sure they must have it's easy to flatten a Mobius strip,
that's not the point, but just the way he did it I think they
must have seen the book that was published on this big design
competition at least, if they didn't see the exhibition itself.

124

Later they modified it and added some arrows so now the
recycling symbol is not quite the same.

Riess: I see he didn't include the year with the date of the
exhibition. Frustrating!

Anneberg: At first perhaps not. I think I probably got him to do it
later on.

December 1969-March 1970: Cloth of India; Yolanda Woo; Carole

Small

Riess: Christmas [1969], you had Cloth of India, Textiles from Western
India collected by Haku Shah.

Anneberg: This was Baku's show that I talked about before. They were
embroidered or appliqued pieces that people hang in their
houses, in villages. There were also some block printed things
that are sold outside temples, and some huge ceiling canopies,
blockprinted, that are used inside temples.

Riess: Yolanda Garfias Woo, Textiles Woven on the Backstrap Loom
[February 1970]. How did you discover her?

Anneberg: I don't remember how. She was a student, I believe, at San

Francisco State. Margery Livingston was teaching there at the
time. She [Yolanda] liked working on the backstrap loom, the
traditional woman's loom of Mexico. Her family came from
Mexico during the revolution, and I believe her mother's people
were Zapotec from the Oaxaca area. She had gone down there and
visited them, found that she looked an awful lot like them, and
they got along great together.

Yolanda made the backstrap loom her own, and she did her
own thing with it. She didn't just copy Indian designs or
anything. Later on quite a few weavers took up backstrap loom
weaving, and for a while it got to be of interest to a lot of
people, but she was the first I ever knew of to explore the
backstrap loom as an artist.

Riess: It's such a different relationship to your work.
Anneberg: Yes, you're tied to it. Tied to the loom.
Riess: Is that part of the appeal, do you think?

125

Anneberg: Well, I suppose. It would certainly give it a different- -you'd
have a different physical relationship to the loom. And it's
used all over the world in different forms. In Africa, western
Africa, the men will be the backstrap loom weavers, because
it's a very portable sort of thing. [For further discussion,
see page 196. ]

Riess: March 1970, Carole Small, metalsmith, Pots, Vessels and Other
Objects.

Anneberg: That was her own work. It was hammered copper, large pieces.
Riess: Useful?

Anneberg: Some of them were, and some of them were pretty decorative.
I'm sorry I didn't have a photograph of some of her large
hammered pots. They were very strong, and she took advantage
of the mistakes that are often made in forming large pieces of
metal, when you start with a flat piece of metal and you raise
it using various hammers and stakes (variously shaped anvils)
to hammer things on. Sometimes it will crumple and bend back
on itself and wrinkle up. She took advantage of that and
forced it to do that, to make mistakes. They were wonderful
big, wrinkled-up pots made of copper. Very large things, which
were especially nice in that show. You can see that Harry
Murphy's design here [in the announcement] just sort of
suggests it.

Riess: The swirling shapes, the curving shapes. Was she local?

Anneberg: She came from the East Coast. She had studied at Temple

University, which had a good art department and a fine metal
workshop.

April 1970; Dominic Pi Mare and June Schwarcz

Riess: Dominic Di Mare, Fibre, Feathers, and Clay.

Anneberg: And June Schwarcz, Enamels and Electroforming. Dominic and

June had a two-person show [April 1970]. That's why the super-
graphic says two.

[looking at announcement] June works in enamels on
electroformed copper foil, and in this case it looks as though
she has taken a very thin copper foil and bent it and formed a
bowl, and then she electroformed it to make it stiff er. The

126

electroforming adds more copper to the original foil, which
results in a very heavy vessel, and it builds up more in some
places than in others. Then she enamels on top of that in
certain places, sometimes leaving the copper surface plain.
She can also color the copper, and enamel on it, so she gets a
rich variety of surface decoration.

Riess: In something like this would you get surprises?

Anneberg: A lot of surprises, yes. Because it builds up in different
ways, sometimes heavier in places and thinner in others.

Riess: It would be interesting to know how peoplewell, even in your
own art, how you think about surprises, how you both are
wanting to control things, so you get some consistency, but you
pray for a miracle.

Anneberg: Right. You certainly do. You never know quite what will
happen in a lot of craft work.

Riess: Is that part of the craft ethos, would you say? The
accidental?

Anneberg;

Riess:

I never thought of it that way, because that wouldn't appear to
be part of it, but you have to be very open to what good things
an accident can produce.

How big are these bowls?
scale.

I can't tell anything about the

Anneberg: Oh, about eight inches high, I'd say, eight or nine inches for
the most part. Sometimes smaller and sometimes larger. They
probably are determined a lot on what she can do in the
electroforming bath. It may be that it doesn't work on very
large pieces, and she doesn't usually work any larger than
about that high, eight inches. Ten inches, I think, would be
too high.

127

June 1970; Nomadic Rug Weaving and Jewelry, and Selling Jewelry

Riess: Nomadic Rug Weaving and Jewelry from Persia and the Ancient
Caravan Route [June 1970].

Anneberg: That [announcement] design is formed out of circles, large and
small, but it suggests an earring shape of some of the ethnic
jewelry that was in the show.

Riess: Joyce Hundal was the collector.

Anneberg: Ordinarily she collected in India, but on this particular trip
that she made throughout the Near East and Turkey, Iran,
Afghanistan, she brought back a lot of flat-woven rugs and
jewelry. That show was important for the largest collection of
ethnic jewelry from that area that I ever had. You'd just die
to see that much in one room today, it would be impossible to
reassemble such a show of jewelry today.

Riess: Did that sell out, the jewelry?

Anneberg: Oh, no, not nearly. There was a lot of it. Too bad, because

it was wonderful, wonderful stuff. But you know, in those days
you would see a lot of it someplace, and you'd think, Well,
this must be easily available these days, I won't have to just
rush in and buy it. It's not going to go away, it's going to
be around for a while. But very often, that wasn't the case at
all. It might be the first time and the last time you'd ever
see it. There were quite a few years that ethnic jewelry was
widely available, but it ran its course, and pretty soon you
couldn't buy it in the country of origin any more, and you
certainly couldn't find it easily here.

Riess: How was it to help women make decisions about buying jewelry?

Did you have lots of mirrors, and get involved, or did you stay
at a distance from this process?

Anneberg: Well, I had a few mirrors. I don't know, jewelry was just like
anything else. You have to convince people to buy things they
don't really need. [laughs] It's all luxury goods, whether
it's jewelry or wall hangings or paintings or sculpture or
anything.

Riess: But personal adornment is a whole different category, isn't it?
It has so much to do with people's own self-image.

128

Anneberg: But it's still a luxury item, yes. You have to help people to
want it more than they did when they walked in the door,
[laughter]

Riess: Did that get tiresome?

Anneberg: I don't know. I really loved that sort of retail selling. I
miss it. I don't know that I was especially good at it, but
when I wasn't too exhausted and I was in the mood for talking,
it was fun.

September 1970-April 1971; Fiesta Mexicana; Hal Painter; John
Lewis; Diana Chrestien; Paula Bartron

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess :

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg;

That's another Mexican folk art show that you're looking at
right there.

Fiesta Mexicana, Mexican Folk Art from the collection of Fred
and Barbara Meiers [September 1970].

Gradually I started having Mexican folk art shows at
Christmastime. It was a natural thing to do in the gallery at
that time of year. Very colorful, and for quite a few years it
was just not available elsewhere. People would be lined up
outside on preview night waiting for the gallery to open.

Now, here's a familiar name, Hal Painter.
Hangings [October 1970].

Tapestries and Wall

Yes. Hal is no longer living. He was a fine weaver in the
traditional style with large bold designs, and rugs that were
about four by five feet.

John Lewis, Blown Glass [November 1970].
person to show him?

Were you the first

Riess:

Probably. Well, I don't really know. He was well known for
his moon bottles. He's still working, doing great things, but
not the moon bottles. I think his work is now more sculptural
although he may be doing small pieces also. He had a number of
goblets in this show. He had his own studio and glass ovens.
He was one of Marvin Lipof sky's early students.

And this is your 1970 Christmas show, Folk Art, East and West.

129

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg;

This was a good one for Christmas. All kinds of folk art from
various people who had shown collections at the gallery, plus
others who hadn't exhibited yet.

Now, Diana Chrestien, Wall Hangings [March 1971].

She was living in Paris, but I think her husband was from this
area. She was one of my very few exceptions to the northern
California artists only rule. I liked her work. She showed me
photographs and a few of the real pieces, and then she shipped
it over from Paris, where she and her husband were living.

A glass show in April 1971 from Paula Bartron.

She worked in Berkeley and was active in this area at that
time. She later went to Sweden. Over there the glass
factories all have resident artists, just as the textile
factories do. They produce designs for the company, but they
also have some free studio space usually late at night when
it's not being used, where they can do their own work using the
factory equipment.

This particular group of things was done here, I think in
Berkeley. They were all cups, in fanciful handblown shapes.
An exceptional show.

Was she a student of Marvin Lipof sky's?

I think so, yes. She must have been.

Harry Murphy outdid himself in this announcement.

Yes, he did a wonderful job there. He won several prizes with
the gallery announcements and my letterhead stationery.

May 1971; Key Sekimachi

Riess: Yes. Next Kay Sekimachi, Monofilament Woven Constructions [May
4, 1971]. Was this your first Kay Sekimachi show?

Anneberg: Yes, I only had one one-person show from her, although I
believe she did participate in some group shows.

These were all monofilament weavings that hung from the
ceiling, and they were in the round. Monofilament is a plastic
single filament, it's not woven or twisted. It's used for fish

130

line, basically that's what it is. It came in white and sort
of smokey colors, grayish, beige, bluish, and black. I don't
think there were any browns. Just a range from black to beige.

Riess: And then she wove these strips?

Anneberg: I think she wove them on the loom, yes, and then constructed
the forms. Some of the most complicated work that I've seen
her do, and they're quite large. Now she sometimes makes very
tall forms, but as a rule she is working much smaller.

Riess: Were the gallery ceilings high enough to accommodate this?

Anneberg: Yes. The ceilings were--I can't remember- -about nine or ten
feet high. Not really high ceilings for a gallery, but they
were high enough so that I could hang moderately sized pieces.
I couldn't show the work of some artists that I really would
like to have shown, because they were just working too big.
Their pieces were much too high to look very good in the
gallery.

Riess: Had Kay Sekimachi been showing elsewhere?

Anneberg: I don't know. There just weren't very many places for craft
people to show.

Riess: A gallery at CCAC?

Anneberg: Well, municipal galleries and school galleries were about all
the venues there were. There weren't commercial places to
show. When my gallery started it was kind of unusual, because
there weren't commercial galleries showing craft work. But
later on, several started showing. Not exclusively, though.
The Allrich Gallery has always shown paintings as well as
textile art. They specialize in textiles, and have done a
marvelous job over the years. Last year they had a twentieth
anniversary, so that's quite a long time.

Riess: Was there a lot of interest in this work of Kay Sekimachi?
They look very beautiful and easy to live with.

Anneberg: Yes, I should think so. They didn't sell very well, no.
[laughter] I can't remember whether we sold one or not.

Riess:

We'll have to get to the economics of this soon.

131

June 1971-October 1971; Indian Arts of Peru; Pat Scarlett;
Barbara Kasten; Traditions in Japanese Folk Art; Bedouin
Textiles and Jewelry from Tunisia

Riess: Indian Arts of Peru, Caroline West [June 1971].

Anneberg: This was, as I recall, material that Caroline West collected on
a trip she made to South America at the time of an American
Craft Councilwhat was it called? World Craft Council, I
think. It was an international gathering.

So members of the American Craft Council were going down
there in connection with that conference. I believe it took
place in Lima, but they were able to do a lot of collecting at
the time of excavated textiles. The government every now and
then would relax their strict rules against taking out pre-
Hispanic materials, so people went down there and bought a lot
of pre-Hispanic textile fragments as well as contemporary
things. Caroline brought back mostly textiles of more recent
vintage.

Riess: Did this result in publication in World Crafts magazine? Was
there a parallel scholarly interest when something new came
onto the American market?

Anneberg: Not especially. Not that I know of.

Riess: Academic interest probably came along later.

Anneberg: I think it did. Anthropologists have only comparatively

recently gone into folk arts, and that sort of thing, like
folklore.

Riess: Then Patricia Scarlett, Painted Ceramics [July 1971]. And a
new announcement format .

Anneberg: Yes. I ran my course with Harry Murphy, and we did our thing
together, and then I had to be on my own again. I gradually
worked up, I think after a few tries, an announcement format in
which I continued to use the same kind of typeface that Harry
had started me on. He always used Helvetica, which is a very,
very simple, not especially fascinating typeface, but it worked
out very well for my announcements.

I figured out a format which I didn't arrive at
immediately, but I always had all the information and a
photograph or two on one side of a card. Not postcard size,
these are much larger. And then the back was for the address.

132

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

The reason I had all the information and the photograph on one
side was so that in libraries, schools, museums, and other
galleries they could pin them up on bulletin boards. So you
need to have all the information on the front, so you can know
where to see the show. Most people don't do that in their
announcements, which makes it difficult, because you then have
to unpin them to find out where and when it's being shown.

Who was Pat Scarlett?

She lived in the Palo Alto area. I don't know what she's doing
right now. She was working primarily in ceramics for a long
time, and then she went into architecture and other kinds of
designing. Her ceramics were sculpturalspare and elegant,
and she painted geometric designs on them. Exceptional stuff,
and completely original.

Fiber Sculpture by Barbara Kasten [August 1971].
wearable art?

Is this

Anneberg: No, her pieces were not wearable.

She insisted upon having the photograph on one side and the
information on the other [in the announcement]. So I think
that this was probably at her instigation that this diverged
from my usual format, but on the back I have all the
information. I believe that she had studied under Trude
Guermonprez at CCAC. Her work shows that influence.

Riess: Traditions in Japanese Folk Art [September 1971]. This is the
first I've seen that you had of Japanese folk art.

Anneberg: Yes, and it's the only opportunity I ever had to get such a
varied show of Japanese folk art. These people, the
collectors, Joe and Katherine Cook, have a Japanese antiques
shop up here on Bay Street, but very few people who visited
their shop would also have been to the gallery, because most of
them were decorators and people who had a little different
interest than the clientele I had. So I didn't worry that
these things might already have been seen.

They assembled a wonderful show of old household implements
and baskets and wooden objects, genuinely old, and textile
fragments. It was a wonderful collection of things that you
could never find again in that quantity. It was all becoming
too rare. For one thing, the Japanese were collecting Japanese
folk art. They were coming over to this country and buying.
The Cooks sold a lot to Japanese buyers over the next few
years.

133

Riess: Bedouin Textiles and Jewelry from Tunisia [October 1971].
Caroline West, assisted by Ann and Nassib Hemaidan.

Anneberg: Yes, in that particular case she had some friends over there
who did a lot of the collecting, if not most of it, for this
show.

There were some exceptional costume pieces, like
embroidered jacketsyou could see what inspired the Spanish
toreador's jacket and silver jewelry with hands of Fatima and
old beads. The Hemaidan couple lived there and they found a
lot of things for her.

Years later I had a Tunisian show from another collector,
and it was really good too, but quite different.

Packing and Shipping,, and Mexican Folk Art, 1971

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

I was thinking about your description of the difficulties of
getting things intact, and getting them through customs. Then
you had to get them repacked?

I had to return them to
pick them up. I always
things, and that was one
myself for the most part
so that they could come
just didn't allow myself
and things like that. I
had to get things out of
of course the expense of

the people if they weren't around to
encouraged people to pick up their own
reason out of many why I limited
to local collectors or local artists,
and pick up their things afterwards. I
time to be able to do all the shipping
also didn't have a lot of space. I
the gallery as fast as I could. And
shipping was another factor.

When you were getting the Mexican work from the Meiers, did you
have to return what was unsold to Mexico?

I had to ship things back to them in southern California, yes.
Sometimes that was a very trying experience, if they needed
them right away for another exhibition. I remember a couple of
times I had to stay up nearly all night, undoing the show,
packing it up and getting it out of here the next day.

Yes, hoping that you would sell as much as possible, so that
you didn't have to pack it up.

134

Anneberg: Yes. Their shows always sold very well, but they were so big
there was always a great deal to pack up and ship back. It
went by truck, so it was picked up at the gallery, fortunately.

Riess: Here's another Christmas show of Mexican Folk Art [1971].
These wonderful cars and trains!

Anneberg: I remember that particular timethat train was on a stand in

the middle of the gallery. Now, I never opened the doors until
seven o'clock sharp, as it was announced, and I never sold
anything before the opening. People knew that, you see, and
they could rely on me not to have sold half the show before it
opened. I didn't allow them to see anything before, and I
certainly didn't allow them towith one exception that I
remember--to ever buy things ahead of time.

So at the Christmas shows, almost always before the show
opened there would be a gang of people outside pressing their
noses against the glass. And sometimes they were even lined
up, because they couldn't all rush in at once. They would do
that on their own.

A man who was first through the door that particular night
pointed at the train as he rushed by me. It was this painted
clay train with little bandits and musicians on top, some of
them holding guns and some of them holding guitars and violins
and things like that. It was a wonderful combination of
bandits and musicians, little figures swarming all over the
train. This man just pointed to the train and said, "I'll take
it." It was some ridiculously low price.

Very often that happened. They would just tell me as they
came in that they would take a certain piece, so that they
would be sure to get it, and I would stick a little red dot on
it to reserve it for them.

Riess: Money was no object, or because they knew that this was all so
cheap?

Anneberg: Everything was very cheap. Yes, they usually knew that it was.

Riess: These painted clay vehicles, the artist Rosendo Rodriguezhe
was named?

Anneberg: That happened occasionally with Mexican folk art, because

certain artists were well known. Now, Rosendo Rodriguez was
not well known outside the Anneberg Gallery, [laughter] but I
had a lot of his work because he was someone that the Meiers
had discovered down there, so they bought a lot of his work and

135

featured him. As opposed to Candelario Madrono, who was very
famous for ceramic figures and houses and trains and trucks and
things like that. Candelario had a different style. It was a
lot rougher and freer, and sloppier, sometimes very sloppily
painted. I like Candelario too, and the Meiers collected a lot
of his work too, but Rosendo's was a different style, and I
would give him credit on the announcement when I could.

January 1972; Andree Thompson

Riess: This next show is an interesting contrast, Andree Thompson,
Mountain Landscapes [January 1972]. How large were these?

Anneberg: They were about eight, nine inches high.

Riess: Were they all the same shape but differently painted?

Anneberg: No. She had a number that were roughly of this shape, mountain
forms, with a cloud formation above them, and the mountain was
painted in detail. They were wonderful. But she also had a
lot of cups and other forms that she liked to make. Teapots
were one of the things she loved. She had made a trip to
Mexico--Michoacan--and the mountains were inspired by the
landscape there.

Riess: We're at the end of this tape, and we're into 1972. Were other
things starting to happen? Were you starting to think bigger?
Were any aspects of the gallery not working after five years?

Anneberg: Well, sometimes I had to avoid things that I knew would not
sell if I needed to have a show that sold, which was most of
the time. Once in a while I would have a show in spite of the
fact that I knew it wasn't going to sell, but that was rather
rare.

It pained me to have to do this sometimes I would get the
opportunity to have a show of a certain artist, for instance,
that was very good, but I just didn't see how I could possibly
sell even a single piece. I would run a very big risk. And
sometimes it happened- -even when I thought I would sell, I
didn't sell anything out of a show. And I very often didn't
have money in the bank to take care of my rent.

136

March 1972- June 1972; Textile Fragments from Egypt; Arts
Indonesia; Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand; Thai Silk

[Interview 5: April 24, 1995]

Riess: Textile Fragments from Egypt, collected by Gordon Holler, and
from Peru, collected by Nik Krevitsky [March 1972).

Anneberg: I've been trying to remember what the sources were for these
things, and I don't remember whether this was the second time
that we got a lot of textiles from Egypt, or whether we had a
show that was separate from this. We'll probably come to it if
we do. Anyway, I had both Coptic textiles and Peruvian
textiles, and they were from two different collectors.

Riess: April 1972, Arts of Indonesia, old fabrics, figures, and

adornments, collected by Hadidjah Fielding and Irwan Holmes.

Anneberg: This was the first Indonesian show that I had. That's 1972.
It's pretty early, because aside from the batiks, Indonesian
things were almost unknown. That's part of a piece from Sumba,
the island of Sumba. I had a lot of different things in that
show that weren't seen around here until much later.

Riess: Who was Hadidjah Fielding?

Anneberg: She was a young woman from Los Angeles who had converted to
Islam and chosen an Islamic name. Hadidjah was not her
original name. A very attractive girl, and an interesting
personality. Irwan Holmes was another collector, but he was in
Indonesia, and he sent things over to her. So the two of them
collected, but I think a lot of them were probably chosen by
Irwan.

Riess: And did they then provide the documentation for you?
Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: If you had had to find out more, how mobile were you at that
point? Were you able to go to the museum, or would you have
the time even to go over to a museum or a library?

Anneberg: I did that a few times. I had to. Mostly just go to the

library and see what I could find, the UC Berkeley library.
It's the best source around here. The de Young Museum helped
out a few times too.

137

Riess:

Anneberg:

At Berkeley it would be the East Asian Library?
talking about the Art Department?

Or are you

Riess:

Anneberg:
Riess:

Anneberg :

Riess:
Anneberg :
Riess :

Anneberg:

Riess:

I'd just look in the stacks, because it was mostly historical
things that I would need information about. As I said before,
there was not at that time an awful lot in print about ethnic
textiles or the sort of thing that I was showing. I couldn't
just go to the library and get a bunch of books on the subject.
For the most part they did not exist.

Textiles were not used as a key to the culture in the way that
paintings and sculpture are used?

I think they can be, but that has come more in recent years.

Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, crafts and artifacts
collected by Trudy Clark [June 1972].

That was a wonderful show, yes. She went over to northern
Thailand, and she got around to some of the villages, actually.
She didn't just buy them in Chiang Mai where they have some
model villages set up so that you can kind of see how they
lived and worked. She also got out into the hillsides and
territory and looked for things in various villages, which is
possible to do, but a lot of people just don't do it. It's a
little extra trouble and hardship. But she had wonderful
textiles and some basketry, good baskets.

And how do collectors know what they're looking for?
I don't know, but they came up with wonderful things.

How do you develop an eye when you're going into a culture that
you don't even know?

I think people, if they had a really great interest, even
though it was a very recently acquired interest, they found
wonderful things. I guess the eye follows interest. She
already probably had some experience looking and judging. She
had a tiny shop in southern California and sold textile and
things like that, ethnic things when she could get them. Then
she developed these sources in northern Thailand, so she kind
of concentrated on that.

I remember a place that was near Gump's, or maybe it was
Gump's, that sold Thai silk, and everyone was quite thrilled by
the Thai silks, the colors.

138

Anneberg: There was a very good period very early on when Thai silks were
exceptional.

Riess: You mean early on, by the seventies, or when?

Anneberg: Oh, golly, I don't know exactly, I think it was probably late
sixties up to mid-seventies. I'm not certain.

There was a man named Jim Thompson who was there at that
time. He developed the industry. I think it's still more or
less intact, but I don't think it's as interesting as it was
during the time he was there. The Thai government took it over
after his death. He died mysteriously at the height of his
powers. When he was in charge they were producing wonderful
silks, and very special dyes.

I know another man- -he lives in this neighborhood- -who was
in charge of the dye works, I believe. He would be in charge
of getting just the right color.

Riess: He was a native?

Anneberg: My friend? No, he was from Germany originally.

Riess: He lived in Thailand?

Anneberg: Well, only while he was working there. Just another person
with a good eye, someone who could do it.

Riess: The pink colors that I remember? Could they be natural dyes?
I always think of brilliant pinks.

Anneberg: I don't know what kind of dyes they're using now. I think that
some were natural dyes at one time. I could be very wrong
about that. But the dyes were special, and they went to
endless trouble to get the right colors. For instance, black
is a very difficult color to achieve.

If you're using native craftsmen working not in factories
but almost outside, under tin roofs and open to the air, it's a
very different sort of situation and requires a lot of
overseeing and establishing standards that don't normally
exist, to get blues that are more or less consistent, greens,
and just to produce the look, the strong colors that he wanted.

139

July 1972: Wissa-Wassef Workshop

Anneberg: Here are some more of the Wissa-Wassef tapestries. [Folk

Tapestries of Egypt, July 1972] They were collected by some
people who lived in Sonoma [Mr. and Mrs. David Williams]. He
went over there frequently, and he got interested in the Wissa-
Wassef workshop tapestries.

Riess: This looks almost like a fragment.

Anneberg: Well, that's a rather small one, produced probably by one of
the younger people there. As I've probably told you before,
they started quite young, when they were seven or eight, some
of them, and many of them stayed with the group until they were
well into their twenties. It was really quite a plum to be
chosen to be in the workshop, in the studio, because I think
that the lot of child weavers, as we're hearing about quite a
bit lately, is not very good in many of these places. I don't
know about this village, it may not be so bad there, but they
did start children weaving commercially, rugs, at a very young
age. Children are able to do the work better than adults
sometimes .

Riess: You hope they're allowed to get up and walk around
periodically.

Anneberg: Yes, I have no idea what the conditions were like there. I

imagine they would vary from place to place. But of course, in
Dr. Wissa-Wassef 's atelier, it was quite a different story.
This was an artist working with children in a very different
sort of way.

Eventually a lot of the things from his studio had a
certain look, because of course, they would learn from each
other. You got so you could sort of recognize them. Then a
few of the graduates from this workshop-- they wouldn't always
stay there, many of them had to go back and work on the land,
on their families' plot of landsome of them went to Cairo and
started up another weaving workshop of their own. Now, you can
always tell the difference, because that was a much more
commercial-oriented sort of thing.

The Cairo weavings were also called Harraniya weavings,
because they were originally from the same village of
Harraniya. So you have to be careful to distinguish between a
Harraniya weaving from Cairo and what is specifically a Wissa-
Wassef studio weaving. The Wissa-Wassef group always uses a
heavy linen warp. You can see on either side, that's a very

140

heavy linen cord that they use for the warp. In the Cairo
group, they use cotton. It's a heavy cotton cord, which tends
to be white or off-white. The linen is ecru, natural linen
color.

August 1972-Septmber 1972; Lillian Ellott; Ed Rossbach

Riess: Now we have Lillian Elliott, Nets and Other Works [August
1972]. Do you remember how you displayed these?

Anneberg: I don't remember, and I also don't remember whether I took the
photograph or someone else did. Sometimes she would just drape
them on a table, or hang themthis may have been hung from one
corner and draped on the floor or something like that. I just
don't remember what the situation was with this, or whether we
just concocted it for the photograph.

Riess: It looks very organic, kind of seething with life.
Anneberg: [laughs] It looks like a fisherman's net.

Riess: Did this take some interpretation to your customers, or were
your clients growing with the craft, as it were?

Anneberg: An awful lot of my clients who would come to see a show like

that were already weavers and already interested in textile, so
they required very little help in understanding it. I was
probably the person who needed education more than they did.
[laughter]

Riess: Textiles by Ed Rossbach, Planar Weavings and Photographic
Pieces [September 1972].

Anneberg: Ed Rossbach was able to print right directly onto the textile,
probably after it was strung up on the loom but before it was
woven in some cases. I don't know his exact technique.

I showed you a few minutes ago a Coptic-derived design that
he wove using some of these photographic techniques. Both he
and his wife, Katherine Westphal, did a lot of photographic
techniques that they could incorporate into textiles, so they
were printing on the textile somehow or other. And I can't
remember the difference between the way she did it and the way
he did it.

141

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

He also did a lot of ikat, and I think he managed somehow
or other to combine photographic techniques with the ikat. It
was ikat but with a difference.

I was asking you about June Schwarcz and the accidental in her
work. There's nothing accidental in what a person like Ed
Rossbach does, it's so precise.

We don't know. I'm quite certain that many things surprised
him and would turn out quite differently. I don't think that
he is the sort of person who is so strict as to want everything
to come out exactly the way he's planned it, because Ed of all
people delights in the unexpected, and things that will just

happen that he isn't prepared for at all.
creative persons I've ever met.

He's one of the most

Did weavers use felting as a technique to change the look?

Well, later on I had a show of felt. I've had several shows
including felting. People got interested in felt a bit later.
But I don't know if Ed ever worked in felt.

October 1972: Four Different Things, A Discussion of Integrity
of the Gallery, and Grace Earl

Riess: This title? Four Different Things [October 1972].

Anneberg: Yes, they were quite different. There was some lace.

Riess: Caroline Beard?

Anneberg: She worked mostly in lace.

Riess: Like bobbin lace?

Anneberg: Yes, it was that sort of thing, bobbin lace. But they were
very contemporary. She used unusual kinds of materials,
metallic threads and all kinds of nontraditional things.

Riess: And Karen Naima Maufres?

Anneberg: She did very nice feather work, quite unusual and good. I
don't know whether she was one of the few that I showed who
came out of the hippie culture. But they were elegant pieces
She made belts that were very nice, almost like feather

142

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

mosaics, and neck pieces, beautiful. And she did wonderful
things with color, the natural colors of feathers.

These are things that people would want to buy.
Yes, I think I sold quite a few of her things.
Did she come into the store with her work?

I can't remember. She probably brought some pieces in for me
to take on consignment, and they were so good that I invited
her to be in this little four-person show.

So you had some cases with jewelry always for sale in the
gallery? I didn't realize that.

Yes, behind the partition I had a very tiny shop area.
But you were sleeping behind the partition.

Oh, that was only for the first few months of the gallery,
[laughter] Later I moved into the room in the back of the
gallery, where the kitchen sink and stove were.

Was the little shop area obvious to people?
pull aside the curtain?

Did you have to

I had regular partitions that partitioned it off. They were
permanently in place, they formed part of the gallery walls.
But there was a very narrow space behind it, a very small space
that was sufficient for my desk as a reception desk, and a few
cases of jewelry, and room for a few things to be hung up and
displayed on shelves. It was not a very large space at all,
and it was completely separate from the gallery, except for an
opening at one end near the gallery door and one of the front
windows, where I had my desk. There was no possibility of
confusion between the shop space and the gallery space.

When you walked in, it was very clearly defined. This was
the difference between my gallery and most other places that
showed craft and folk art together. I never confused the two,
and after a show opened I did not bring out things from the
shop part and mix them in with the gallery show. I always left
it completely separate.

It wasn't very good business, but it preserved the
integrity of the gallery, which was very important to me. The
reason I started the gallery and continued with it--I mean, the
reason why I persevered with it, I should put it that waywas

143

because I really wanted a milieu for the people working in
craft media that was at least as dignified and offered them as
good a place to show as an art gallery for paintings and
sculpture. There just wasn't any before it was the first time
that there was a gallery that showed craft only, and showed it
on the same level as paintings and sculpture, and prints and
photographs even. Of course I was showing folk crafts too-
folk artbut that had not been taken seriously before as
gallery material either.

Riess: It would be easy and tempting to sell a few post cards, or

greeting cards or something like that, earrings. But you did
not want to have that kind of image?

Anneberg: Well, I didn't want to mix anything like that, that I might be
selling in the shop part, with the gallery show. It's
perfectly all right to sell things like that to help pay the
rent, but I did not mix it in with the gallery show. And
almost every other gallery that shows craft work will mix in
things from their regular supply--! don't necessarily mean
small objects, cheapies and things like that, but they may have
other unrelated objects that are on consignment and part of
their stock.

Riess: How did people get to the back room with the cases of jewelry?
How would they even know they were there?

Anneberg: Well, when you walked into the gallery they were just to the
right, behind my reception desk, which blocked the way. You
had to walk around it through a rather narrow place to get to
the other objects that I had on sale. They weren't in the back
room.

Riess: Did they support the gallery in fact?

Anneberg: Well, they helped a lot. Sometimes there were periods of feast
and periods of famine. It wasn't always possible to predict
ahead of time whether a gallery show would sell well.
Sometimes I would think it would obviously sell quite well, and
it wouldn't sell at all. And other times I would be very
surprised that a show would really attract a lot of buyers, and
I wouldn't have thought it would.

It wasn't always something that influenced my choice of a
show. Sometimes I just knew it would look awfully good and it
would be an excellent thing to be showing, something that I
wanted very much to show, something very unusual, or an artist
that was extremely good and the work would look marvelous in
the gallery. Whether or not it would sell had to be a little

farther down, but on the other hand, if I knew that I had very
little chance of selling, and it may have been a time when I
had had very few good-selling shows for a long time, I'd have
to start getting a little more realistic about who or what I
showed .

It really saddened me. There were some artists that I
could not show, and I wanted to, and they wanted to show, but I
just had to refuse. Sometimes because the work was maybe too
large, or I knew it was more appropriate for a large
corporation situation than an individual collector, and I sold
mostly to individual collectors.

Riess: Are you talking about something like very big wall hangings?

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: So who would you have turned down?

Anneberg: I can't name names. I would rather not.

Riess: Did you have any shows of Peter Voulkos ceramics?

Anneberg: No. At this time, he was doing very large cast metal

sculptures. He was a very famous name. One of the few who
successfully crossed over and was regarded seriously as a fine
artist. I didn't even think about asking him.

Riess: Still part of in Four Different Things, Grace Earl, patchwork.

Anneberg: Grace Earl was very interesting. She was a retired teacher
from the Art Institute of Chicago. She was forced to resign
when she got to be the age at which you were supposed to
resignretire, I mean. She would have preferred working at
her teaching job until she was ninety, I'm certain, but when
she had to retire she packed up and left Chicago and came out
to San Francisco, where she had a couple of friends.

I met her when she started coming into the gallery. I
found out that she did these wonderful things, patchwork quilts
and smaller pieces, and I went over to her house, her
apartment, and saw them. She was later included in a film
about quiltmakers.

Riess: Yes, I've seen that film.

Anneberg: She was the one with the closet full of materials that she'd
bought in Woolworth's basement, and she just had shelves
completely floor to ceiling of these little tiny prints, cotton

145

prints that she had bought, and she cut them up and would make
very small pieces and put them together in her own patchwork
designs. It was good.

Riess: Quilting is certainly just an enormously popular pastime.

Anneberg: Grace Earl was and is in a class by herself. She was an artist
and a teacher in a very prestigious school, so you can imagine
that her work was not at all ordinary.

Riess: Not just the log cabin pattern.

Anneberg: [laughs] No, it wasn't like that. It was eye-dazzling, and it
was very special.

Riess: Antonia Williams, miniature environments. What were the
miniature environments?

Anneberg: She was a very young person, and she did little constructions,
I think you'd call them, out of cardboard, and painted. They
were sort of borderline craft and something else. [laughter]

Riess: Christmas 1972. Mexican Folk Art from Fred and Barbara Meiers.

Anneberg: This was the last Mexican folk art show entirely from the
Meiers, although they contributed things to one later on.

January 1973: Dominic Pi Mare in a Different Direction

Riess:

Anneberg:

Dominic Di Mare, Recent Works [January 1973].
things?

What are these

I should explain about Dominic. He showed the first time in my
gallery in 1970, but at that time he had not been showing for
about four years.

Dominic had been very famous in the sixties for his three-
dimensional weavings, large three- and four-dimensional off-
the-wall weavings. He was one of the very first to do that
sort of thing. He himself says that he was influenced
originally by Lenore Tawney, a famous weaver in New York who
sort of began all the off-the-wall woven construction.

Dominic became a very influential figure. Before he knew
it he had so many copiers and followers that it really became
diffused, so that you no longer had an image of that type of

146

thing being a Dominic Di Mare originally. There were so many
three-dimensional weavers all of a sudden, and I'm sure that
they came mainly from his influence.

I think he tired of it, and he simply stopped weaving. He
was very, very famous for his weaving and he stopped
completely, got rid of his looms and his materials, and
disappeared from view for several years, and nobody knew what
had happened to him. Then all of a sudden he reappeared with
this show, doing a very different sort of thing, constructions
with macrame, clay forms, and paper, and wood, and horsehair,
just combinations of things.

It really was astounding, because he went off on such a
different direction than his woven things. Sometimes they were
vaguely related to textile, but mainly through the knotting,
which was exquisite. His background was that his father had
been a fisherman, originally from Sicily, so he learned
knotting by making nets. Dominic was expected to continue in
the family tradition and inherit the boat, but he became an
artist instead.

Riess: Were you in touch with him over all of those years?

Anneberg: No, I didn't meet him until I started the gallery. He began
coming in.

Riess: These are box-like shapes.

Anneberg: In this 1973 show he began making paper. The unusual thing
about his work is that he made paper not in just the square,
rectangular, straight-edges-with-corners format, which is
natural for paper, because you make it in a box-like form--a
sieve- -which has a frame around it, and that frame is usually
rectangular or square. But Dominic would manage to make it
round or in various shapes. People still don't do that very
much. He would make some, of course, in the square format, or
rectangular, and in this case, you see, he does both.

Sometimes he would also combine it with commercial paper as
a background. And he would combine it with other things too.
He loves working with things like horsehair and fibers of
various sorts, and feathers. And even his very latest work
still uses those a lot. He hasn't been doing as much paper,
but he still does paper occasionally.

147

February 1973-April 1973; Ron Wigginton; African Folk Crafts;
Fiber Forms

Anneberg: This [Ron Wigginton, Ceramic Sculpture and Drawings, February

1973]] was an artist who for this show was working primarily in
ceramics. The sculptures were ceramic.

Riess: Was he from the Bay Area?

Anneberg: Originally, and then he lived in the Northwest area, Seattle

and Portland. Now he's in San Diego, doing landscape design--
his business is called Land Studio.

Riess: Would these be outdoor pieces?

Anneberg: No, they were fairly small. They look monumental, but they
were quite small, about a foot or so long.

Riess: African Folk Crafts, collected by Ann Maurice? [March 1973]

Anneberg: Yes, they were mostly from Upper Volta--it's called Burkina

Faso now, that general area from Mali down through Upper Volta,
Ivory Coast, Togo.

Riess: And Ann Maurice?

Anneberg: She's a local collector who lives in Oakland, and sells a lot
to decorators. She would find great textiles, baskets and
things in markets in places like Ouagadougou.

Riess: This category of people who are local collectors. I don't know
that I've ever known one, but you have known many of them.

Anneberg: A lot of these are people who go over regularly and bring back
shipments that they have collected and chosen out of native
markets, and from probably native weavers and other people that
they place orders with.

Riess: It's a powerful role. You select what you think is good and
make it visible in a way that it's never been before.

Anneberg: And bring it back here and sell it to decorators and to people
who like it and hang it up on their walls. They're tastemakers
in a way, you're absolutely right. They expose people to
cultures and a design look that is quite different than things
they're used to.

148

African things always blend in with our surroundings much
easier than others, though, because we have a strong tradition
from the French painters on introducing us to African things.
They strike a note that is very familiar.

Riess: Sometimes other cultures combine colors in ways we never see
here .

Anneberg: Yes, that's right. It took the Mexicans to show us that it was
all right to combine pink with orange. [laughter]

Riess: Yes, that's exactly what I mean.

Fiber Forms: Carole Beadle, Ted Hallman, Candace Crockett,
Jacquetta Nisbet, Trude Guermonprez , Barbara Shawcroft [April
1973]. Whose work is this in the announcement?

Anneberg: It's probably Barbara Shawcroft. Some of those were wall

pieces, and some were hangings, and some were just things that
would lie flat on a table surface or something like that.

Riess: Did you think of exhibitions in terms of juxtaposing one look
against another? Was there a plan there?

Insights : :to Economics, Tourists, Spending Patterns, and
Appreciation of Craft Art ////

Anneberg: You try very hard to get things that are a little different,
and not have too many ceramic shows in a row, or too many
textile shows. I did at first try to balance out the folk
crafts with the contemporary crafts. Later on, things changed
a great deal. In my last five years or so I just found that it
was disastrous for me to try to concentrate as much on
contemporary crafts, so I had to go over to folk crafts almost
completely.

Riess: Is that because there were other outlets for contemporary
crafts?

Anneberg: Mainly the economics, but yes, there were some very fine

galleries starting up that could deal with collectors' pieces
in the crafts, and I just couldn't do it. Also my physical
condition no longer allowed me to get around as much, and to
deal with exhibitions the way I could at first. It was very
difficult.

149

Riess:
Anneberg:

For one thing, I was dealing in luxury goods, and it was
very much at the whim of the economic situation in the United
States whether people were spending their loose cash on luxury
things or hanging onto it because they might need it for
important things in a few months. So I certainly noticed how
people spent their money.

Sometimes I would have a terrible time selling anything at
all for months and months, and it would be during a period of
economic recession. People were just holding back, I suppose,
because they were fearful that it might be very difficult to
buy necessary things, dishwashers and things like that, that
they might need later on. They were also probably fearful that
they would still have their jobs in six or eight months.

I don't know if people got used to it later on or not, but
these winds of economic fortune certainly blew cold on the
gallery at times.

Yet your pieces were not expensive compared to art galleries.

They were not, no. But it also was not something that was
commonly collected at first. I remember that after three or
four months of just struggling to meet the rent, all of a
sudden the doors would open and people would come in and buy as
though they couldn't stand it any longer, they just had to
start spending money again.

I think that Americans just can't hang on to loose cash
forever. They're so used to being consumers that sooner or
later they can't stand this penny-pinching any longer, and
they've just got to buy to satisfy their souls. So people
would come in, and I'd be able to pay my bills for a few
months. It was wonderful.

Riess: And would those be people who had wandered through the store
and resisted earlier?

Anneberg: Oh, yes, most people would come in and treat it like an art
gallery, you see, like a museum. They would come in month
after month and never buy anything at all. Most of the people
who came to the gallery never bought anything.

Riess: And then they would let loose?

Anneberg: It was usually the people who occasionally bought that would
let loose. I don't know.

150

Riess: In your location here on Hyde Street did you get the drifting
tourist trade? For instance, Japanese tourists?

Anneberg: I would get very little in the way of tourist trade.
Riess: Even as the Ghirardelli Square and the Cannery flourished?

Anneberg: Right. Rather little. Tourists at that timeyou see, it's a
little different nowbut at that time the dollar was a bit
stronger, and I suppose they had to pay very expensive hotel
prices and restaurant food. There isn't even now an awful lot
left over for tourists for just buying. Most tourists can only
buy a few t-shirts, and that's why they sell so many t-shirts.
And not all tourists have money to spend on larger, more
important things.

Riess: Tourists coming here, what would they look for as a souvenir of
American folk craft?

Anneberg: [laughs] I don't think they'd be looking for American folk

crafts. When people come to America they're probably looking
for manufactured things, glitz and glamour and that sort of
thing. They might pick up something that represented the USA
in their minds.

I occasionally got some foreign tourists. I can't remember
selling much to them. But I do remember one notable occasion,
encountering some Italian tourists who were awful. [laughs]
Talk about German tourists! These out-Germaned any German
tourists I've ever seen. They were rude, and they bargained!
They wanted very much to buy a bracelet that I had made, as a
present for their hostess in town. But they wanted to pay
about half as much as I had it marked. The man who was doing
the talking saw no reason in the world why I couldn't just mark
it way down.

In Italy, in Europe apparently, there was a custom of, when
they were given a price, to ask if that was the last price, the
final price. I didn't understand that at all. Instead of
saying, "Final price?" he'd say, "Last price? Last price?" I
just didn't know what he was talking about, but he wanted to
know if that was my final price, you see.

This went on for quite a long time in the afternoon.
Finally I remember there was this great flare-up of tempers on
both sides, and they stamped off across the street. I thought,
Good riddance! Because I usually had my prices down as far as
I possibly could, and I knew how much sweat and blood went into
that piece. It wasn't that I was buying it from somebody else

151

and I had no idea how they ever arrived at that price, but I
knew how I had arrived at that price. He was trying to get me
down far below any reasonable price.

I thought I'd seen the last of him, but instead he gave me
a cooling-off period of a day and then came back. And he
sounded all mollified, as though he was going to be reasonable.
He picked out four or five other things and then he made me an
offer on the package, you see, including my bracelet, which I
finally succumbed to. I don't know whether I was taken or
what, but at least I got rid of him a second time. He did get
away with the bracelet finally, and several other things.

Riess: It sounds like despite all he had good taste.
Anneberg: [laughs] Bad manners but good taste.

Riess: You said in the beginning of opening the gallery that your
clientele was often other artists. Now, five or six years
later, did you have collectors buying, real collectors? People
such as this couple, [looking at magazine article] Dorothy and
George Saxe, who collect contemporary studio craft.

Anneberg: I really did not get very many people like that. I think that
they collected later, for the most part. It was some of the
other galleries that started up who were more successful at
attracting serious collectors than I ever was. I just don't
think I ever did break into that. I didn't have a very
glamorous-looking gallery, it was pretty folky-looking and
homemade-looking.

Riess: That's a lot of it, you think, the look and the location?

Anneberg: The look has a great deal to do with it, I'm sure. It would
inspire confidence in a person. It would make it look as
though the gallery owner was successful and knew what he or she
was doing, was able to get the best artists, attract them to a
gallery that was obviously not just a little folky-looking
place. I think it had a great deal to do with it.

Also, I was in an increasingly tourist area, which made it
harder and harder for people to come down here. The parking
was terrible, and it began to look more and more like a tourist
area. So there were several reasons why I gradually found it
more and more difficult.

But I would have had a very hard time moving elsewhere.
For one thing, I had very cheap rent, which was the reason why
I was able to survive, doggedly survive and maintain the sort

152

of standards that
commercial in any
paid my apartment
some money behind
in the bank. You
rent like I was .

I did. I would have had to become much more
other part of town. I could not have both
rent and the gallery rent. You have to have
your enterprise. You have to have something
can't just expect to make your month-by-month
I was just living hand-to-mouth all the time.

Riess: You didn't have a family income at all.

Anneberg: Oh, no, I had no income. And no money in the bank.

Riess: Did anyone ever consider being a partner? Did you consider
that?

Anneberg: No. Not until the very last few months that I was in the

gallery, and then I really couldn't accept the person's offer
because I knew that she didn't have any idea how difficult it
was. She had no idea of what she would be getting into. She
could not have assumed all my debts, for one thing. She just--
I knew that she had no conception of what it was, and I was so
burned out that I couldn't share in her enthusiasm at all.

Riess: When was that?

Anneberg: In 1981. It was just too late. And it was sad, but that was
the way it was. I had no taste any longer for continuing. I
wasn't physically up to it, and the neighborhood had become
completely touristy, and I just couldn't do it.

Riess: I wonder if anyone had any idea what a load you were carrying.

Anneberg: Very few people, I think. I didn't try to inflict that on
people. I don't think that they had any conception of how
difficult it was financially, and how close to the lowest rung
of the poverty ladder I was living on. I never could afford a
car or anything like that.

Riess: And yet you had to keep putting together the announcements and
pouring the wine.

Anneberg: Yes. Well, looking back I could have done it in a much less
expensive manner. But this was one thing that I knew worked,
more or less. Gradually most galleries had to go to a much
less expensive announcement format, so that many of them were
sending out very small post card-sized announcements, and no
longer attempting to do full color, although sometimes they
did. Color was very important to a lot of galleries, so they
had to reduce the size of the announcement. They had to make
changes, too.

153

Also, I was right on the street. I was open on the same
level with the street. You didn't go inside up an elevator to
the gallery, like many galleries have some protection from the
street. I was increasingly having a lot of trouble from people
just coming in and wanting to rough me up. I had a lot of
trouble that way. The street got very rough.

Riess: You mean, "Give me your money" sort of?

Anneberg: They were a bit cleverer than that, but I had some pilfering
right in daylight. I never had any robberies at night, but I
had several bad thefts in the daytime. And of course, you
can't possibly afford the kind of insurance that will take care
of all that. You have to just figure it will balance out, and
if you have to pay a lot of money once a year, it's still less
than paying the insurance every month. So it's rough.

Riess: And how about your markup? Did that change?

Anneberg: I was still trying to get by on 40-60, 40 percent for the

gallery and 60 to the artist or the collector. I think toward
the end I tried doing 50-50, but it was a little hard to get
most of them to agree to that, because they were used to the
40-60. Now, of course, they're doing 60 for the gallery and 40

for the artist most of the time,
different. But it has to be.

It's gotten to be much

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

I think very often an artist or a collector does not
realize the enormous expenses of a gallery and how much
overhead there really is. It seems very simple on the outside-
-oh, you pay a little rent, and you don't have to make the
things, you don't have to buy them, you just get them on
consignment. But there's an awful lot of expense involved in
the gallery, and the bigger the gallery and more expensive the
rent, and the announcements, the greater the investment on the
part of the gallery owner. It can be enormous.

That's right, because they're not selling, for the most part.

For the most part, they don't sell. That's right, they're not
selling things enough to make that rent every single month.
They have to have money in the bank in order to tide them over
the months where the gallery doesn't sell enough, and then they

may have some very good months .
holds true for most galleries.

And I'm sure that that still

Did you have an exclusive relationship with any of your craft
artists, that they could not sell elsewhere?

154

Anneberg: No, I didn't operate that way. I just couldn't, because these
were artists who couldn't possibly have done it that way.

There were a lot of differences in the way I could operate
and the way galleries that were in a better financial situation
could. I know that many galleries are in areas where there is
a ready-made clientele of people who are seeking out things to
collect. I know of galleries in other parts of the country who
are in places where they get a lot of very wealthy tourists
coming through.

Riess: Cambria, or Carmel, those tourist areas, there is a clustering
of galleries, as if the sheer number is a draw.

Anneberg: Right. And they wouldn't be there if they weren't making their
expenses, you see, because those are high-rent areas. There is
something to that kind of steady clientele.

In San Francisco it's very diffused. You don't have a
distinct locality where you know that you will get a lot of
wealthy, or at least paying customers, you see. It's quite
different from being in a resort area. Certain kinds of resort
areas are better than others, and there are some where very
good galleries can do quite well.

Riess: Is there some way that being in San Francisco contributed to
the lack of a market? Does this community fail to educate?

Anneberg: I don't think so, I think it was world-wide--no different here
than in other parts of the country, as far as that's concerned.

People weren't as aware of ethnic arts when I first started
the gallery, but gradually people began bringing things into
San Francisco and into other major cities in the United States
from places like India, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Africa,
and you got a lot of wonderful things for the first time that
you didn't get back in the thirties and forties at all, or
fifties or early sixties, you just didn't see them.

As I've probably said before, many things that I -had in my
humble little gallery people started seeing actually for sale
for the first time, like these mirrored cloths from India. Who
had them before I did? Even Cost Plus didn't have them before
I did, I don't think, or maybe about the same time. It wasn't
ordinary at all, it was an unusual, wonderful thing. And
Guatemalan textiles, who had those before I did? No one. And
it was just luck. I was as new to it as anybody else was.

155

I very often had to learn about these things for the first
time when a collector brought them in. It was a wonderful
education for me, but I had to learn fast as much as I could
about the textiles, mostly from looking at them and asking the
collector questions, and getting as much information as I
could. Very often I was wrong. I had a lot to learn that I
couldn't possibly learn in that space of time that I was
showing the collection. Sometimes years and years and years
later I would find out about certain things that I was selling
back then and be very surprised.

Riess: How interesting. Also, what about the fact that this was the
center for the hippie culture in the sixties? I associate the
hippies with crafts, tie-dye and things like that.

Anneberg: It wasn't on this level at all, you see.

Riess: But I would think tourist interest in extraordinary crafts
would be stimulated by that.

Anneberg: People were not aware of extraordinary crafts, for the most
part. They had no conception that crafts had reached this
artistic level. Most people had no idea of that sort of thing.
They became aware of crafts on the street made by hippies, they
found out about macrame and pottery and that sort of thing from
street fairs. But for the most part that had nothing to do
with the sort of thing I was showing.

I found that people really got the two confused for a long
time. They thought that this hippie movement must have been an
enormous revolution and had a great impact on the craft
movement. Well, quite the opposite. It had nothing to do with
the craft movement for the most part, you see. It [the craft
movement] had been in existence and very much alive and well
and strong for a long, long time before they ever came on the
scene, and it was going ahead on its own. It was like the
difference between day-care centers and the University of
California.

I remember Grace Earl, who we talked about a minute ago,
being appalled at the hippie tie-dye, because Grace Earl was
making this wonderful, very complicated tie-dye. She knew how
to tie all kinds of wonderful knots to make different effects.
She was so appalled--! remember her telling about sitting on a
park bench one day next to a hippie who was covered with this
awful tie-dye that she said she'd made herself, and Grace
offering to show her how to really do it! [laughter] I can't
remember how that turned out, but I think she did give her a
lesson or two. I don't know if it took or helped at all.

156

Riess:
Anneberg:

So there were a lot of things in the way [by the time I
stopped running the gallery]. There was economics in the way,
and people's general level of awareness of crafts. I had the
tough street and the people who were out there preying on the
tourists who also came in to try to prey on me. And the fact
that I had no protection, I was right there inside the door.

I had several cases of my own jewelry and other people's
jewelry on the wall behind the reception desk, right in full
view when you came in the door. All the things that were on
the walls in the gallery were also fair game. People could
walk right in, and it was very difficult for me to see the
entire gallery, which was mostly hidden by the partition. I
was there all alone. It was tough, and I had some very, very
harrowing experiences.

Did you have anyone who would spell you in the gallery?

Only on rare occasions. It was pretty hard to find someone
when I couldn't pay them.

May 1973- June 1973: Katherine Westphal; Hugh Aanonsen ##

Riess: Now we are at Katherine Westphal, Recent Textile Works [May

1973]. I don't understand what I'm looking at at all, but it's
beautiful.

Anneberg: She did a combination of photographic work and painting and
weaving and printing, and she is so enormously creative and
productive, I couldn't begin to tell you how things were done.
It was just a wonderful blossoming of color and exuberance.
She did a lot with photographic and printing techniques. I
never knew what exactly it was all about.

Riess: This announcement, Hugh Aanonsen, Elegance [June 1973], reminds
me of the psychedelic look.

Anneberg: I don't know just how he got that effect. He worked in
porcelain. His work was interesting in that he used
traditional glazes and techniques in his own way. He did some
fine Chinese-type glazes.

157

September 1973-October 1973; Silk Road; Threads of India;
Thoughts on How Collectors Collect

Riess: Souvenirs of a Traveler Along the Silk Road, Old Textiles and

Jewelry from Persia, Turkey and Afghanistan, collected by Alice
Erb [September 1973] .

Anneberg: Alice Erb has had a shop for a number of years in Berkeley
called Tail of the Yak. At that time she was a traveling
collector, she didn't yet have her shop of her own. I think I
recall that she arranged with me to have a show when she got
back from this particular trip. She traveled alone, mostly,
and visited places where people didn't ordinarily go, like
eastern Turkey. Absolutely intrepid. She brought back
beautiful little embroidered bags and crocheted tobacco
pouches, and interesting jewelry.

Riess: How did these collectors decide what a fair price was? Would
they buy directly, or would there be a middleman?

Anneberg: Oh, they usually bought in markets. They didn't go out and try
to find a Bedouin caravan and buy jewelry off people's necks.

Riess: Why not? Because they could have, couldn't they?

Anneberg: Sometimes, maybe, but usually not. I wasn't always aware of

how plentiful this sort of thing would be in the hinterland or
out with people who were still living in a traditional manner.
I very often didn' t--simply had no way of knowing, because
collectors would usually buy things in the markets. Whether or
not this sort of thing was still being made, the collector
often didn't know.

Riess: In Central or South America would it also be a market, or would
it be a village?

Anneberg: I think it was both, but it was still very difficult to tell.

That was the one thing that I never really was able to get
a very clear picture of, and that is how much of it was still
being produced. It was a mystery to me, it was very difficult
to tell. And as it turned out, many of the things that I was
showing were produced a generation or more earlier, you see.
They were not always contemporary. But I didn't know which
things were. It was very hard for me to tell, because
sometimes things looked very new. They could have been put
away in a trunk for a couple of generations and still look new.

158

Riess: Are there methods for actually testing age? Like carbon- 14?

Anneberg: Not for things just a hundred years old or less. And testing
is so expensive, even museums can rarely afford it. They can
only test very important pieces. They couldn't possibly test
most things in their collections. Museums are probably full of
forgeries for that reason: they just can't afford much testing.
I certainly couldn't. But the things I was showing were not
the sort of things that are forged.

People don't forge things as a rule unless they can bring
good money. And again, I would have to rely largely upon the
collectors to give me information about how something was made
and who made it, and who wore or used it. I began to have a
pretty good instinct for a lot of things, but I certainly
couldn't tell very much about the origin.

I liked to have that information, but not everyone agrees
that it is necessary. Museums tend to encourage people to look
at things aesthetically, and to just admire the design, the
colors, or the look. I liked them to know something about who
made it, who wore it, and why they made it. I liked them to
know something about the economics behind it, and also the
materials and the availability of the materials.

I think all that has a lot to do with your appreciation of
a work of folk craft, whether it's textiles or carvings or
whatever. I like to know whether something was made in a
village for village people, or whether it was produced to make
some money, to lift the economic level of the village a little
bit. Or whether they made it for tourists and that's all
right with me, if it's good and fresh and appealing.

Most Mexican folk art is not made for villagers, it's made
for the tourists. It's frankly tourist art, but it's wonderful
tourist art. You don't usually admit that it's made almost
entirely for the American market, to be shipped up here. If
it's still good, what's the difference? Most American Indian
art as we know it--Navajo rugs, Pueblo pottery--is made for
outsiders, but we don't hold that against it either.-

There is something you call airport art, and we all kind of
know the difference between that and art that is made for
tourists that is better, you see. Now, you get down into these
fine points when you're discussing folk art, and boy, it gets
murky. I know certain kinds of African folk art that I would
never touch, because it was, as far as I was concerned, airport
art. Even though a lot of people liked it and would pay good
money for it, I hated it and I wouldn't show it.

159

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

There were certain Indonesian things that I wouldn't show
too. And certain things from the Caribbean and this part of
the world that I wouldn't show, I just didn't like it. It had
that aura of airport art, it seemed too commercial. It wasn't
something fresh and wonderful, something that I liked.

Did you show anything from Native American artists?
that seems to me to get into all of these questions,

Because

I would, I did, and I would like to have done more if I had
good sources for older things. I had a good source for
contemporary Navajo, Hopi and that sort of thing, and I got
some very good things. I didn't get into it early on because
there were other things that were more exciting to me, and new
and different. There were lots of American Indian things
around. I was kind of in this to bring to the public other
things that they hadn't seen before.

Now, Threads of India, Old Textiles collected by Gyongy Laky
[October 1973]. This is mirror cloth, isn't it?

Yes, some of that. She had traveled quite a bit in the state
of Gujerat and several other areas that were close to the
Indian Ocean- -western India, north of Bombay and south of the
Great Indian Desert. She knew some good collectors in that
area who could help her, like Haku Shah, so she brought back
some really quite interesting things.

By this time people were much more aware of Indian mirror
cloth and embroidered things, but she had some interesting
pieces that were a little bit different. Gyongy, of course,
has wonderful taste, a wonderful eye. She was the director,
you know, of Fiberworks for a long time in Berkeley, and a very
important local textile artist.

And were you showing her work too?

No. She was involved in Fiberworks, and she had a gallery over
there, and she had her own places to show. I did have a few
pieces of hers in a group show, though.

Her gallery was an adjunct to the school, showing the work
of the people who were involved over there, some of whom were
quite good. It was a very good school, and a great
contribution to the local craft scene at that time.

160

Christmas 1973; Tin Can Craftsmen of Mexico

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Okay, the Christmas show 1973, Tin Can Craftsmen of Mexico.

This was recycled stuff from Mexico, at a time when recycling
was just beginning to come into our own consciousness, the idea
that we could make things out of things that were thrown away
and abandoned. Here were people doing this, making consumer
goods in Mexico for ordinary people who couldn't at that time
afford regular consumer goods.

There were whole parts of town in some cities in Mexico,
like Morelia, Michoacan, where tinsmiths have their wares out
on the sidewalk, in front of their little shops where they make
things out of old oil or gasoline cans, and cans of soda pop,
soup cans, that sort of thing.

Sometimes they would be able to get odd pieces of sheet
metal from factories, that didn't have anything printed on
them. Sometimes they could go to a bottle cap factory or a tin
can factory and get whole sheets that were rejects, that might
have the labels printed right on thera. And sometimes they
would work with the can itself, without cutting it into another
shape.

I would love to see those shops.

Morelia has a couple of blocks of these tinsmiths who make
things out of recycled tin cans, and license plates and the
like. They use all kinds of things that, in Mexico, you
wouldn't think of just throwing away. Up here we throw away
tons and tons of that sort of thing, or anyway we did at the
time of this show. Down there they use everything, old
toothbrushes, everything. Of course in recent years recycling
is getting to be big business here.

Riess:

Stephen and Melissa Kassovic were the collectors,
in the markets?

They bought

Anneberg: Yes, they were anthropologists, and they were doing their own
work down there in various towns. They became aware of this
and started collecting it themselves, so they approached me to
see if I wanted a show of this sort of thing.

It was exciting. At that time- -well, even now you don't
come across this sort of thing everywhere. Sometimes the
tinsmith would manage to turn a tin can inside out. You
wouldn't be aware that it was made out of recycled material

161

unless you looked inside and saw the label. I always liked it,
of course, when it said "Ibano" on the outsidethe name of a
motor oil.

January 1974-May 1974; Lynn Mauser; Young Weavers of San
Isidro; Contemporary Southwest Indian Crafts; Andree Thompson;
Traditional Crafts of Botswana

Riess:

Anneberg:

Lynn Mauser, Screened Images on Cloth [January 1974].
shows a sort of stuffed-looking piece.

This

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Yes, she made all those at a place she worked. I think it was
some textile factory in Sweden, and she was an artist in
residence during the day helping them design textiles, printed
textiles. But at night they would let her, after ten o'clock
at night or something like that, use the premises for her own
work, so she could make use of their printing facilities and
tables to work on. She produced these enormous hangings of
trapunto (stuffed) quilted and printed works that were really
stunning.

That reminds me of the revelation of the Marimekko fabrics.

Well, those were from Finland, but all the Scandinavian
countries have had factories producing outstanding, very
contemporary things that appeal greatly to a certain aware part
of the American buying public. Not just textilesglass and
other media too.

The Young Weavers of San Isidro, Folk Tapestries from Colombia,
collected by Robert and Judith Blomberg [February 1974]. Was
this really a workshop of young weavers?

This was a shanty town outside a large city in Colombia, a
shanty town of workers--! 've forgotten whether they worked in
the factories or what- -but they lived in very crude homemade
shelters. It was a true shanty town, with houses made from
stuff that they just picked up from dumps.

A famous weaver in Colombia, Olga de Amaral, and some
friends started supplying children there with weaving materials
and showing them how to do it, and just letting them weave
things, so that they could sell them, you see. They'd bring
the weavings down to the city and sell them for the children.
They were very lively and colorful, wonderful little
tapestries .

162

Riess: This one has a date and a name on it.

Anneberg: Feria de Manizales, the Manizales fair. In that particular

tapestry the young person just depicted some things he saw when
he went to the fair in Manizales.

Riess: All right, here we have Contemporary Southwest Indian Crafts,
collected by Phyllis Seidkin [March 1974].

Anneberg: She was a very good collector who specialized in contemporary
Southwest crafts. She did this as a sideline, she was also a
freelance editor. She had quite a good little business going.
She collected some fine things.

Riess: Do you like it?

Anneberg: Pretty well, yes. It's a little more expensive than I can

afford on the whole, so I never went in for collecting Indian
pottery or jewelry, or baskets or weavings.

Riess: Did you ever show anything you didn't like?

Anneberg: A few times, yes. But it didn't happen very often. For the
most part sometimes it was just that I would finally break
down. It was something that other people liked, and the fact
that I didn't like it, I decided that perhaps I needed a little
education myself, and so I would try.

Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I
felt the same way about it after I had shown it, but that didn't
happen very often. Sometimes actually coming into a good
collection of that sort of thing, I would see something more in
it, and I would see that there were some good aspects to it.

Riess: That must have been hard, to live for a month with something
you were a little ambivalent about.

Anneberg: Occasionally a show would turn out to be not quite as good as I
expected it to be, and so it was a little difficult to live
with. It also depended a lot on my personal taste. .Other
people liked things that I hated, so I couldn't always be sure
that I knew what was best.

Riess: Andree Thompson, New Ceramic Forms [April 1974]. Her work
looks like it would appeal to California craft collectors.

Anneberg: Yes, she had some collectors. But very often the collectors
I'm talking about were other artists, or maybe they were good
friends of the artist. They were usually people who were on

163

the same economic level as the artist. They weren't really
rich people coming into it from the outside with the purpose of
forming a nice collection. They were just people who loved it
and wanted to buy it. So I'd call them collectors, but they
were buying for themselves, you see.

Riess: What about someone who was building a collection of

contemporary ceramic work? Did you have clients who were doing
that?

Anneberg: Sometimes people would buy from that point of view. Other

timespeople just happened to like Andree's work and they'd
buy a lot of it. They'd buy it every time she had a show.

Most people who buy ceramics are in that classification.
They would be people that you wouldn't normally call important
collectors, but they might have rooms full of a certain
artist's work because they happened to love it, and they could
live around it and use it.

Riess: Now, Traditional Crafts of Botswana, selected by Tim Young and
Diane Jolin [May 1974]. The announcement shows some amazing
baskets .

Anneberg: They brought them in for the first time in this area. Later on
Botswana baskets became much better known. But the quality has
remained about the same. I've seen Botswana baskets recently
that were very comparable to these early ones that were brought
out in the seventies.

These two people had been to Botswana with the Peace Corps.
The show was outstanding because they not only had these great
baskets from the Hambukushu tribe, there were also things made
by the Bushmen, necklaces of sweet-smelling roots and ostrich
eggshell, chipped out with stone tools.

The thing that stunned me about them was the fact that the
technique was twining for the most part, I think, but there
were several techniques involvedif you take an American
Indian basket from a certain tribe or a certain area, they
always start from the bottom in a certain direction. It is
traditional, they always do it the same way.

In these, one person would do it from the left and the next
person would do it turning around to the right. They didn't
have a set way of doing it, and yet the technique may have been
the same. But they would vary the way they did it.

164

Also, the designs had the same free aspect that jazz music
has, drumming, for instance. They had a certain syncopation.
There weren't certain designs that always had to be done a
certain way. They were completely free and completely able to
do anything that the medium would allow.

165

V EVOLUTION OF THE GALLERY, 1974-1979
[Interview 6: May 1, 1995] ##

Network to de Young and Mexican Museums

Riess: Did representatives of museums ever make purchases for their
museums that you were aware of?

Anneberg: It did happen, but very seldom. Occasionally one would come to
look at a folk art show. I didn't always know who they were,
but sometimes I suspected they were there looking at things when
it was something that tied in with one of their permanent
collections .

I remember it may have been the Turkish show, or something
like that, where someone--oh, I remember now, it was McCoy
Jones . He was the one who put together that wonderful
collection of flat woven rugs at the de Young, and he bought an
embroidered piece. It may have been old Turkish or old Afghani,
something like that. I don't know whether he bought it for his
own collection or for a collection that he gave to the de Young,
because he did put together a collection of embroideries for the
de Young.

He and I got to be kind of great friends for a very short
time there. I went out to dinner with him one time, and he told
me wonderful stories about his days in the navy, when he was a
young man, and about his adventures collecting. He was in his
eighties at this time. He didn't go out into the field to do
any collecting of rugs and things like that. I asked him, and
he said no, no, he never did that. He bought from dealers. He
was a real horse trader by nature. He liked to haggle,
[laughter]

He belonged to the Haji Baba Club, which was a Washington,
D.C., rug collectors' club. Originally, you had to have stolen
a rug in order to get into the club. [laughter] Because Haji

166

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Baba was a great thief. And by stealing, that means getting
something for a steal, buying a rug that was really worth an
awful lot more than you paid for it.

The Mexican Museum, did you have a connection to them?
get things from you?

Did they

No, they never did. They started with a nucleus of a collection
donated by the first director and founder, Peter Rodriguez. He
had a collection of colonial Mexican art, little religious
paintings and santos, figures of saints for home altars, and
that sort of thing. He also had some masks, I think.

Gradually, over the years the museum acquired money to
collect. And they were given some things from the famous
Rockefeller collection of Mexican folk art, a small part of that
collection. So they have acquired quite a few nice things over
the years. I haven't really seen the whole collection.

A general question, were any of the artists ambivalent about
selling their work and about making money?

Yes, that happened. It happens with every artist, I think, that
there are some things they just don't want to sell. And
sometimes they would put them in the show anyway, and have them
not be for sale. I tended to discourage it, because that's
always the piece that everybody wants to buy, so it didn't
happen too often that a piece like that ended up in the show.
It would only be if it was necessary to fill out the show, or
for some reason like that. But it did happen.

It might be a way in which craft artists would differ, that the
personal involvement with a piece would be higher.

I don't know. I imagine painters feel the same way, though,
about certain things. I do know of one painter in town here who
at a certain point refused to sell any more of his work. I
don't know how long that lasted, but he did stop selling. Maybe
he just, for reasons of his own, wanted to acquire a collection
and keep it intact for a while. I don't know why, but he did
that.

167

Craft Artists and Gallery Exclusive Ambivalence

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

I have read about artists whose work is all bought in advance.
Everything they're doing is contracted for, for the next five
years. That must be a strange way to work.

Must be. I personally have never heard of a craft artist whose
work was all bought in advance.

What was your policy of protecting and maintaining a distance
between the collectors and your artists? There must have been
people who wanted to go straight to the studio.

It happened more than you can imagine with craft artists.
Because for one thing, I was really the first one around here to
have a craft gallery, so there were no rules and standards set
up that craft artists were familiar with, and that they would
agree to. I didn't attempt to impose any on them, because it
just seemed impossible. They weren't used to that sort of
situation, where painters probably all were, or most of them,
anyway, with galleries. Although I'm sure there were some
galleries, quite a few, that didn't impose that on painters
either.

That the painters could not deal directly with the customers?

Right, and that they
that. But of course
multiplied and gone
business in 1966, so
some craft galleries
saying that they won
certain geographical
Rocky Mountains, and
something like that.

would demand an exclusive and things like

craft galleries around the country have
a long way since I started in the gallery

now it is the practice, I suppose, with
, to ask their artists to sign a contract
't deal with any other retailer within a

area. Like from the Pacific Ocean to the

from a certain point south, for instance,

But you didn't do it.

I didn't, oh, no. It just never occurred to me that I--well, it
did occur to me a couple of times, but I knew that it would be
totally impossible, because these artists simply were not used
to working that way.

168

June 1974-October 1974; Pat Scarlett; Trude Guermonprez; June
Schwarcz; Curtis Photographs

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg;

I think we're here in [June] 197A, with Patricia Scarlett,
Paintings on Ceramic.

I think this was the second show I had with Pat Scarlett. She
was a bit unusual for a ceramic artist. All of her works were
sculptural. It seemed almost like she was a painter working in
ceramics, even though they were all three-dimensional. It was
something about her attitude toward the things that she was
doing. It's a little hard to describe.

Are these boxes?

Boxes with sort of pyramid-shaped tops, yes.

Is this grouping of five displayed as a sculpture, as it were,
or are these individual items?

It's hard for me to remember, but I believe that was probably a
series. I just don't remember now. She tended to work in
series, but usually the pieces were priced separately. It may
have been the case with these, I just don't remember. This was
her second show at the gallery.

Trude Guermonprez, Recent Weavings [July 1974].

Trude Guermonprez, yes. She was one of the great teachers and
weavers in this area, and one of the reasons why the Bay Area
became so noted for textile art. She taught at the California
College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Who are her followers?

I think she probably had a great influence on a lot of her
students. It may have been a bit subtle, it's hard to say. I
think that probably almost everyone who came in contact with her
had something rub off. [See Regional Oral History Office
interview with Kay Sekimachi, who talks extensively of
Guermonprez and her defining influence on Sekimachi 's art.]

Trude Guermonprez came from Germany at a time when textile
was just beginning to be considered as an art form, or maybe a
little before that. She had studied at the Bauhaus, and Anni
Albers and people like that from the Bauhaus were pioneering
weaving as an art form. Trude was an enormously complex and
interesting person with an interesting background. She had been

169

a model for Gerhard Marcks--one of the German Expressionists--
when she was a student at the Bauhaus, and she knew all the
people there.

During the war she was married to a Frenchman- - that ' s where
the Guermonprez name is from. He was sort of an aristocrat, I
think, and involved in the French Resistance, but he was killed.
Trude lived in Holland for a year or so before she fled to this
country. I don't know whether she stayed in New York for a time
or not, I don't believe so, I think she came directly to Pond
Farm, because she knew some of the people there. A lot of them
were also refugees from the war. And very strong personalities.
She was a wonderful teacher. She and Ed Rossbach were the two
greatest teachers in the Bay Area in textiles.

Riess: This particular piece is very pictorial.
Textile Graphics.

And the show is called

Anneberg: Well, this particular piece is two heads lying down chin to
chin. It's Trude and her husband, John Elsesser, whom she
married after coming to the Bay Area. They look like clouds,
because they're floating up above another mass of cloud-like
forms. She often used her own face in this series of weavings.

Riess: Do you have anything from her?

Anneberg: I don't have anything. Her very close friend, Kay Sekimachi,
has one piece, which she bought from this show.

Riess: Did Kay study with her?

Anneberg: Yes, I'm pretty sure she did.

Riess: June Schwarcz, Enamel and Electroformed Metal. [September 1974]

Anneberg: This was a solo show. The first time she showed, it was with
Dominic DiMare. This is one of her enameled panels. Her
husband worked at the Stanford Linear Reactor center, and June
was influenced by some of the drawings, the blueprints, that
Leroy would bring home from there.

Riess: Is it a wall piece, this panel?

Anneberg: Yes, the background is white enamel, and then drawn onto it with
enamel was this very fine line drawing, just like a blueprint.
These were pretty elegant pieces, very different from the work
that she did on electroformed copper, the bowls, you know.

170

Riess: Now, this was a departure. Edward Curtis, Original
Photogravures [October 1974].

Anneberg: This was a departure. I guess I don't have an explanation why I
had certain shows. It just seemed to me that the old Curtis
photographs were something very special, and not exactly the
same as a photography show, but an ethnographic show- -it might
have been considered thatbecause the Indians he photographed
were all in costume. [laughs] If they didn't have their own
costumes, Curtis supplied them with certain ornaments and things
that he brought along, like little nose rings and various other
things. They were all authentic, of course, but they were
dressed up and posed.

Riess: Who was this collector, Vincent Cobalis?

Anneberg: He was a young man who got hold of a folio of the Curtis prints.

Riess: Did these sell well?

Anneberg: I sold some. They didn't sell awfully well.

Riess: Were they in good condition?

Anneberg: Yes. There were examples from quite a few of the Indian tribes
that he photographed. He would do a series of a tribal group,
and then go on to another, so he had tribes that you never heard
of. He tried to photograph all of them he could find.

More on Economics and Pricing of Folk Art

Riess: Christmas 1974. Folk Art for the Holidays, from Africa, Mexico,
Central America, South America, Southeast Asia, and the U.S.

Anneberg: That was just a little of everything. There was a South
American and Guatemalan collector, Caroline West, and a
Southeast Asian collector, Trudy Clark, and a collector of
contemporary Indian things, Phyllis Sudkin, and others. That
was one of the special shows that would be nice for holiday
gift-giving, I liked to have something that was very colorful
and fun for the holidays.

Riess:

Did you mix things, or did you keep each area intact?

171

Anneberg: Usually there was a little group that was together, yes. It

just worked out better that way. But they wouldn't be entirely
separated.

This particular piece looks Laotian, but it was from
northern Thailand, from the Hmong group. But they weren't
called Hmong by most people here at that time. Collectors who
brought back things from northern Thailand called the Miao,
which is a Chinese name meaning something like "barbarian." It
was a rather derogatory termthe Chinese gave most of the
tribal groups in the far reaches of China names of that sort.
These in that show are mostly nomadic or semi-nomadic people who
are also found in China.

I think that this tribe had come down from China to
northern Thailand. In Thailand they were called Miao, but they
themselves preferred Hmong, so that's what they were called once
they arrived in the United States.

Northern Thailand is very rich in tribal people of various
nomadic groups who don't to this day really respect borders
between China and Laos and northern Thailand and Burma.

Riess:

How

much was this part of their economy, producing these things?

Anneberg: A lot of times it did mean quite a bit to people in certain
villages, to have their work collected by outsiders.

Riess: You were one step removed, because you had the collector in
between.

Anneberg: And even the collector would only be one collector, you see.

They would not be the sole savior of a village's economy by any
means .

Riess: We marvel over the amount of handwork, and have an image of

people struggling at what seem like inappropriate wages. And
you think to yourself, How can people live? Isn't this one of
the ways that people get involved with folk art?

Anneberg: It does happen. I knew a couple of collectors who were

personally involved with certain Indonesian islands where they

had worked with the people and became very emotionally involved

with problems there. And there were others who worked for

A.I.D. [Agency for International Development] or the Peace Corps

who brought back native crafts and set up importing businesses

to try to help out the people in the countries where they had worked,

172

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Lots of times people coming to the gallery would not
understand why things had to be priced so high, when they knew
that the original price that these things were bought for was
only a fraction of the retail price that I would be charging.
But there would sometimes be several persons in between.

It's hard for people to understand the economics of it, but
sometimes it was extremely simple. You might buy something for
a dollar from the original artist, and the person who bought it,
in order to pay all the expenses of having traveled to that
place and back, and there were quite a number of expenses
involved, would have to more than double the price, usually
about four times. Sometimes not that much, and sometimes even
more.

So, say it ended up four dollars that he would charge
either me or yet another middleman, middle person. Every time,
that four dollars would be increased at least twofold, you see,
to eight dollars, and then say there was an extra middleman in
there, I would have to pay--let me seethe wholesale price may
have been to me eight dollars, or even sixteen, because there
were people with expenses all the way along. I would have to up
the price almost twice that in order to meet my rent and
overhead expenses, which would be even higher.

Things would get increased all along the way, and not
exorbitantly really, but that's just the way it went. People
had a lot of expenses once something left the village, that the
producer could never in the world conceive of, because he or she
had none of these expenses. But the small amount the producer
got would be enough to help keep a roof over the person's head,
or to buy food or whatever.

Well, for their supplies.

Whatever they needed. But they didn't have expenses the same
way that other people along the way would have. They would have
needs, but not expenses.

That's an important fine point.

Yes. And when you consider gallery or store rent, which
sometimes could be enormous, these little things wouldthere
would have to be an awful lot of them in order to make the rent
for one month, and that was often something that people didn't
like to accept.

Yes, well you've answered my question perfectly.

173

Anneberg: Even hard for artists to understand.

February 1975-May 1975: Ann Christenson; Lillian Elliott; Jan
Wagstaff; K. Lee Manuel

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

This piece reminds me- -I thought it would be Andree Thompson
again.

Oh, no, this was Ann Christenson [Porcelain Ceramics, February
1975]. You see the teapot over there on the top shelf? That is
hers. She had a wonderful exuberance and flair, and yet it
wasn't sloppily done at all. She was a wonderful crafts person.
She specialized in teapots. This is a vase form that you're
looking at here in the announcement photograph, combined with a
bit of textile. But most of the pieces, a great many of them,
were teapots and cups. She used a lot of decal and painting on
them, and then she had a great sense of humor.

Lillian Elliott, Miniature Tapestries [March 1975].
like the back of the piece.

This looks

No, Lillian liked to leave the ends of yarns hanging out where
one color stopped and she went on to another color. Some ends
were tucked into the back, but very often she liked to bring
them out and let them be part of the surface texture.

Miniature tapestries.

By miniature, they could be anywhere from ten by twelve or even
much larger. They were just not large pieces. The work on them
tended to be small.

Riess: Each time she had a show it would be a new and different group
of work?

Anneberg: Very often, yes. She was always going on to something new,

although there were some things she still continued to do, like
tapestries.

Riess: I guess one of the important things about exhibiting is to bring
a particular body of work to a conclusion.

Anneberg: For an artist, I think very often they like to see a certain
period that they've been working on in their art as a whole.
It's very good to be able to have a considerable series in one
particular direction, so that they can then put it up on the

174

wall of a gallery and step back and look at it, and see what
they've done.

Riess: I knew Lillian Elliott a little bit, and knew how pleasant a

person she was. This is a generalization you can deal with or
not, but studio artists often are prickly and difficult and even
inarticulate. Do you think that craft artists are more
accessible and easier to deal with?

Anneberg: There were some who were pretty prickly, but for the most part
they were a pretty sane bunch, and very easy to deal with.

Riess: I guess maybe it's the ego that gets in the way in a lot of
cases with big artists.

Anneberg: That's right, and difficult egos are more to be found, I think,
in the so-called fine arts than among craft artists, although
there were some.

Riess: Do you have any thoughts on why that would be?

Anneberg: I don't really know, unless it was that crafts really were not
accepted as a part of the art establishment. They weren't
accepted as a true art form by many artists and critics. I
think perhaps people who were into craft were less ego-driven on
the whole.

Riess: Now Jan Wagstaff, Tapestry Constructions [April 1975].

Anneberg: I think Jan may have been a pupil of Trude Guermonprez. It

looks like it to me, and as I recall, I think that she did study
under her. Jan was teaching at Chico State at this time.
They're very nice things, beautifully done.

This was an apron form that she was interested in. They
weren't really three-dimensional, they were just not completely
flat on the wall like a painting. It looksas you can see here
there was a certain amount of draping.

Riess: K. Lee Manuel, Amulets, Painted Leather and Cloth [May 1975).
Anneberg: She was wonderful.
Riess: You should describe this.

Anneberg: This is a painted piece of deer hide, which was also wearable as

a cloak or a cape. She has painted on hide and leather, various

kinds of backgrounds, sometimes cloth. She's a very good

painter, and was a good friend of William Wiley and several

175

other painters, highly respected by painters. But she chose to
paint on pieces of cloth and leather, instead of within the
confines of a frame.

Riess: These feathers, I don't know whether this is painted or what.

Anneberg: I believe that's all painted. She did use feathers a lot and
often painted on the feathers. This was a pretty wild example
right here. She would use a complete chamois cloth very often,
which is a sizeable piece, and paint on it. And it could be
worn, if one desired, or just hung up on the wall.

There was something very special about K. Lee Manuel's
work. It didn't smack of hippie amateurism at all. It didn't
belong in that class. She just happened to like painting on
leather. It was pretty elegant.

Riess: I wonder who would buy it, and would they buy it to wear it?

Anneberg: People would buy it who would buy paintings, I think. It was
more in that category. I think I sold a few pieces out of the
show.

Every now and then I hear about her. I'm not sure whether
she still paints on leather or not. But she does live in San
Francisco, and every now and then I hear something about her.

Riess: A lot of these people might exhibit now at the Craft and Folk
Art Museum. Has there been a continuity?

Anneberg: When I started the museum I did draw upon this pool of people
whose work I knew, so I showed quite a few of them, and some
were shown again later after I left.

June 1975; Kurdish Wedding Carpets

Riess: Kurdish Wedding Carpets [June 5-28, 1975] collected by James
Greenberg.

Anneberg: Yes. These were embroidered in very strong colors of golds and
orange-reds, with accents of green, black, and things like that,
and occasionally blue. It was a wonderful punch in the gut as
far as color is concerned. It was an indescribable effect. I
think he bought these in Syria. I've never seen them since.
That was just one of those wonderful, once-only shows. These

176

Riess:
Anneberg:

were large, like rugs, although I wouldn't want to use one as a
rug. They were better as tapestries.

I may have mentioned it, I don't know, but right after this
show was opened I got a telephone call from a man in Los Angeles
and he identified himself as a Kurd. He said, "Do you really
have a Kurdish show on now?" I said, "Yes, Kurdish wedding
carpets," and he said, "What are your hours? I'm coming right
up." He caught a plane the very next day and came up to see the
show. I thought that was wonderful. He saw the announcement
and couldn't believe that somebody was actually having a show of
Kurdish things.

He walked in, and he stopped as soon as he got inside the
door and just said, "Oh, oh, the colors!"

He told me a lot about Kurdish life. He said that actually
most Kurds lived in cities, that they were urban dwellers, and
that there was a whole series of cities in the mountains, along
these mountains that went all the way from Syria through Iran
and Turkey and on up to Afghanistan, that were primarily Kurdish
cities. Now Kurds are very much in the news as a separate
ethnic group.

He said that there was no one in his immediate family, his
mother or anything, who made these carpets, but he did have an
aunt who made some .

Within each family it would be practiced?

It must have been something that was made for the dowry. There
was a similarity in all of the ones that I saw. They were each
different, but they did have a similar look, so they may have
been from one particular place. The colors it was just
marvelous, I've never seen anything like it. Very, very heavy
wool.

July 1975-November 1975; Guatemalan Weaving; Susan Green and
Barbara Corns took; Indonesian Ikats and Baskets from East of
Java; Dominic Pi Mare; Horvath Costumes and Folk Textiles

Riess: Guatemalan Weaving of the Past Fifty Years [July 1975].

Anneberg: This particular show had some older pieces in it, which is why I
said "past fifty years." It wasn't all just recent, like the
past ten years or so. There were some older pieces in it, which

177

was the reason I showed it. But since Guatemalan weaving had
become so well known by this time, people were no longer
interested in buying it. I don't think I sold a thing out of
that show.

Riess: Fiber Jewelry, Susan Green [August 7-30, 1975], and Barbara
Comstock, Pieces of an Early World, cloth constructions.

Anneberg: Barbara Comstock did very nice soft sculpture, textile forms
which she sewed on a sewing machine. They were fairly small
pieces, mostly landscape forms.

Susan Green made wonderful necklaces. She used mostly
beads, but also other things, shells and things like that. She
did a lot of wrapping and twining around a core base, using
cords of various fibers, including monof ilament . This was her
first show, she told me. Her work is in great demandit's
strong and dramatic, but very wearable.

Riess: You made a point of showing things not available elsewhere.
Soft sculpture was a new thing?

Anneberg: Well, this was 1975. It wasn't too common.

Riess: Indonesian Ikats and Baskets from East of Java collected by
Michael Yerby [September 4-27, 1975].

Anneberg: Michael Yerby, yes. This was a wonderful show, baskets and

ikat. Ikat is one of the primary textile arts of Indonesia, and
they usually use it for sarong-type garments worn by women or
men. And sometimes for shawls. Different islands have slightly
different styles of dress.

This particular piece came fromlet's see, where did that
come from?--Flores. It was an unusual piece from central
Flores, I believe.

Riess: You would recognize the specific area?
Anneberg: Oh, yes. You had to know at least that.

This was interesting because Jack Larsen saw it when I sent
him an announcement, and he wanted a picture of it. He'd been
looking for a piece of this type for a book that he was working
on, and so he had his co-author, who was in the area, stop in to
the gallery and pick the piece up.

178

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:
Anneberg:

Someone like Ed Rossbach, how much would he learn from what he
saw at your gallery? Was it quite well known, the technique?

I don't think that it had been shown much at all. I hadn't
shown Indonesian ikats before, but I'd had a few pieces in the
shop part. I had shown Guatemalan ikats, of course. But
Indonesian ones had not been seen much. I tried not to have
shows of things that were too well known, because people might
not be interested in them any longer. As far as I was
concerned, they should be things that would excite people and
interest them because they hadn't been seen much. But of course
someone like Ed Rossbach or Lillian Elliott would already be
quite familiar with the technique.

I think of ikat as more abstract, sort of flame shapes,
pictorial.

This is

Well, if you're good enough you can do all kinds of things with
ikat. The Japanese do ikats in designs with birds and flowers
and seaweed and all kinds of things, and some islands in
Indonesia do representational pieces. They often use birds and
fish, crustaceans, emblems from old Dutch coins, and things like
that.

This is Dominic Di Mare again, Recent Work [October 1975].

Yes. He used a lot of feathers and quills, porcupine quills and
things like that, along with paper, and his trademark knotting.
This piece has fishing lures that had belonged to his father, I
believe.

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

It's very beautiful. It's beautifully photographed, too.
you photograph these?

Did

Yes, I think I did. I photographed quite a few pieces for
Dominic for shows. For someone who doesn't really know anything
about photography, I didn't do a bad job. [laughs]

This [Horvath Costumes and Folk Textiles from Hungary,
November 1975] was one of the very few, if perhaps the only--
maybe it was the only show I ever had of European things . I
would have liked to have had more, but there just weren't people
bringing it back. This lady [Laura Schiff] had a lot of
costumes from a particular small area in Hungary.

And are they old?

These were a generation or so old, I think. Not terribly old,
it is an area where the tradition is still very much alive.

179

Riess: I see this incredible lace and embroidery, was anyone here
working in lace?

Anneberg: There were quite a few lace makers around, and people who were
interested in lace. I did have a show later on, for a very
brief period, of bobbin lace. But yes, there were people who
were interested in the technique of lace-making. Not this
traditional type of lace, but the basic technique can be adapted
to contemporary craft.

This was a nice show.
Riess: Did it sell?

Anneberg: No. Some things just didn't sell, although I thought they

would. In this show there were a lot of petticoats that were
very wearable they had wonderful borders of lace, and were very
heavy cotton. They would be great as skirts.

Riess: When you had such a show as this did you let the Hungarians in
the community know? Would there have been a way of extending
your mailing list?

Anneberg: I just couldn't do that. I didn't know of any group that I
could contact. Sometimes there were groups that I could
contact, and I would send them an announcement.

February 1976-May 1976; Susan Wick; Javanese Batik; Carole
Beadle and Gayle Luchessa; Eileen Gilbert Hill

Anneberg: This was kind of an unusual show [Wick's Books, Journals with a
Textile Basis, Originals and Xerox Interpretations, January 29-
February 28, 1976] of artists' books. I thought it fell between
the cracks, almost. Susan Wick made books that weren't really
books, but they were bound in book-like form. They were sort of
constructions.

It was a lot of fun, because we fixed the place Tip to look
like a book shop, from the outside, anyway. Some people in the
neighborhood thought that I had converted my gallery into a book
shop. [laughter] It wasn't really in the craft experience
exactly, it was a little bit more like what has since become
known as "artists' books." A lot of artists use the book form
sometimes in a similar way.

Riess: Is it also, in the sense of a journal, very personal?

180

Anneberg: Almost, yes. Some of these pertained to her travels, to Italy
and other places, so there might be a weekend or something that
she was just wanting to preserve in book form, and she would
have theater tickets and little scraps of odds and ends, and
lots of drawings.

Riess: How could she part with them?

Anneberg: [laughs] I don't think she would have any trouble with that. I
think we sold a few, but again, it was not a very saleable type
of show.

And this was a Javanese batik show [Traditional Javanese
Batiks, A Woman's Art, March 4-April 3, 1976], the only all-
batik show that I had. The reason I presented this was that
Beverly Labin had spent quite a bit of time over there studying
batik from various batik masters, and so she knew a great deal
about the technique and the various designs. We had wonderful
labels. It was very instructional.

Riess: This is a very disconcerting piece, vulvas and hand-like things?

Anneberg: Well, you are seeing a detail. Usually you just get the overall
picture, you don't really notice these various plant forms.
They're really taken from leaves and seeds and flowers and
things like that. That looks like kind of a seed and pod form.

They use animal forms that often trail off into plant
forms, so you can't always tell the difference between what
you're looking at--you see, this could be a bird, and it could
also be floral and leaf shapes and things like that. Here are
some tendrils from vines. One becomes the other.

She had batiks from all different parts of Java, not just
the ones from Solo and Djakarta that are usually seen. Some are
extremely unusual, you wouldn't think of them as being batiks
from Java.

Riess: Is it unusual to have such a light background?

Anneberg: This must have been indigo on white, just blue and white. It
looks to me as though this was probably a detail from a silk
batik, or selendang, which is a long scarf, worn by either men
or women. Very often indigo is used as the dye, producing a
very deep, deep, deep blue on a cream color or white silk
background. I'm quite certain that's what this one was.

Riess: Felt, Carole Beadle and Gayle Luchessa [April 8-May 1, 1976].

181

Anneberg: This was a felt show, but felt was not yet as widely done as it
was a few years later. Carole was teaching at CCAC and Gayle
was finishing her MFA at Fiberworks. Each had been exploring
felt as a medium for textile art. They got together and cooked
up the idea for the show and presented it to me, and I thought
it sounded good. They found inventive ways of making felt at
home and in the studio. Carole formed layers of different
colored felt into a block, like a loaf, and then sliced it with
an electric knife.

Riess: It has the thickness of handmade paper, as you look at it.

Anneberg: Doesn't it? Well, paper and felt have a lot in common. They're
made in very similar ways.

Riess: When you did something for the first time were people amazed?
"Margery, what's this stuff?" Well, you didn't have such a
naive audience, probably.

Anneberg: I didn't have a naive audience at all.. They were much more

knowledgeable than I was. In fact, I had to stayit was all I
could do to stay abreast of my customers. They often knew much
more about what I was showing than I did.

Riess: That reminds me, some galleries have a book where visitors can
write down comments. Did you do that?

Anneberg: Well, yes. There was always a book where they could sign their
names, so that the collector or artist could see who had been
there .

Riess: And beyond that, comments?

Anneberg: Sometimes. People don't often comment.

Riess: Metal Containers, Miniature Containers in Silver and Brass [May
6-29, 1976].

Anneberg: This was an artist who worked in metal, but these were very

small. This [illustration in announcement] was much larger than
the actual size of the piece.

Riess: Eileen Gilbert Hill.

Anneberg: She did metal containers that were monumental in spirit, but

they were very small. Mostly silver, but there were also some
copper and occasionally bronze, I suppose, pieces on them. But
they were mostly silver. She was a very good artist.

182

Riess: I don't understand what you mean by "monumental in spirit."

Anneberg: Well, it could be an enormous piece, it doesn't look as though
it's small- -you can't tell from looking at the photograph. It
could be several feet long, but it actually was measured in
inches it was probably about three and a half inches long.

Mailing Lists and Bulk Mail

Riess: Did you keep the visitor books for the gallery over the years?

Anneberg: I can't remember. I probably kept them for a few months,

anyway. I added most of the new names to my mailing list. I
was very generous in sending out announcements, because when I
first started, postage was very cheap and so was paper, the two
main costs of sending out announcements. The bigger the mailing
list, the better.

Since then, nowadays, a gallery has to keep the mailing
list as small as possible, but as potentially productive as
possible. You try to have names on your mailing list of people
who are either proven buyers or people who are potential buyers.
You don't just put anyone on the mailing list. But in those
days, you could.

For a while, galleries were sending everything out first
class. I did for many years, until it just got to be
prohibitive, and then I went over to bulk mail. But even bulk
mail has gotten very expensive.

Riess: And it's hard timing it to be sure your announcement gets out.
Anneberg: Yes. It's very difficult.
ft

Anneberg: You don't want to send them out so far ahead that people have
forgotten all about it by the time the opening occurs.

With bulk mailing they go first to regional post offices,
and from there they're sent out to various towns under that main
post office. For instance, Marin County goes first to the San
Rafael post office, and from there it's sent out to all these
other places, San Anselmo, Sausalito, et cetera.

183

San Rafael was a notoriously slow post office. So the
people in Marin County almost never got their announcements more
than a day ahead, and sometimes not until the week after the
show started, and they were always complaining. And yet, I got
them into the post office as soon as I possibly could, at least
twelve days before the opening. They weren't late from my
standpoint, it was just that they didn't get delivered.

The Oakland post office wasn't much better. So sometimes
people in Berkeley would not get their announcements in time,
and I had mailed it two, two and a half weeks ahead of time.
Bulk mail is tough.

June 1976; Tibetan Art and Artifacts. Collected by Moke Mokotoff

Riess: Tibetan Art and Artifacts [June 1976].

Anneberg: Moke Moketoff was a collector who contacted me after a

recommendation from Jack Larsen. He was a student of Tibetan
Buddhism at a center located in the Berkeley hills. I believe
he had collected all the pieces in this show in Ladakh, a tiny
kingdom bordering on Kashmir in northeast India and Tibet.
Ladakh had been closed to the outside world for a long time but
had just been opened up the year before. It had a completely
Tibetan culture.

A lot of the lamas who had fled from Tibet after the
Chinese takeover had gone into the lamaseries in Ladakh. Also,
valuables from Tibetan lamaseries continued to be smuggled out
of Tibet into Ladakh. People like Moke who got in there early
after it was opened up to tourists and traders brought out some
wonderful things, silver prayer boxes inlaid with turquoise and
coral, bracelets and rings, rugs, saddle rugs, all kinds of
religious objects. There was enormous interest in this show.

July 1976: Diana Leon, and a Discussion of Usable Ceramic Forms

Riess: Porcelain and Stoneware [July 1976].

Anneberg: Diana Leon is very special. She is an artist who rarely shows
anywhere .

Riess: Because people already buy everything she produces?

184

Anneberg:

Riess:

Yes. She used to have a couple of big sales a year, but now
she's gotten it down to only one a year. She used to have two
or three. Her one show a year takes place in early December,
the first week of December usually.

When you get there, you line up, and you're given a number.
About half an hour or an hour before they let you in to buy,
you're allowed to go in and just look around and see where
things are that you want. Then you have to go back and line up
again in the same order. That's why you're given this little
ticket with a number.

And then, when everybody is all back in line, they open the
doors and let you rush in and buy. The noise from people
gathering up porcelain and stoneware is almost deafening. It
sounds as though it's all being smashed and broken, but it's
just the clink of things together, you see. Very often, it's
all over in ten minutes. The whole thing has been sold out.
It's really very exciting.

Does she produce it all, or does she have people who work for
her?

Anneberg: No, she does it all herself. She used to have a partner who did
the glazes. But now she does everything herself. It's
wonderful stuff. I have a lot of her pieces myself. But I know
people who have rooms full of it, literally. They can't get
enough of it, it's beautiful. Her most popular ware is a cobalt
blue spongeware in porcelain. That's what she does mostly now.
But her shapes are simply beautiful.

Riess: And it's all usable pieces?

Anneberg: Yes. These are sort of goblets here. Plates, bowls, pitchers,
teapots. But mostly bowls, plates, vases, that sort of thing.

Riess: I wonder how people decide to become manufacturing ceramicists.
It must be tempting to have someone do the rudimentary stuff.

Anneberg: Very often, artists work with an apprentice. That's fairly

common. But Diana does not, she does everything herself. And
she's very noted for her spongeware, which is cobalt blue
applied with a sponge, so it's dappled all over--I have a lot of
that. She had some exquisite pieces in the show, mostly other
kinds of glazes. A lot of her forms are derived from Chinese
ceramics. She really is a wonderful artist-potter.

185

Riess: Certain crafts shows, outdoor crafts shows, have first-class
things. Craft artists must know what the rank order is of
these. Is that a bigger outlet than it used to be?

Anneberg: Well, apparently the art forms are taking over, especially in
the shows .

Riess: The art forms?

Anneberg: Instead of useful objects, most of them are art forms. You

almost never see useful pottery or glass in an art festival like
the big ACA shows, with a lot of different artists' work.
Especially in ceramics, you hardly ever see useful objects.
They're sculptural pieces, and they're very expensive. I think
it's kind of too bad, because as far as I'm concerned a cup can
be just as much a work of art as anything else.

I always maintained that, and I always found it a little
sad sometimes when a person who created real art using the
format of useful objects would decide that he or she wanted to
be an "artist," because from then on they would start making
sculptural pieces, and they weren't nearly as good at it as they
were making cups or plates or bowls. I like an artist who can
continue to feel comfortable working with recognizable forms,
useful objects, because there's nothing wrong with that, and I
don't think it's any less art than a piece that has no function
at all.

Riess: This is a discussion that particularly works when you're
thinking about ceramics. What about fiber and fabric?

Anneberg: I don't feel quite the same way about fiber and fabric, because
in the old days, in the thirties and forties and most of the
fifties, there were an awful lot of placemats and window casings
and rugs being made, you see. But they weren't all that
interesting, so it was rather a relief to have weavers going
over to wall hangings and tapestries, rather than yard goods.

Riess: But then there's wearable art.

Anneberg: Wearable art, yes, that's fine. But the weaving that was done

in earlier times was just flat woven pieces, and that really was
not as interesting as it has become in the last twenty-five
years, I think.

186

August 1976-November 1976; Contemporary Bobbin Lace; Zapotec
Rugs; Philippine and Indonesian Baskets, and Abaca Ikats

Anneberg: This was a lace show [Contemporary Bobbin Lace, A Group Show,
August 3-28, 1976] .

Riess: Can you tell by looking at this [illustration on announcement]
what the technique is?

Anneberg: This is lace. It may not be recognizable because it's in such
large format, but actually, the technique is lace. There are a
lot of people who are interested in lace as an art form.

Riess: Did you find these people and put together the show?

Anneberg: No, Kaete Kliot, who teaches in Berkeleyshe has a shop called
Lacis--she put it together, and she knew a lot of artists who
worked in lace. This was at the same time that there was a
meeting in town of lace makers from various areas, so it was
kind of nice to have the show. This was a summer show, in
August .

It was quite interesting. I had never hadI'd had small
individual pieces of lace, but I'd never had a whole show. Most
of it was very contemporary looking and you would never
recognize it as lace. But there were a few traditional pieces,
I mean more traditional looking.

Riess: Zapotec Rugs from Southern Mexico [September 1976].

Anneberg: This was from an area near Oaxaca where they weave rugs using
designs that are I think originally inspired from the ruins at
Mitla, and one phase of the ruins was Zapotec. These are
Zapotec Indians who have begun weaving rugs using these Mitla-
type designs which are actually unusual for Mexico. They seem
more like Navajo designs. They're quite beautiful, some of
them. These are hand-spun wool, with natural dyes. They're not
as sturdily woven as Navajo rugs, so they don't wear as well,
but they're very beautiful.

Riess: Were they priced to be used or to be hung?

Anneberg: They were not very expensive, not at all like Navajo rugs have
become. But the designs, even though they don't seem very
Mexican, are firmly rooted in Mexican history and tradition,
because as I say, they're found in the ruins at Mitla.

187

Riess: The Handmade Papers of Eishiro Abe [A "Living National Treasure
of Japan," sponsored by the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Crafts and the American Craft Council, October 1976].

Anneberg: This was a very wonderful show. I showed it in connection with
this Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts that I had
founded--! think that we've mentioned that before. It was the
organization that I founded with the idea that someday we would
start a museum of folk art and craft.

Riess: No, we have not introduced that.

Anneberg: I think we should first talk about this other show, and leave
the handmade papers for another time.

This was a show of baskets from the Philippines collected
by Joyce Yee and David Holden, and baskets from Indonesia
collected by Michael Yerby and Robbie Bennett, and abaca ikats
from the Philippines, from Mindanao, collected by Kate Morris
and Peter Gest [November 1976]. Philippine baskets it was the
first time I had shown them. Later on I had several shows of
nice Philippine baskets. I had had a show previously of baskets
from Indonesia from Michael Yerby, the same one who collected
here.

Now, abaca ikats are large ikats from Mindanao that are
woven of abaca fiber--! can't really explain exactly what that
is, but it's a very stiff fiber. They use these almost like the
Pacific Islanders use tapa cloth. They weave them in very large
pieces, then they can be cut down for various purposes.

Kate Morris and a friend of hers [Gest] went to the village
where these were made, and at the time it was very difficult,
because there was a rebellion in that area. They didn't realize
that there was fighting going on and what a lot of danger they
were in, going to this village and getting out safely.

It was a nice show, there were some very good ikats. They
were large pieces, some of them quite complex.

Then Collectors' Folk Artthis was another Christmas show
[December 1976], and it's from all over, from Latin America,
Africa, Southeast Asia, the Far East, and Southwest United
States. Very similar to the one a year before, similar type of
thing. A lot of textiles and baskets, pottery and jewelry.

188

October 1976: The Handmade Papers of EishirS Abe
[Interview 7: May 8, 1995] ##

Anneberg: This Abe show was jointly sponsored by the American Craft

Council and the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts.
Simultaneous exhibitions of Abe's papers were held at the Museum
of Contemporary Crafts (now the American Craft Museum) in New
York, the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles, and the
Anneberg Gallery.

Eishiro Abe (pronounced ah-bay) was designed a "Living
National Treasure" by the Japanese government some time in the
late 1960s.

The ACC had arranged to have Mr. Abe visit New York first,
then go to Los Angeles, and after that San Francisco. The
reception for him here was scheduled for October 22.

Riess: How did you arrange to have him here?

Anneberg: Donald Wyckoff, the director of ACC, called and asked me if the
Center would like to show the papers, so there would be
simultaneous exhibitions in New York, L.A. , and San Francisco.
It was rather short noticenot enough time to schedule it at a
museum, because they need about a year's advance notice before
they can even consider a show. So the only thing to do was have
it at the gallery. And since the papers were all going to be
for sale, I decided to make it a benefit for the Center with
most of the profits going to it. Just a small percentage went
to the gallery, so I didn't have much income at all that month.
But it was a good thing for the Center, and probably good for
the gallery too.

Abe almost didn't make it to San Francisco. Apparently
there was a mixup in communications and he and his party had
been planning to return to Japan after the Los Angeles
reception. I guess they didn't know they were expected up here.
So there were a lot of frantic telephone calls to L.A. and
finally, after a sleepless night (on my part) I got word the
next morning that Abe and his group would be flying up for the
reception here, which was only a few days off.

They arrived a few minutes early and looked the show over
and then lined up and had their pictures taken in the gallery.
Abe brought out a hanging scroll with some calligraphy on it and
hung it up. This was a Japanese custom, I was told, to bring

189

Riess:

good luck to the show. Apparently it only hangs there for the
reception, because they took it down at the end of the evening.

What did it mean to have a Living National Treasure travel to
America?

Anneberg: Very little, outside of the craft community.

There was an entourage of four or five others with Abe, all
Japanese involved somehow with handmade papers. Two were from
Tokyo and spoke some English- -one was a woman who made folk art
dolls of paper. Abe was seventy-some years old, very dignified
in formal Japanese dress. I think they must all have belonged
to the Mingei--that 's folk artSociety, which is devoted to
preserving traditional folk arts.

Riess: Had you known much about the folk art movement in Japan?

Anneberg: Just a little, from reading books and things like that. He was
the first person who was directly involved in it that I have
ever met--in fact, the only one.

Riess: Because of who he was was there any stir in the community here?
Was it dealt with differently than other shows?

Anneberg: No, it really wasn't. The press ignored it. Mr. Abe liked the
gallery and the way the papers were exhibited, though. He said
that he appreciated its being simple and unpretentious because
that was exactly what the papers were.

The papers were very interesting, because Eishiro Abe had
researched the papers that were in the Shoso-in, the imperial
treasure house, in Nara. Paper was invented in China around the
first century A.D., and it went from there to Korea and finally
to Japan in the seventh century. The Shoso-in has beautiful
Japanese papers that date from the eighth century, and in the
1960s he was allowed to study these, which inspired him to
recreate the ancient papers and the dyes.

He was able to see the beautiful colors that were still
glowing, natural colors that resisted fading. So he learned to
reproduce those colors using various barks and roots and leaves
and berries and seaweed, and so on.

The main improvement that the Japanese made was the use of
the inner bark of kozo paper mulberry, instead of the hemp that
the Chinese used. The colored papers are made from kozo, which
has a very smooth texture. Another kind of paper like those in
the Shoso-in is made from gampi, which is a kind of wild thyme.

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Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

It's very silky feeling and used for fine writing paper and
calligraphy and for painting. Gampi cannot be cultivated,
whereas kozo can. And another kind of paper in the show was
made from mitsumata, which is a shrub that can be cultivated
too. It has a very fine gloss and is used for calligraphy and
special writing paper.

Gampi and mitsumata paper are both insect resistant. Also,
a special kind of starch made from taro root is added to
Japanese paper pulp so that when they are drying, they can just
squeeze out the water and the paper won't stick together. They
can even go through floods without damage.

This show attracted a lot of people who are interested in
handmade paper, like printmakers and fine printers. And people
who make paper for artists and such. There is a pretty well-
known studio in Berkeley that makes handmade paper, called
Imago .

Was he making book forms, or just simply pieces of paper?

Well, he did have a few blank booksblank sheets bound in book
form, in the show. And various things like Japanese-style
stationery and blank calling cards. But it was mainly papers-
colored papers, ones with inclusions like seaweed or bits of
confetti, and fold-dyed papers and decorative block-printed
ones. The Japanese make the finest paper in the world, and
Eishiro Abe makes the finest paper in Japan, so it was an honor
to have this show.

You had a show of handmade paper earlier.

Yes, Dominic. Dominic Di Mare worked in handmade paper. He
made paper in a very simple manner in his own house, sort of in
a patio, so he didn't have a real paper studio or anything like
that. Just very, very simple equipment, which he made himself,
of course.

Collecting in Mexico for the 1975 Christmas Show

Riess: Margery, I see that we've missed a Christmas exhibition.

Mexican Folk Art, Christmas 1975. And you were one of the
collectors, you and Ellen Kernaghan. Tell me about that,
please.

191

Anneberg: The thing about this was, I didn't have quite enough from the
various other collectors. They each had kind of smallish
amounts, and I needed a lot of stuff for a December show, around
Christmastime, because I usually sold quite a lot then. In
December people really wanted to see an exuberance of color and
lots and lots of pieces.

I was worried about not having enough, but fortunately a .
friend of mine wanted to go to Mexico and look for things at the
same time, so we went down together over Thanksgiving. We were
there three days exactly, but we went straight to Mexico City,
where there were some really good government stores, and also a
good folk art shop that we knew of.

The two of us got a bunch of large paper cartons . We had
to bring everything back with us, and we had to pack it up well,
because I had to get back and open the show at the gallery, you
see. This was really right down to the wire. We had everything
figured out, and we didn't have time to run around Mexico City
looking for paper cartons and wrapping stuff, packing things.
So we brought it all down with us. We flattened the paper
cartons and tied them together, we brought masking tape to seal
them up with, and what else? Lots and lots of twine to tie
things with if we had to, and we just checked them in with our
luggage.

When we got down there we picked up a whole lot of
newspapers, and we wadded them up and used that for packing
material. We would go out and buy during the day, and bring it
back to the hotel room, and pack everything up. It was quite an
adventure. And we managed to bring it all back without it
having to go through customs separately, we brought it back as
excess luggage on the same plane we were on, so we could guide
it through customs ourselves, answer all the questions that
needed to be answered, things like that.

[laughs] I'm sure we could have lied, saying they were all
gifts and things like that. Well, actually, we didn't have to.
All we had to do was say that it wasn't old, it was just curios
and things like that, which they didn't mind being taken out of
Mexico. All they were worried about was antiques.

Riess: But then did you have to pay duty when you came in?

Anneberg: No, they didn't ask us to pay any duty at all. I made a

complete list of everything, but they weren't even interested.

Riess: When you went to the Mexican art stores, you said you were a
shopkeeper? What kind of a bargainer are you?

192

Anneberg: No, we didn't have to. In many parts of Mexico, you didn't
really bargain any more. You didn't bargain in government
stores, and you didn't bargain from Victor, who had the folk art
shop that I mentioned. He had his prices, and if you didn't
like them, you didn't buy.

But it wasn't such an enormous amount that we were bringing
out, it wasn't really worth our being given some special status.
We weren't really buying an enormous amount.

Did that trip make you want to do more of that?

Well, I would like to have, but for the most part, I couldn't
get away from the gallery. I didn't have the luxury of being
able to do my own collecting, because I had to be there running
the gallery. But this was a lot of fun.

Riess: Are these [in announcement picture] ones that you chose?

Anneberg: No, those were from another collector. These are from Ocumicho,
in Michoacan--that little town has become very famous for these
big panoramas of the Last Supper and things like that, that you
can see in the Mexican Museum gift shop. At the time, though,
they mostly depicted the devils that they believed occupied
places like volcanoes and caves.

Riess:
Anneberg:

January 1977: Tibetan Artifacts

Riess: Now, back to 1977. Journey to Tibet [January 20-February 12].

Anneberg: Yes. And there I must say that I was a little bit ahead of the
game, as I often wasunfortunately for sales, because people
had not yet taken an interest in Tibetan rugs. I had a roomful
of Tibetan rugs, none of which sold. Later on, just several
years later when people realized how wonderful they were,
collectors started collecting them. People started buying them,
and you couldn't find one in town for love nor money.

Riess: The prayer rugs?

Anneberg: There were various kinds. Small square rugs that were for a

monk or someone to sit upon while meditating. There were longer
rugs that were used in the lamaseries almost like hall runners.
There were rugs for various purposes, including something like a
saddle blanket that was a rug that went under the saddle on the
horse. It had an unusual shape.

193

The colors were absolutely undescribable, the oranges and
reds and pinks and blues and greens that you don't find in other
handwoven rugs from other great rug centers. The wool is
especially fine, almost glossy, and the pile is a bit longer
than other handwoven rugs. Also, the knots aren't quite as
close together, so at first people just looked at things like
thatthe colors were strange, the knots weren't as tightly
spaced.

Riess: Which is usually the hallmark of fine rugs?

Anneberg: Yes, for rugs that we know from Afghanistan, Iran, that area.
These were different and had to be looked upon as a different
order of rug entirely.

Of course, once people really digested them and saw their
true qualities and this wonderful look, they couldn't understand
why they weren't around. I had a lot of them, dozens of them,
and nobody took any interest at all. They were very
inexpensive, compared to the prices dealers were getting for
them just a few years later.

Riess: It seems too bad that you couldn't have maintained a stock.
Moke Mokotoff and Arthur Alden Leeper were the collectors?

Anneberg: They were dealers themselves, you see, so there was no way I
could cut in on that.

Riess: Was interest in Tibet high at the time?

Anneberg: Oh, yes. There were Tibetan meditation centers in Berkeley, and
a lot of work was being done in transcribing Tibetan texts, or
translating them into Englishrepublishing them, or sometimes
publishing some of them for the first time, was being done in
Berkeley.

Riess: So it wasn't a lack of interest in Tibet.

Anneberg: That's right. But people really hadn't seen Tibetan artifacts
much, except for jewelry. But I got some interest from
collectors of other things. For instance, anything having to do
with human bones and skulls attracts certain collectors. I had
the human skull crowd rushing in to buy [laughter].

Riess: Is that really true? There is such a crowd?

Anneberg: Yes, that's attractive to some people and some collectors. And
in this show there were things made of human skulls, drinking
vessels I think they were. I had several skulls, or just the

194

Riess:
Anneberg:

bowl part of the skull, not the face part, the top of the head.
This is part of theI'm afraid I can't explain it very well,
the Tibetan attitude toward life and death, you see, that it's
all an illusion anyway.

Death is not something to be feared, but it's something to
be taken as part of the great cycle of being. So there are
horns made of human thigh bones. The announcement here shows a
wonderful Tibetan monk with heavy, dark-rimmed glasses, a bit
cross-eyed, and he is blowing on a human thigh bone, some sort
of a horn, with a veryyou can tell that he's always laughing
and smiling. Moke said that he was very jolly, a wonderful guy,
There's something comical about him, just-- [laughs] being
wrapped in- -I don't know, it looks like he must have about six
robes on. He's all bundled up, with his prayer beads hanging
from the horn.

Did you have any emissaries from Tibet at that show?

Well, yes, at the opening there was a Tibetan monk that Moko
knew, maybe several, I don't remember now.

March 1977; Mats from Borneo

Riess: Now, Mats from Borneo [March 1977].

Anneberg: This was a show of just Borneo mats, but before this I had
several shows which included baskets from the same area of
Borneo, the southern part, called Kalimantan.

Riess: Borneo is the wild men, isn't it?

Anneberg: Well, the central part, to the north of Kalimantan, is head-
hunter country. Most of it formerly was rain forest, and kind
of swampy, drained by several large rivers, but very swampy,
like rain forests are. But Kalimantan, in the southern part of
Borneo, is rice-growing, and not jungle.

Most of these mats were woven by the Kayan people, who are
rice growers for the most part. But the finest ones are woven
by the Poona, who are very elusive and seldom seen because they
are constantly moving around, avoiding contact with outsiders.
Some have been converted by missionaries and settled in
villages. But the Poona that stay hidden keep their culture
intact and they are the ones that weave these very fine mats and
baskets with the beautiful designs. Mostly for their own use,

195

but they do sell some, which are then bartered and end up far
from the place they came from because they're so highly prized.
I'm not sure where these nomadic Poona live, somewhere in the
rain forest. The Poona mats in this show were old and stained,
definitely used.

Riess: And were these sleeping mats?

Anneberg: The Poona ones were. The Kayan mats were mostly larger, for
various uses. All through the Orient, people sleep on mats.
They do everything on mats. They live on the floor instead of
halfway up like we do, on tables and chairs and beds. They sit
on the floor and eat on the floor, and so in most of these
cultures they use mats extensively.

Riess: Are these particularly fine in their decorative motifs?

Anneberg: Some of them were quite wonderful, especially the Poona sleeping
mats and the Kayan ones that show Poona influence. They were
usually not in colors, just black and white, and natural shades,
I think, of reeds andalthough the black here may have been
dyed, I'm not certain about that.

Riess: Who were Robbie, Don, and Michael?

Anneberg: Robbie Bennett was an Australian, married to a Javanese woman
and living in Indonesia. Don Bierlich was a fellow from Los
Angeles who contributed some of the mats. And Michael Yerby was
a young man that I knew who collected wonderful textiles and
baskets for other shows that I had. The last I heard, he was
teaching in Kalimantan and I think married to a woman from
there.

Riess: So these three were not associated, except in your show?
Anneberg: They knew each other, that's all.

Riess: When a show like this was taken down, was there another place
they would take the show?

Anneberg: Very often the collectors had their outlets. Perhaps they had
things on consignment in certain shops, or sometimes they would
have other shows.

Riess: But not in the Bay Area?

Anneberg: Well, Straw Into Gold carried Mike Yerby 's mats for quite a

while, and they carried a lot of baskets from Borneo, that sort

196

of thing. Because at that time they had an interest in this
sort of thing.

A lot of weavers were interested in the mats, but they were
difficult for people in our culture to use. They weren't strong
enough to be really walked on like the Japanese tatami mats are,
which are made for that purpose. These mats are meant to be
used and replaced frequently. People hang them on walls and
over doorways, but they also eat on them, they spill things on
them, they walk on them and get them dirty, and they sleep on
them. They're very cool, you see, and they don't have the
concept of having to sleep on soft things that we do, as long as
there are several layers of mats.

April 1977: Traditional Weaving of West Africa

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

West African Folk Textiles, Traditional Weaving and Dyeing
Today, collected by Ann Maurice [April 7-30, 1977].

Yes. These were from Mali and from Upper Volta, which is now
called Burkina Faso, that part of West Africa. And a lot of
them were tie-dyed, as you can see here. Many of them were
woven by men in that area on narrow looms, about four inches
wide. Rente cloth, which you've probably seen, is woven on
those very narrow looms and then sewed together to make larger
pieces. Most of the textiles in this show were woven on the
very narrow men's looms.

The men were the weavers of fabrics that they wore
themselves, like the kente cloth. They also wove a lot of
blankets, which were again woven in narrow strips and sewn
together.

Is that because they traveled with the looms?
that earlier.

You mentioned

Yes, they did. The weavers would take their looms from village
to village and set them up in sort of like a town squareonly
it wasn't usually squarean area where people gather, and where
they hold markets and things like that, and they would just tie
them between two trees. It takes up quite a bit of room, but
it's very portable. If a thunderstorm should suddenly arise,
they can gather everything up very fast and duck for cover.

They roll up these long pieces of cloth into great wheels
and carry them around that way. They're really very portable,

197

and they can take them from village to village, and that way
sell the things that they've woven, or sometimes weave to order.
The blankets from Mali are often of coarse wool from white
camels .

Riess: What about the women?

Anneberg: Women don't travel. Women stay at home. They weave other

things for their own use and wear on large floor looms which are
not portable, which are in the house.

Riess: Were these colors fast, or was that not even an issue as far as
you were concerned?

Anneberg: The tie-dyed and stitch-dyed things were usually indigo. There
were also some textiles that were batik, a batik that was
different from Indonesian batik. I don't know how they did it.
There were dyes like kola nut--I think it was the leaf of the
kola treewhich was an attractive brownish color. That was
very popular, and overdyed with indigo it produced a really nice
green. It was especially beautiful. These were often on flour
sacks and were worn by women as skirts.

Riess: Did the local African-American community come to this show, or
other shows from Africa?

Anneberg: No. I don't recall that such shows created any interest at all
there. I didn't really have time to get out and mix with other
communities and try to interest them in the gallery. I simply
had no time whatsoever to do that sort of thing. I had a lot of
people on my mailing list, and it was well advertised in the
paper, in the pink section. But I rarely got people from the
various ethnic groups in this area. I rarely if ever got
Africans coming and buying African cloth, and I never got Asians
coming in to see the various shows from that part of the world,
almost never.

Riess: Was that frustrating?

Anneberg: Well, it was, in a way. I would have liked to have had more
such people interested.

Riess: To create a circle that closed somehow.

Anneberg: Yes. Sometimes I got Japanese Americans coming in to see
Japanese shows. I got I think probably a little bit more
interest in the papers of Eishiro Abe from the Japanese

198

community, but I didn't normally get that sort of interest from
the various ethnic communities around, and it was something that
I regretted, but there wasn't much I could do about it.
Galleries are generally intimidating to people outside their
usual interest groups, I'm afraid.

Another thing was that people connected with third-world
cultures didn't always appreciate being reminded of the
"folkier" aspects of their culture. It was as if they weren't
being depicted as part of the modern world. They didn't all
feel that way, of course.

May 1977- July 1977; African and New Guinea Sculpture; Uzbek and
Afghan Textiles; Ikats and Batiks from Indonesia; Art of the
Upper Amazon

Riess: African and New Guinea Sculpture, Uzbek and Afghan Textiles,
collected by Will Collier [May 19- June 4, 1977].

Anneberg: This was an unusual show in that it was a mixed collection, but
I thought it was very good on the whole. He had collected some
interesting things. There were some nice sculpture pieces, and
some beautiful silk ikats from Afghanistan, mostly Uzbeki.

Riess: This head is set with shells, inset into wood?

Anneberg: I don't recall. It was covered with something that looks like
cowrie shells but they weren't. It was a different sort of
shell.

Riess: Ikats and Batiks from Indonesia, collected by Joseph Fischer
[June 1977].

Anneberg: And Laurence Moss. Joe Fischer was writing a book on ikats and
batiks from Indonesia, to be published by University of
California Press. It was going to be the catalogue for a huge
exhibition at the Lowie Museum of Anthropology and the
University Art Museum of the University of California at
Berkeley. I believe that both Joe and Laurence Moss were
curating this show. So they both knew a lot about Indonesian
textiles and they had some good things. There were actually
more than just ikats and batiks in the show, there were other
artifacts as well from Indonesia.

199

Riess: As you talk about it, we must be working up to a museum, because
you're so conscientious and aware of what you're offering
people, and yet it was so ephemeral.

Anneberg: Yes. Well, ikats were of tremendous interest to the textile
community, more than batiks.

Riess: Did they want to pick them up and really handle them?

Anneberg: Oh, yes. They were very interested in that.

Riess: So there was something that they could learn and copy from?

Anneberg: They couldn't do exactly the same sort of thing. They weren't
interested in that. But they were increasingly interested in
learning the technique, which is very difficult to do the way
people work here.

You see, we work one by one, an individual artist or weaver
or textile maker in a studio. Whereas the way they work in
Indonesia, a whole village might be involved in the production
of the ikats. All of the women in a certain village will be
working together. It's a very complex process, so to make some
of these pictorial ikats or ikats with a lot of design really
requires the work of a number of people.

Riess: Was there ever any effort here to create a workshop situation?

Anneberg: No, it just wouldn't be possible. You couldn't afford it.
There wasn't money for that sort of thing.

Riess: And working as an individual, there's something very American
about that idea.

Anneberg: Yes, it is. So ikats that people succeeded in doing here were
quite different. It was ikat all right, but it was modified to
suit the capabilities of an individual artist working alone, and
also the sort of look that the artist might want to achieve,
which would certainly be very, very different from anything
found in Africa or Indonesia or Japan, for instance.

Riess: Did they end up doing more random things here because that way
they didn't have to control as much, would you say?

Anneberg: I think there was a lot more randomness. Because a tight

control and a specific design is not of paramount importance to
an artist working today, especially in America. In fact, the
mistakes are just as sought after sometimes.

200

]Riess: This really is a folk craft, rather than an individual artist's
production. Whose is the guiding vision?

Anneberg: It's hard to say, I don't really know how they worked. 1 know
that it would take a number of people to tie the knots and do
the dying and that sort of thing, and to keep track ofit's
very difficult to keep track of the various bundles of dyed
yarns so that they'll come out looking like a design, which I
suppose is drawn out ahead of time. It may have been drawn out
by one person, or, it may have been the work of several, I don't
know.

Riess: People of the Upper Amazon and their Arts, Collection and Color
Photographs by Lisa McCreery and Robert Duncan [July 7-30,
1977]. Is that Robert Duncan the poet?

Anneberg: No, this has no relation whatsoever to that Robert Duncan.

Riess: Were the color photographs for sale, or were they just
illustrations of how the people lived?

Anneberg: I can't remember. They may have just accompanied it to show the
ambiance, the background of the various things.

It was a very interesting show, with some costumes, and
masks. The costumes were from--I can't tell you the name of the
tribe right now, but they were from one of the tributaries of
the Amazon and were brought out from the interior. They were
costumes made of bark cloth, pounded bark. So it was almost
like a tapa cloth. It was not the same type of thing exactly,
it was more barky- looking, because it wasn't made from the paper
mulberry, like tapa.

Riess: Are they quite indestructible?

Anneberg: They were made to be worn only at puberty ceremonies, and they
were originally meant to be destroyed afterwards, but more and
more they were taken out and sold, you see. As long as they
were gotten rid of, I suppose it didn't matter whether they
burned them or sold them to collectors.

September 1977: Mexican Dance Masks. Ceremonial and Not

Riess: Milagros and Old Dance Masks of Mexico, collected by Grace Relfe
[September 2-10, 1977] .

201

Anneberg: Well, this was my first Mexican mask show, and I knew nothing
whatsoever about Mexican masks at this time. There was no one
that you could ask about [them] that I knew of, and no books on
the subject, so I was completely bewildered, I simply didn't
know what I was looking at. Years and years later I became more
knowledgeable about them and was able to distinguish a true
ceremonial dance mask from a mask that was made just as an
artifact, something to look at or sell to somebody else.

Most of the masks in this show, if not all, were of that
sort. I didn't know at all that they weren't genuine dance
masks. They were made for a very different purpose, and that
was simply as decoration, as fantasy. But they were works of
art in many ways and they were very interesting. And I didn't
know it at the time, but they were often made by the same
carvers as the dance mask makers, the same people.

These masks would simply be expressing something very
different. Instead of following traditional precepts in carving
a certain type of mask for a certain dance--and they had to be
very, very strict, you see, because tradition is followed in a
very strict way for ceremonial masks these were very full of
fantasy and had a lot of snakes and lizards and things like that
crawling all over them, which are not common in dance masks.
They had a lot of expression.

Very often the faces were contorted or--how can I say it?
In a ceremonial mask the face is more passive, it's not
emotional, that wasn't the point of a ceremonial dance. But
these very often showed a great deal of emotion. The mouths
were wide open, and the eyes bulging or with expressions of
fright or horror or happiness, or some very pronounced emotional
state.

Riess: Were they being collected from one village, or did she collect
them from many places?

Anneberg: No, as it turns outwell, she collected them from people who
brought them out. She lived in Zihuatanejo, which is in
Guerrero. These masks were made in the state of Guerrero, not
in the area where she lived, but a considerable distance away.
People would bring them down out of the mountains or the hills,
out of the back woods, and sell them. They were often carved in
one place and then brought to another place where they were
painted.

But all this took a long time to put together. It was not
easy to discover, because it was a phenomenon that began in the
1970s and reached its peak in the 1970s, and that has not really

202

been asthey still make non-ceremonial masks in Mexico, but
they aren't as good. The really golden period was the 1970s.

Riess: You were more than a little ambivalent about the fact that you
had something that was not really authentic?

Anneberg: I didn't know that they were not ceremonial. I had no idea. I
had never seen Mexican masks really in any quantity. I had seen
some. I had had some in the gallery in connection with some of
my Christmas shows, but they were ceremonial masks, and they
were of such a different type that these stunned me. They were
really very, very different. I didn't know what to make of them
at all, but neither did anybody else who first saw them, so they
puzzled a lot of people.

October 1977-December 1977; Ann Christenson; Chaika Marbled
Paper; Mexican Ex-Voto Folk Painting and Milagros; African,
Chinese, and European Beadwork; Folk Arts of Mexico

Riess: Ann Christenson, Porcelain [October 20-November 12, 1977],

Anneberg: Ann Christenson was the person who made the fantasy teapot that
you see here, which really works, incidentally.

Riess: You had an earlier show of hers?
Anneberg: Yes. This was a second show.

Riess: Chaika Marbled Paper, Decorative Paper by Betty Lou Beck and
David Henderson [September 13-24, 1977], What is Chaika?

Anneberg: Chaika is just the name of their studio. They made marbled

paper in their studio setting forsome people collect marbled
paper, and there are a number of bookbinders in the Bay Area who
use it, so they were pretty well known in this area. Some of
them were well, they were all beautiful.

Riess: What did you have for sale?

Anneberg: Sheets of marbled paper.

Riess: And the show was only for ten days? That's a short one.

Anneberg: Yes, that's a fairly short show.

203

Riess: One Hundred Years of Mexican Ex-Voto Folk Painting and Milagros
[September 29-October 15, 1977]. That looks like a wonderful
show. Rae and Joe Neumen.

Anneberg: Rae and Joe, yes. They got these from a dealer in Mexico, and

they were all from one particular church. It was very puzzling,
because none of us knew exactly how the dealer had gotten them
or why they had been sold. They spanned a hundred years- -they
came right up into the 1960s.

This is a very traditional scene that you see on half of
the milagro ex-voto painting here, and then a more graphic
picture on the other side. Now, an ex-voto painting is a
painting that is made in thanks to the Virgin for having
interceded and delivered you from some terrible fate. Might
have been illness or an accident or something that you
miraculously recovered from, like an operation.

Riess: And where would they be in the church?

Anneberg: Usually, they would just be nailed to the wall. And they were

painted on sort of copper, or I don't know what it is, not
necessarily copper, but steel or tin. There were milagro
painters, semi-professional village painters who would paint to

order. Very often there are standard scenes of the Virgin and a

kneeling figure, and you can just buy one of those, and then

underneath have printed on there what you are giving thanks for,
or your name .

But it was a bit dicey because we really didn't understand
why there were so many of them from this one church. It was
possibly because the church might have needed a new roof or
something like that, or possibly the wall was being torn down to
make room for some renovations, or an extension on the church,
or something like that. Perhaps the priest decided it was a
good way to pay for the new roof or whatever needed to be done--
to sell the ex-voto paintings.

Riess: You don't think that Rae and Joe went down there and talked him
out of them?

Anneberg: I know they didn't because they were in the dark as to exactly
how- -they knew that it was on the up and up, they weren't
stolen, they were bought from a church by a dealer, and they
bought them from the dealer. But it was a bit odd that so many
of them would come from one church.

Riess: African, Chinese, and European Beadwork by Noel Michelson
[November 16-26, 1977] .

204

Anneberg: Yes. She made up beaded necklaces using very nice beads from

Africa, China, and Czechoslovakia and various bead centers, and
coins and things like that.

Riess: Another short show, the second I've seen that's only ten days.
You would decide to do that occasionally?

Anneberg: It worked out that way. I don't remember the situation.

Galleries sometimes have scheduling problems, and you find
yourself with a "hole" that needs filling up. If you're lucky
you can call on someone who is happy to have even a two-week
show and has some good work that just fits the bill.

Riess: Folk Arts of Mexico [December 1977]. What is this thing called?

Anneberg: That in England is called a corn dolly. Now, this particular
design, which I used for the announcement in this show of folk
arts of Mexico, collected by Rae and Joe Neumen again, that
particular corn dolly is very traditional in Mexico. I don't
know how it got from Europe to Mexico, because I think that they
do a very similar one in Portugal and--I don't know if they do
that particular design in England or not.

Anneberg: They certainly have pre-Christian associations of the harvest.
In Europe they're still being made today, but probably for
different reasons. In Mexico, this is called corazon de trigo,
"heart of the wheat." It looks like a heart. The design may
have come by way of Spain and Portugal. I'm not certain whether
they make them specifically for a harvest celebration or what.

February 1978: Ceremonial Ikat Weavings and Artifacts from
Borneo, and Reflections on What Anneberg Would and Would Not
Show in the Gallery

Riess: Ceremonial Ikat Weavings and Artifacts from Borneo [February 2-
25, 1978] --amazing ikat.

Anneberg: This particular area in Borneo does some fantastic weaving.

They decorated the inside of a longhouse, which was occupied by
a number of families, and they have ceremonial importance.
These were head-hunting societies, so a lot of the designs have
to do with the rituals of headhunting. It's not the sort of
thing I like very well, but they are certainly fine weavings.

205

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

It's interesting to me that the same culture that's engaged in
hunting heads is also home tending the ikat.

Well, head-hunting was very extensive all over Southeast Asia at
one time. It was quite common, and had a lot to do withwell,
with seeking power in various ways. The reasons why head
hunting was important probably varied in different cultures, but
it was certainly practiced in Borneo and other parts of
Indonesia, as well as parts of New Guinea and even the
Philippines.

When you say this isn't something you particularly like, I kind
of wonder why you would have the show, then.

Oh, whether or not I had an emotional feeling against it made no
difference. If I recognized it as a true traditional art that
was important and of good quality, I certainly would show it,
whether or not it was something that I felt anything against or
for.

Did this collector send you a piece, or a photograph?
of an approach did they make or did you make?

What kind

Riess:

I think they brought in some samples. Usually, the person
brought in some pieces to show me, and photographs perhaps as
well. I can't remember, but I think this was the show where
they also brought in a shrunken head, and I refused to show it.

I had some rules in the gallery. For one, I didn't show
weapons of any sort. I refused to show sharp knives or anything
that was used to kill people. I just could not show that sort
of thing. I refused to show this head, which was an example of
the sort of heads that would occupy a ceremonial position in the
long house, probably a great many heads.

This sort of thing in New Guinea is still going on in
remote areas. It still takes place.

How about erotic art? Would there be some things that would be
offensive?

Anneberg: I really never ran up against that, except in one particular

instance. A young anthropologist from Berkeley came back with
some silver things from Taxco, which were articulated couples in
[laughter] interesting poses. You could move them and make
things happen, you see. They were very funny, and they were
brought back at a time when this was absolutely against the law
in Mexico. There were very strict anti-pornography laws, and

206

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

you could not transport these things over the border. You could
be fined or put in jail even on the Mexican side.

So it was at some risk that she brought these back. I
thought, well, they were so funny and utterly delightful, and
had all the qualities of Mexican folk art that I liked, so I
bought all she had. But I couldn't have them right out in the
cases, you see. They were not part of a show, they were just in
with some of the other things that I had in the shop part. But
because I had so many sweet little ladies [laughter] who came in
often that I didn't want to offend, I had to be discreet.

So I had some difficulty showing them and selling them, and
I ended up with a lot of them that I hadn't sold. I'd show them
to certain people, you see. The word would get around. But I
ended up with quite a few which I sold in my final sale when I
went out of business. I had some wonderful stuff tucked away.

Good. You had sweet little ladies who stopped by?

Lots and lots, yes.

Were they collectors, or just--what were they doing?

There were lots of people who just came to every show to see
what was there. I don't think that they bought very much. But
no, I had a certain regard for my regulars, whether or not they
bought things. They were important to me in lots of ways.

Well, they thought it was a museum already.
Yes, they treated it that way. Certainly did.

March 1978- January 1979; Votive Arts of Mexico; Serapes and
Blankets from Northern and Central Mexico; Indonesian Textiles,
Carved Wooden Puppets from Java; More Mexican Dance Masks;
Textiles and Figures of Asia. Africa, and the Americas; Shipibo
Pottery; West African Textiles from Ghana and Upper Volta;
Madhubani Folk Paintings; Candelario Medrano. Mexican Folk
Artist; Antique Japanese Baskets, Kasuri and Stencilled Textiles

Riess: Votive Arts of Mexico, Old Santos and Religious Paintings on Tin
[March 10-April 18, 1978]. How old?

Anneberg: Well, it's hard to say. I think most of these were 19th
century. I don't think they were any older than that.

207

Riess: And it's that very porous wood?

Anneberg: No, it was various kinds of wood. It wasn't really porous.

Very few of these were completely intact. They would have hands
missing or something like that.

The santos from Mexico are fairly difficult to come by.
Many of these were small figures which were used in household
altars at home. I would say that they were probably more likely
to have been used at home than in a church.

Religious paintings on tinthese were pictures of saints
and that sort of thing. It was a very nice show.

Riess: A Hundred Years of Scrapes and Blankets from Northern and

Central Mexico, collected by John Mendenez [April 13-May 17,
1978] .

Anneberg: Yes. That was the only time that I really had a lot of what

you'd call serapes, traditional-looking blankets of this type.
Some of them were fairly old, and some of them were fairly
recent. It was a nice show. There were a number of different
styles represented, from various parts of Mexico.

Riess: Indonesian Textiles and Other Handcrafts, Old Carved Wooden
Wayang Puppets? [May 25-June 17, 1978]

Anneberg: Wayang. That's a kind of shadow puppet drama from Java. Traude
Gavin was a collector who lived in Bali, and Bali was one of the
main places where collectors went to buy Indonesian textiles.
There were some very good dealers in Bali, and also in Djakarta
or Java. It was possible to buy very fine Indonesian textiles
from dealers who had shops in these places collectors very
rarely traveled around to the various islands. There were
professional buyers, mostly Chinese-Indonesians, who did that.

This piece on the announcement is a detail from a
selendong, which is a long in this case silk shawl-like piece.
This was batik. I believe it was indigo, blue and white.

Riess: Animals, Demons, Men, Mexican Dance Masks collected by Grace
Relfe [June 29-July 29, 1978].

Anneberg: Here is a second show from the same collector of Mexican masks.
Riess: Did Jungian analysts buy these to hang in their offices?

Anneberg: No. [laughs] But they caused quite a lot of interest. That's
why I had a second show from the same collector. I still didn't

208

know anything more about these masks than I did the first time,
but a young man [Craig Kodros] came in and explained to me--
well, he was very polite about it, but he had begun to
understand the difference between these masks and the real
ceremonial kind. He had been collecting the real ceremonial
masks, and all of a sudden these wild things came on the market.

It took him a long time to distinguish all the various
types of purely decorative masks that were being made in
Guerrero during the 1970s. It was a very thriving industry.
Not everybody understood, or understands to this day, the
difference between decorative and ceremonial Mexican masks. You
still see museums (including the Mexican Museum, I'm sorry to
say) showing these non-ceremonial masks labeled as ceremonial.
Anyway, Craig Kodros came in and put me straight on what I was
showing, so from then on I was a little more careful. I
gradually began to learn from him.

Riess: And so you wouldn't call them Mexican ceremonial masks anymore,
you would just call them Mexican masks.

Anneberg: If I showed them at all, yes. I tried not to from this point

on, but even Craig didn't know all the different types that were
spurious .

Riess: I don't understand the principle here.

Anneberg: Well, ceremonial dances are still performed, and very seriously,
in Mexico, and the masks that go with them are of a semi-
religious character. It's a very serious business.

Riess: So it really steps over the line to pass these false masks off
at real ceremonial masks, even as you sell them.

Anneberg: Yes. The mask makers themselves were not the ones who sold

these creations, or passed them off as genuine ceremonial masks.
They weren't making the masks as deliberate fakes at all, they
were making them just as artistic carvings. From their point of
view, they were just expressing themselves as artists, as
opposed to the times when they carved according to the
traditions of the dance, as ceremonial mask makers. So the same
person could do these two different things sometimes, and not
have any qualms about it at all.

Riess: Yes, so why couldn't you sell them without qualms?

Anneberg: Because I didn'tyou see, people didn't know the difference.

They were buying and selling the masks, thinking that they were
ceremonial.

209

Riess: You mean the middlemen were?

Anneberg: Galleries and shops--dealers--were selling them, and people,
collectors and museums, bought them. The middlemen in Mexico
sometimes knew perfectly well that they weren't genuine
ceremonial masks. Sometimes they knew, and sometimes they
didn't know. It's kind of a complicated matter.

Riess: Traditional Expressions, Textiles and Figures of Asia, Africa,
and the Americas [August 1978].

Anneberg: August was the month I usually had just a general folk art show,
with no particular focus. A lot of galleries just have what
they call a group show. Same thing really.

Shipibo Pottery of the Peruvian Amazon [September 1978] .
Now, this is a very interesting show. Lisa McCreery and Bob
Duncan, the two that collected for this other Amazon show. Lisa
McCreery was the person I really had most to do with. I didn't
see Bob Duncan very much, but Lisa was in quite a bit. She had
found this contact up the Amazon in a certain village who would
supply her with Shipibo pottery for a gallery show.

Riess: Shipibo is the name of the area?

Anneberg: Shipibo is the name of the tribal group that paints this

distinctive pottery with small geometric-type lines. This
particular jar [illustrated in announcement] is for holding
fermented something-or-other, kind of a fermented alcoholic
drink. I have a [Shipibo] bowl up here on the bookcase. That's
very typical.

This show was packed up and sent out of this village on a
truck, destined for Lima, where it was to be professionally
repacked and flown up to the gallery just in the nick of time to
meet the scheduled date for the show. We only had about a week
or so leeway in order to give us just enough time to open the
show after getting it through customs and all that sort of
thing.

Well, unfortunately in this area of Peru there was a
general strike called--! can't remember, but it involved a lot
of transportationand the truck driver had to stop and clear
off the road, because the strikers had rolled these enormous
boulders onto the road at ten-mile intervals or so. Whereas it
would normally be a several-days drive, it took him two weeks,
something like that .

210

The show was literally two weeks late in opening. We
simply didn't know whether we were going to get a show or not.
I had to scurry around and call people and put notices on the
door. I couldn't mail notices out to my mailing list, but I had
a lot of explaining to do. When it finally arrived it was a
wonderful show. We put it up in a hurry. We got it through
customs very fast here, they were very cooperative.

Riess: I thought you were going to say that when it finally arrived, it
arrived in many pieces.

Anneberg: Only one piece broke, and that is the piece you're holding in
your hand. It was the only one that broke out of the whole
show, getting it up here. It's amazing.

Riess: West African Textiles from Ghana and Upper Volta, Bonnie Britton
is the collector [October 5-28, 1978].

Anneberg: Yes, and this included a lot of Ghana kente cloths. And also

other kinds of textiles. It was quite a good show, the only one
I ever had with things from Ghana.

Madhubani Folk Paintings from Bihar, India, collected by
Mary and Tony DeBone from Berkeley [November 2-25, 1978]. Tony
worked for the University of California on the campus there, and
Mary was interested in textiles. She was doing research in
India, especially on the silk double ikats of Patan in Gujerat.
But in this particular instance they collected folk paintings,
which I thought was a marvelous departure from my usual Indian
shows. These were on paper, and came from a particular village
in Bihar--they were traditional in that village.

Riess: The 1978 Christmas show, Mexican Folk Art. Candelario Medrano.

Anneberg: Unusual things from Candelario Medrano, who later became very
famous for other types of things, like painted clay buildings,
ships, cars, and trucks. I had a lot of those in this show too.
But Candelario Medrano also made very traditional ceramics, cast
from molds, which he then painted rather wildly. These on the
announcement were wonderful angel figures and a figure of San
Miguel. Absolutely wonderful. Rather sloppy, like a lot of
Candelario 's work is, but they really had a lot of gusto.

Riess: Antique Japanese Baskets, Kasuri and Stencilled Textiles,
collected by Cynthia Shaver [January 10-February 3, 1979].

Anneberg: Kasuri is the Japanese word for ikat. These were old futon
covers, indigo dyed kasuri with pictorial designs, and some
beautiful painted and stencilled futon covers. These were

211

Riess:
Anneberg:

combined with a wonderful collection of old ikebana (flower
arrangement) baskets. A stunning show.

I wonder whether Kasuri Dye Works was in Berkeley by this time,
I think they were.

February 1979: Borneo Baskets, and a Discussion of Baskets

Riess: Indonesian Ikat Textiles collected by Grace Relfe [February 8-
March 3, 1979]. Borneo Baskets and Artifacts, Robbie Bennett.

[looking at announcement illustration] This is what you're
talking about, the old coin imagery?

Anneberg: Yes. The Dutch were in Indonesia for quite a long time, and

they brought with them tapestries and other European textiles.
Some of these textiles then influenced weavers on the islands,
especially Sabu and Sumba.

Anneberg: Sabu Island used a lot of floral motifs, especially roses, that
were more European than anything else.

Riess: That has a medieval tapestry look.

Anneberg: Yes. I think it was probably taken from a tapestry. But I
thought they were interesting from that standpoint. Grace
collected a lot of these very pictorial pieces from Sabu.

We should say something about the baskets that I've been
showing from this part of the world and Japan. The Borneo
baskets were mostly what they call black baskets. They were
blackened in the house, hung up on the rafters and covered
eventually with greasy smoke and soot from the open hearth.
They cooked over open-pit fires, right in the middle of the
living quarters.

They smoked the baskets to season the rattan that they make
them from. It filled all the pores and fibers of the rattan
with this oily smoke which made the baskets insect-proof for one
thing, and also added greatly to their strength. Of course this
made them last much longer, because they would be much more
resilient and not fall apart like baskets easily do when they're
used. They break, they dry out. These had a lot of resilience

212

because they had a certain amount of oil from the smoke. And
they would turn darker and darker the longer they hung. They're
called "black baskets."

In Japan this was also done in the old farm houses. They
would hang them up in the rafters over the cooking fire. In
rice-growing areas, baskets are extremely important, because
they would use them to transport rice from the fields, to winnow
the rice, and also store it after it was prepared. So for
storage and various transporting purposes, the baskets really
had to be very strong and were very important to the culture.

In Japan they made very beautiful decorative baskets not
just for storage but also for flower arrangements, so the flower
arrangement baskets became very important. And they no longer
would hang them up, you see, in the old farm houses because the
farm houses were not concerned with the art of flower
arrangement in the same way. So they would treat them in
various ways to get the same blackened effect, but more
artistically, to look as though they were blackened. It's very
interesting.

The Borneo baskets, and the baskets from the Philippines as
well, which were blackened in the same way for the same
purposes, would arrive reeking of smoke from buffalo fat or
whatever kind of meat they eat, and they eat a lot of meat. It
was kind of a bacon-like smell. [For further discussion see
page 239]

March 1979-April 1979; Tibetan and Mongolian Treasures; Images
of Traditional China, and Discussion of Care and Handling of
Works on Paper

Riess: Tibetan and Mongolian Treasures (March 1979].

Anneberg: And that includes these wonderful little rugs. There's an

example of what I was talking about. You see, the design is so
different from anything you would see in other parts of the
world, and the colors were shockingoranges and yellows and
pink and blue and green all together. And they had a rather
deeper pile than you would see from other parts of the world.
Again, the knots were not as closely tied.

Riess: Images of Traditional China, collected by Laurence Moss [April
1979] .

213

Anneberg: Stone rubbings. Some of them were rubbings taken from stone

steles, and some were woodblock prints. But mostly these were
rubbings taken from sculptures in tombs--! don't know exactly
where they were originally situated. But they showed a lot of
different scenes from daily life, hunting and fishing and things
like that, kitchen scenes. Those were scenes that would be
carved on the walls of tombs--to accompany the deceased.

He also had some New Years woodblock prints, and this was
right after they started allowing that sort of thing again in
China. They were definitely not allowed for a number of years,
but things were loosening up in China.

Riess: You mean the subject matter was not allowed?

Anneberg: Yes, to make New Years printsbecause they depicted gods and
goddesses, the hearth gods and things like that.

It was a wonderful show, I thought, if you were interested
in Chinese history and culture. These rubbings dated from as
early as the Han Dynasty. And a lot from the Sung Dynasty.

Riess: On your labels you would have a date?

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: And the collector would have provided that material?

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: How much more would the collector do?

Anneberg: Laurence Moss in this case actually purchased these in China at
these various archaeological sites, and some of them in shops.
But mostly they were sold at the archaeological site, so the
data was accurate.

Riess: Then did you hang something like that framed?
Anneberg: No, I didn't. I couldn't possibly do that.

Riess: How did you protect something, assuming you hung these on the
wall?

Anneberg: I was very, very careful about hanging paper. For instance, in
the Abe show I used French clothespins, which are made of wire
covered with plastic, a rather decorative little clothespin that
you don't see too often, but they were available in some import
shops. So I could put nails in the wall and hang the

214

clothespins on the nails, and then attach the paper by means of
the clothespin. I may have done that with some of these as
well.

When I had to use pins I would do it very delicately, with
a very fine pin- -sometimes I even used ordinary straight pins--
and very carefully pounded them into the wall.

Riess: What kind of material were your walls?

Anneberg: Some of them were fiber board, and some of the walls were
plywood covered with burlap, which was painted white.

Riess: From your studies and your work in the library you understood
conservation issues, and scotch tape and pins.

Anneberg: I was good in some ways and terrible in other ways. [laughs] I
also had a problem, because if you made things too available
they would disappear from the walls, so you had to nail
everything down or pin everything down. Sometimes I got rather
reckless when it came to textiles, and just nailed them down,
because I preferred having a little nail hole in the object to
having it disappear altogether.

Where paper was concerned, there was not usually that sort
of a problem, so the object was to do as little violence to the
paper as possible. Sometimes it meant that it took a longer
time than usual to put up a show.

May 1979: Korean Folk Arts

Riess: Korean Folk Arts [May 3-26, 1979].

Anneberg: This was a great show, because it was the only time I was ever
able to get Korean folk art, and it was one of the last times
that it was possible to do at all. Mary Ann Shallenberger was
one of the collectors, and Shulamith Rubinfien was the other
one.

Riess: Why were these hard to get?

Anneberg: Well, because they don't allow old Korean folk art to leave the
country. You can buy any amount of it over there, but you have
to leave it there. I mean, they'll sell it to you, but you
can't take it out of the country.

215

Riess: Is that because there had been such a raid on it?

Anneberg: Yes, and they finally realized that they just had to put a stop
to it. So all of this was brought out before they stopped the
exporting of old Korean folk art. Paintings especially have not
been much seen, and still are not understood, in this country.
There are several different genres of Korean folk paintings, and
I had good examples.

Riess: This [on announcement] is a painting?

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: Is that a detail or is this the whole thing?

Anneberg: That's the whole thing.

Riess: And what is it all about?

Anneberg: I'm a little hard put to remember. Some of them were

calligraphy that was based on a character, a Korean character,
or several characters, that were then made intolet's see, how
can we put that? Then they were made into a painting,
transformed into a work of art, so that it no longer resembled
the original character, but it was based upon a calligraphic
idea.

Riess: I can see that in this one. And what is the Abacus?

Anneberg: Mary Ann Shallenberger had a shop which was called the Abacus
[in Menlo Park]. It dealt primarily in Korean folk art and
paintings. In order to get the show, I had to mention the
Abacus, but I insisted that it could not be an advertisement for
the Abacus, so I didn't explain what the Abacus was, I just left
it mysteriously in the announcement. Collected by Shulamith
Rubinfien and Mary Ann Shallenberger, the Abacus. It's a little
mysterious, but that way I got my way and she got her way.

Very often, when people know anything at all about Korean
folk paintings, they remember the paintings of tigers-. So some
of the--I don't know, what do you call them, astrological
animals? A tiger is one of the astrological animals that is
often depicted in Korean folk painting, because it has a great
decorative value. And the cock, the rooster, is another one.
But there are several other wonderful types of Korean folk
paintings that are most extraordinary. Not to mention the
boxes, baskets, and chests of drawers and other things that I
had in the show.

216

Riess: How about pottery?

Anneberg: I had some pottery too, yes. Not a great deal, but some,

Decline in Number of Contemporary Craft Artist Shows at the
Gallery

Riess: Why haven't I seen craft artist shows for the last years?

Anneberg: In the last few years, I had to start going easy on artists,

because I found that I was having greater and greater difficulty
making my rent. So I had to find shows that would sell well,
and many times that just turned out to be textile and folk art
shows .

Another reason was that by this timewe're getting into
the late seventies the work that I started doing here had taken
off, and other people started doing it, too. There were a
couple of very fine craft galleries that had sprung up. Meyer
Breier Weiss was one of them, but later on that closed and
Virginia Breier opened a gallery and shop of her own, and
Dorothy Weiss established a primarily glass and ceramics
gallery. In the 1970s Meyer Breier Weiss was a very nice
gallery devoted to contemporary craft. The other fine craft
gallery was Elaine Potter's, on Bush Street downtown.

These galleries were increasingly able to do the work of
selling and promoting contemporary crafts much better than I
could. I began to feel that I couldn't really compete that well
with them. Sometimes, it was very difficult for me to sell
craft the way I was doing it.

Riess: Whereas they could keep a larger inventory?

Anneberg: They could, yes. And they had more money to put into lighting
and displaying and things like that. They had much larger
spaces to work with. So it was just easier for me and that was
primarily the reason it was easier for me to just deal in folk
arts. I hated to have to do it that way, but it was necessary
for my own survival.

But I had some very fine folk art shows, and I think it
fulfilled an important purpose, anyway, for the artists as well
as collectors, because the artists really need access to folk
art. Folk art is one of the main inspirations for contemporary
craft. It certainly is the ancestor to a lot of contemporary

217

craft, and something craft artists all have a very strong
interest in.

Riess: Your audience continued to be the same audience.

Anneberg: Yes. I had some serious collectors who were not artists, but
most of my collectors were just people like me who bought when
they could afford it. Sometimes they would have layaways and
would buy things over a period of many months.

Riess: Did you work in trade at all?
Anneberg: No. I just couldn't do that.

June 1979-September 1979; Central Asian Silks; Wissa-Wassef
Workshop; Philippine Baskets

Riess: Central Asian Silks [May 31-June 30, 1979].

Anneberg: Mary and Tony DeBone again. And Steven Shucart. I can't

remember what role he played, but he probably supplied some of
the ikats from an area that they didn't have.

These central Asian silks came out of Afghanistan, but they
largely originated in Uzbekistan in the U.S.S.R. They were
woven in silk in very large, dramatic ikat designs from several
different areas. There were costume pieces.

Riess: That means?

Anneberg: They were ceremonial garments or pieces that were worn only on

important occasions. Most of these were quite old, from around

the turn of the century, and many of them were partly in shreds.

So unless you were going to tack them up on the wall and show

them kind of like a wall hanging, sometimes they weren't too

practical to wear. But some of them were in good enough shape
to wear.

Riess: How did you display them?

Anneberg: I put them on a rod. And usually there was an eye hook right in
the center of the rod, which was hung over a nail on the wall.

Riess: Tapestries and Batiks--the Wissa-Wassef workshop again [July 6-
August 4, 1979] .

218

Anneberg: This was Wissa-Wassef again, and this was my original contact
from the Wissa-Wassef workshop itself. He surfaced again and
wrote to me from where he was living back in Massachussetts .
Then he came into the gallery and I met him for the first time.
He supplied another show of tapestries from the Wissa-Wassef
workshop in Harania.

By this time any of the original group of children were now
in their twenties, although they were still working out of the
workshop, or the studio or whatever you would call it. So it
was a wonderful opportunity to see a lot of genuine pieces from
the Wissa-Wassef.

Riess: And these look like some smoky old Philippine baskets [September
6-29, 1979].

Anneberg: Yes, wonderful old Philippine baskets again. This was the

second time, I can't remember- -that I got Philippine baskets. I
think it was the second opportunity.

Riess: Is Grace Relfe from around here also?

Anneberg: Yes, she was a San Francisco girl. She went down later and kind
of homesteaded, I suppose you'd call it, a place in Zihuatanejo.
Started living there, and before she knew it, by right of having
occupied the premises for a long enough period of time she owned
the land, as long as she lived on it. If she moved away, or
stayed away for any length of time, then she would no longer be
owner of the land, according to Mexican law.

Riess: She continues to be a conduit for art from that part of the
world?

Anneberg: She traveled around various places. Mexico, Indonesia, and the
Philippines. And she brought back some very fine baskets.

While I had this show on, another collector that I later
had several shows from showed up, and he said that he had some
Philippine baskets in his car and would I like to see them? I
said, "Sure." I never refused to see things when people brought
them in, even though they were rarely of any interest. You just
never knew what might turn up.

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VI CHANGES IN FOLK ART COLLECTING AND CONTEMPORARY CRAFT
EXHIBITING

[Interview 8: May 15, 1995] ##

Anneberg Gallery Artists Represented in American Craft Council

Anneberg: I don't know whether I mentioned it before, but among the

artists shown at the gallery were really quite an astounding
number of Fellows of the ACC. If you count me--I was made a
Fellow in 1979--there were thirteen. 1

Riess: How does that come about?

Anneberg: I think that for the most part over the years it has been a

committee that has voted on new Fellows. But I know that lately
they've been sending around questionnaires and asking all the
past Fellows to recommend people that they think should be
included.

There are two categories: the Fellows of the American Craft
Council, and the Honorary Fellows. The largest group are the
Fellows, who have had outstanding careers as artists who have
been especially influential or important in their field. The
others are Honorary Fellows, and that's what I am.

For some reason or other, Ed Rossbach is an Honorary
Fellow, although he should certainly be a Fellow on the basis of
his work as an artist. But I think it was because he- was also
such an influential teacher, they made him an Honorary Fellow.

'Dominic Di Mare, Lillian Elliott, Trude Guermonprez, C. Carl
Jennings, Marvin Lipofsky, Ed Rossbach, June Schwarcz, Kay Sekimachi, and
Katherine Westphal exhibited at the Gallery and later became ACC Fellows.
Merry Renk, Ted Hallman, and Bob Stocksdale exhibited in group shows and
later became Fellows. [added by M.A.]

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Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

It's just a different category, that is, for general service-
people who are considered to have made some sort of contribution
to craft as educators, or museum or gallery people.

I've forgotten when they started doing this. It was in the
early seventies, I think, 1972, or something like that. I could
look it up. I have a list of all of the Fellows somewhere.

Was there a feeling on the part of people on the West Coast that
they never got adequately recognized?

I don't know. I think that crafts people in general are a bit
more self-effacing. Most of them don't really think of
themselves, or at least didn't in the past, as having been
under-recognized or anything like that. They probably didn't
expect to be recognized, in other words.

Is there a sense that the East Coast never quite sees what the
West Coast is doing?

I'm not certain. I don't think so. For instance, in textiles
we know that the West Coast has been very important, and the Bay
Area probably more so than southern California, equal to the New
York area.

I myself was not really aware of this for a long time. I
mentioned to Jack Larsen once something about feeling that
textiles were more important than other crafts in the Bay Area,
and he said, "I don't think you really understand that the Bay
Area is the textile area in this country." He said this in
about 1979, some time back. It was true, but I hadn't realized
it.

When you say textile, would it be the same as saying fiber arts?

Fiber arts, yes. That includes baskets and all kinds of--
anything that involves fiber.

American Craft magazine, is that an East Coast publication?

Yes, it's based in New York. They frequently ask people from
this area to contribute articles, so I don't think that we're
overlooked.

I don't think that the West Coast has suffered in exposure,
really, because it is important in many ways. However, there
may be less attention paid to some of the other areas of craft
than textile. Metal work, for instance, I think probably
doesn't get much attention, because the East Coast has so many

221

famous schools and teachers and famous artists in all branches
of metal work, from jewelry and enameling to wrought iron. I
don't know about glass and ceramics, how they feel about it, I
really don't.

Riess: It seemed like the craft movement began around the location of
schools, like Rochester or like Cranbrook.

Anneberg: That's true, and they were mostly in the East. In the Bay Area
we were fortunate for a while to have two very excellent textile
schools, which are now unfortunately gone, based on fiber arts-
Pacific Basin Textile Arts, and Fiberworks, both in Berkeley.
They were in addition to the textile programs at UC Berkeley and
CCAC.

September 1979; Philippine Baskets, and Discovering a New
Collector

Anneberg: I think that it was during this show of Grace Relfe's [September
1979] that I first met William Galvin, who brought in some
Philippine baskets to show me. And since Grace's show was
getting rather rapidly sold, not really sold out, but a lot of
pieces were being sold, I was afraid that it wouldn't hold up
for the remainder--! think there were two or three weeks left in
the show at that time. (I would leave everything intact in the
show, I didn't allow people to take things away as they bought
them, unless they were leaving immediately for New York or
needed them for some special reason. I would leave pieces in
the show and just put a little red dot next to them. That was
the usual procedure.)

But the show was getting thin, so I asked William if he
would bring me some baskets because the ones he showed me were
excellent. I was surprised to see such good things, because I
had thought he was just another merchant seaman who bought
terrible things when he was in Hong Kong, Manila, and places
like that.

Riess: It was not infrequent that someone, another merchant seaman,
might stop by with a load of stuff?

Anneberg: I can't really remember how many people stopped by, but yes,

many people did. Usually they didn't ask me if they could bring
things in, they just brought them in and dumped them on the
table and said, "Look." Very often, they were perfectly
dreadful, because, of course, you don't find excellent

222

collectors in just every person who travels. Sometimes they
would be very nice, but things that I couldn't use.

I never refused to look at anything, because I never knew
what I might discover. And in this case, it was a jewel,
because William Galvin turned out to be someone with a wonderful
eye for Philippine arts. And he continued to grow.

I should also say that the first time around, very often
you don't get the best things. They may seem good, but you can
be collecting too soon. Later on, when things get very, very
scarce, then the better pieces will show up on the market, even
in the country of origin. People very often don't want to sell
really good things until the value goes up, so they can get a
worthwhile price.

Riess: Are you talking about people with baskets that might be in their
own homes as the people who don't want to sell?

Anneberg: Yes, very often that's the case. Or they may have carvings, or
textiles, costumes, or jewelry that are in the family, in the
house. It may just be something that is no longer valuedthe
older people may still value them but not the younger people so
much. I don't know for what reasons things come on the market,
but I know that collectors may have to pay more if they wait a
few years, but there is better stuff available.

All over the world, once the initial wave of collecting is
over, you won't be able to pick things up as easily or cheaply.
You may not find much in the bazaars or markets or antique
stores or whatever. Wherever people go to find things, they
will no longer find them as easily. Once that's over, then all
of a sudden wonderful things start coming out, often really
museum-quality things. That's happening now with Philippine
artifacts. Not just jewelry and baskets, it's mainly carvings
and other wood objects.

James Willis had a show before he moved out of his gallery
on Post Street about three or four years ago, of Philippine
things collected by William Galvin that was astounding. I had
never seen things like that. William had not been able to get
them while he was still showing at my gallery or for some time
afterwards. We had a show in the early years of the museum [San
Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum], and it was fine things,
wonderful stuf f--especially the baskets were very beautiful.
Now the baskets are very difficult to find, but what you are
seeing are some really beautiful wood things, wood carvings.
They are so much better than the ones that I saw earlier.

223

Riess: That's interesting. It wouldn't be true across the board, would
it? When you talked about the Coptic textiles, it's not that
you could go back and get better and better each time.

Anneberg: I don't think that is a good example, because that involved

archaeological digs. Some of the prime digs were early on, you
see, before they had excavated all the sites that they knew
about.

Riess: But like the Kurdish wedding carpets?

Anneberg: It may be that they're not available at all any more, and it may
be that the war and things like that, the unrest in that part of
the world, has simply hidden them from us for a while. Maybe
they'll come out later, who knows. Maybe they're gone. They're
wool--maybe the moths have gotten them all.

Riess: William Galvin was encouraged in his pursuits by you?

Anneberg: Well, I remember introducing him to a lot of people and telling
people about him. It may have helped. But he himself had such
good stuff that I think sooner or later they would have found
out about him. Catherine Cootner at the de Young Museum I know
is a great fan of his. She's curator of the H. McCoy Jones
collection. And there were people on the staff there buying for
themselves, if not for the museum.

Every time William would get a shipment in, when one of his
containers arrived, he would bring all the baskets and things
from his shipment over to his mother's househe didn't have a
permanent address here, he used his mother's houseevery time
that would happen they'd find out about it and he would have
people showing up over there before he even had a chance to go
through the stuff, when he was still unpacking. So they were
that important to them. He was just the source for good
Philippine baskets, and for a long time, that's what people were
mainly interested in.

Riess: What led collectors to bring their findings to you?

Anneberg: I don't know. I think the word gets around. I don't' think

there were very many places to sell or to show things, at least
there weren't at that time.

Riess: Well, like William Galvin. How did he know?

Anneberg: I don't know. He may have seen the listing in the pink pages in
the Chronicle Sunday paper, for all I know. That may have been
when he first noticed it. Or he might have seen an announcement

224

Riess:
Anneberg:

tacked up on someone's bulletin board, because I sent them
around to a number of different places where that might happen.

That must have been a wonderful part of your job, the surprises.

It was very exciting, but I often wished there were more good
surprises. It didn't always happen that it was something really
fine, something really good like that.

What if only a few pieces had been very good? Did you have a
way that you could say, "I'll just take these five things," and
tuck them into some other show?

I think I must have done that very many times. I wouldn't offer
a person a show if they only had a few things that were good.
But if I knew that they were capable of going back and
collecting for a show and really doing a good job of it, then I
would entrust the person with that sort of mission.

Did you finance any of the collectors?

No, I couldn't do that. I never had the money, and it would
have been several thousand dollars, probably. Hard to say. I
had no conception of how much a trip might cost someone, or how
much they originally paid for things. I had to leave it up to
them to set their wholesale price.

November 1979-February 1980: Art of West Central Africa; Mexican
Folk Art. Old Tools and Household Implements; Indonesian
Textiles; Beadwork Embroideries and Patchwork from India

Riess: Okay. Art of West Central Africa, November 1979.

Anneberg: This was the only show I ever had from Africa of carvings and
masks that were genuine, not made for the tourists. So it was
very nice to have this show. Traditional carvings from Niger
and Upper Volta, Mali, Ivory Coast. And it had some wonderful
Tuareg and Fulani jewelry.

The jewelry was especially eye-opening, because the Tuareg
make wonderful crosses, so-called. Actually, the Tuareg aren't
just Christian, they're also Muslim and they seem to have
retained a great deal of their native pre-contact religion,
whatever it might be. So when they speak of a cross, what
they're talking about is the Southern Cross in the heavens,
which is visible, you see, in that part of the world. That

225

forms the basis of this configuration that looks very much like
a cross. Every important village has a different version of
this cross.

I don't know anything about the significance of Tuareg
crosses, but they were most interesting, because sometimes they
could not really be considered a cross form. On the other hand,
certain areas make a type of cross that we identify with Tuareg
jewelry and Tuareg crosses, which are more understandable from
our point of view.

Also, these were intact, they weren't restrung. They had
the original cords that went around the neck, and a few beads
here and there along the cord, so that you could see exactly how
they wore them. It was wonderful from that standpoint.

Riess: In these cultures they wear their wealth? Was there much gold?

Anneberg: Many of these cultures did wear their wealth on them, but that
didn't always mean that it had to be of precious metal.
Sometimes the wealth was simply in the jewelry, and it didn't
matter what it was made of.

I don't know why we always have to think of jewelry being
gold or silver, because sometimes it isn't at all. It may look
like it, and perhaps nickel was substituted for silver at some
time, or beads in place of precious stones, because of the
danger of being robbed. Especially if they lived a nomadic
life, it was very difficult to protect things like that on their
person. They could easily be robbed and stripped of their
valuables, but if it wasn't really gold or silver, it might not
make such a target, you see.

Riess: Mexican Folk Art, Old Tools and Household Implements [1979].

Anneberg: This was a combination of several different things. This was a
December show, and part of it was Mexican folk art, as I usually
had for Christmas. But also, a friend of mine who collected a
lot of things from Goodwill and junk shops and various places
like that, and who had a houseful of wonderful junk, contributed
some wonderful stuff. A lot of it was old household implements,
old Italian cooking equipment, you know, made of wood and tin.
She had a great eye for funny stuff, and I thought it would make
a good accompaniment to the Mexican folk art, for Christmastime,
and it did.

Riess: Were people actually collecting them?

226

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Anneberg;

Well, it sold fairly well. I think there were a lot of
interesting things.

Who was your friend?

Ruth Wall. She is a great traveler. She doesn't buy on her
trips, but she collected an awful lot here in San Francisco in
antique stores and junk shops and Goodwills and thrift stores
and places like that. That was kind of unusual, I didn't
normally have shows like that.

You didn't call it junk.

No, I didn't. [laughs] This is what I said: "Nostalgia in
wood, wire and iron. Shop tools and kitchen equipment. Old
wood forms." Great stuff. Hat forms, shoe lasts, all kinds of
strange things that people really liked.

Did she give a particular polish to them? Were they fixed up?

No, they were just washed off and wiped clean. Some of the
metal was kind of rusty, some of the old tools and things, but
it wasn't in bad shape, no.

Indonesian Textiles was another show. Now, this one was
collected by Mary Hunt Kahlenberg [January 1980] who at one time
was in charge of textiles at the Los Angeles County Museum, and
then she later went into business for herself as a collector and
source for old textiles. She had, of course, an excellent eye
and a very fine collection. She brought Indonesian textiles
that were a little different than some I had had before.

Was this a case where as the years went by the quality improved?

Decidedly. I think that Mary Kahlenberg was able to get better
things in some respects. By the time she went into business for
herself, it was beginning to get difficult to find textiles of
high quality in the markets and the usual outlets in Indonesia.
Now, I don't know what it's like, because I don't travel myself,
but it's quite possible that if you went over there, you would
find some very fine, very expensive things. Not very many of
them, but it would be possible probably to find that sort of
thing.

Now, this particular textile that I had on the announcement was
a ship's cloth from Sumatra.

227

Riess: A ship's cloth? What's that?

Anneberg: Well, many of them depict a ship. I think it's a little hard to

see here, but there's the prow of the boat, and the stern, and

the inside part. These are used for ceremonial purposes rather
than to be worn.

Now, here is another show from India, called Beadwork,
Embroideries and Patchwork [February 1980] . It was from several
places, Saurastra and Gujerat and Rajasthan. The collection
belonged to a young couple who were living in Sunnyvale, down in
Silicon Valley [Vinu and Kokila Shah] . I went down there on the
train to see their collection.

They were a young Indian couple. He was working somewhere
like Lockheed, or one of those places, I can't remember. But it
was quite interesting to go down there and have dinner with them
Indian-style, eating with your fingers and everything. And yet,
at the same time they were living a very American-style life, or
trying to set themselves up to live that sort of life. I think
they were very recently arrived.

Riess: Had they brought the collection with them as a way of

establishing some kind of financial footing when they got here?

Anneberg: I think so. I think it was partly that sort of thing. One of
the interesting things about their collection was an awful lot
of beadwork, very tiny trade beads that were sewn onto cloth in
patterns, sometimes in pictorial style. This particular piece
on the announcement is completely beaded, I think. Most of them
were flat, but a few were free-hanging, with stuffed bird
shapes .

Riess: Were they costume pieces also?

Anneberg: No, they weren't costumes, they were pieces that could be hung

on the wall as decoration or placed over or under something in a
semi-ceremonial sort of way. Some were three-dimensional.

It was a folk craft that was specific to that part of
India, and it showed up also in Africa in beaded bracelets and
things like that . I think it may have arrived in Africa by way
of Indian traders who settled in Africa in various places. Then
the English probably brought it to Europe and America, where it
was taken up by the Indians.

Riess: Did they ever have more to offer you, or was that it for them as
collectors?

228

Anneberg: Well, as I may have pointed out before, the San Francisco area
got rather over-saturated with Indian embroideries and things
like that, so they did not sell really well. But I thought in
this particular instance, they had some things that were unusual
and had not been seen much before around here, so I had the show
on that basis. It sold only moderately well.

March 1980: Another Discussion of Mexican Masks

Anneberg: Now, the next show is another of Mexican ceremonial masks

collected by George and Craig Kodros [March 1980] , but I regret
to say that I pictured on the cover a very fine example of a
non-ceremonial mask. [laughs]

At that particular time we had not yet sorted out
completely what constituted ceremonial and what did not, because
there were so many different styles that were being produced in
Guerrero as purely decorative masks, and they were very
different, these styles, one from another. So it was rather
difficult to make decisions about all the various styles. This
was so unusual and so wonderful, very large masks that looked
like insects. The bulk of the show was of genuine ceremonial
masks, but they did have some of these very large decorative
pieces .

Riess: And these were the same collectors who brought the first masks
to you?

Anneberg: Yes, but these were not the first masks that I showed. Craig

had come into the gallery to see a show collected by Grace Relfe
that consisted entirely of non-ceremonial masks, which I in my
ignorance had probably identified as ceremonial, and he pointed
out to me that they were not. So I had begun to be able to tell
the difference, but neither one of us had really sorted out all
these various styles that could be counted as spurious. We very
gradually over the years made decisions and came to conclusions
that other scholars were beginning to see, too.

There are quite a number of signs that indicate when
Mexican masks are not really ceremonial. And sometimes you want
something to be genuine so badly, you overlook all the obvious
signs [laughter] long after there was any excuse for that sort
of thing. You fool yourself. We should have been able to tell
that these couldn't possibly have been ceremonial masks.

229

Riess: Because they would be unwearable?

Anneberg: Well, yes, they were completely unwearable, they were very

large, and up until this time, the ceremonial masks we knew of
from Mexico were very small. Most of them, anyway. Very few
large ones. And there are a number of differences in the way
they're painted.

Riess: Did it make a difference in your pricing? Once you were really
clear that something was ceremonial, was it therefore two or
three times as valuable?

Anneberg: Well, once I had really decided or understood that something was
non-ceremonial, I simply didn't sell it. I didn't have it in
the gallery, so there was no problem there. I think many times
these masks were worth the very high prices that were charged
for them because they were exceptional carvings. There was
nothing wrong with them from that standpoint. They were
interesting, lively, they had all kinds of wonderful qualities
about them. They just weren't genuine ceremonial masks, but
something else entirely.

Riess: Margery, why couldn't you have had a show of all non-ceremonial
masks?

Anneberg: I could have, but at that time, what I was looking for was
ceremonial masks. And actually, I did have-- [laughs] my
original mask show was entirely non-ceremonial, I just didn't
know it at that time.

April 1980: Quezada Family Potters, Contemporary Casas Grandes

Riess: Quezada Family Potters, Contemporary Casas Grandes [April 1980].
Anneberg: Yes. Well, this was an interesting story.

Riess: We should go on with the subhead here, "The spontaneous revival
of an extinct branch of Pueblo Indian art in a northern Mexican
village."

Anneberg: Yes. Well, there had beenthis particular collector, Spencer
McCallum, had found some rather odd pots for sale at a service
station just this side of the border in New Mexico. It's not
unusual to find things for sale to tourists at service stations,
but it is unusual to find anything really good, which these
were. The station owner didn't know exactly where they came

230

from. He just waved an arm in the direction of some nearby
mountains and said, "Over there somewhere, across the border- -
this fellow came in and he had some pots to sell, and I bought
them, and that's what they are. He said he made them, or his
family made them, or something like that."

So Spencer bought them, and then mused over them. They
were obviously related somehow or other to Pueblo Indian
pottery, but they came from Mexico, from northern Mexico, and
he'd never seen anything quite like them. They did seem to have
a sort of relationship to Casas Grandes, which is an old type of
pottery that's found around the Rio Grande area, mostly broken
pieces .

Some months later he decided to go back and really try to
find the source of the pots. He packed up a lot of supplies for
getting around the Sonora Desert for a few weeks, and started
going along the main roads. Every time he came to a service
station or a store, he'd get out the pots and ask if they'd ever
seen anything like it.

Gradually, the trail got warmer. Various people recognized
them, and he finally narrowed down his search to a certain
village where he found the young man who had made them. He was
a charcoal burner, and he had been going out in the surrounding
hills cutting mesquite and burning it to make charcoal. Then
he'd take it across the border to sell. In his daily work he
would come across fragments of Casas Grandes pottery, this
really old pottery, and he'd look at these wonderful designs on
the fragments he was finding, and he began to wonder how it was
made, and to think that he'd like to make that sort of thing
himself.

So simply by trial and error he began to try to figure out
how to make pottery, and it was extraordinary, because he had no
schooling, no instruction at all. Nobody around there made pots
any more. And he had no idea how to do it. He simply got a
bunch of clay and mixed it with water, and found that when he
baked it, it fell apart. Gradually he figured out how to add
grout to it, sand I guess, and pulverized bits of broken pots,
which is what holds it together.

He literally reinvented how to make pottery. He figured
out the whole thing step by step until he got a pot that would
hold together, and the surface of which you could paint. It was
amazing. It happened over, I'm sure, several years, but he
finally got so that he had quite a presentable pot that he could
make and sell. He started peddling them around occasionally
when he'd get a few made.

231

Riess: So Spencer found him and got this whole story from him?

Anneberg: Yes, yes. He realized that what this young man was doinghe
had found these broken pieces of Casas Grandes pottery with
these old designs on them. And he wasn't copying them outright,
he was just using them as a stepping-off point, and creating his
own designs. And yet, all this happened far from the American
markets, from any sort of contact with anthropologists or
collectors or anything like that. He was doing it on his own.
So it was a spontaneous revival.

Well, very gradually, he attracted the notice of the
outside world, and I think mainly through Spencer McCallum. So
he did attract the notice of collectors and anthropologists, and
gradually his whole family got into the production of pottery.
Then more people in the village started making it too, so that
there were a number of people making this Casas Grandes type of
pottery. And he had simply revived an old type.

Riess: And they continued to use only the old designs?

Anneberg: No, not at all, but it's clearly derived from them. It's like
Pueblo pottery, it's more modern, the designs change from
generation to generation, sometimes very subtly, or sometimes a
potter will create designs that are quite new. He became
acquainted also with Pueblo Indians in the United States that
were producing pottery. It had a similar look, you see, but he
had been unaware of their pottery, and they had certainly been
unaware of his.

Riess: Dance Masks of Java, Bali, and Madura, collected by Leo Brereton
[May 1980].

Anneberg: Leo Brereton, yes. Leo traveled quite a bit, but he had been

mainly interested in tattoo art up to this point. I was rather
surprised when he took an interest in masks and collected quite
a few from Java and Bali. Madura was an area on the west coast,
I think it was, of Java that was a little different and had a
special look, so that there were three different styles of
masks. He collected quite well. They were fairly contemporary,

232

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

most of them. It didn't look to me as though they were intended
for tourists, they weren't at all crudely made. They were all
mask types used in traditional dance dramas.

In those cultures were they ceremonial masks?

Yes, I'd say they were. They were used for oldfor various
traditional dance dramas that were still being presented. Dance
dramas that had religious connotations, like those in Mexico.

What is tattoo art? How you can you be collecting it?

By getting tattoos, I suppose. Or collecting photographs or
drawings of it. Leo was interested in tattoo art. I won't go
into the reasons that he gave. Part of it, I think, was a
reaction against a rather strict upbringing. But he was
volunteering time with the little tattoo museum down on Columbus
Avenue. Lyle Tuttle is the man's name who runs it, and he was
said to have a complete "body suit" of tattoos. I always
thought that Leo must have a lot of tattoos too.

One time he said that he had traveled to Yap Island in the
South Pacific to see some very special, very wonderful tattoos
that they still possibly were doing there. However, he found it
was only very old people who were tattooed now, and those who
knew how to do it were no longer producing, no longer tattooing.
But there were still some of the necessary tools in existence,
and he did get himself a Yap tattoo. I asked to see it, and I
was astounded that it was so subtle and simple. It was a very
simple linear design, almost like an arrow, up and down the
calves of his legs, just on the outside part. It was very
elegant looking.

Turkish Textiles, collected by Dorothe Gould-Pratt [June 1980].

Dorothe Gould-Pratt had first gone to Turkey many years before,
when she was still a young woman, but she returned again later
on and lived there for a number of years. She had started a
business of designing printed textiles. This was an exhibition
of some of the costume pieces and embroideries and things like
that which she had collected during the years she lived there.
It was very interesting.

[reading from announcement] "The revival of Karakalem, the
Turkish art of woodblock printing on fabric."

I mentioned that she was responsible for the revival of this
particular Turkish art of woodblock printing on fabric. I can't
remember right now whether we showed very much of that or not,

233

but I did have some examples that were in the gallery at the
time.

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

She had things that were called palace pieces, which were
from the harems of the sultans in Istanbul. They were made of
silk, many of these things were made of silk, that was actually
grown and produced in Turkey. It was very different from
Chinese silk. It was a rough, raw silk, and it had a yellowish
color to it. It was strange to me, I had never seen it before.

I'm talking about sheets and underwear and shirts and
things like that. Silk sheets that were really rather coarse,
and I wondered how they would feel. It may have been all right,
you see, once it was washed and softened up, and you slept in
them for a while. But they were extraordinary-looking, and it
was wonderful stuff.

That was in the show, too?

Yes, I had a lot of that sort of thing.

And for that show, "Guests of Honor: His Excellency and Madame
Sahli Diler."

Oh, the consul-general of Turkey came. Dorothe knew them, so
she planned all this. I think that she considered it a special
honor, and she did want his name put on the announcement, so we
did. They were very interesting people, and it was nice to have
them there.

Riess: Was Dorothe Gould-Pratt involved in the early days of the
museum?

Anneberg: I knew her, but no, I didn't have her on the board of the Center
for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts. That was the organization
I had started while the gallery was still in existence that
looked forward to a possible museum some time in the future.
Dorothe was not involved in it at that time, but once I had
closed the gallery, and the museum was being organized, then she
expressed an interest in it, and we had her on the advisory
board.

Riess: Weaving and Dyeing of Sierra Leone, Tie Dye Tritik, Batik, and
Handwoven Cotton, collected by Olive Wong [July 1980]. Tritik.
What is that?

Anneberg: Tritik is a technique where the fabric is stitched together so

that the dye will not penetrate certain areas. If the fabric is
folded and stitched together very tightly, the dye will only

234

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg:

Anneberg:

Riess:

penetrate the areas that are left unstitched. It is a little
difficult for me to explain, because I'm not sure I've ever seen
any while it was still stitched up. I've seen quite a bit after
it has been dyed and the stitches removed. The marks of the
stitching can also form part of the design.

This [on announcement] is an example?

Yes, sometimes it can look like herringbone.

Olive Wong?

Olive Wong was a very interesting person, a black woman who had
been married to--oh, goodness, now I can't remember his name. A
prominent Chinese-American actor in this area. What was his
first name? He had a role in the movie "Dim Sum."

Olive was no longer married to him at this time, although he did
come to the opening.

Olive had a wonderful sense of style, just the way she wore
clothes and fixed her hair was almost legendary. I got used to
people asking after her, "What did Olive wear to the opening,
how did she look?" It wasn't that she was especially beautiful,
or a flashy dresser; in fact, she was rather reserved and
serious. But she had an extraordinary presence, and when she
appeared at a special event she just lookedwell, effortlessly
stunning. Even her daughter, who was extremely pretty and
probably in her early twenties, seemed almost in awe of this
unusual quality in her mother. Olive's father had been a well-
known local minister, and I think that background may have
contributed a lot to her manner.

Olive had only recently finished a tour of duty with the
U.S. government agency AID in Sierra Leone. She had set up a
cooperative there for the marketing of native handcrafts--mostly
dyeing and weaving.

Sierra Leone is renowned for its decorative dyeingtie
dyeing, stitch dyeing (tritik) , fold dyeing, and something
called crumple dyeing. It was a really stunning show. There
were so many different kinds of tie dyeing, and stitch dyeing
and fold dyeing, and resist dyeing, which is done by painting
designs on cloth in wax or a starch paste before it is dyed.

That's what batik is, isn't it?

235

Anneberg: Yes. And the starch resist gives a different sort of effect.

There is a great variety of patterns and styles, and
various villages have their particular specialty in dyeing. For
the most part it is done in standard sized pieces for the
wraparound skirts worn by women there. They use imported white
cotton, and damask, which has a pattern woven into it in a
jacquard satin weave, is greatly favored. They like that
interplay of dyed and woven patterns, even though they're
completely unrelated. It's a very subtle effect, you have to
look closely to see it.

So Olive had set up this cooperative with its office and
headquarters in Freetown, the capital. There was a well-stocked
shop where all these different kinds of dyed cloth--as well as
some handwoven cloth and other crafts--was available. They did
a thriving local business, but they also exported some to
customers in London and New York. They also sold some of
Olive's own designs, made from the dyed cloth.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess :
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

That's a story I would have expected to come up more frequently.
It's the only case that I was aware of.

Olive had all kinds of wonderful dyed fabrics in the show.
Of course it was almost entirely synthetic dyes that were used,
but handwoven native cotton is still sometimes dyed with indigo.
The striped cloth that you see here on the announcement was
woven with natural colors of native cotton. There is a
beautiful brown cotton that is native to Sierra Leone, as well
as the whitish cotton. They call this "country cloth."

What is mud cloth? Do you know that?

Yes, but there wasn't any in this particular show, because they
don't do it in Sierra Leone. As I understand it, it's made by
painting the designs on the cloth in a certain kind of mud that
stains the cloth a very dark brown. Then when it dries they
wash out the mud, leaving the design.

Were people buying these [fabrics of Sierra Leone] to do things
with, or to admire?

I think they bought it for both reasons. There was a young
Episcopal priest who came and bought a lot of it--he was going
to have some vestments made and some altar cloths and things
like that. I can't remember which church it was, somewhere here
in the city, that had a rather young congregation that he was
appealing to, so he was interested in these gorgeous cottons,

236

brilliantly colored, some of them, or very dramatic. That's a
better word to use for them. They were dramatic. And they
would look wonderful.

I always wanted to go and see some of them, if he ever
actually went ahead with this project. I think he probably did.
He didn't have very much money to spend, but he spent it very
wisely, and spent a lot of time trying to decide which ones to
buy.

I really should mention one rather special kind of dyed
design in this show. The dyers of one village came up with a
novel way of doing a checkerboard design. They cut pieces of
plain white cotton into two-and-a-half-inch strips, and then
bound each strip very tightly with raffia into two-inch
sections, alternating with untied sections of equal length.
Then when the strips have been dyed in indigo they are sewn
together, making a very striking and lively checkerboard
pattern. Olive had a long gathered skirt in this material which
she wore to the opening.

After the show was over there were certain pieces I would
really have liked to have bought for myself or to have in the
gallery shop, but Olive had other commitments and had sent the
remaining things off for exhibition elsewhere. So we sent back
an order to the cooperative in Freetown, which included a
checkerboard skirt for me.

Unfortunately, before the letter arrived even, there was a
coup and the government was overthrown. AID money was cut off,
and the entire staff was dismissed. They had put new people in
charge who apparently knew nothing about the local weaving and
dyeing, not to mention how to run a business, or even how to
write a business letter, and I think the whole thing fell apart.
The U.S. withdrew AID support, and without that it couldn't
function.

I got the strangest letters back from the new manager. I
had already paid up, you see. The gallery had paid Olive, and
Olive had paid them. But I got a bill for thousands of dollars,
because they had simply looked through the records of the
cooperative and found these statements of the value of the
fabrics that were shown in the gallery, and they sent me a bill
for it. It meant nothing, you see. Olive wrote a rather sharp
letter, straightening him out.

237

I never got the things that I ordered, needless to say.
And I had sent a money order paying in advance which was a total
loss. Too bad.

Riess: Japanese Silk Kimonos: Weaving and Dyeing of the Past Hundred
Years [September 1980].

This was your first kimono show?

Anneberg: Yes. This show was just kimonos. I don't list the collector,

so I may have had several collectors involved in this particular
show. [In another list Winifred Dahl is named as collector.]

Riess: I can remember, back in those days, stores where there would be
piles of what seemed to be beautiful kimonos piled on the floor,
as if there were shiploads coming over at a certain point.

Anneberg: Yes, there were. And one reason so many kimonos were available
was that in Japan, secondhand clothing was never worn. It
wasn't considered clean or proper to wear secondhand clothing.
You didn't do it. So unless you were terribly poor, you would
never resort to buying that sort of thing, no matter how
beautiful, no matter how interesting it was. It would be out of
style, for one thing. Someone else would already have worn it,
so you wouldn't think of wearing it.

So the temple markets, which were mainly where people went
to buy these things, were full of stacks and stacks of old
kimonos, which would be sold primarily to tourists. There would
be a jumble of all different kinds of kimonos of various
qualities. A shop here could arrange for people in Japan to
sell them a shipment, send over a shipment of kimonos.
Sometimes it was just a jumble of all different kinds of things.

Riess: Tell me about your show.

Anneberg: Well, these were, of course, well selected. [laughter] There
were a lot of different dyeing techniques that were involved in
Japanese kimonos, and a lot of textile people, a great many of
the young people studying at both Fiberworks and Pacific Basin,
were interested in these dyeing techniques. So yes, it caused
quite a bit of interest.

Riess: By looking they would be able to figure it out?

Anneberg: I'm just saying it was mainly that type of student or young
person who was interested in this sort of thing. They were
pretty knowledgeable.

A lot of them were too expensive for most people, but I
ftill old quite a few.

November 1980-March 1981; Dolls from Fifty-Six Countries;
Philippine Baskets; Silk Road Treasures from Afghanistan; Kilims
and Decorated Textiles and Jewelry; Japanese Kimonos and Haoris

Riess: Dolls, collected by Dorothe Gould-Pratt and Dorothy Shelton
Gould? (November 1980]

Anneberg: Dorothy Shelton Gould was her mother. A lot of these dolls were
collected over a generation or two. Many of them were dolls
that you could buy in markets and places as you traveled. They
were tourist items, but wonderful tourist items, costume dolls
that were quite extraordinary.

Riess: "Folk, souvenir, and costume dolls from fifty-six countries."
Dorothe Gould-Pratt and her mother traveled in fifty-six
countries?

Anneberg: Well, they came from fifty-six countries, and I suppose they
probably did visit most of those.

Riess: The dolls look to be wrapped in wonderful little scraps.

Anneberg: Of old textile, yes. There were all kinds of dolls. Some of

them were rather kitschy, and some of them were wonderful pieces
of real folk art.

Ritas i They were ready to say goodbye to the collection?

Anneberg: Yes. The mother was in her nineties, and I don't know, Dorothe
was probably in her late sixties, and they probably felt that
they no longer had much of a use for them.

I have never been much of a doll-lover, because 1 didn't
have dolls when I was a child. I only remember a few. We were
not very well off, and my mother really couldn't afford to buy
things like that. So we didn't have a lot of toys.

I remember operating on a doll to find out how the "Mama"
worked. In those days most dolls for little girls said "Mama"
when you bent them forward. So when 1 operated on my doll to
find out how she made this sound, my mother cried, because it
was a sacrifice for her to have bought this doll in the first
place.

239

I also operated on my Raggedy Ann doll because in the story
book she was supposed to have a candy heart, and I wanted to
find out if she really did. I was very disappointed, because it
turned out to be cardboard. [laughter] So my mother stopped
buying me dolls.

Riess: Here's a note on the Philippine baskets. [October 1980]

Anneberg: This was the first Philippine basket show that I had from
William Galvin. As always, he had various things besides
baskets, like textiles, costume pieces, jewelry, men's hats,
wooden shields, carvings of rice gods.

I should say that in a rice-growing area baskets are
extremely important. These came from rice-growing areas of
central Luzon, which is inhabited by several different native
tribal groups, I suppose you'd call them, or cultures. So there
was some difference in the appearance of the baskets from one of
these peoples to another, but mainly they were all utilitarian
baskets, very strong and very beautiful, because they were made
for a purpose. They had very little decoration, but what
decoration there was, was useful. It just resulted from the way
the fibers had to be tied off.

The baskets were very beautiful in a very simple way. They
had all been smoked, 1 so many of them were black, and had a
strong smoky odor. But most were various shades of brown, on
the way to being black. There were baskets that were used for
storage, for carrying, for cooking, for serving food, and also
forwhat do you call it when you shake the rice in order to get
rid of the chaff?

Riess: Threshing or hulling or husking--?

Anneberg: Oh, winnowing. Some of them are huge, and may still be used in
that way, although 1 think they probably have found other things
to use than these natural fiber baskets. All the baskets were
of rattan, which is a kind of cane. It looks like bamboo.

Riess: Christmas show, 1980.

Anneberg: This was another Mexican folk art show, this time collected by

Joan Sommers. She bought things from various parts of Mexico, I
think because at that time you could buy things from government
stores in Mexico City and various other places. But she also

'Hung from the rafters over the cooking fire, permeating them with
oily smoke to strengthen the fibers and render them insect-proof.

240

Riess :

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

collected things in Guanajuato and Michoacan, so she had local
toys and things that were specific to those areas.

Silk Road Treasures from Afghanistan, Uzbek Embroideries,
Textiles, Rugs, Adornments, Animal Trappings, Antique Guns, from
the Collection of a Former Afghani Merchant. [January 1981]

Yes. [laughs] I didn't want to use his name, because he had a
shop here in town, and I didn't want to be advertising his shop,
so we made a compromise, and I listed him mysteriously as a
"Former Afghani Merchant."

He had a shop selling much the same sort of thing?

Well, a lot of the same sort of thing. But he wasn't widely
knownand he did have a lot of things in this show that he
didn't normally have in his shop. He had good things. I should
probably mention at this point that his shop is still in

existence,
Union.

and it's called Silk Route. It's on Fillmore, near

He drove a very hard bargain, I remember, so I wasn't
anxious for him to get any more publicity. [laughs]

But you wanted the show.

I wanted the show.

His name is Abdul Abrahimi.

Right. Nice fellow. I liked him, we got along well. But he
drove a very hard bargain, and insisted that I get less of a
commission than I normally got, because he needed more of a
commission. [laughter]

Over the years, you must have gotten a little harder yourself.

Well, I tried, but I wasn't always successful, and in this case
I was no match for Mr. Abrahimi. But at any rate, this was one
of the last times that I could get quality things directly from
Afghanistan, and he was in a position to get them, because he
had all kinds of contacts from there. So there were rugs and
costume pieces that were simply not easily obtainable after this
point, because the war was spreading and taking over, and Kabul
would soon no longer be the place that it once was. So there
were a lot of very fine embroideries.

: think it was out of this show that I sold something, an
embroidery, to McCoy Jones. He was collecting things for the de

241

Young Museum, but whether it landed in the collection that he
finally gave to them, I don't know.

Kilims and Decorated Textiles and Jewelry, collected by
Juanita Netoff [February 1981]. Her mother had been a collector
for a long time, so she had grown up in that milieu. I think
they lived in Santa Cruz, or somewhere in the Santa Cruz area.
But their collections were not much known around here. Juanita
had a lot of rugs that were extraordinarily beautiful, I
thought, although all but one or two were contemporary. Older
rugs from Tunisia almost never turn up.

Riess: Is this a fragment [looking at illustration in announcement], or
is this the whole thing?

Anneberg: I think that was probably the entire rug, although it looks as
though it was cut off a little bit on the side. Hard to say.
But there were almost no old rugs in the show. There was one,
which I ended up buying myself. It was a very interesting
little rug but it was very uneven at the bottom, and it had a
small area that was poorly mended in white cotton, instead of
wool. As Mr. Jones told me, he wasn't interested at all in
Tunisia, because you couldn't get old rugs any more. In this
case the rug was old and would have been just great if it
weren't so but of shape and badly repaired.

Riess: Japanese Kimonos and Haoris [March 1981].

Anneberg: This was collected entirely by Winifred Dahl. It had a lot of
men's coat-like garments, equivalent to the haori--there was
quite a variety.

Riess: The dyeing techniques, kasuri, shibori, oshima, and stenciled?
Anneberg: Yes, shibori is the term they use for tie-dye.
Riess: And what is oshima?

Anneberg: It was a mud-dyed silk. An elegant shade of very dark brown,
much favored by older women.

242

April 1981-July 1981; Final Discussion of Mexican Ceremonial
Masks; and Final Show. July 1981. of Folk Arts and Crafts of
Madagascar

Anneberg: Another Mexican ceremonial mask show [April 1981] and again we

have a mask that I would now consider to be non-ceremonial. I'd
have to look at the back to be absolutely sure. No, it doesn't
look right to me, the beard is much too long.

Anneberg: And the eyes don't look right, the painting doesn't look right.
It's too dramatic and expressive, it has too much of a
frightened stare.

This was another show by Craig and George Kodros, this time
with a friend of theirs, Scott Marshall, who also had a few
things in the show. But we were still learning. It's a little
embarrassing to me now to have had these shows that were really
quite wonderful, they were mostly good, genuine ceremonial
masks, but on the announcements we had these spurious masks,
simply because they were so very dramatic. We still considered
them to be genuine because we wanted them to be the real thing
so badly. But a true ceremonial mask is usually understated and
not that dramatic, it doesn't usually make a powerful emotional
statement in itself.

Riess: I am surprised, the last ceremonial mask show and this, the

facial type of the mask doesn't even look particularly Mexican.
Maybe it's more Spanish or something? What do you think?

Anneberg: Actually they're not right as ceremonial masks in either
tradition. They were astounding when they came out, very
different and puzzling. In spite of the fact that the carving
could vary considerably, very often the painting had a
similarity, a certain look about it that simply had not been
seen before. There is some evidence that a great many of these
decorative masks from Guerrero that showed up in the 1970s were
painted in the same locality, if not in the same studio, which
would account for their stylistic similarity.

At the time people thought that it was something that was
only now coming out of the Sierra. Some parts of Guerrero are
pretty remote, and considered rather wild. Even though they're
not too far away in actual miles from metropolitan centers,
still they're not places where people go in and out of freely or
frequently. So it was possible, we thought, we had never seen

243

these before, because they came from relatively inaccessible
villages, and that they were showing up on the market because
they were old and no longer in use, and people were just now
getting around to selling them or something. They had all been
"weathered" and made to look old.

Riess: Folk Arts and Crafts of Madagascar. [July 1981]

Anneberg: This was my final show, and it was from an unusual place. I had
never had a show from Madagascar. I don't think I sold a thing
out of that show, because for one thing, people like to be a
little bit familiar with what they buy. It has to strike an
emotional note somewhere, and all this was so different. It
didn't--! don't know. People didn't respond to it in an
emotional way.

This show had a lot of baskets and objects of daily use,
and some nice ceremonial textiles. And there were carvings that
were probably purely decorative. I didn't care in this case,
because they had a crudity and sometimes a folk quality that I
valued. You can't always discard something just because it's
made for tourists. Almost all Mexican folk art is made for
tourists, and has been for years and years, and yet we value it
as folk art, and it is, too, it's wonderful folk art.

The Difficult Decision to Close the Gallery

Riess: You knew this was your last show?

Anneberg: Well, I'll tell you. I had known that I should wind up the
gallery soon for five or six years before this. But I never
quite had the nerve to do it. It's hard. I'd been doing it for
so long, and what would I do next? I wasn't quite certain, you
see, and I wasn't quite--! really wanted to have something else
lined up that I could do. I wanted to get the museum started,
for one thing, and all that had not quite come together.

I wasn't up to it physically. Even with help, running a
gallery is hard work. It was becoming more and more obvious to
me that I couldn't keep going much longer.

One reason why I wasn't showing contemporary craft any more
was because I kept thinking I wasn't going to be running the
gallery next year. I kept putting it off and putting it off, so
it stretched out into five or six years that I was putting off
closing the gallery.

244

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

When it finally happened, it was so sudden, really a spur-
of-the-moment decision. After this show, I had my usual
midsummer--see, this show ended the middle of August, and then I
was going to have a summer show/ sale for a couple of weeks like
I usually had. It was really a show, but it was also a
combination of things from all kinds of collectors, all
different collectors and from various parts of the world.

Every year in August?

Yes, I would send around a very simple circular that I never
considered worthwhile even saving afterwards, so that I don't
even have a copy of this last sale announcement.

But as I was making up the flier, I thought to myself, This
is it. This is the perfect opportunity. I am going to tuck it
in somewhere here that this is my last show. I didn't want to
be dramatic about it or anything like that.

Usually there was a little paragraph where I described
certain things that would be in the show. Almost as an
afterthought, at the end of that paragraph I mentioned that this
was the last opening of the Anneberg Gallery, and that I would
be going on to doing other things. I didn't even know that
people would notice, but I wanted at least to have made some
sort of an announcement.

I didn't want it to be a dramatic announcement or a big
going-out-of -business sale or anything like that, because it
wasn't. I only made the decision as I was making up the
announcement. But I realized, I've got to do it sometime or
other, and this was--I was so tired by this time. I knew that
it had to be done.

You were really keeping your own counsel about all of this?
didn't chew it over with two or three people?

You

Oh, no, no. And I didn't really expect a big stir over it, you
see. I didn't think there would be more than maybe ninety
people at the very most at the opening. Well, there were
hundreds and hundreds. I was simply mobbed. It was
extraordinary. Everybody came.

In a way, not to buy things but to sort of--?

Apparently, to say goodbye. I got people from all over. There
were people from Seattle, a friend of mine from there, and there
may have been some from Los Angeles--! can't remember right now.
But there was just everybody there, and so it was wonderful from

245

that standpoint. I had to get people to help me write up sales,
because I was so swamped. People bought a lot, and everybody
wanted to talk to me, and everybody had a wonderful time. It
was good, it was a nice send-off. But it was unexpected, and I
really hadn't planned it that way.

Riess: After that success, you didn't have second thoughts?
Anneberg: No. By this time it was really time it was long past due.

Riess: When you say you were tired, was it also that the disease was
catching up with you more?

Anneberg: I think that was mainly it. Also, it was getting very difficult
to operate a gallery at this particular location, because
Fisherman's Wharf had finally engulfed me. It had been getting
closer for a number of years, and I had refused to take notice,
you see. But finally, it got to the point where it was too
much. T-shirt shops were springing up all over, and the traffic
and parking were impossible. It just wasn't the same
neighborhood any more.

Riess: This story is becoming a kind of cliff-hanger, because we know
you had something else in mind. Probably a reason you were
overworked was because you were trying to--you had another set
of horses.

Anneberg: Yes, it is true, and it was an extraordinary amount of strain,
trying to keep the two things together. It was stress beyond
all reason, and I should not have been putting myself under that
amount of stress from both sides.

Riess: Can you say what you did immediately after, or should we save
that for the next time?

Anneberg: We'll save that for the next time.

But that last show was very, very hard, just getting
everything packed up. I had tons of stuff to get rid of.

Riess: I'd like to understand that. I thought after each show was over
it was cleaned out by the collector or the artist.

Anneberg: Yes, but over fifteen years you accumulate an enormous amount of
stuff in the back rooms and closets and everywhere. Things that
had never been picked up and I couldn't get in touch with the
people who bought them, or things I had bought that had proven
unsalable, and all kinds of things. Odds and ends. Things

246

never meant to be shown, that I had bought for some reason or
other.

Riess: How about Margery Anneberg jewelry? Was there any left?

Anneberg: That was part of it too. I sold quite a bit of jewelry. Apart
from jewelry, most of it was odds and ends that after seventeen
years in that location, fifteen of them running a gallery, you
acquire an awful lot of junk. So a lot of it went to the
Goodwill and places like that. A lot of it I gave away. Some
of it I put on consignment elsewhere.

247

VII CREATING THE CENTER FOR FOLK ART AND CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS
[Interview 9: May 22, 1995]

Summing Up the Development and Demise of the Gallery

Riess: You said you wanted to sum up.

Anneberg: Yes. I had started out from the very beginning with folk art,
my very first show being Coptic textiles, and then immediately
went into contemporary craft with Marvin Lipof sky's glass show.

I was fortunate in many, many ways, first of all in that
there was an enormous amount of folk art coming onto the market
in the mid-1960s. Jet air travel was new; it had become
possible to fly almost anywhere in a matter of hours. People
were traveling, discovering folk art, and bringing it back in
huge amounts. It was new. My gallery was here, and it was just
the right place to show this sort of thing. People would go
over and buy a lot of stuff, and make a nice little collection
with the intent to come back and sell it. But they collected
well, and it was nice stuff.

Folk art was easy to find at that particular time. This
was in the mid to late sixties when I started the gallery. It
was easy to find, so I had some very good shows of folk art that
you could never in the world put together today. And some of
the materialit was absolutely the first and last time it would
ever be seen in such quantity outside the country of origin, if
even there. All of a sudden, people were mobile, in the air.
It was possible to fly anyplace in the world to buy things and
bring them back.

I may have said all this before, but I really want to
stress it, because it's extremely important, that people were
able to go--it didn't take you two weeks to get to Europe any
longer by boat. It took maybe ten hours to fly to Afghanistan,
with various stopovers and things, but that was nothing compared

248

with what it was before. It was easy for people to go over
there with not very much money, because the dollar wasn't that
depressed. It was worth something. People were very happy to
get dollars. Even just a few went a long way.

So a lot of people collected. At first, I thought that
only a person who was older and had experience and had developed
a discerning eye would be able to collect well, but I was wrong,
because there were so many very young people, Alice Erb being
one of them, who collected beautifully. Just to use her as an
example, her show, which was called Souvenirs of a Traveler
along the Silk Route, or something like that she brought back
ethnic jewelry from the area of Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, that
was just magnificent. It's not that it was really worth an
awful lot of money intrinsically, but it was rare and there had
not been much of it around before.

Well, at about that time there seemed to be suddenly so
much of it around, in my gallery and one or two other places. I
think I was maybe one of the first to show it around here. For
a while it seemed as though good ethnic jewelry was going to be
around in quantity forever, but it wasn't. It was only a few
months, or a few years. And that was true of a great many other
things. When you saw a lot of something like ethnic jewelry in
the gallery, it looked as though there was a plentiful supply.

So I didn't always sell a lot of it, because people
thought, Oh, well, I can't afford it this month, but I'll get it
next month, or next year. But by that time it would maybe not
be around. That happened over and over again. Tibetan rugs, as
I mentioned once before, disappeared very shortly after I had
them in the gallery. I had so many of them that people had a
false sense that they would be around for a long time, but they
weren't .

Riess: Did you keep things from various shows with a sense of their

future value? Or would the collectors leave a few things with
you?

Anneberg: That was fairly rare, partly because I just didn't have much
space. And I didn't have much money to buy things. But
gradually, even though I had only a very tiny space for
consignment things, it filled up so that it looked as though I
had quite a lot of things.

But when I closed the galleryit ' s hard to explain, but
you do accumulate an awful lot of things. They may be just
small items, and things that you had bought, oh, to make life
easier in the gallery, equipment and things like that.

249

Riess:
Anneberg:

You sold the equipment? You were sort of stripping the place?

Not at the final sale, but later on, I did. In September I
stripped the place down, even the wall boards. I went to a
great deal of trouble to try to get rid of as much of it as
possible, because there were people who wanted various things
and could use them. I gave a lot away.

And then the space itself?

I was living upstairs by that time, in this space I still have.
This apartment upstairs had become available.

And one of the reasons why I felt that this was finally
time to close was that my rent had been steadily increasing.
The building had been sold five years before, and the people who
bought it had been very good about not raising my rent very
much, but they'd had to raise it some, because the former
landlord had not charged me much at all. I didn't even have a
lease. He just wanted me here because I didn't make any
trouble, I didn't ask for help all the time. He was very kind
and sweet, even though he didn't fix a single thing, even leaks
in the plumbing. He once "repaired" a hole in a water pipe
under my sink by hanging a little tin can under the leak to
catch the drips of water. A tiny tomato paste can.

However, finally I did have my rent increased by the new
owners, not by dreadfully high increments, but it went up every
six months for a while until they got it to where they felt it
was reasonable. But it reached the point where I knew I
couldn't handle it, even though it was still very cheap for this
area and for San Francisco. There just wasn't enough money in
the sort of gallery that I was running for me to be able to
continue any longer.

Then as far as contemporary crafts were concerned, there
were other people who had more resources than I did financially
who were now showing contemporary crafts, and doing a marvelous
job with it. 1 I didn't feel that it was really dependent on me
to do that sort of thing, so I had been showing fewer and fewer
artists, and finally, for the last couple of years, only folk
art.

The thing that I really wanted to do from the very
beginning, since I was a crafts person myself, was to provide a

'Mainly the Meyer Breier Weiss Gallery and Elaine Potter's Artisans
Gallery.

250

place to show that wasn't just a crafts shop sort of place.
Crafts people were able to show occasionally in museum settings
and in municipal galleries, but aside from that, there was no
real gallery situation that was available for crafts people.
Commercial galleries simply did not show that sort of thing.

I felt that it was very necessary, because as far as I was
concerned, we were all artists. There wasn't that much
difference between us and the painters and the sculptors as far
as art was concerned. I really felt strongly that it should be
done by someone, and there I was in a perfect position to do it.
And whether or not it made money for some reason didn't matter
to me at the time. I think it should perhaps have mattered a
little more than it did, because it was very hard going. It
didn't make money.

From the very beginning, it was difficult, except for the
fact that the very first show, Coptic textiles, sold very well.
Very often people start galleries, and their very first show is
a marvelous success, because their friends and relatives gather
around, and people buy a lot of things, and there's a lot of
enthusiasm.

Then it dies down when the general public has to take over,
because they take a long time to get used to you, to the fact
that you're there and that you are showing a certain type of
thing. Any shop or gallery, I think, has to rely upon a good
three years before they can get established. So it did take
quite a long time.

Anneberg Honored by the American Crafts Council

Anneberg: I think that I succeeded in establishing a good venue for craft,
although- -well, after a while, when things get very difficult,
you do begin to feel a tiny bit sorry for yourself, because
there you are all alone, and you wonder if anyone has noticed
what is going on here. Aside from the local crafts community,
who were very supportive and, I'm certain, pleased to have me
here. But I sort of wondered if people did out in the great
world beyond, what did they think in New York, at ACC.

Well, I found out one day when I opened a letter and found
that I had been made a fellow of the American Craft Council.
Now, I barely knew what that meant. I had a vague idea, but it
was a complete surprise. I was a bit puzzled. I didn't think

251

much about it for a few hours , and then it dawned on me that
this was really some sort of honor.

Riess: But you had no notion that this was in the offing?
Anneberg: None at all, no.

Riess: And when you said you wondered what did they think of you out in
the great wide world, hadn't there been any kind of
communication? You would certainly send your gallery
announcements .

Anneberg: Oh, yes, there had been, and people did stop in all the time.
But I still didn't really know that they realized what I was
doing, quite, or how difficult it was. Of course, that is not
something that should matter one bit, and I realize that there's
no excuse for anything in this world. What matters is the end
result, and whether that's good or bad. It doesn't matter a bit
whether you're blind or have one arm or any of that, you have
towhat matters is the final result, and the excellence of what
you can do.

So I just didn't know that anybody quite saw what it was
that I was able to do or trying to do in this area.

Riess: And the fact that you were doing it from these two points of

view, from both the folk and the contemporary craft, that there
was some thinking here, that it wasn't just a shop.

Anneberg: That's right.

A Toueh World for Craft Artists and Gallery Owners

Riess: Did the craft artists appreciate what you were doing for them?
Because after all, there was no profit in showing their work,
and yet they might not have understood that it was not basically
salable?

Anneberg: Oh, it very often was difficult from that standpoint. There
were quite a few artists that didn't realize at allwell,
mainly, they didn't realize that the Bay Area at that time was
really a very poor art market. It may still be, I really don't
know, but I think it was more so at that time.

If an artist, a painter, a sculptor, anybody, wanted to
really make it, it had to be in the outside world somewhere, as

252

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

well as here, because local people didn't collect that much.
There weren't big collectors, anyway weren't enough big
collectors in this area to support an art community. So it was
a tough art market, and it was even tougher for contemporary
crafts, I thought, although it probably wasn't much different.

Did they think that you had failed them?

Sometimes they did. Sometimes they did, if I couldn't sell.
They didn't understand the real situation. For the most part,
though, they didn't feel that way about it. They were often
disappointed if they didn't sell as much as they hoped they
would, but we all are when that happens. But often, sales were
reasonably good and no one was disappointed.

You were made an honorary fellow is 1979.
that? Renewed hope on your part?

What came along with

Well, yes, in a way. I was pleased, I was extraordinarily
pleased, really, because they gave it to me for the work that I
had done in the gallery, and also probably they'd heard that I
was thinking ahead in terms of a possible museum someday. But
it was the work in the gallery, and what I had managed to
accomplish in promoting the crafts in this area.

I got letters from people all over the country wanting to
show. They heard about the gallery in various ways. I also got
letters from Europe, and South America, and Canada, all over.
But I concentrated on local people as much as possible, because
it was just easier in many ways, and also I felt a particular
commitment to people in this area.

That continued for years and years after the gallery ended.
I still got letters from all over, people wanting shows, or
wanting jobs, thinking that this was a successful gallery, a
good place to work. They were young people, and I thought it
was very flattering, because they would send me these marvelous
resumes, and I thought, If I only really had a place where I
could hire people, I could get a marvelous staff together, and
it would be wonderful.

Did you ever consider expanding, or joining another gallery, or
something like that?

Well, I really didn't get any opportunity like that. Also, I
was a bit burned out. Eventually it takes its toll. My health
wasn't too good, and I really wanted to get the gallery
transformed into a museum or--not exactly the gallery itself,
but the idea behind the gallery.

253

The Idea Behind the Gallery, and the Hopes for a Museum

Anneberg: And there was also another aspect of it. All the time that I
had the gallery I had tried to occasionally offer a few books
for sale. Very often a collector would bring in some books that
could be for sale, just because they pertained to the subject.

Riess: Used books or new books?

Anneberg: New books, on consignment. They would get them from the

publisher or something like that. Like the Korean folk art
show, I had several books on Korean painting, Korean furniture,
and that sort of thing. And also I had contacted a couple of
publishers, like Kodansha, that had wonderful books on Japanese
folk art, crafts, that sort of thing.

Now, because I showed this sort of thing and had shown it
for so many years, people began to look upon me as some sort of
authority. So I had to have a few books around that I could
quickly look the facts up in, and also that I could offer them
as source materials, as sources for information on whatever it
was they wanted to know. It wasn't just people walking in the
door wanting to know things, but people would call me up on the
telephone, local people and people all over the country,
thinking if they had a question and it couldn't be answered in a
book, I could answer it.

At that time there weren't an awful lot of books published
on some of these folk crafts. There hadn't been that much
research done yet. There certainly hadn't been much written on
contemporary craft, especially with regard to their use of some
of the techniques found in traditional folk crafts. Ikat is
only one of them, there are many others. So they were always
calling me up.

This gave me the feeling that what we really needed was
some sort of resource center, an information center. Why not a
small library? And connect the library to the museummost
museums do have small libraries. I thought it should- be more of
a real information center that the public could have access to,
whereas with most museum libraries, it's not too easy for the
public to even find out that they exist, let alone get in to use
them. So I was hoping that that sort of thing could happen.

Riess: You said that when you received the award in 1979 they already
had an inkling that you were interested in doing a museum. How
did they know?

254

Anneberg: Well, I will cover all that in a minute.

Anneberg and Marl Lyn Salvador Get Together

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

The Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts was established,
let me see, it must have been in the very early seventies.

I don't remember exactly what year it was, 1969 maybe, but
a young woman came in who had just gotten back from the Peace
Corps in Panama. Her name was Mari Lyn Salvador. She and her
husband had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Panama. She had
lived with the Cuna Indians on the San Bias Islands just off
Panama and done quite a bit of research while she was there, and
had come to realize how little understood native cultures were,
especially those of Latin America, right next door to us.

We had many long talks about this. One day I said to her,
"You know, I've always wanted to start a museum." And she said,
"So have I!" So right there a spark was lit, you might say. It
was a casual sort of thing that happened in a conversation, but
we did get together about a week later. We decided we'd go
someplace and talk it over. So on a rather cool day we went out
to the Palace of the Legion of Honor and spread a little mat out
on the lawn, and sat down and talked about it.

Of course, we had grand ideasyou always do when you first
think of something. I won't even go into how grand they were;
they seem ridiculous now. But at some point you always think in
the burst of enthusiasm that you can do absolutely anything, and
that it will all come true someday. I'm really quite amazed
that as much actually has come true.

Did she have some sources of money?

No, she didn't. Neither one of us had a cent. It was just a
dream.

You didn't want to go into your fantasies, but I want to know
how wild they were!

[laughs] Well, we thought of a building of our own, for one
thing. You always think of that. And beautifully furnished
with state-of-the-art equipment, conservation equipment,
facilities.

Riess: Modeled on what, might you have thought of?

255

Anneberg: There were various European museums that we had heard of that
were beginning to blossom forth, devoted to European folk art,
various sorts of things. The one in Lisbon in Portugal probably
hadn't started up yet at that time, but there was a museum of
folk art in France, in Paris. There were various places in
Europe that were doing things, probably not in full scale, but
it was happening.

Riess: That sounds like folk art of their own country? At no point had
I thought you were particularly emphasizing American folk art.

Anneberg: Well, we didn't because it wasn't that available. It wasn't too
easy for us on the West Coast to have access to it.

The museum in Paris does consist of folk art from various
parts of the world. They were very interested in African
sculpture and things like that. When I say folk art, I'm using
it in the very broad sense. Very often I have to stop and
explain to people what I mean when I use this very loose term.
I am also including a lot of ethnic art and traditional crafts
and that sort of thing.

Continuing Difficulty Defining Folk Art

Riess: The current fact sheet on the Craft and Folk Art Museum talks

about three aspects, one being contemporary American craft, two
being American folk art, both visionary and traditional, and
three being ethnic art of "folkloric character."

Anneberg: Well, I think that's a very broad statement, and a lot could be
subsumed under that sort of description. I think people were
trying to boil it down in just a few words, and it is a subject
that boggles your mind, it really does. It's very difficult.

I think I may have mentioned that some time in the 1970s,
about 1974 it might have been, there was a conference of
anthropologists from all over the country. It took place
somewhere in the Southwest, I can't remember just where, and the
theme of the conference was, "What is Folk Art?" It did seem
that it should be definable, and since the term was such a--I
can't use the term clumsy, but it just didn't quite work. But
then neither do other general terms, like "love" and "art" and
all that sort of thing. You can't say it's just one thing. So
I don't think they should have been so surprised that "folk art"
didn't quite work.

256

Anyway, they had this conference. Eminent scholars from
all over the country came and read papers, and at the end of
this week-long conference they could not decide on a definition
of folk art. These were the experts from all over the country
who were really bending their minds specifically to this one
task of defining it.

So if they couldn't define it, I can't either. I finally
decided, what the heck. You don't really have to define it.
Nobody is going to make an art museum define art, and I don't
have to define folk art. An art museum defines art in respect
to what it is that they want to show, and it's very personal
sometimes. It very often hinges upon the taste of the director,
or a series of directors over the years will shape the
collections of an art museum in a certain direction.

Folk art can also include something that comes very close
to high art in a particular country, something that would be
regarded as art the way we regard fine arts as art. Even though
they may not use a word like "art" or even have a concept of art
as such, to them it may be the highest expression of this sort
of endeavor.

Sometimes folk art can be a pretty sophisticated product,
you see, and other times it can be very crude and very popular.
Sometimes it can be almost "palace" art, the art of the sultans,
the rulers, the emperors, or the establishment.

I think that we shouldn't exclude any of these aspects of
folk art. I like to include as much as possible of the very
popular expressions because they are important, because that is
where you sometimes find the liveliest and freest expressions of
art, and that's what I personally like and value a lot. But I
also like the other, more refined aspects of traditional art, so
I would include both.

Riess: All right, away with defining.

1972; The Center Exists Legally and Publishes a Newsletter

Riess: We were talking about your ideas for a museum.

Anneberg: [laughs] Well, we did think in terms of conservation, and a

library, and a resource center. Something that really provided
education and information in a very broad sense as well as being
a place to come and look at art. Now, I can't remember exactly

257

how we contacted other people. I just don't really remember how
it was. But we were very lucky in attracting the attention of
several very helpful people, and one was Victor Honig, and
another was Warren Saltzman.

Riess: Who are these people?

Anneberg: Victor Honig was an accountant, a CPA, of a very special sort, a
collector, and a very discerning man. He helped us a lot in
setting it up. For one thing, he had a friend who could help us
with the legal aspects of it, Warren Saltzman, who was an
attorney.

Riess: Did you move ahead with this back in the early seventies?

Anneberg: Yes. By 1972, with the help of these two gentlemen, we had our
nonprofit status. They moved right ahead and got all that set
up. It was a lot of work for them, and it was a great help.

Riess: What did you do with your nonprofit status then?

Anneberg: Mostly we talked about what we wanted to eventually do. We

interested a small group, a very small group, of people. We set
up a board of directors with four others besides Mari Lyn and I.
Of course the faces changed from time to time. But there were
no more than that. So it was small and manageable.

Riess: Who was on your board of directors?

Anneberg: It changed over time. But the first board consisted of Victor
Honig, Warren Saltzman, Florence White (she was the wife of Ian
White, who was the director of the Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco), and Mayga Dayton, and the two of us.

Riess: At that stage were you doing fund raising?

Anneberg: Yes, we did try to do fund raising. I can't remember what we
did at that very early stage, it's difficult for me to put it
together.

During the first few years we got our not-for-profit status
established and our by-laws were drawn up. This was done in
record time, I think, by some time in 1972.

I spent a great many hours writing and rewriting a
statement of our purpose in establishing the Center, what
exactly we wanted to do. Mari Lyn and I would talk about it
endlessly, I would write it all out, and we would discuss it
with the board. What kind of museum/ information center/library

258

did we want to see emerge from our efforts, and why did we think
it important?

None of the board really contributed money of their own,
because this wasn't a real going concern yet, so it was probably
not appropriate for people to be shelling out large sums of
money for an almost nonexistent sort of thing. It existed on
paper and was very fresh ink. It was amazing, though, that we
did occasionally get money from other donors, that people were
able to bring in a little money now and then just for our basic
expenses.

Riess: What were your expenses? Had you started publishing A Report?

Anneberg: Well, now, that was something that Mari Lyn Salvador helped me
with a lot. I felt that we should publish a newsletter, and we
should send it out free to our mailing list, to the Anneberg
Gallery mailing list.

The gallery had a very large mailing list which would be
impossible for a gallery of that size to sustain today because
everything has increased in cost, not just postage, but paper
itself is extremely expensive. At that time, it wasn't. So it
was possible to send out mailings in a very cavalier manner to
anybody in the world who wanted to be on the mailing list.

I thought that it was good publicity to have this large
mailing list, not just for the gallery but for what we
envisioned as a museum some day. Just to interest people in the
concept, in the idea, and hope that some day, if we could
establish ourselves in a separate place as a museum, that some
of them would join even if they didn't live in this area. As a
matter of fact, we did get quite a few members early on.

Riess: In the first mailing did you describe your ambitions for the
museum?

Anneberg: My very first mailing was just a little typewritten sheet. I

think that was when we described our wonderful idea, and what we
would like to do.

We labored over this--I think I must have made about a
hundred drafts of it. There wasn't just a first draft and a
second draft, but it was agonized over, every single word. It's
hard to imagine now how difficult it was to put our thoughts
down on paper, and to gel this idea into something that made
some sense, and didn't sound too hare-brained.

Riess:

Was it an appeal to people to join? Or more for feedback?

259

Anneberg: It was feedback mainly, I suppose. We didn't actually ask
people to join us, but we hoped that they would. That was
probably where we began to get some active support, and people
who just wanted to come and help out or offer ideas.

[tape interruption]

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and a Wish List for a Crafts
Museum

Anneberg: It is much easier to raise money for the arts when you have

something substantial. The new Museum of Modern Art building
that has taken shape in the Yerba Buena Center area has done so
much. And in that part of town you would never have believed
that the whole surroundings could look so good.

When I'm down there, in the Yerba Buena Center or the
museum, and I look around the whole horizon, I see that instead
of mountains you're looking at buildings, but they take shape
like mountains. They're part of a landscape. It's a wonderful
landscape. Buildings that were nondescript before, or ugly,
like the Marriott, something that we couldn't quite accept
before, now all of a sudden look just right. To me, it is a
landscape .

And there is a wonderful thing, a certain type of glass in
the windows of a building on one side of Yerba Buena Center-
it's wavy glass, and it reflects everything wavy, you see,
everything that's happening in Yerba Buena Center, and also some
of the buildings surrounding it. It's thrilling.

When I saw that I couldn't believe it, because it's like a
constantly moving piece of art. I'm sure that they put it there
for that reason. It couldn't be otherwise. I've never heard
anyone describe it or mention it, but it is just the most
wonderful thing, especially if you're in that outdoor coffee
shop, some place where you can look across at it and really get
a good view of this long series of plate glass windows that
reflect everythingit dances around in such a wonderful way.

Riess: That's a very nice description. It's a place that really

rewards sitting down. Not that many places in San Francisco are
designed for just sitting down.

Anneberg: Yes, right. I was on an ad-hoc committee way back when they

were just thinking about the Yerba Buena Center. I don't know

260

why I got myself on this committee, but I went to a meeting one
time, and I ended up attending a lot of very boring meetings for
a year or two. What we were asked to do was to give our input
as to what Olympia & York, who were the builders, would have in
the Yerba Buena Center. I thought that the crafts ought to be
represented in some sort of way, so I went to all these
meetings, hoping that something would happen there. I didn't
know what .

None of us really had any illusions that this sort of thing
would really be taken seriously by Olympia & York, but it was
our one chance to give them ideas from the community as to what
we really wanted. I think they did read them, and consider them
to a certain degree. They were limited as to the amount of
money that could be spent and what they could do in this space.
There were all kinds of limitations, and I'm sure that craft and
folk art was very far down on their list.

But I did write up a fanciful Christmas wish list of the
sort of things that I would like to see happen there.

Anneberg: I wanted it to be not just a gallery, but also studio space for
an artist-in-residence, so that, say, a potter, a famous potter
from someplace else, or a glass blowermaybe not a glass
blower, because that requires special equipment that really has
to be in place all the time- -but a lot of things could happen,
with textile artists and that sort of thing, who could come and
live for several months perhaps, give workshops and classes and
that sort of thing. Just be there, and do their own work, and
whatever might be called for.

I set up this idea of a studio space that could be
converted to various purposes, and with an adjacent exhibition
area, a gallery. That never came to pass, but it was fun to do
it. I understand that I was listed in the announcement of the
opening, which they probably sent me a copy of and I threw away
because I couldn't attend it, and I didn't know that my name was
on there as people who contributed, you see, to the idea of the
Yerba Buena Center. But it was kind of nice to be given credit.

Riess: What you would have proposed in this ad-hoc group that was

putting together ideas for the Yerba Buena Center, was that also
what you wanted for the Craft and Folk Art Museum?

Anneberg: We never really thought in terms of artist-in-residence, because
for a museum, I think that would be a bit excessive. It would
cost a great deal, and I don't think any museum could quite

261

support it. What I did think of for the museum was the library,
and as it turned out, we did eventually set up a small library.

Funding and Designing A Report

Anneberg: But to get back to the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Craft, Mari Lyn and I decided that we would put out this
newsletter, and that we would try to get funding to have it
typeset and nicely printed, so that it would attract a little
attention, and send it out to a broad mailing list of people all
over the country.

But we applied to the- -I don't remember what it was called
in those days, the Calif ornia--

Riess: Council for Humanities, or Council for the Arts?

Anneberg: Something like thatwhatever it was called at that particular
timein Sacramento.

We applied, and Mari Lyn was able to go to Sacramento to
plead our cause since she was free and I wasn't, and she was
also more of an extrovert than I am, and able to get up and give
a good speech and presentation. We were awarded a grant to send
out this newsletter free of charge to our mailing list for six
issues. It was quarterly as I recall.

In addition to the newsletter, in order for me to be able
to have time from the gallery to do this, it also provided for a
small stipend for me--it wasn't very much, just enough so that I
would not have to make quite as much jewelry to pay the rent,
and could spend that time making up the Report .

We went to this great young designer named Ann Flanagan in
Berkeley, and she designed a small newsletter that would be
within our resources, using Helvetica type, which was a good
all-purpose typeface. The logo was designed by Harry-Murphy,
and I've already explained about that. We used the logo that
Harry Murphy had designed for the gallery letterhead, and Ann
Flanagan invented the name. A Report she called it, and then in
small letters, "From the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Crafts." This was kind of an unusual title for a newsletter,
just A Report. We thought that was great, and it did attract a
bit of attention.

262

We sent it out all over the country, and lots of people
wanted to be on the mailing list. Everybody seemed to like it.
Each issue had one major article, several pages long, and
pictures. Sometimes we would have a couple of articles.

In addition to that, we would have news of various shows
that would be of interest to people, shows at other galleries
that had some relevance. And any other local craft and folk art
news, and reports about what we were planning as far as the
museum was concerned. Also we sent out calls for support, and
for membership, and we included a membership application where
you could send in your money, all the way from fifteen dollars
to a thousand.

We drummed up quite a number of subscriptions, considering
that this was the only way we had to do it. It was over a
hundred, which seemed like an enormous amount. We were coming
right along. The basic membership was twenty-five, so most of
them were twenty-five-dollar memberships.

Riess: Are these Reports numbered and dated by volume?

Anneberg: Yes, loosely. The trouble is that I didn't always get them out
right on time. Sometimes it's an occasional publication instead
of a quarterly. But I do have them numbered, so it's possible
to put them into chronological order, which I'll do for our next
interview and let you know just exactly how it went.

This one that I'm looking at right now is "Junk and Its
Transformations," an article by Steve [Stephan] Kassovic, who
was a graduate student in anthropology at the University of
California in Berkeley. He and his wife [Melissa] had been
doing research on other topics in Mexico, and they had noticed
in some towns in Mexico that there was a street where tinsmiths
operated, and they made [from recycled materials] what you could
only call consumer products, the sort of thing that you need to
buy to keep your life going, household things and things for the
car and things you needed on your farm or your acreage. So
there's a picture of a watering can here made from an oil can.
That was Volume III, Number 1.

Riess: Did you pay him for his writing? Was that an additional cost?

Anneberg: No, we didn't pay any of the writers anything, not even a little
honorarium. But they did get to count it as a publication, you
see, because it was a legitimate publication. And they were
usually very happy to do this--just to get something in print is
a joyful experience for most graduate students. We got some
wonderful articles over the years.

263

Riess: Did you own that logo?

Anneberg: Harry Murphy and Friends, which was the design firm that I used
for a while in the gallery, he'd invented this designed based on
a flattened Mobius strip for one of the announcements and later
for use as a logo. Then I think it was usurped by someone in
the recycling movement on the East Coast, and became extensively
used for years in the U.S. and Canada as a recycling symbol,
because Harry had entered my announcements in various
competitions, and it was widely published. So a lot of people
had had a chance to see it. On the other hand, it would be
perfectly easy for somebody else to come up with this same
design, I'm not putting that out of consideration either.
Somebody else could have invented it at the same time.

The original idea of the design had to do with an eternal
turning of events, the Hopi idea of the universe. Harry Murphy
had originally created it for the announcement of Barbara
Shawcroft's exhibition, The First People of the First World, in
November 1969. The exhibition title referred to the Hopi
concept of the universe being recreated in different eras. And
of course, this idea is also found in other religions throughout
the world, such as Hinduism, for instance. So it was the
eternal feeling of continuation, of one thing turning into
another throughout the ages. And this idea of return and
continuation makes sense in the recycling movement, you see.

Harry also used this in my letterhead for the gallery, just
as a logo. And he used it again in the letterhead for the
Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts as a logo. He won a
prize for this letterhead in another nationwide competition.
Ann Flanagan used the logo for the "o" in A Report so the design
became strongly associated first with the Anneberg Gallery, and
then the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts, and
finally it was used in A Report.

Philosophy in Linking Folk Arts and Contemporary Craft, with
Examples

[Interview 10: June 5, 1995] ff

Anneberg: I've always believed in the Chinese art of location, and Los
Angeles I know to be bad feng-shui for me, and also Palo Alto
and that area. It has much the same atmosphere. There is
something about the air that's too still, not enough wind. I
don't know. It just is wrong somehow.

264

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

It's something tangible?

Yes, it's tangible. I think it has to do with the weather,
because I like a lot of people down there. I used to go down
and visit them every now and then, and I'd have great fun in Los
Angeles. It's a great place. But I just cannot stand living
around there. [laughter]

Keeping folk art and contemporary craft together is basic to
your concept of the gallery, and the museum. And you say that
the artists valued that connection too?

I think that artists in craft media generally feel very strongly
that folk art is important to them. It's like an ancestor, even
though the art that they produce is not necessarily directly
derived from folk art. They draw sustenance from it, and it
enriches their art in many ways, not always directly.

In the case of Lillian Elliott, for instance, she was a
great collector, and she bought a lot of things from the
gallery, and from a lot of other places, too. She formed a very
rich collection, part of which they showed one time at the Craft
and Folk Art Museum. Her work often drew on various traditional
techniques of knotting and netting and ikat, and she was often
inspired by the folk art she had bought.

Ed [Rossbach] certainly was too, in plaiting especially, and
ikat--and a lot of other things. And there were many artists
whose work may not have actually shown the influence, but even
though they didn't use the techniques themselves, they were
still enriched by it. I can't quite explain why or how.

There are very good examples in the fiber arts. How about in
the jewelry, in the tribal jewelry, or other jewelry?

I think that's always an influence, yes. I certainly made
things from time to time that were directly influenced.

I have a wonderful necklace from someplace in Iran. It's
just a very wide circle of wire, and from that wire are hung all
kinds of mysterious Zoroastrian symbols some Islamic and some
Zoroastrian, but you might expect that in a tribal people,
because they would pick up influences from various places. I
thought it was so wonderful, I wore it every chance I got. But
it tended to catch on sweaters and things like that, because it
was very rough and crude.

It had, instead of real stones, beads, and instead of amber
it had a yellowish bead of some sort. The beads would imitate

265

things like lapis lazuli and turquoise, which were too precious
probably for really poor tribal people.

They would substitute other things that were just the right
color, but they would still have the value of an amulet.
Certain things will ward off the evil eye. Others will ward off
fascination. You know what that means? That's like what the
Pied Piper did to the children of that town [Hamlin] . He played
music that fascinated them, and his fascination was so strong
that they couldn't do anything but follow him.

To ward off fascination is very important. You might be
terribly influenced by something, by a man, evena woman can be
fascinated too much by certain men who aren't good for them, you
know, or just by, oh, a witch or a healer of some sort who might
have an evil influence on you. So that's important, to ward off
that sort of thing.

Things like amber, lapis lazuli, certain kinds of agate I
suppose, sapphireswhich they don't have, but that is one of
the stones that is very important all over the world all these
are given the effect of amulets to protect against ills and
disasters.

Riess: They have all these added values?

Anneberg: Yes, largely due to the color, I think, that's passed down over
the ages. The value of the stone, plus the color. But they
have, you see, substituted plain glass for some of these things,
and it will still produce the same effect if you believe in it.

The Magical in Jewelry-Making, and Figuring Out Granulation

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess :

How would jewelers be influenced by this kind of work?
would they like about it?

What

I think what they like about it is the idea, first of- all, just
the idea, because there is something magical about jewelry, and
goldsmiths feel this very strongly, I think. I certainly did,
and a lot of the people that 1 knew. You felt that you were
doing something that had to do with magic, and that had to do
with alchemy.

Because of the combining of metals?

266

Anneberg: Yes, and all the fire, especially if you weren't too deeply into
lost wax, which is kind of--I don't know, I never cared for
that, because you don't get very deeply into the metal itself.
You're dealing with wax, which is an entirely different thing.
It's a good technique to know how to do and to use on occasion,
but I think that when you work directly in the metal, then you
get the feeling of how wonderful this is, and how much you can
transform metal, the things that a kind of metal will do. The
transforming quality of metal is very magical. You feel as
though you're part of a long line dating back to the alchemists
and even further. You really feel in contact with them.

I used to read old books. One of my favorites was
Theophilus, an llth century monk who wrote a book on various
techniques and in it he described many of the techniques that
the alchemists used in working metal. 1 I don't know whether I
got it from Theophilus or somebody else, but I found a medieval
recipe for making niello, which is a technique that they use a
lot in Thailand. It's a lead compound, but it's black.

I thought it would be really wonderful to try to figure
this medieval recipe out. It wasn't easy, because lots of times
they speak in riddles, and it's very difficult to figure out
exactly what they mean, you see. They didn't talk directly in
plain language, because for one thing they didn't want just
anybody to pick up that recipe and be able to do it. So you had
to figure out what they meant. I can't give you a terribly good
example right now, but they had various ways of disguising what
they were getting at.

Anyway I figured it all out and succeeded in making niello.
I sent up clouds of very poisonous lead vapor into the skies
above Berkeley, where I was living at the time. [laughs] I
made it in the back yard, not in the house. It was before I
realized how dangerous it was--I would never have done it today.
But that was fun.

Riess: That's a good answer to my question of influence, the idea of
putting yourself into a tradition, to give yourself roots.

Anneberg: And of course, there's hardly a goldsmith who hasn't wanted to

make granulation. Granulation is those little tiny round beads.

Now, the difference between a granulated bead, a bead that
is stuck on to a sheet of metal by granulation, and one that is

'On Divers Arts. The Treatise of Theophilus, University of Chicago
Press, 1963.

267

soldered on, is that in granulation you have the point of
contact right where the little ball touches the base, the metal
underneath it. That is where it joins, but it doesn't fill up
the rest of the space there. Whereas if you're soldering, the
solder will melt and fill up that space, so that it won't look
really round, it will look flat on the bottom. The point of
granulation is to be able to do this other thing. It produces a
much more refined, lighter look.

Well, there is a way the Greeks and Romans did it, and the
Etruscans. They used a salt that had some copper in it, and
they used a very high-karat gold. Now, gold and copper will
fuse together without using any solder. They will just
naturally fuse together; if you use a little flux to raise the
melting point and heat it up enough, they will fuse together.

So what you have to do if you want to fuse a tiny ball of
gold onto a sheet of gold, you have to use a copper salt or
something that will add enough copper to make the two stay
together. And it's fairly easy to do this when you have a
relatively pure gold that you're working with in the first
place, like 18 karat, which is very close to pure gold. It has
just a little bit of whatever metal or metals they put into the
particular .alloycopper, silver, or something else. And so it
isn't too difficult for a person today to figure out how to do
it, and lots of people have. It's very joyous, it's great fun.

What is really difficult is what John Paul Miller has been
doinghe's a famous goldsmith from the East Coast. Have you
ever seen his work? He makes wonderful bugs and insects in pins
and pendants. They are absolutely encrusted with little balls
of granulation, and he does it all in 14 karat, which is
extremely difficult. I mean, nobody else has ever been able to
do 14K granulation in jewelry.

He was a metallurgist that was his profession before he
turned to jewelry-making. So he understood how to combine
metals to make alloys that would be consistent. He understood
all of that business about alloys very thoroughly.

I figured it out one time but just by trial and error
because I'm not a metallurgist, I don't know the chemistry of
it. But I did figure it out, because I thought that what he had
to do was change one of the alloys just a little bit, not have
both the granules and the metal beneath them exactly the same.
They can both be within the 14 karat range there is a slight
range in the ratio of gold to the added metal that you are
allowed and still be able to call it a particular karat. One of
the two had to have slightly more copper content than the other.

268

Riess:

Anneberg:

My feeling is that he would start with a plain 14 karat
base that he would make the insect out of, but for the
granulation he would add just a tiny bit more copper and get it
into the very high range, so that there was a bit more copper in
that ball than in the base. He would be able to figure it out
and know exactly how to reproduce this, and have it made up for
him, because he was a metallurgist.

I'm certain that was what he did. He used to write
articles on this in what was then Craft Horizons. I used to
read them over and over and over, so I thought I understood
exactly what he was talking about. He always said that he was
telling you everything except the real secret. He would tell
you almost everything else except exactly how he did it.

However, he did say that he didn't use copper salts of any
sort. He didn't do what the Greeks and Romans did, which was to
use a copper salt as a flux. He would just use ordinary flux.
So in that case, he had to be doing something like changing the
ratio of copper to gold in one of the two metal alloys.

Is that part of the definition of craft, the magic and the
secrecy?

Sometimes there is a certain amount of that. Traditionally, you
see, there was a lot of secrecy involved, because in glass-
blowing particularly, in Venice the glass-blowers were like
slaves. They were not allowed off the islands, and they were
kept virtual prisoners, because they knew all these secrets of
making glass. They did not want them out there teaching it to
everybody else.

Mastery of Technique Marks Contemporary Craft Art

Riess: Yes. That's interesting, and I've got to bring us back to the
present. [laughter)

I thought one way we might come back to the present was to
speak a bit about this article that we both had looked at from
Smithsonian [May 1995]. ["Today's Crafts Join Our Nation's Past
at the White House"] This is a collection of seventy-seven
American craft artists on view at the National Museum of
American Art.

Anneberg: Yes, the Renwick Gallery is where craft shows are normally held,
because the craft collections of the Smithsonian are in the

269

Renwick. Dominic di Mare has a piece in the Renwick, and I'm
sure Ed Rossbach does. I don't know who else does.

This collection was formed by Michael Monroe, who is now
the curator of the Renwick. Hillary Clinton had some say in it
too, I suppose, since it was originally designed to be on
exhibition in the White House. But it's extraordinary that it
was shown in the National Museum instead of the Renwick.

Riess: What struck me is the extreme elegance of these pieces.

Anneberg: They are elegant. And they have a certain timeless character

about them, even though there are some very modern things about
them too, especially in the surface treatment. Only one of them
has a terribly modern look ["Imago Bag" by Kate Vogel and John
Littleton]. It's actually glass, but it looks almost like
fabric in the photograph.

They're not too far out. They have a certain stateliness
about them that goes with the White House. At least, they look
that way in the photographs .

Riess: And would you say these vessel shapes are ancient?

Anneberg: Not necessarily, they just have an evocative feel about them.
They evoke the past, whether or not they're actually ancient
shapes. These ["Incandescent Bottles" by Michael Sherrill] tall
pottery forms are not ancient shapes. Many of these in the
collection are not at all classic shapes. But they have
something about them that goes very easily with White House
furnishings, which are definitely period. So there is something
timeless about them, which is considered to be a quality of the
very finest in craft.

Riess: And do you think a collection of this quality could have been

put together thirty years ago? I guess that's what I'm curious
about.

Anneberg: Probably not, I think crafts have in some ways become extremely
technique-driven. Craft artists have been going through, and
are still in, a period of being very conscious of technique,
developing old and exploring new techniques. Now, there are
good things and bad things about that. On the one hand, it has
produced some very elegant, very well-done and very good
techniques with a lot of different looks.

If I contrast the things that June Schwarcz is doing now in
enamels with the things that she was doing a number of years ago
when she was having shows at my gallery, there's almost no

270

comparison, the change is so enormous. I thought they were
wonderful then, but they are exquisite now. They're not
delicate--! 'm not talking about delicacy or anything like that.
I'm saying that now she is such a master of her craft that she
can do wonderful things with it in an effortless-looking way.
It just doesn't look difficult. So there are very good things
that have come out of this pervasive interest in technique.

On the other hand, you also have a very heavy emphasis on
minutiae and on excessive embellishment, I think. What is the
right word?

Riess: Actually, in art it would be rococo.

Anneberg: Almost, yes. And I'm repelled by it. It's just too much.

Riess: Tour de force?

Anneberg: Yes, it's that sort of thing. Virtuosity. It's just too much.
I see it in the craft shows that ACC has in various parts of the
country. I think that it's just awful. [laughs] Because it no
longer really feels--it just doesn't feel real. There's
something virtuosic and Cellini-esque, and Cellini has never
appealed to me strongly, because he went over too far on the
virtuoso side, I think, to be really interesting.

A Board for the Center

Riess: Now, let's go back to where you wanted to take the Center for

Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts, the function of A Report, and
what evolved, the steps on the way to the museum, and the first
museum.

Anneberg: We talked about Victor Honig, and Warren Saltzman, and Mari Lyn
Salvador and I--we were the first four. I had mentioned to the
husband of an artist who had shown at the gallery, Si something-
or-other, that I was interested in the idea of a craft and folk
art museum. He said, "I know just the person you ought to
contact who might be very interested. He's an attorney, and
you'll need an attorney." That's how I made contact with Warren
Saltzman, who then interested Victor Honig, an accountant who
had a strong interest in ethnic arts.

271

Then I sent out an early newsletter just announcing that I
had this idea in mind, and it attracted the attention of a woman
named Mayga Dayton. She lived in Ross. She had had, a few
years back, a wonderful folk art shop in Sausalito, on
Bridgeway, in that building that was just full of a lot of
wonderful shops at that time. Hers was a shop of folk art from
especially South America, Mexico, and places like that. She
herself was Latvian, and she had some wonderful traditional
Latvian rings that looked like great knots made out of silver.
She had a lot of great stuff.

It was at a time when some very good things were coming out
of Mexico. It hadn't yet attracted the attention of the federal
government in Mexico, so they weren't buying things from various
villages and folk artists. Things were coming out naturally,
they weren't being produced for the government, or for large
buyers, like Vivian Burns, people who would go down there and
buy large quantities of things. This was before all that.
(Mayga had closed the shop in the mid-fifties, though, several
years earlier. )

Mexican folk art was wonderful then, but in lots of ways I
liked things that came later just as well, because they still
had the exuberance that you can never quite put a cap on in
Mexico. It still is there. No matter how commercial it gets,
it still has a very genuine exuberance and wonderful quality
that you don't find anyplace else, in my opinion.

Riess: And did Mayga Dayton shop for all of these things?

Anneberg: A great many of them, I think. I don't know exactly how she got
them, but she had sources, people who would send things from
various places. Her shop was calledwhat was it called? Oh,
Tristamba. It was a wonderful, funny name, and had nothing to
do with folk art itself. She had a very strong interest in folk
art and she wanted to help.

When she closed her shop, a few years before this, I think
it was probably for a number of reasons. Her rent got too high,
for one thing.

Mayga brought in a friend of hers, Florence White, known as
"Floppy." She was the wife of Ian White, who was director of
the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. So Mayga and Floppy and
the rest of us were the original team, and we formed the
original board of directors.

During the first few years we tried to formulate the idea
of the museum, what it would do, and what it wouldn't do.

272

Warren Saltzman and Victor Honig got our nonprofit status and
bylaws, so that we had a legal basis for the future museum.

We had some memorable fund raisers during this early
period. Mayga Dayton gave a large sit-down dinner party at her
home in Ross for a select group of about fifty or so, maybe
moreshe had a very big house. There were three very long
tables. She had salmon soup (a secret recipe) with fresh dill,
served with excellent Finnish vodka. This was before really
good Russian vodka like Stolichnaya was available. It was very
good vodka, and the soup was sensational. Mari Lyn and I had
gone out the day before to help Mayga with some of the
preparations, like cutting up loads of dill, which we had found
in a market after a bit of searchingit was off season.

There was a blind auction too, of craft and folk art items
that various people had donated. I don't remember now how much
money was raised, several thousand dollars I think, a lot for
that time. It was very enjoyable altogether.

Another fundraiser was a special private evening viewing of
an exhibition of American folk art at the de Young Museum. We
served wine, cheese, crackers, and fruit to a crowd of several
hundred. We had the party in the museum's sculpture court, and
then of course the exhibition was open for the guests to see.
Such evening receptions could be arranged through a special
auxiliary group at the de Young.

Later on, after several years, we eventually had a complete
turnover of the board. But it was always a fairly small group,
although it behaved more like an advisory board than a true
board of directors, because we never had a board that would be
able to contribute large sums of money or guarantee them. We
always had a board that was more of a working board, but not a
money board, you see. What we tried to do would be to raise
enough money to fund announcements and newsletters of whatever
activities we were having.

An Exhibition at UC Berkeley's Lowie Museum

Riess: Did you have activities in that period?

Anneberg: Yes, we did quite a few things. One of the most exciting things
we did was to get a show of Mexican masks up from Mexico. This
was in 1975. One of the people on our board at the time, Tom
Layton, was in Mexico on vacation, where he saw an exhibition of

273

masks from the collection of a man named Victor Jose Moya. He
contacted Senor Moya and met with him in Mexico City, and said
he would like to have these masks shown in San Francisco.

The masks were partly ceremonial and partly decorative.
This was the first time that any of the decorative Guerrero
masks that I've talked about before were ever shown up here, and
we didn't understand the nature of them. We didn't understand
which were really decorative and which were ceremonial. But
they were wonderful, they were very exciting.

So Victor Moya and the Mexican government got together and
they sent the masks up and we arranged to have them shown at the
Lowie Museum, and after that at the California Academy of
Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The Lowie Museum had a nice
little catalogue printed, and the Center split the cost of
publication with them. As a result, we had hundreds of
catalogues on our hands. They sold at fifty cents each. (I
sold them in the gallery.)

The Academy of Sciences did a wonderful exhibition. (It
was part of the opening exhibition for the new Wattis Gallery--!
think it was called the Gallery of Man or something like that.)
I think it was 1975, because one of the reasons that they sent
it up was because it would tie in with the Bicentennial, which
was coming up. They sent it up late in the year. It was kind
of a gesture from the Mexican government for the Bicentennial
year.

One wonderful thing I remember that the Academy of Sciences
did was they painted costumes on the wall that they took from a
book of Mexican costumes, the costumes that were worn with each
mask.

Naming the Center, and the Museum

Riess: Now, you talked last time about the elements of A Report.

Anneberg: Yes, and that was partly to attract membership to this new

organization. We wanted to also report on activities that we
were doing, because we were beginning to feel our way along, you
see, and understand the type of activities we would be able to
do. That would be largely reaching out into the community and
doing things.

274

Riess:

We didn't have a museum, we didn't have a location. We
worked out of the Anneberg Gallery, but that didn't mean that we
actually had a location there. We couldn't invite people in and
say, "See, this is the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Crafts," because there was no such place. We were just on
paper. But we could do things in the community, like put on
exhibitions, and later on we put on lectures and film showings
and things like that.

But we wanted to be able to attract membership, not only
from the local area, but from all over. I had a good mailing
list, which I had been cultivating over the years, that spread
out all over the United States. We wanted to be able to send
this newsletter out free to our mailing list, and have a really
interesting newsletter that would also give local people some
things, like announcements of exhibitions and events that were
taking place in the San Francisco Bay Area that were pertinent.

And let me see. [looks through papers] And we would have
one or two articles. We would also have little news items, and
a little article from the director, that I always wrote, that
just told about what the Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Crafts hoped to do in the future. We would ask for volunteers
and things like that. So it was an all-purpose newsletter.

Margery, how did you decide not to call it the West Coast Center
or the California Center? How did you have the nerve to call it
the Center?

Anneberg: Oh, we had lots of nerve in those days. And we weren't the only
ones who had a lot of nerve. [laughter] There wasn't any other
such place, you see. I don't know. This was so early.

I'm not sure I even knew- -yes, I knew about The Egg and the
Eye in Los Angeles, and the fact that they did craft and folk
art. But I didn't know at the time we first started the Center
for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts that they were also
starting a museum down there. We did this without any idea that
they were doing it down there. We didn't have direct
communication, I didn't know the people there.

Riess: And what is the museum down there?

Anneberg: It's called the Craft and Folk Art Museum, the Craft and Folk
Art Museum, see. And I think it's always been a bit of a sore
point with them, as I have understood it, that we had the nerve
to later on call the museum up here Craft and Folk Art Museum.
But they did want to get away from this rather cumbersome title
that I had originally had, the Center for Folk Art and

275

Contemporary Crafts. The reason I had that long, cumbersome
title was that I wanted to put everything into the title that
described the museum, you see, so that people would have no
mistake what it was.

Riess: It's interesting that you really thought of havingit's like a
museum without walls.

Anneberg: Yes, and in fact we thought for a while that it would just go on
being that way forever. That was an idea that was fashionable
at the time, a museum without walls. People were talking a
great deal about that sort of thing, doing outreach into
schools, working with other museums and things like that, and
that you would send these great exhibitions out into the
community, and that it would do all the things that a regular
museum might do, except have a permanent collection. You could
even, I suppose, have a small permanent collection.

We didn't really have any idea what form this would
eventually take. We were working it out in our minds, and it
was just being formed as we went along. We hoped that we would
have a museum. That was one of the things that we hoped, but we
also entertained the idea that it might be a museum without
walls for a .while.

More on A Report

Riess: Would it be appropriate to line up the Reports and see what it
shows about the evolution?

Anneberg: The first one I remember was about molas from the Cuna Indians
in the San Bias Islands of Panama, which Mari Lyn had studied.
She had gone down there in the Peace Corps and spent almost a
year living and working with them. She had a lot of
information, which she later wrote a doctoral dissertation on,
and she wrote our first article.

Now, "California Portuguese at the Smithsonian Folk Life
Festival" was something Mari Lyn went to. She was one of the
field workers who was asked by the Smithsonian to bring together
musicians and singers and dancers in the Portuguese community
here, because she was doing research on the Portuguese in
California for her Ph.D. So this particular Folk Life Festival
had a lot of Portuguese singers and dancers from California, and
Mari Lyn went to Washington for it, then wrote this piece for A
Report .

276

That same Folk Life Festival also had a demonstration by
Craig Kodros on how to build a kind of Greek beehive he had
discovered that his father knew how to make. It was an archaic
form, woven of reeds and covered with cow dung, which is no
longer made anywhere else in the world. Craig wrote about the
beehive for A Report several years later, after the museum
finally opened.

Another Report that we put out was on Javanese batiks, by
Beverly Labin, who had done research in Java on them. She had a
show at the gallery of batiks she had collected there, and she
wrote a very scholarly short article. We tried to get people
who could write good scholarly articles for A Report, but they
also had to be very short because we didn't have much room.

Riess: Was A Report a place to review shows at the gallery, or would
they just be announced?

Anneberg: We just announced them, we didn't try to review them.

Riess: You also listed what was going on in the folk art-craft world at
large, which must have been a great boon to the artists.

Anneberg: That's right, because a lot of these things weren't listed in
newspapers .

Riess: And it was a place to announce competitions.

Anneberg: Yes. We also announced other activities of the Center. For
instance, in this one we announced a film showing of "In the
Land of War Canoes." This was a tale of Kwakiutl Indian life on
Vancouver Island which was filmed in 1914 by Edward S. Curtis.
I don't think that many people know that he made a film. It
never got wide circulation because of World War I; it opened to
rave reviews in New York, but the very next day we got into the
war and the public's attention became completely riveted on the
warthey lost interest in Indians.

So the film was put aside and lost for years and years, and
then it wasthey never found the film itself, what they found
were scraps from the cutting room floor that someone had managed
to save. So these scraps were put together by some people in
the anthropology museum at the University of Washington in
Seattle and made into a film which probably closely approximates
the original. Curtis had published a book based on the film so
there was something to go by.

We bought a copy of the film for the Center for Folk Art
and Contemporary Crafts--! wrote up to the museum in Seattle and

277

got a copy, which is now in the Craft and Folk Art Museum
Library in Fort Mason Center.

Anneberg: To get back to A Report, we didn't review shows at the Anneberg
Gallery, but we did review shows elsewhere that people might not
be aware of. For instance, they had a retrospective at the
Oakland Museum of the jewelry of Margaret De Patta, who had died
some years before, and I gave a review of that. And there's an
article on the Mexican masks that I just talked about.

Riess: It was really West Coast, even though you didn't call it a West
Coast center.

Anneberg: Oh, I didn't attempt to go farther afield than just the Bay

Area. But there were some very interesting articles. This one
on tattoo by Leo Brereton, who as I think I mentioned before was
involved in Lyle Tuttle's little tattoo museum down on Columbus
Avenue. He wrote a nice article on the tattoo of Yap Island.
He went there to research their tattoo but found it had all but
died out, there were only a few very old people who still knew
the art.

And here's another on junk and its transformation.
Riess: We talked about that last time.

Anneberg: For one issue I wrote an article on Eishiro Abe and his handmade
paper. I've already talked about that exhibition.

We also had a showing of several short films in a little
auditorium at Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, way up on the hill.
It was part of a film series, that later on included three
showings of the Curtis film, in Berkeley at Newman Hall just off
the UC campus, in San Francisco at the Unitarian church, and in
Marin County, at the College of Marin.

Riess: And did you recruit membership each time? Was that part of it?

Anneberg: Well, it was good advertising for the Center. We had a speaker,
an anthropologist who had done research on Curtis' making of the
film, and it was very interesting.

Riess: Your relationship with the Lowie Museum, did you continue that
or was it a one-time thing?

Anneberg: We had several people from the Anthropology Department at UC
Berkeley, and Lowie Museum, on our board at various times,

278

mainly Nelson Graburn and Frank Norick. Nelson Graburn is a
professor of anthropology, and Frank Norick is principal
anthropologist of the Hearst Museum, which was then called the
Lowie Museum.

Riess: Did you feel you were going in a direction that was going to be
well supported by an academic institution?

Anneberg: Yes, definitely.

Riess: In this newsletter, you say "We will soon be expanding A Report
to include more articles, giving information not easily found
elsewhere. The expanded publication will fill a real need,
available only to members." This is one of the last Reports on
your stack here. Did A Report evolve into something else?

Anneberg: I think that it probably didn't. I can't remember whether we

started that or not. Over the next few years my health

deteriorated considerably, and it got very, very difficult to

continue all the activities of the center.

Riess: And this is late 1977.

Anneberg: Yes, in 1977. And so the center began having fewer and fewer
activities. We did keep it together and continued having
regular board meetings, and occasional fund raising events of
various sorts. It wasn't that I gave up the idea of the museum
by any means. We had regular board meetings, and some
activities. It was just that it was on the back burner for a
while because I couldn't do anything concrete about it. There
was a small lecture series at the gallery, which included Craig
Kodros and Lisa Lethin, who also wrote an article on the same
subject for A Report, on Mexican ceremonial dances. They showed
slides and some masks and other paraphernalia.

When I finally foldedwhen the gallery finally folded in
1981, it was another year before I got together with the right
people to really start the museum.

Riess: When you were no longer able to contribute time and energy to
it, it just subsided?

Anneberg: We continued to have a few more issues of A Report but they were
fewer and far between.

Riess:

And did that original board stay together?

279

Anneberg: No, we had none of the original group by that time. Like on all
boards, there was a changeover every few years, because people
just can't keep at it. Many people get burnt out.

Riess: [laughs] You should, but you never did.

Anneberg: I never did. I couldn't, because I was keeping it together.
And Mari Lyn got a grant to go to the Azores to work on her
research with the Portuguese in California.

California Craft Museum, from Peninsula Stitchery Beginning to
Location at Ghirardelli Square

Riess: A "fact sheet" from the Craft and Folk Art Museum says that the
San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum opened in 1983. What
happened from the gallery's end in 1981?

Anneberg: At about that time, the last year that I had the gallery, I

began hearing about a woman who wanted to start a craft museum.

Now, there was also a group down on the Peninsula that was
starting a craft museum, and they had known about my interest up
here and my organization, but since I had slowed down greatly in
the last few years, I suppose they may have thought that I had
given up the ideaI don't know.

But at any rate, they went ahead with their idea of a
museum, and they started what they called the California Craft
Museum. It was at first located on the Peninsula, I think in
the Palo Alto area, I don't recall exactly where. I went down
to some of their meetings. They invited me down, and also
Louise Nason, who knew most of them and was president of our
board. I think they were hoping that we would combine with
them.

Riess: Folk art was not in their title?

Anneberg: Not really in their agenda. They were originally a Stitchery
group. Not very many people are aware of that, but they were
originally a group of women who belonged to the Stitchery Guild,
I think it was called.

I don't know if I should say things like this, it's purely
my own personal viewpoint, but I think many of these were
extremely talented women who had no other artistic outlet.
Stitchery is a very safe sort of thing to do at home if your

280

Riess:
Anneberg:

husband doesn't want a mess in the house. A lot of artwork is
an awful mess, and it also takes up too much of women's time.
Many menand I think this is not just my own opinion, it is a
factdon't like women to get too heavily, too seriously
involved in an art form.

And so stitchery is one of the safest things you can
possibly do, because what man doesn't think it is charming to
see a woman sitting and sewing and embroidering? Throughout the
ages, from medieval times onward, a woman sitting at the window
embroidering is the most charming sight to a man. So it's
perfectly safe, whereas jewelry, for instance, is sometimes
difficult, and so is ceramics, because that involves a kiln and
an awful lot of mess.

Weaving involves quite a lot of rooma loom is a large
object and it takes up a great deal of time. So even weaving
sometimes is not very easy for women to pursue, although it's
close. Weaving kind of gets in under the wire a lot of the
time, but most craft media can be a problem, as well as painting
and sculpture. It's just harder for a woman to fulfill her
creative drives than it is for men, in general.

Actually, ceramic painting is a traditional one.

Ceramic painting of plates, yes. One of my great-aunts did
that, and my grandmother's house was full of the awful stuff,
[laughter] But I've seen some very nice work done in fairly
recent times.

Riess: And this group of women wanted to take it a little further.

Anneberg: Yes, and they succeeded in forming the California Craft Museum,
and they even got a location. Now, they were able to do this
because they were mostly women who didn't have to work, their
husbands had rather good academic jobs, for the most part, in
the Stanford area. They found themselves a location, and they
all worked as volunteers. They didn't have to be paid. Nobody
had to earn a living at this like I did. You see, I couldn't
just transform the gallery into a museum because I would have to
be paid something. I had no other form of income.

They were a whole group, not just one person, as I was, and
they were all working toward the same end. There was an
enormous amount of energy, as you can imagine. These were women
who had a lot of talent, I think, and energy to put into
something like this, which they felt very deeply about. They
needed a form of expression and a place to show work, and they

281

felt that there was a lot of interesting work that other women
were doing, and men, too.

Riess: Wouldn't a gallery have done as well for their purposes?

Anneberg: It may have, but they had the energy and the foresight to look
forward and think of it in terms of a museum rather than simply
a gallery.

Well, they asked me to come down and sit in on a meeting,
which I did. And at that time Louise Nason was part of our
board of directors. She had been involved in stitchery here.
She was a person of enormous talent and energy also. She was in
San Francisco, but she knew all these people down there because
she had lived on the Peninsula. That's how I got acquainted
with the people down there.

Well, gradually it became less of a stitchery group and
more of a regional, Peninsula-area group of all kinds of people
who were interested in this idea of a museum. As I said, they
did find a location for several years--! don't recall exactly
where it was and after a while they moved to San Francisco, in
about 1975 or '76. They got a location in Ghirardelli Square,
which was a great thing for them.

A Meeting of Interests Results in a Museum on Balboa Street

Anneberg: Meanwhile I was still hoping to establish a museum in San
Francisco.

Now, right about that time I had heard of this woman who
was anxious to start a museum in San Francisco, but I had no
time to get in touch with her--I just didn't have the time or
energy or anything to be able to do that, because I was
completely involved in this very emotionally wrenching business
of freeing myself from the gallery, which was very difficult for
me to do. My whole life and everything was tied up in it, and I
didn't know where I would go if I quit the gallery.

Riess: Yes. One doesn't walk away easily.

Anneberg: No. But I kept in touch, through June Schwarcz and other people
who were going to various meetings that were held in San
Francisco with the idea of possibly finding a museum. They
would report back to me about developments.

282

The woman was Gertrud Parker- -she wanted to start a craft
museum. She was interviewing various people who might be able
to assist and help in this direction, and she interviewed the
people from Palo Alto. That didn't work out, because they had
different ideas than she did, and somehow or other they just
didn't quite mesh.

Well, I figured it might work out for me, if fate had that
in store. But I just couldn't worry about it at the time. So I
kept in touch through other people--! knew what was going on--
but I didn't get in touch with her myself, because I just could
not spare the time and the energy right at that particular
point. And so it wasn't until some months after I closed the
gallery that June got me together with Gertrud Parker.

Riess: Was Gertrud Parker a craft artist?
Anneberg: She was a weaver, interested in fiber arts.

She invited me and June to luncheon at her house in
Tiburon, where I met her and her husband. We had a very nice
lunch, and then we talked afterwards. I told them what I was
interested in doing. I talked about the idea of the museum and
the fact that I had the nonprofit status all ready to go, and
the bylaws.

I also mentioned that I was interested in not just a museum
but also a library, because I felt that there was a real need
for such a library. People were contacting me from all over the
country, asking me for information on books, and I didn't
necessarily have that information. I felt that there should be
some sort of a library that could collect all these craft and
folk art books that were beginning to be published.

Also, there were books that had been published in the past,
which were scattered here and there, libraries weren't
necessarily interested in collecting that sort of thing. I felt
that it was necessary to gather them together under one roof
somewhere .

It turned out that the Parkers were quite excited about
these ideas, and they were also interested in the library, which
was very important to me, and made me look kindly on them. So
we agreed to agree, and over the next few months we got
together.

They had some real estate in San Francisco, and one of the
places was a little house out on Balboa which they felt could be

283

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

temporarily used as a place to house the museum.
started renovating the house.

Was it in a commercial area?

So they

Not really. There was nothing but a couple of restaurants in
neighboring blocks. I don't quite know how they got around the
zoning, but we had no trouble with that.

They redid the living room, and blocked out the windows,
and put in wallboard on the walls, and blocked out the
fireplace, and they made it possible to use a fairly large
living room and dining area as exhibition area. There was a
small kitchenette which they compacted into a closet so that we
could use the kitchen area, and another small bedroom area off
the kitchen which also became exhibition space. So we had a
little more space than I ever had at the Anneberg Gallery, but
it wasn't necessarily very good space.

I'm very curious about how you thought about who would be the
director and who would choose shows.

Anneberg: Well, the idea was that I was the one who knew how to put shows
together. What we eventually agreed on was that Gertrud Parker
would be the director. She did not work in the museum, she
worked out of her house in Tiburon. She was never around the
museum except on rare occasions.

I really ran the place, and I set it up in the image of the
Anneberg Gallery, really. I set it up according to the ideas
that I and my friends had evolved in the Center for Folk Art and
Contemporary Crafts. We got together a board and agreed that
we'd have to change the name, because that was a bit cumbersome.
So the name was changed to the San Francisco Crafts and Folk Art
Museum. Later on they dropped the "s" on Crafts to the San
Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum.

Riess: Why San Francisco rather than California or Bay Area?

Anneberg: I think that was to distinguish it from any other musjeum, the
one in Los Angeles, for instance, although many people thought
that we were a branch of that museum. But that was the board's

idea,
it.

They insisted upon that wording, and I went along with

But I did set up the museum and the gallery according to
the vision that I had been working out for the past ten years.
It had been ten years since we had gotten our nonprofit status,

284

and a few more years before that that I'd been working on it
with Mari Lyn, so I'd had a long time to think this out.

And I'd had a lot of experience in the gallery putting on
shows and putting them up quite professionally, I think, getting
everything open on time, and the labels on the objects by
opening time, which is more than even the Craft Museum in New
York could do sometimes. But it takes an awful lot of
discipline and hard, hard work, and you have to know how to do
it very fast.

285

VIII SAN FRANCISCO CRAFT AND FOLK ART MUSEUM, 1983-1986

[Interview 11: July 3, 1995] ##
Curator's Job

Anneberg: I was telling you last time about the museum that was started up
on Balboa Street. This was an ordinary, small house, with two
or three bedrooms upstairs, and a living room and a dining room
and a kitchen downstairs. They tore out the kitchen stove and
sink and put all the necessary kitchen equipment in a small
closet, which was just one of those all-in-one units, a gas
stove and a kitchen sink, with a curtain over it, and used the
kitchen for a gallery space, and the small anteroom for gallery
space. The middle room was a dining room, and we set up a sort
of counter behind which I could work and talk to people as they
came in.

I chose to be on hand downstairs instead of stuck upstairs
in an office, primarily because I was the only one, the only
staff, aside from our museum preparator, Bob Hanamura. He was
the other hired staff member at the very first.

Riess: Did you hire him? Was he your choice?

Anneberg: I didn't, but he was a friend of mine. I knew him because he
used to come to gallery openings. But he was probably
recommended to Gertie Parker by Lillian Elliott, who knew him
quite wellthey both came from Detroit. He had run -a little
folk art shop and gallery there.

He had put up a number of shows as a freelance preparator
for places like Fiberworks in Berkeley, and I saw a show of Bob
Stocksdale's work that he installed for the city of San
Francisco in their small gallery on Grove Street.

So he was hired to hang the shows, although I did help out.
Usually I had the job of doing the back rooms, and he took care

286

of the large front living room area. We also used part of the
dining room area, although that was mostly a reception area.

Riess: You started to talk last time about your role in the gallery.
Tell me what you did, and how you got the shows.

Anneberg: I was in charge of setting up the museum and doing everything

having to do with the actual mechanism of working in the museum,
setting up the shows.

In fact, I did everything. I did all the mailings, which
meant taking care of the mailing list, and putting it together.
We started with my original gallery mailing list, plus a mailing
list that Gertie Parker put together mainly of her friends
around Marin County.

I did all the preparing of bulk mailing and getting it down
to the post office. And in the meantime, somewhere in those
first few months, the main bulk mailing center moved from the
Rincon post office down to South San Francisco, a very difficult
place to get to. The only way I could do it was by taxi. All
this had to be done late at night, and it was very spooky and
difficult.

It was really quite arduous, getting the mailing list
together, getting the mailing out, and putting it through the
bulk mail process. It's not just a matter of taking it down and
delivering it; you have to go over it with somebody else who
spot-checks to see if you've made any mistakes. And if you've
made any mistakes at all, then you have to take it away, outside
the post office environs, and redo it. It's really quite
complicated.

I had been through all that in the gallery for a number of

years, so I knew how to do it quite easily, as easily as one

person can do it. But it wasn't a simple matter at all. It

took a lot of time and energy, and physical energy, which I

really didn't have.

I also took care of greeting the people as they came in,
and answering questions. I was the receptionist. And I was the
main museum person who did the correspondence that had to be
done from a curator or someone like that, not the director.
Gertie took care of the other end of the museum, getting funds
together andwell, I don't know what all she did.

Riess: What I'm really not understanding is--it seems like the most

important thing is the exhibitions, and who put them together?

287

Anneberg: I did. They came from a lot of my contacts and people that I

was able to meet. Not entirely contacts that I had made in the
gallery, but contacts that I was making all the time.

Riess: Were you on a list of venues for traveling shows?
Anneberg: No, we didn't take in traveling shows. We just didn't.

Riess: Were they offered, from the American Crafts Museum or something
like that?

Anneberg: Not really. No, I can't remember that they were. We were very
small, for one thing, and usually traveling exhibitions are set
up to go to museums who can really handle them, museums that
have more of a staff.

Riess: For security purposes.

Anneberg: For security, yes. And security is important.

I knew a lot of people in the area, so I didn't have too
much trouble getting together shows, although sometimes it was a
little sticky. It always is.

Shows; Opening, Reviewed by Albright

Riess: Do you have a list there of shows?

Anneberg: Well, I can remember a number of shows that we had.

Riess: Was there a grand opening show?

Anneberg: Yes, we did a grand opening show. Now, that wasn't entirely my
idea, because I wouldn't have gone in for anything quite this
lavish. But I was strongly advised, and in fact, it was made
imperative, that I put together a show of both crafts and folk
art, all one show, mixed media, as many crafts people as I could
fit in to make a big cross-section of the craft community here,
and folk art of all different kinds, from all kinds of
collectors.

Riess: It sounds very difficult to put together.

Anneberg: Very difficult to hang and make it look like something that made
any sense. I can't remember right now who the reviewer was who
reviewed art shows for the Chronicle at that time.

288

Riess: Was it Thomas Albright?

Anneberg: Thomas Albright, right. He was very ill at the time- -he died
within a year, I think. He never reviewed my Anneberg Gallery
shows, but apparently he knew of me, and knew of my work. We
eventually became more or less friends on the telephone after I
was in charge of the museum. Well, he wrote a review which
wasn't entirely flattering, because he had the same objections
to the show that I did myself, that it was just too much of a
mish-mash, that the mixture of everything didn't really make
sense as a show.

But he was flattering about a few other things in the
museum, and said that he was happy to see me as museum curator,
and the person in charge there.

Riess: Which means that he really had been quite aware of the Anneberg
Gallery.

Anneberg: Apparently.

Riess: That sounds like a very difficult first show. You had to

contact probably thirty times as many people to do it as you
would ordinarily have to do.

Anneberg: Right, and that is one reason why ordinarily I would only have
one person represented. I never tried to give--I can't say
never, because I did it four or five times in the fifteen years
that I had the gallerybut as a rule, I didn't try to give
group shows. Even two- or three-person shows, it was difficult
for me to put together a group show.

Riess: But you said it was imperative. What if you had said, "No, this
is not professional. I can't do it." Would that have been the
end?

Anneberg: That wouldn't have been something I could do at the time. I
never felt like standing up to the authorities in charge,
because they were, after all, funding the museum. It wasn't
something that I ever found easy to do.

The fact that Thomas Albright did review the show and speak
at length about the museumor at least he wrote a sizeable
reviewmeant that he took notice of the museum, which was a
very good thing for us. It brought, I think, a lot of attention
to the museum.

But we were stuck out on Balboa Street, deep in the
Avenues, and it was hard to get people to come out there.

Riess:

289

fact, for a long time they really couldn't tell the difference
between that little bungalow and houses on either side. So
eventually Bob Hanamura was commissioned to make an awning that
would call attention to the museum, and he did a wonderful job
with a bright blue and white sort of sculptural awning, which
you could see from way down the street. I think that helped
people see it. They would know that they were on the right
block, for one thing.

The job sounds physically inappropriate for you, to be standing
all day answering people's questions. It sounds very difficult.

Anneberg: I wasn't always standingit was really my office. Also I had

my typewriter there, and I did work that had to be done. It was

difficult, but I couldn't very well have an office upstairs at
that particular time.

Thoughts on Staffing with Volunteer Help

Anneberg: I was urged to get together a group of volunteers. Now,

volunteers who really can help you on a sustained basis are very
difficult to find, people who can be there all the time, over a
period of months or years even. It does occasionally happen.
The California Crafts Museum, the one that had a spot in
Ghirardelli Square, they operated entirely with volunteers. But
they were a more cohesive body, as I've already gone into, and
they could get people together easier than I could.

The crafts community is very far-flung. And they're busy
people. And also people who are interested in crafts in the Bay
Area are very far-flung, and it's just hard to pick them out.
You can't very well go to them and say, "I want you to
volunteer," or "Can you volunteer?" You have to wait for them
to come to you.

Riess: There was a board, wasn't there?

Anneberg: Yes.

Riess: Why couldn't this be an issue the board could take on?

Anneberg: It was very difficult to find volunteers, and the board couldn't
have done it any easier than I could. They weren't people who
were in the craft community, for one thing. And it was a while
before we got together an advisory board, which was a larger

290

Riess:
Anneberg:
Riess:
Anneberg:

group of people who were just interested in crafts and folk art,
and included quite a few craft artists.

It took me a while before I think Gertie realized the truth
of my contention, that you really couldn't survive very easily
on just volunteer help, you had to hire people. She eventually
saw that volunteer help was very difficult to get. We did have
some wonderful volunteers, though. I can't say that we didn't.

One of them in particular, Candice McCann, volunteered for
quite a few months before she let it be known that she just had
to have a salary, she just had to be paid, or she would need to
go out and find a job. She was trained in secretarial skills,
she was very, very good, and she was eventually hired to take
over a lot of the secretarial work that I was trying to do, and
she was installed in an office upstairs.

I was greatly relieved. One thing Candice took over was
the monumental job of reorganizing the mailing list and keeping
it up to date. This included mailing announcements, the
newsletter, and A Report. And I was really tired of being blamed
for not being able to keep up with it. Then Gertie also hired a
professional mailing service to do all the very complex bulk
mail sorting and tying up in the right bundles for the various
postal centers, not to mention getting it to the post office on
time. It's an enormous job, not something the curator should
have to do.

Bob Hanamura was officially on the staff, wasn't he?
Bob was staff also, yes.
From the beginning?

Yes. And he was part-time. I was supposedly part-time. I
suppose everyone was theoretically part-time. The library was
not started yet, or staffed, but that was also done by a
volunteer.

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Shows; Boats. Trains, Cars, and Planes

Riess:

Anneberg:

Let's go through the early exhibitions,
sampling of everything.

The first was the grand

Yes. I don't remember the exact sequence, because I don't have
a list of exhibitions, but I can give you some of the
highlights.

We had usually two exhibitions on at the same time, and I
was encouraged, or told, that I should have exhibitions that
went togetherthe two of them had to have some relation. Well,
that wasn't always possible, and right at first I didn't make
any strong attempt. It's not always possible to have two
exhibitions that really make sense together. It's very
difficult, if one of them is folk art and one of them is craft.
I liked to keep a balance that way between the two as much as I
could.

I'll just mention some of the exhibitions, although I may
not be able to say which ones went together. I remember I had
another folk art exhibition called "Boats, Trains, Cars, and
Planes," which I gathered from a lot of different collectors-
folk art objects involving transportation. That was a lot of
fun.

One thing in that show that created a lot of interest was a
Nigerian coffin. These have not been seen around very much, but
I think they've gotten a lot of press more recently because the
village they are from in Nigeria is still producing decorated
coffins in the shape of, oh, something that the person was
involved in during his lifetime, or her lifetimemostly men, I
noticed. Their occupation, or their interest. It could be an
airplane, or a fancy car or truck, or it could be something that
they had been involved with, or made their living from, like a
large red pepper or a chile or something like that.

Vivian Burns, who was a well-known importer in San
Francisco for a long time, had come across this village in her
travels in Africa. She commissioned the local coffin-maker to
make a lot of coffins for her of the same type that he had been
making for the local villagers. She had had a big show at the
de Young Museum which caused quite a stir at the time. The de
Young had bought, I think, several coffins.

She still had one of the coffins left, so she loaned it to
us for this exhibition, "Boats, Trains, Cars, and Planes." It
was some sort of a fishing boat, with oars and little people and

292

everything, and right in the middle of it was this satin-lined
area where the body could lie in repose. I think that the whole
thing could be buried. I don't know exactly what their burial
customs were. I heard that some lady in Marin County had bought
one of them from Vivian Burns, and she intended to be interred
in this magnificent coffin. Anyway, that was a lot of fun.

Shows; Schwarcz; Shawcroft; Elliott; Christenson; Mexican Masks;
Arts of Luzon

Anneberg: I showed some of the artists that I'd known in my gallery days,
like June Schwarcz, who does enamelling and electroforming. I
really wanted to show her, because she had developed as an
artist so much in the years since I had shown her at the
gallery. She had developed her art in ways that were really
wonderful.

She did a lot of different types of things, mostly bowls or
vase forms, but many times she would start with just a very thin
piece of copper, almost a foil, and she would crumple it, or
stitch, or pleat, or bend it, or fold it, and then electroform
over it, so that it would become very solid. She could control
the electroforming sometimes, so that it could be very smooth,
or lumpy and bumpy. Then she would enamel certain parts of it.

June really had no peers, no competition in the whole
country. She did what she did, and it was very unusual. She
had developed as an artist magnificently, I thought, in the--I
don't know how many years. It wasn't terribly long, it was just
five or six years maybe since I'd shown her before. It was a
wonderful show.

Barbara Shawcroft also had a show of mostly sculptural
pieces, smallish, for her. Barbara was also known for very
large pieces in buildings downtown. One of the Embarcadero
Center buildings, I can't remember whether it was Two or One,
had a piece of hers for a long time outdoors, and there was a
huge one in the BART station down in that area. The museum
produced a nice catalogue for Barbara's showthat took some
special funding.

We also showed Lillian Elliott. At the time, she was doing
a lot of collaborations with Pat Hickman, who worked mainly with
gut, actually sausage casings. She was inspired by the Alaskan
Eskimos who made wonderful rain clothes, clothes that were
impervious to snow and rain and water, so that they could roll

293

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

over in their kayaks and be completely sealed in these wonderful
rain parkas made of gut, which were quite beautiful. Lillian
did marvelous large baskets, and small ones too, of course, but
wonderful sculptural baskets.

So between the two of them, they combined forces, Lillian's
basket structures with the gut stretched over them, adding
another almost transparent dimension to the wood, or metal, or
sometimes plastic. Lillian used any materials that caught her
fancy. She was a lot like Ed Rossbach in that respect. So that
was a wonderful show.

I also had a show of Ann Christenson's ceramics, which were
a little more sculptural than the rather wild teapots that she
showed at my gallery.

Another show was Mexican Ceremonial Masks, from Craig
Kodros. Since his last show at my gallery [March 1980] he had
become an expert at figuring out which Mexican masks were purely
decorative, and which were genuine ceremonial dance masks. So
it was a very clean show, we might say. [Earlier discussion on
page 229.] It had none of the decorative masks in it at all--a
wonderful show. That's another show that was reviewed by Thomas
Albright.

But he didn't come to every one.

I don't think he did, no. Certain ones right at firsthe died
so soon after that, and once he was gone, there was no one who
really had a strong interest in the museum. So right at first
the museum got a little more attention than it did later on.
Although from time to time we had more luck getting photographs
in the gallery section. I think that still holds true, that the
museum's shows rarely, if ever, get reviewed, but the papers
sometimes print a photograph in the Sunday pink section.

Were you still the house photographer, as you had been for your
own gallery?

I photographed some, but I didn't really have time to do very
much.

Susanna Millman began photographing the exhibitions, and she, I
think, was largely volunteer. She was someone who was a friend
of a friend of someone that Gertie knew. Susanna and I became
good friends. She was quite good, very professional, a
freelance photographer. She took a lot of color slides of the

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early shows. I don't think that she was involved for very many
years, not long after I left the museum, anyway.

Riess: Was it a complete document of the show, the way you had done?

Anneberg: Not quite so much. She photographed certain items separately,
but mostly groups of things. She was a lot better at it than I
ever was she had better equipment, lights and different lenses,
and that sort of thing, so that she could show larger groups of
things than I could. And her color was marvelous, because she
had the proper lighting, and knew all about the right kind of
film and that sort of thing.

Riess: Now, you had the Mexican Masks, and then?

Anneberg: We also had a show of Native Arts of Luzon [July-August, 1984].

I should mention that most of the time I designed the
announcements, and I was sometimes involved in producing
catalogues. I did all the photography for the Native Arts of
Luzon catalogue. Luzon is the northernmost- -not the largest
island, but the island that has Manila and the most important
cities of the Philippines. The inner part of Luzon is almost
entirely tribal, mountainous and tribal, but around the edges,
it's rice-growing and lowlands. But in the mountains there
still live many different tribal groups, so this reflected that
part of Luzon.

Newsletter Design and Mailing

Riess: Margery, did you keep shows longer than you had when you were a
gallery, longer than the four-week period that was typical?

Anneberg: For the most part, they were on just for a month. Sometimes
they lasted longer than that.

Riess: And the announcement, was it part of the newsletter?

Anneberg: No, I also produced a newsletter, and A Report. The newsletter
was more occasional, it wasn't every single month.

Riess: The point of it was to just keep in touch with members?
Anneberg: To keep in touch with members and others on the mailing list.
Riess: What was the format of the newsletter?

295

Anneberg: I think I have one here that I can show you. We probably had a
number of formats, but I have one right here that I remember,
[looking through papers] Also announcements were sometimes
designed by the person who had the show, sometimes by me, and
sometimes we had announcements designed by a volunteer. One of
the volunteers was Karin Nelson, who still is in charge of
publications at the museum.

Riess: The designer of this it says is Patricia Thornton.

Anneberg: Patricia Thornton was a designer that was involved with a
printing establishment downtown. She was a professional
designer. She took on a lot of jobs for us at, I think,
probably a reduced price for the experience of working with the
museum.

Riess: This is the design that the museum still has. But this
newsletter is 1986, and you were still on Balboa.

Anneberg: Very late in 1985 the museum got this wonderful new logo.

Riess: [reading] "Our new logo is designed by Patricia Thornton. The
stylish penmanship is by British calligrapher Malcolm Drake, a
direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake."

Anneberg: I don't know who knew him or put him onto it, but he had done
some important things.

Riess: It says he is in the collection of Princess Diana!

Anneberg: Yes, he's well known in England. So his wonderful calligraphy
was used. I was very adamant about not having a design for the
logo, because I think that print of some sort, type, or in this
case calligraphy, makes a more serviceable logo, something
that's really more useful. I think it, in the long run, holds
up better than a design of some sort.

Shows: Haitian Vodou and Architectural Glass; John Turner
Curates Southern Black Visionaries; Textiles of Old Japan

Riess: Here's another announcement, "Art in Haitian Vodou, and Shelley
Jurs, Architectural Glass."

Anneberg: That was a combination that had very little to do with each

other. The architectural glass consisted largely of doorways

296

and windows and screens and that sort of thing, that can be used
in architecture. Shelley Jurs was a wonderful artist.

But what I really liked in this combination was that the
Vodou banners were covered with sequins and glass beads and
glittery things like that, which kind of complemented the glass.
That was a particularly nice show, because these were banners
and other objects that had been actually used in Vodou rites.
One way you can tell the real ceremonial banners is that they
are edged with twisted gold fringe, and on these it was rather
worn.

These were collected by someone who had good contacts in
Haiti, and he collected them there himself. He also bought a
number of banners that were made specifically for tourists to
buy, which we could have for sale. They were very fine pieces,
though.

The ones I actually showed were only the genuine ceremonial
ones. There were also some other small objects used in Vodou
rites, like for instance decorated bottles, which they use to
pour whisky libations on the ground during the rites, and a few
things like that.

Riess: And you had to answer questions about the Vodou rites? Did you
have some literature there at the desk?

Anneberg: I didn't know a great deal about it, although the collector fed
me a lot of information, so I could answer some questions.
[Dolores Yonker, chairman of the Department of Art History at
Cal State Northridge, wrote the article on Haitian Vodou for A
Report." See further, p. 307.]

Riess: This newsletter you showed me is from January 1986. The show is

called "The Road to Heaven is Built by Good Works: Southern
Black Visionaries." And curator for the exhibition is John
Turner?

Anneberg: John was someone that I knew. He worked for a local television
station, KGO, but he was a collector of American "outsider art"
--that's what he calls it--art by American folk artists, mostly
sculptural pieces or paintings and that sort of thing. John was
one of the many people who served on the board of the Center for
Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts. So I knew him from years
back.

He contacted me after we started the museum and said he'd
like to serve as curator of American folk art, non-paid, of
course, but from time to time to dig up shows for us in his

297

field of expertise. He still does that. So we supplied him
with a business card that said that he was the curator of
American folk art.

He did this wonderful show of American black artists-
Southern black visionaries- -called "The Road to Heaven is Built
by Good Works." It was paintings and other pieces, some painted
on plywood or tin or something like that.

There was a show called Textiles of Old Japan, Bast Fiber
Textiles and Old Kasuri [March-April, 1985], and Mary Dusenberry
was the guest curator for that. She was a scholar who had spent
a lot of time in Japan, studying folk textiles.

I helped somewhat, because I had to find examples in
collections in this country, mostly private collections. She
could produce examples that were sent from Japan, but things
from collectors up and down the Pacific Coast and elsewhere, I
had to come up with. She knew of some, but most of them I had
to find. So what I did was locate people who had things in
their collections that they could send or bring in, and then
Mary, when she came, would choose among them for the show. We
also had things loaned from Lowie Museum.

Things for Sale, and Catalogues

Riess: How was it to be having exhibitions where the material was not
for sale?

Anneberg: Museums can't sell things out of an exhibition, but they will
sometimes put you in touch with the artist or collector.

It was always possible to have certain things be for sale
that weren't exactly in the show. They were kept more to one
side, by the reception deskyou could consider it to be a sales
area. Sometimes it's a little hard to draw the line between
what is in the show and what is in the shop. With big museums
that have those big traveling exhibitions, they usually have a
little room that has a lot of things for sale that travel with
the show, for instance.

Riess: Did the museum count on that as partial support?

Anneberg: Well, they couldn't count on it.

Riess: Was that one of your jobs, to be selling?

298

Anneberg: Yes, because we always had some things that were for sale that
were kind of behind the counter, and in a small showcase that
we'd put up. And yes, I did have to take care of sales of that
sort. Some shows would have certain things that the artist or
collector would supply in addition to the show, and that could
be for sale. Otherwise, we could just make arrangements with
the artist to sell something if a person was interested.

Riess: And you had to think about your nonprofit status in all of this?

Anneberg: Oh, of course, because there are rules that you have to abide
by. So we were careful to stick with the standard rules.

Riess: You mentioned earlier that you did catalogues for the shows.

Anneberg: I didn't always do the catalogues. I just occasionally helped
with them. I did do the photography for the Luzon catalogue,
with Bill Calvin's help. He was the collector. He helped set
up the lights and things like that, that are a lot of hard work.
Karin Nelson designed the catalogue.

Riess: It's expensive creating all of this printed stuff.

Anneberg: I think that they found funds for special catalogues. They did
a good catalogue for Barbara Shawcroft's show, and that was
professionally designed. Not all shows had catalogues, by any
means .

The Early Board, and the Advisory Group

Riess: It strikes me that you were working as hard, if not harder,
putting all of this together, as you were in your gallery.

Anneberg: It was a different sort of thing, quite different. I found it
quite exhausting. It was very difficult, at first especially,
because I was expected to do so much. And not only that, but it
took me so long to get out there, transferring twice on the bus,
I think it wassometimes twice, or even more often. It took
over an hour to get home every time, and about an hour to get
out there.

Riess: I have a list of five early board members. I'd like to know how
they got on, whose friends they were I'll read them to you and
then whether they were helpful to you, and whether you could
come to them and kind of rethink things as you went along.

299

Anneberg: No, they had nothing to do with the actual workings of the

museum. I set up the museum pretty much the way I envisioned
it. But a lot of museum work does not involve the actual
physical part of the museum, it's making the right contacts to
get funding and that sort of thing, and that's the job of the
trustees .

Riess: I'd like to have you respond to these names and tell me what

connection they do have to the art world. Maybe they have none,
maybe they're just connections of Gertrud Parker's and yours.
Ann Stevens?

Anneberg: She was not on the original board. She was someone that I had

known slightly, a friend of another person who was on the Center
for Folk Art and Contemporary Crafts board, so she was a contact
that I had known about. It turned out that she and Gertie
Parker were involved in something or other in Mar in County, on
the same board or something like that. I pointed out to Gertie
Parker that she was interested in the museum, so they got
together, and Ann became a supporter. She did give money from
time to time. She was one of the very early contributors, and
still is as far as I know.

Riess:
Anneberg:

Jim Connell?

James Connell was a friend of the Parkers and a collector. He
was involved mainly with the Asian Museum, and a collector of
early Thai ceramics. He was interested in the sort of thing
that we were doing. He was a friend of Gertie Parker's, in
fact, these people were all friends of hers.

Leonard Rogers was another.

Leonard Rogers the treasurer, although he was not an accountant
or anything like that. He was the financial advisor and a
member of the original board.

Let's see, who else?
Jan and Andy Katten.

That was later on. Jan Katten was on the advisory board while I
was there.

Robert Dickenson?

He was just on the board for the first year,
because of ill health.

He had to resign

300

Riess: These were referred to as the original board in a conversation I
had with people at the museum. Maybe that's an imprecise
definition of the original board.

Anneberg: And Gertie Parker and her husband, Harold Parker, who was the

attorney, and myself. There were only six of us to start with.

I was given the job of setting up the museum--! really had
the vision of the museum. I also had a lot of experience with
putting up shows and that sort of thing from the gallery. I was
the only one in the bunch who knew how to do it, who had any
idea at all of what would be involved. So that was my job.

Riess: On boards of other museums the board are enthusiastic collectors
of the sort of thing the museum they are funding is all about.

Anneberg: Well, I think later on the board became more active and involved
in actually doing things for the museum, raising money, and more
of a collectors' group. But we also had this parallel body
which was not a legal board- -most museums have a group like that
which is advisory.

Riess: And they worked more with you?

Anneberg: The advisory board only met once or twice a year, that was
rather a large group.

Riess: How did you use them?

Anneberg: Well, they were largely contacts and things like that, people
who could offer occasional advice. We didn't really make much
use of them at first, but we got them involved with the museum.
They were mostly people who wanted to be involved. But some
were people that we wanted to have involved but who didn't want
to come to meetings. They were people that we could point to
and say, "Look, this person is involved with the museum."

Riess: June Schwarcz and Barbara Shawcroft and Lillian Elliott and Ed
Rossbach--were they on the advisory board?

Anneberg: I don't remember that Barbara ever was, but the others were.

Rudolph Schafer, who was very old, in his nineties, was on the
original advisory board, and we showed part of his collection.
He had a collection of ceramics and things of that sort. He
also taught flower arranging, so we had wonderful flower
arrangements during that show, which were changed from time to
time. He was great fun to be involved with. He was still quite
active well into his late nineties.

301

Riess: Were you able to develop the library?

Anneberg: We didn't do that right away. We didn't have room for it for
quite a while.

Developing the Library

Anneberg: In about 1984 Gertie hired another person who had an executive
function. I never exactly knew why she hired her, except that
she had contacts with other museums and knew people that could
be useful. She knew how to work with other museums. She was
also, unfortunately, rather emotionally disturbed, I felt. She
was very unpleasant to me.

It was an extremely difficult time in my life, to have to
have this person constantly looking over my shoulder at
everything I did. She had an office in the museum. This went
on for, I don't know, six months or more. When she finally was
let go she got another job, and I know that the people who
employed her were very upset with her because she had caused a
lot of disturbance there, and they called up and wondered how on
earth she could possibly haveif we had had similar problems
with her.

Riess: That sounds awful.

Anneberg: It was a dreadful time in my life, and I was most unhappy with
it. But anyway, that passed.

After she was no longer occupying office space in one of
the rooms upstairs, they broke down a wall between it and an
adjoining room, making one large space. One end of it was
occupied by Candice McCann who was now the executive secretary.
And then the library took up space in the rest of it.

I knew a place to get steel shelving, the kind that you
find in library stacks. I knew a good, cheap source for that,
so I measured and figured out how much shelving we would need.
It all arrived in pieces that you had to assemble. Bob Hanamura
did most of the assembling, because it was kind of heavy
physical work, but I helped. It worked out just fine. We had a
lot more shelving than we had books.

Then I sent out the word through our newsletter that we
were interested in donations of craft books. Also, a friend of
mine who had been on the board of the Center for Folk Art and

302

Riess:

Anneberg:

Contemporary Crafts, Louise Nason, had some books that were
quite old and unusual, and mostly involved stitchery, which was
her original interest in crafts. She donated a pile, quite a
large number of books, I can't remember how many, but it was
several boxes.

I donated a lot of my books that I thought the library
could use, and various people brought in little boxes of books
which we would go over and see what we could use. So we got
together several shelves full. It was a start. People also
donated issues of various craft magazines and periodicals, and
we had National Geographies going back to the 1920s which were
donated to the center before there was a museum. Old
Geographies have wonderful photographs of native costumes from
all over.

By 1985, let's say, did the place have a vitality?
place people would come?

Was it a

No, we didn't really try, because for one thing it took us a
long time to get things recorded and catalogued and that sort of
thing. We had volunteer help; we didn't have a professional
librarian, but a library student named Erin Emerson took over.
She did the original cataloguing. We bought a few things
occasionally, mostly catalogues and things like that from other
museums .

Riess: But after two years of being out there, how much traffic did you
get through the museum, other than your openings?

Anneberg: Very little. Some shows we'd have fifty or a hundred people.
Well, no, let me see. Maybe more like twenty-five to fifty a
day. Other shows we would get very little interest at all, and
we would be lucky if we had five people a day. It was hard to
get people to come out there.

Riess: The folk art in the schools program, when did that begin?

Anneberg: Well, this young woman named Pamela Apple started that [in
1985].

Riess: Did that start out on Balboa?

Anneberg: Yes. She was a volunteer, and her interest was in getting folk
art out into the grade schools. So she started very simply,
with practically no funding at all. I don't know if she had any
funding. She and another woman just put together a few objects
and :: think started showing them to kids in the schools, and
providing projects that they could do based on the type of folk

303

art that she was showing. She started very modestly, and
they're still going and doing very well. [See "Folk Art in the
Schools," by Karin Nelson, in A Report from the San Francisco
Craft and Folk Art Museum, Vol 10, No. 4, 1992]

Riess: Did you make an effort on any of the shows to have the artist
there, or to have "in residence" or demonstration things?

Anneberg: No, that really isn't terribly easy. Most of the time it just
can't be demonstrated. Except for the openings, I don't think
that we ever had artists out there greeting the public.

Riess: What were your hours, or days of the week?

Anneberg: We were closed, I believe it was Monday and Tuesday, which were
the same days that the big museums were closed at that time. We
were open Saturday and Sunday. I worked Wednesday through
Sunday, and sometimes I was out there on the other days, too.

Shows; Max Pollak's Collection; Day of the Dead Altars; Little
Black Dresses

Riess: Have we talked about all of the shows that you remember?
Anneberg: Well, no, there were quite a few others. Let me see.

I should mention that I didn't always have free rein with
exhibitions. There were times when shows were mandated from the
director's office. One time, it was something that both of us
agreed we should show, and that was some of Mrs. Max Pollak's
[Friedl Pollak] collection of her husband's work and Guatemalan
textiles.

Riess: Who was that?

Anneberg: Max Pollak himself was no longer living. He was an Austrian who
had been an old friend of Gertie Parker's family. He was an
artist known for his etchings, but he was also a great collector
of Guatemalan folk textiles. He had been there in the forties
and fifties, I believe it was, rather early on to be collecting
that sort of thing. So what he was able to find were still some
of the old natural-dyed textiles. Those were the ones that he
was specifically interested in.

By the time he got down there and started collecting they
were well into using aniline dyes for everything, as they are

304

now. So he would just find a glimpse here and there of an old
well-washed textile. But he could tell the difference between
the softer colors, and the way a chemically dyed textile would
look when it was well washed from the way a naturally dyed
textile looked.

He came into the gallery one time, my gallery on Hyde
Street, to sneer at the Guatemalan textiles I was showing, which
were marvelous for their time, but they weren't the kind that he
loved, you see, because he loved the really, really old ones. I
didn't know at the time that he wasn't down there when they were
actually producing the textiles. He was just finding old
textiles that were still around. He would ask people if they
still had any.

With his cane--he always carried a bamboo walking stick,
and he would lift up the ladies' skirts in thethey were seated
in the marketplace, you see, with their skirts and petticoats
all around them, selling things. Well, he would just sort of
surreptitiously lift up a skirt, and he would maybe see an older
skirt underneath it. [laughs] And then he would know that she
had something, so he would ask not about the skirt, but about
anything with natural dyes, and just keep at it until he got
some results. I think I told you about him earlier.

He would also find things sometimes at the bottom of a pile
of textiles that they didn't consider to be very valuable.
Because they didn't particularly value these older textiles.
Aniline dyes, after all, make a lot prettier--! mean, a wider
range of color, not necessarily prettier. But the women often
think they are prettier, because they are brighter and have a
much wider range of color. So they were delighted with aniline
dyes when they came inalso, these new dyes were a lot less
work, you know.

Riess: Where did he exhibit his collection, or didn't he?

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

He didn't exhibit. But after he died I got to know his widow.
She invited me out a great many times to her house, and I
photographed a lot of his collection, or I tried. It was
awfully difficult, because I had to take everything outside and
pin it up against a fence, or something like that. But I did
get to see quite a few things then. So I was kind of familiar
basically with the type of thing that he had collected.

You introduced this by saying that this was a mandated show.
Well, it was, but it was a show that we worked out together.

305

Riess: Did you make the selection? Or did Mrs. Pollak?

Anneberg: She pretty much brought in what she wanted to show. She also
showed some of his etchings along with it. And some of his
collection of other thingshe collected other objects as well.

Riess: You were closer to the de Young Museum. Were you getting more
interest from curators now that you were another museum?

Anneberg: I don't think so. We were actually a very minuscule museum
compared with other established ones.

Riess: But you would be listed in the pink section with other museums.

Anneberg: Well, we did several rather interesting things. The Mexican Day
of the Dead was not widely celebrated around here then. It
gradually took hold in the larger community over the years, and
now it's an established thing. But a group of friends of mine
and I had been doing a little celebration for six or seven years
at the Day of the Dead, which is right around Halloween, you
know. It's a church holiday, actually, which more or less
corresponded to a native autumn celebration in Meso-America in
pre-Hispanic times.

In fact, it's celebrated all over the world, usually in the
autumn, but any time from late August a celebration that
invites the spirits to come back and visit. It's celebrated in
various ways all over the world. It's very common--All Saints'
Day and All Souls' Day is part of that, which the church had to
recognize, you see. All Souls' Day was part of the original
pre-Christian idea, and All Saints' Day was added by the church,
you see. And All Hallows' Day I think had to do originally with
All Saints' Day, the hallowed ones.

Anyway, some friends of mine and I had been celebrating it
every year, putting up a large Day of the Dead altar with all
kinds of folk art toys relating to the Day of the Dead, and also
pictures or mementoes of friends or relatives we wanted to
remember. One of the people had a house with a room in the
basement, a rumpus room, and we had been having our 'Day of the
Dead there, but he was remodeling his basement, so we had to
find someplace else.

Riess: Were these artists, the other people?

Anneberg: No, they were just friends, people thatwell, a friend of mine
had run a gallery for many years, a painting gallery, and many
of these were just collectors and people that she had met in the

306

course of that. So some of them were artists and some weren't.
But I just mention that we had been doing this for many years.

So I suggested that we put up our altar that year in the
museum, because we were looking for a place to put it up anyway.
I thought it would be interesting to have the Day of the Dead
altar in the museum. And then we could also invite Amalia
Bains-Mesa to do an altar. She was well known at the time for
her very special altars, usually to honor some particular person
in the art community, a painter or someone special.

Riess: Who is she?

Anneberg: Amalia worked with the public schools, she was an educator, and
very well known, an artist as well. Later on, after this, she
was a recipient of one of the MacArthur "Genius" awards for her
work with the Mexican community.

I asked her if she would put up an altar, which she did. I
can't remember who it was exactly that she was honoring, but it
was a wonderful altar. That was on one side of the room.

And the other side was our rather eclectic altar, mostly
Mexican folk art toys, but also we include many of the things
that are commonly used on a Day of the Dead altar. Like an
image of a dog, because a dog transports souls to the other
world, and salt, and a few things like that, that are important
to the souls of the dead. And we also honored friends of ours,
you see, that had died during the year.

Riess: Did this become an annual event at the museum?

Anneberg: No, we had it just one year at the museum. And we had sort of a
private opening. We invited the board, and they loved it. It
was just great fun.

Another time we had a rather off-beat show, difficult to
explain, but Mary Winder Baker is an unusual artist.

Riess: Mary Winder Baker?

Anneberg: Winder Baker. She has since dropped the "Mary" part and just
goes by the name of Winder Baker.

She was interested in the "little black dress"--do you
remember the little black dress of the forties and fifties?

Riess: Yes.

307

Anneberg: She had collected a lot of little black dresses. I knew this,
and I thought that in a way the little black dress had become
sort of an icon of American pop artnot exactly folk art, but
it occupied that sort of niche for a lot of people.

So Mary did her thing in the back room of the museum. She
put up some sort of black paper all over the walls. Everything
was very dark in there, and the dresses were spot-lighted, you
see. Then there were special things that went with the dresses
--the shoes, the handbags, the pearls, and that sort of thing.

There was an enormous amount of interest in that show. It
was just amazing. Women would come in and tell me all about
their collection of little black dresses some women still had
forty or so black dresses in their closet. [laughter] Left
over from the forties and fifties. And it was amazing. They
had such stories to tell! It really is a part of American
folklore. It's difficult to pinpoint it.

And More on A Report

Riess: In the museum's publicity release it says "A Report became

institutionalized as a quarterly journal of original research."

Anneberg: Well, that's what I always considered it to be. Although I
didn't always get out exactly four a year. I tried, but it
wasn't always that way. I had a lot of other things to do too.
But of the ones I remember that we put out during the first
three years of the museum, there was an issue on Okinawan
textiles that was an article by Dorothy Miller, who lives on a
little farm down in the Aptos area.

She had done a lot of research, and gone over to Okinawa a
number of times. She had a great Okinawan-type loom that she
set up in the museum, and a lot of textiles from her collection
from Okinawa. They are very difficult to get hold of or see.
People don't really know about Okinawan textiles. Many of them
are kasuri, dyed in the fiber before it's set up on the loom,
and some were printed. So she had an exhibition and did an
article for A Report.

Another one was on Bagobo costume of the Philippines
[Spring 1984] by a woman named Vivian Poon who had gone over to
the Philippines a number of times and done research on Mindanao
with the Bagobo tribe. These were some of the most fanciful

308

costumes of the entire Philippine Island group, most decorated,
I should say.

Riess: Was Vivian Poon a Filipino?

Anneberg: No, she was an American woman who had married- -Poon, 1 think, is
a Chinese name .

Another issue was called "Archaic Beehives Rediscovered"
[Summer 1984]. This was by my friend Craig Kodros together with
Lisa Heller. His father, I think, had mentioned that he used to
have a certain kind of woven beehive in Greece. Craig had got
his father to reconstruct one, because it had turned out to be
of a type that Craig knew from his reading was no longer used in
Europe, or anywhere else. He thought it had died out completely
so he was quite surprised to find that his own father knew how
to make this particular kind of beehive. I think it was woven
of willow or something like that, and then plastered with cow
dung.

The fall 1983 issue had an article on "Dance Dramas of the
Mexican Highlands" by Lisa Lethin Heller--this was in connection
with the Mexican mask show by Craig Kodros and his brother,
George. Craig and Lisa had done field research in the
Cuetzalan, Puebla area in the late 1970s, so this article comes
out of that experience. Lisa wrote the article but Craig had a
lot to do with it, and the photographs were taken by him.

There were three more issues in 1985, the last year I was
with the museum. "Invitations to the Spirits: The Vodou Flags
of Haiti" by Dolores Yonker [Spring 1985]. In the article she
explains the historical and ritual background of the flags. We
had a show on at about that time of Haitian Vodou flags.

Then there was an issue on flat woven tribal Oriental rugs
["The Languages of Symbolism in Tribal Oriental Rugs"] written
by Jan David Winitz, which accompanied our show of rugs from his
collection. It goes into the various symbolic elements used in
tribal rugs from Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, that area, and I
think it helps demystify them. This came out in Summer 1985.

The last Report I had anything to do with was the Fall 1985
issue which featured an article on "The American Arts and Crafts
Movement" by Dorothy Lamoureux. She is a local scholar
specializing in the furniture and decorative arts of the Arts
and Crafts movement, and she guest-curated a show of this sort
of thing in the museum at the end of 1985. There was Stickley
and "Mission Style" furniture in the show, and handmade pieces
by Bay Area designers of the early 20th century, and also

309

ceramics, lamps, glass, and rare books, mostly from the
collection of D.J. Puffert of Sausalito. Dorothy Lamoureux
gives a very good summary of that whole period in American
designearly 20th century--in the article.

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:
Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

By creating this series of original research reports, you were
really doing something that the Lowie Museum might have done.

Well, it was an opportunity to present short articles on
original research in this sort of thingfolk art, folklore,
traditional arts of various sorts. It was something that would
be interesting to a wide group of readers. They wouldn't have
to be experts in the field, because the articles were written
for the lay person, but written by scholars who were really
experts .

You were saying they've all been reproduced by the museum.

The original ones that I produced when I had the gallery were
still available, I still had a number of copies of them. So
after we started the museum I made up a list of publications-
some of the catalogues that we had produced, and the old copies
of A Report, that were published under the name of the Center
for Folk Art and Contemporary Craft. We had quite a number of
titles that we could offer for sale to other museum libraries.
Museum libraries send out these lists of things to other museum
libraries, and you can order things you see that you don't have
in your collection. So we got quite a bit of response from
other museums.

After a while, Gertie Parker thought that we should reprint
some of these items published under the name of Center for Folk
Art and Contemporary Crafts. Essentially we reprinted old
copies of the Report under the name of the new organization.

Did other museums wish to have the exhibitions?
them designed to travel?

Were any of

We never had people inquiring if they could have our
exhibitions, no. I think that already it was becoming very
difficult. You had to get a lot of funding, for one thing, to
get a traveling exhibition ready to travel.

310

Summing UP. and Leaving

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg;

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Riess:

Anneberg:

Now, by 1985, 1986, was this entity, the museum, what you and
Gertrud Parker had wanted it to be?

Well, it was taking shape pretty much as I had envisioned it.
The combination of contemporary craft and folk art was something
that I very definitely wanted, and that I felt was important to
have together. You can have them separate, of course, but I
thought that it was more interesting to have a combination.
Even to a certain degree the American Craft Museum in New York
combines the two. Occasionally they have exhibitions that are
more folk art, and certainly they feature folk art subjects
occasionally in American Craft magazine.

And you and Gertrud Parker were in agreement about what the
museum was supposed to be?

Not terribly, at times. I stood up for what I felt was
important, and that was to have the combination of the two. It
was suggested that we narrow ourselves down to one or the other,
and make a choice.

She suggested that, or the board suggested that?
Well, I don't know who exactly was insisting upon it.

The people who were trying to raise funds were having trouble
funding it?

I think it was the board. It was suggested to me that it would
be better to have one or the other. I made a case for having
the two combined, and apparently it wasn't too much of an issue
at the time. So anyway, that stuck.

I also was very concerned about establishing a library, and
so I succeeded in setting up the museum the way I had originally
envisioned it, pretty much, including the library. So in a way
my mission was pretty much completed by the time the Parkers
didn't feel that they wanted to keep me on as a paid staff
member. I was invited to volunteer if I liked, and to remain on
the board.

Had they hired somebody else in your position?
No.

311

But I decided to leave altogether and not remain on the
board. It was time, anyway, and it was no longer physically
possible for me to get around very easily. It was hard to get
there, hard to get around once I was there, all kinds of things
were difficult. Although in the last year that I was there I
was provided with a small office upstairs, and volunteers were
manning the reception area downstairs. I was doing more and
more of my work upstairs. Part of the time I was downstairs on
the weekends I was still downstairs.

Riess: Who coordinated the volunteers? That's almost a job in itself,
organizing that. Were the volunteers serving as docents?

Anneberg: No. Not yet, docents were only used after the move to Fort
Mason, when attendance increased greatly.

Riess: They were just simply manning the place?

Anneberg: Manning the place. I had a couple of people that I could call

on occasionally to help me with exhibitions, the part that I put
up myself, and cleaning up and getting everything labeled. I
also organized the openings, and got there early or just stayed
theresometimes I didn't get dinner at all and saw that the
show was ready to open when it should open. Which is really
quite a feat, many museums don't manage that very well.

Riess: And you did all the labels for everything?

Anneberg: Yes, I did all that, all the labeling, and had the show ready to
open when it was supposed to open.

Riess: In 1986, on this newsletter, you are still Margery Anneberg,
editor, and curator.

Anneberg: I stayed on through the month of January, 1986. I was there

from the beginning of 1983, actually the end of 1982, throughout
'84 and '85, those three years. But my name was still on the
letterhead through most of '86, they used up the old stationery
before getting it reprinted, so they continued to make use of my
name for a while.

Riess: What has been your relationship to it since then?

Anneberg: I don't volunteer, but I have a very good relationship with the
staff. I think I mentioned that I go to see most of the shows,
and I know most of the staff people. I don't know all the
people that I see volunteering in the reception area, I don't
always know those, but I know the others.

312

Weldon Smith, the director, who took over when Gertie
resigned in 1987 I think it was, I knew from when I was on the
board of the Friends of Ethnic Artabout '82- '85. He was
president of the FEA board, and also director of Fiberworks in
Berkeley in those years. Carole Austin, who became the curator,
had worked with me on the board of the Center for Folk Art and
Contemporary Crafts just before the museum started to take
shape. And Karin, editor of A Report, was the very first
volunteer, she was there from the beginning.

Riess: When you were given that choice of being a volunteer or leaving,
was that a way of pushing you out, or were they so strapped for
funds?

Anneberg: Both. I think they were anxious to have me leave, but money.
Riess: The museum then took quite a different direction?

Anneberg: No, it was pretty much the same. After a while the exhibitions
--let me see, for a while, exhibitions were the work of a
committee. Now they're completely under Carole Austin, the
curatorshe's part-time. All of them on the staff are, I
think, except for the director, Weldon Smith, and the secretary.

Riess: It looks like there was a year at Balboa Street without a paid
curator.

Anneberg: You know, I can't remember exactly what was going on, how soon
it was that Carole was hired.

Riess: It says here [on press release] they hired a museum professional
as the first paid director, and that was 1986.

Were you in on the thinking about the move to Fort Mason?

Anneberg: No, I wasn't. That was at least a year after I left. Although
I am pretty certain they knew about it.

There must have been a lot of things in their thinking.
One was that I wasn't getting along very well, they thought,
with them. Harold Parker apparently had all kinds of problems
with me. He was doing the funding, and I was told that I wasn't
deferential enough to him. I guess he would interpret the
expression on my face, although I was careful to try not to show
anyhe would interpret it as being disrespectful. It was just
too difficult.

I should mention that late in 1985 I had urged Gertie to
try to get funding for A Report, which was a successful

313

publication and was one activity that had brought attention to
the museum outside the Bay Area. That did turn out to be true.
The funding she obtained for A Report was the first large grant
apart from the hotel tax money which she was able to get for the
museum.

Funding for the museum increased considerably after Weldon
Smith became the director. He had been the director of
Fiberworks after Gyongy Laky left, in fact he still occupied
that post when Gertie Parker decided to retire as director of
the museum and offered him the job. He called me at home to say
he had been approached, and asked me what I thought about it. I
said I thought the only way the museum could really succeed
would be to have someone like him take over. I knew he was a
good administrator and experienced fund raiser and would
represent the museum well, and I was very pleased when he
accepted the job--he had just the right personality and
credentials for the job. He is still the director and my
expectations have been more than fulfilled. Also, he gets along
well with craft people and collectors, which is very important
for the health of a museum like this. I think things are going
in the right direction, and I'm very happy about that.

Transcribed and Final Typed by Shannon Page

314

TAPE GUIDE- -Margery Anneberg

Interview 1: February 27, 1995
Tape 1, Side A
Tape 1, Side B
Tape 2, Side A
Tape 2, Side B 25

Interview 2: March 13, 1995
Tape 3, Side A

Tape 3, Side B 36

Tape 4, Side A A4

Tape 4, Side B 54

Interview 3: March 20, 1995
Tape 5, Side A
Tape 5, Side B
Tape 6, Side A
Tape 6, Side B

Interview 4: March 27, 1995
Tape 7, Side A
Tape 7, Side B
Tape 8, Side A
Tape 8, Side B 122

Interview 5: April 24, 1995
Tape 9, Side A

Tape 9, Side B 14

Tape 10, Side A 148

Tape 10, Side B 156

Interview 6: May 1, 1995
Tape 11, Side A
Tape 11, Side B

Tape 12, Side A 177

Tape 12, Side B

Interview 7: May 8, 1995
Tape 13, Side A
Tape 13, Side B

Tape 14, Side A 204

Tape 14, Side B

315

Interview 8: May 15, 1995

Tape 15, Side A 219

Tape 15, Side B 226

Tape 16, Side A 234

Tape 16, Side B 242

Interview 9: May 22, 1995

Tape 17, Side A 247

Tape 17, Side B 254

Tape 18, Side A 260
Tape 18, Side B not recorded

Interview 10: June 5, 1995

Tape 19, Side A 263

Tape 19, Side B 270

Tape 20, Side A 277
Tape 20, Side B not recorded

Interview 11: July 3, 1995

Tape 21, Side A 285

Tape 21, Side B 293

Tape 22, Side A 301

Tape 22, Side B 309

APPENDIX

A. Anneberg Gallery Exhibition List 316

B. Nine Decades: The Northern California Craft Movement. 1907
to the Present, the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art

Museum, 1993 324

C. "San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, A Fact Sheet" 356

316

APPENDIX A

ANNEBERG GALLERY
2721 HYDE STREET
SAN FRANCISCO, CA. 9^109

ExH I B I T I ONS

OCT. 10 - Nov. 5, 1966
Nov. 28 - DEC. 24, 1966

FEBRUARY 5 - MAR. 5, 196?
MARCH 13 - APR. 6, 196?

APRIL

MAY 2 - JUNE 1, 1967

JUNE 20-JuLY 15, 1967

AUGUST 12- SEPT. 9, 1967

SEPTEMB ER

OCTOBER 3 - Nov. 4, 1967

Nov. 20 - DEC. 30 1967

JAN. 30 - MARCH 2, 1968

APRIL 30 - JUNE 1, 1968
JUNE 10 - JULY 15, 1968
JULY 23, AUGUST 24, 1968
SEPT. 6 - OCT. 12, 1968
OCT. 22 - Nov. 23, 1968

DEC. 3 - JAN. 4, 1969
Jan. 9 - Jan. 29, 1969

ANCIENT TEXTILES FROM^ EGYPT - GRECO-ROMAN,
COPTIC, EARLY ISLAMI'C. COLLECTED BY
GORDON HOLLER.

GLASS FROM BERKELEY - MARVIN LIPOFSKY AND
H I S STUDENTS AT TH E~UNT"VERS I TY OF UAL I F R N I A
DEPARTMENT OF DESIGN.

LARRY MCCLARY -. DRAWINGS AND SCULPTURE

ISLAMIC POTTERY FRAGMENTS, 10TH-16TH CENTURY,
EXCAVATED AT THE SITE OF t~ U S T A T , EGYPT.
COLLECTED BY ELINOR PAWULA.

COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ISLAMIC MIDDLE EAST
BY GORDON HOLLER.

HELD OVER.

LILLIAN ELLIOTT - WALL HANGINGS

LUMINOUS IMPRESSIONS - JEWELRY BY IMOGENE

G I E L I N G AND STUDENTS AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE COLL.

HELD OVER.

FORGED IRON - C. CARL JENNINGS

HELD OVER.

GUATEMALAN INDIAN TEXTILES FROM THE COLLECTION
"OF CAROL i NE WEST.

A CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION - GROUP SHOW OF BAY AREA

CRAFTSMEN.

Held over

EARLY ISLAMIC TEXTILE FRAGMENTS FROM EGYPT.

HELD OVER.

RITA YOKOI - CERAMICS

WEAVING BY CAROLE BEADLE

BARBARA SHAWCROFT - WEAVINGS i N 2 & 5 DIMENSIONS

BRUCE ANDERSON - CERAMICS

INDIAN ARTS OF PERU - COLLECTED BY CAROLINE WEST

CALIFORNIA CRAFTSMEN - GROUP SHOW.
Child Weavers of Eevnt

317

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

FEBRUARY 4 - MARCH 8, 1969 HOWARD KOTTLFR. DECAL PLATFS AND CER'AM.CS

APR i L

MAY 6-31, 1969

JUNE 4-28, 1969

JULY 8 - AUGUST 2, 1969

AUGUST 5 - 30, 1969
SEPT. 9 - OCT. 4, 1969

OCTOBER 7 - Nov. 1, 1969

Nov. 4-29, 1969
DEC. 3-27, 1969

FEBRUARY 3-28, 1970

WAR. 7 - APR. 4, 1970
APRIL 8 - MAY 2, 1970

MAY 6 - JUNE 6, 1970
JUNE 17 - JULY 18, 1970

SEPT. 2 - 26, 1970

OCTOBER 8-31, 1970
NOVEMBER 4 - 28, 1970

HELD OVER.

NIK KREVITSKY - STITCHERY

INDIAN TEXTILES FROM GUATEMALA. COLLECTED

RECENTLY BY CAROLINE WEST, INCLUDING AN EXTENSIVE
COLLECTION OF 1 KAT WEAYtNGS.

SAROJBEN - CLOTH APPLIQUE PAINTINGS,,
(A FOLK ARTIST OF H7 D I A j

EL A i ME HENNJNG - WOVEN KINETIC FORMC

FABRIC AND FIGURES OF SOUTHERN MEXICO. FROM

THE COLLECTION OF FRED AND BARBARA Ivi E I E R S .

BERBER WEAVING AND JEWEVRY FROM MOROCCO.
COLLECTED IN THE ATLAS FOUNTAINS REGION BY
CAROL i NE WEST .

BARBARA Si; AW CROFT. THE FIRST PEOPLE OF THE
FIRST WQRL p. WOVLN FORKS AND HANGINGS.

CLOTH OF INDIA - TEXTILES FROM WESTERN INDIA
COLLECTED BY H A K u SHAH.

HELD OVER

YQLANDA GARFIAS V.'cc - TEXTILES WOVEN ON T H r
BACKSTRAP LOOM.

CAROLE SHALL (METALS MITH) - POTS, VESSELS AND
OTHER OBJECTS

DOMINIC DINARS - FIBRE. FEATHERS. AND CLAY
JUNE SCHWARCZ - ENAVELS AND EL ECTROF ORM i NG

JACQUETTA NISRET - Tv.-o DIMENSIONS (WEAVING)

NOMADIC Pur. WEAVING AND JEWELRY FROM PERSIA
AND THE ANCIENT CARAVAN ROUTE. COLLECTED BY
JOYCE HUNDAL.

Fi rs.TA MEXI CANA - MEXICAN FOLK ART FROM THE
COLLECTION of FRED & BARBARA MEIERS.

HAL PAINTEM - TAPESTRIES & WALL HANGINGS
JOHN LEV/IS - Gt.ov.'N GL ASS

DECEMBER 2 - JAN. 24, 1971 FOLK ART EAST AND WEST.

318

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

TO JAN. 24, 1971
FEBRUARY

MARCH 3 - 27, 1971
APRIL 6 - MAY 1, 1971
MAY 5 - 29, 1971
JUNE 2 - JULY 3, 1971'
JULY 7-31, 1971
AUGUST H-SEPT. 4, 1971
SEPT. 8 - OCT. 2, 1971

OCT. 6 - Nov. 13, 1971
Nov. 17 - DEC. 23, 1971
JANUARY 5 - 29, 1972

FEBRUARY

MARCH 1 - APRIL 1, 1972

APRIL 5 - MAY 20, 1972
JUNE 1 - JULY 1, 1972
JULY 7 - AUGUST 5, 1972

AUGUST 10 - SEPT. 9, 1972
SEPT. 14 - OCT. 14, 1972

OCT. 19 - Nov. 11, 1972

FOLK ART EAST AND WEST
Held over

DIANA CHRESTIEN - WALL HANGINGS
PAULA BARTRON - GLASS

KAY SEKIMACHI - MONOFILAMENT WOVEN CONSTRUCTIONS
INDIAN ARTS or PERU.- COLLECTED BY CAROLINE WEST
PATRICIA SCARLETT - PAINTED CERAMICS
BARBARA KASTEN - FIBER SCULPTURE

TRADITIONS IN JAPANESE FOLK ART (PEASANT
TEXTILES, TOOLS AND UTENS I LS) . C LLECTED BY
MR. & MRS. J. EDWARD COOK

BEDOUIN TEXTILES AND JEWELRY FROM TUNISIA, -
COLLECTED BY CAROLINE WEST

A CHRISTMAS SHOW OF MEXICAN FOLK ART -
COLLECTED BY FRED AND BARBARA MEIERS

ANDREE THOMPSON - MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPES
(NEW CERAMI c FORMS)

Held over

TEXTILE FRAGMENTS FROM EGYPT (COLLECTED BY

GORDON HOLLER) AND PERU (CO"L"LECTED BY NIK KREVITSK\

ARTS OF INDONESIA - COLLECTED BY HADIDJAH
FIELDING AND I RWAN HOLMES.

HILL TRIBES OF NORTHERN THAILAND. TEXTILES AND
OTHER ARTS COLLECTED BY TRUDY CLARK.

FOLK TAPESTRIES OF EGYPT. ATELJ ER RAMSES
WISSA-WASSEF AND OTHERS. COLLECTED BY MR. & MRS.
DAVI o Wi LL i AMS.

LILLIAN ELLIOTT - NETS AND OTHER WORKS

EQ ROSSBACH - TEXTILES PLANAR WEAVINGS AND
PHOTOGRAPHIC PIECES

FOUR DIFFERENT THINGS - WORKS BY CAROLINE BEARD,
NAIMA MAUFRES, GRACE EARL, ANTONIA WILLIAMS.

Nov. 16 - DEC. 23, 1972

MEXICAN FOLK ART FROM FRED AND BARBARA MEIERS

319

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

JANUARY 4- - 27, 1973
FEDRUARY 1 - 24, 1973
MARCH 1-31, 1973
APRIL 5 - 28, 1973

MAY 3 - JUNE 2, 1973

JUNE 7 - 30, 1973

JULY 3 - AUGUST 18, 1973

SEPTEMBER 6 - 29, 1973

OCTOBER 4 - NOVEMBER 10
NOVEMBER 15 - DECEMBER 22

JANUARY 3 - 26, 1974
JANUARY J1 - FEBRUARY 23

FEBRUARY 28 - MARCH 30

APRIL 4 - 27, 1974
MAY 2 - JUNE 1, 1974

JUNE 6 - JULY 6, 1974
JULY 11 - AUGUST 10, 1974
SEPTEMBER 12 - OCTOBER 12
OCTOBER 17 - NOVEMBER 16

NOVEMBER 21 - DECEMBER 23

Do"ifnc Dif.'ARE - RECENT WORKS

ROM Wi COIN TON - CERAMIC SCULPTURE & DRAWINGS

ATRI CAN FOLK CRAFTS - COLLECTED BY ANN MAURICE

F i am FORMS - CANDACE CROCKETT, CAROLE BEADLE,
TRUDE GUERMONPREZ, TED HALLMAN, JACQUETTA
NISOET, BARBARA SHAWCROFT

KATHERIHE WESTPHAL - RECENT TEXTILE WORKS
HUGH AANONSEN - ELEGANCE (CERAMICS)

HUICHOL. ARTS-YARN PAINTINGS FROK' HUICHOL INDIANS
or THE WESTERN SIERRA fviAORc, MEXICO. A

COOPERATIVE EXHIBITION WITH N V A I GALLERY,

BERKELEY. SIMULTANEOUS SHOWING AT NOVA I GALLERY.

SOUVENIRS OF A TRAVELLER ALONG THE SILK RQAO
OLD TEXTILES AND JEWELRY FROM PERSIA, TURKEY
AND AFGHANISTAN COLLECTED BY ALICE ERB.

or INDIA - OLD TEXTILES COLLECTED BY

GYONGY LAKY.

T i u CAM CRAFTSMEN or MEXICO - COLLECTION OF

OTEVE AND MELISSA KASSOVIC.

MEXICAN FOLK ART - COLLECTED BY MOLLY HANNER.

SCREENED IMAGES ON CLOTH - LYN MAUSER

THE YQUNC. WEAVERS or. SAN I si PRO - FOLK TAPESTRIES
FRGf. 1 . COLOMBIA COLLECTED BY ROBERT AND JUDITH
BLOMB ERG .

CONTEMPORARY SOUTHWEST INDIAN CRAFTS - COLLECTED
BY PHYLLI s SEI OKI N.

NEW CERAMIC FORMS - ANOREE THOMPSON

TRADITIONAL CRAFTS OF BOTSWANA - SELECTED BY
TIM YOUNG AND DIANE JOLIN

PAINTINGS ON CERAMIC - PATRICIA SCARLETT

RECENT WEAVI NGS - TRUDE GUERMONPREZ

ENAMELLED AND EL ECTROFORMED METAL - JUNE SCHWARCZ

EOWARO S. CURTIS - ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAVURES.

COLLECTED BY VlNCENT COBALIS

FOLK ART FOR THE HOLIDAYS - COLLECTED BY
ANN MAURICE, MARY COZAD, LYNNE MEISCH AND BILL
E, PHYLLIS SEIOKIN, MAR.LYN SALVADOR

320

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

JANUARY, 1975
FEB. 6 - MARCH 1, 1975
MARCH 5 - 29, 1975
APRIL 4 - MAY 3, 1975
MAY 17-31, 1975

JUNE 5-28

JULY 8 - AUGUST 2, 1975

AUGUST 7 - 30, 1975

SEPTEMBER 4 - 27, 1975

OCTOBER 2 - 25, 1975
NOVEMBER 6 - 29, 1975

DECE-.-BER 4 - JANUARY 24,
1976

JANUARY 2P - FEBRUARY 28,
1976

r/ARCH 4 - APRI L 3, 1976

APRIL 8 - MAY 1, 1976
!,'AY 6 - 29, 1976

JUNE 3 - JULY 3, 1976

JULY 8-31, 1976
AUGUST 3 - 28, 1976

SEPTEMBER 7 - OCTOBER 2,
1976

OCTOBER 6 - 30, 1976

NOVEMBER 4 - 27, 1976

FOLK ART FOR THE HOLIDAYS (HELD OVER)
ANN CHRISTENSON - PORCELAIN CERAMICS
LILLIAN ELLIOTT -MINIATURE TAPESTRIES
JAN WAGSTAFF - TAPESTRY CONSTRUCTIONS

K.LEE MANUEL - AMULETS: PAINTED LEATHER

AND CLOTH

KURDISH WEDDING CARPETS. COLLECTED BY

JAMES GREENBERG

OLD GUATEMALAN WEAVI NG. COLLECTED BY MARTHA

AND JOHN M E N S E R .

FIBER JEWELRY - SUSAN GREEN, AND

BARBARA COMSTOCK - PIECES OF AN EARLY WORLD

CLOTH CONSTRUCTIONS.

INDONESIAN IKATS AND BASKETS. COLLECTED BY

MICHAEL YERBY

DOUINIC DiM.ARE - RECENT WORKS: HANDMADE PAPER

HORVATH COSTUMES AND FOLK TEXTILES FROM HUNGARY

COLLECTED BY LAURA SCHIFF

MEXI CAN FOLK ART. COLLECTED BY ELLEN KERNAGHAN
AND MARGERY ANNEBERG

WICK'S BOOKS - SUSAN WICK (JOURNALS v; i T H A

TEXTILE BASIS, ORIGINALS A NO XEROX INTERPRE-
TATI ONS)

TRADITIONAL JAVANESE BATIKS - A WOMAN'S ART
COLLECTED BY BEVERLY LAB i N.

FELT - CAROLE BEADLE AND GAYLE LUCHESSA

METAL CONTAINERS - EILEEN GILBERT HILL.
MINIATURE CONTAINERS IN SILVER AND BRASS.

TIBETAN ART AND ARTIFACTS. COLLECTED BY
MOKE MOKOTOFF

DIANA LEON - PORCELAIN CERAMICS
CONTEMPORARY BOBBIN LACE - A GROUP SHOW -
ZAPOTEC RUGS FROM SOUTHERN MEXICO. C o L L E c T E.D
BY MARY HALLOCK

THE HANDMADE PAPERS OF EISHIRO ABE. A "LIVING
NATIONAL TREASURE OF JAPAN." SPONSORED BY THE
CENTER FOR FOLK ART AND CONTEMPORARY CRAFTS
AND THE AMERICAN CRAFT COUNCIL.

PHI LI PPI NE BASKETS. COLLECTED BY JOYCE YEE

AND DAV I D HOLDEN

I NDONESI AN BASKETS. COLLECTED BY V. ICHAEL YERBY
AND ROBBIE BENNETT

ABACA IKATS FROM MINDANAO. COLLECTED BY KATE
MORRI s AND PETER GEST

321

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

nrrFMBER 2 1976 - COLLECTORS' FOLK ART. FROM LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA,
JANUARY 8, 1977 SOUTHEAST As. A, THE FAR EAST, AND SOUTHWEST UN, TED

STATES'.

FEBRUARY 12, 1977 JOURNEY TO TIBET. TIBETAN ARTS AND ARTIFACTS

COLLECTED BY MOKE MOKOTOFF AND ARTHUR ALDEN LEEPER.

MARCH 2-APRIL 2, 1977 MATS FROM BORNEO. COLLECTED BY ROBBIE BENNETT,

DON BlERLICH, AND MlCHAEL YERBY.

APRIL 7 - 30, 1977 WEST AFRICAN FOLK TEXTILES. COLLECTED BY ANN I/AURICE

MAY 10 _ j UNE : 4, 1977 COLLECTED BY WILL COLLIER - AFRICAN AND NEW GUINEA

SCULPTURE, UZBEK AND AFGHAN TEXTILES.

JUNE 9 - JULY 2, 1977 BATIKS AND IKATS FROV INDONESIA. COLLECTED BY

JOSEPH FISCHER AND LAURENCE Moss

JULY 7 - 50, 1977 ARTS OF THE UPPER AMAZON RIVER. COLLECTED BY

LISA MCCREERY AND ROBERT DUNCAN

No SHOW IN AUGUST

SEPTEMBER 2 - 10,

1977 OLD DANCE MASKS AND MILAGROS FROM GUERRERO, I\;EXICO.

COLLECTED BY GRACE RELFE.

SEPTEMBER 1? - 24,

1977 CHAIKA GARBLED PAPER. DECORATIVE PAPERS BY

BETTY Lou BECK AND DAVID HENDERSON

SEPTEMBER 29-

OCTOBER 15, 1977 100 YEARS OF MEXICAN EX-VOTO PAINTINGS AND T/ILAGROS.

COLLECTED BY RAE AND JOE NEUMEN

OCTOBER 20 - ANN CHRISTENSON - PORCELAIN
NOVEMBER 12, 1977

NOVEMBER 16-26, 1977 AFRICAN. CHINESE, AND EUROPEAN BEADV;ORK- COLLECTION

AND DESIGNS BY NOEL MICH EL SEN.

DECEMBER 2-23, 1977 MEXI CAN FOLK ART. COLLECTED BY RAE AND JOE NEUMEN.
JANUARY, 1978 MEXI CAN FOLK ART. CONTINUED

FEBRUARY 2-25, 1978 CEREMONIAL I KAT WEAVINGS AND ARTIFACTS FROM BORNEO.

COLLECTED BY MICHAEL AND FATIMA PALMIERI.
MARCH IO-APRIL 18, VOTIVE ARJS OF MEXICO. COLLECTED BY RAE AND

1978 JOE NEUMEN.

APRIL 13-MAY 17, 1978 100 YEARS OF SARAPES AND BLANKETS FROM NORTHERN

AND CENTRAL MEXICO. COLLECTED BY JOHN MENDENEZ.

MAY 25-JuNE 17, 197 INDONESIAN TEXTILES AND OTHER HANDICRAFTS. OLD

CARVED WOODEN PUPPETS FROM WEST JAVA. COLLECTED
BY TRAUDE G*vi N.

JUNE 29-JuLY 29, 1978 ANIMALS, DEMONS, MEN. MEXICAN DANCE MASKS COLLECTED

BY GRACE RELFE.

322

ANNEBERG GALLERY EXHIBITIONS, CONTINUED

AUGUST 1-31, 1978

TRADITIONAL EXPRESSIONS. TEXTILES AND FIGURES or
ASIA, AFRICA AND THE AMERI CAS.
SEPTEMBER 13-24, 1978 SHIPIBO POTTERY OF THE PERUVIAN AMAZON. COLLECTED

BY Ll SA McCREERY.

OCTOBER 5-28, 1978

WEST AFRICAN TEXTILES FROM GHANA AND UPPER VOLTA.
COLLECTED BY BONNIE BRITTON.

NOVEMBER ;2-25, 1978 MADHUBANI FOLK PAINTINGS. COLLECTED BY MARY AND

TONY DE BONE.

DECEMBER 1-30. 1978 MEXICAN FOLK ART. COLLECTED BY CRAIG KODROS,

FRED AND BARBARA MEIERS, AND MARGERY ANNEBERG

JANUARY IO-FEBRUARY

JAPA NESE BASKETS, KASURI AND STENCILLED TEXTILES.
COLLECTED BY CYNTHIA SHAVER.

FEBRUARY 8 -
MARCH 3, 1979

MARCH 8-24, 1979
AFML 5-28, 1979

MAY 3-26, 1979

MAY 31-JuNE 30, 1979
JULY 6-AuGusT 4, 1979

SEPTEMBER 6-29, 1979
OCTOBER, 1979
NOVEMBER 1-24, 1979

NOVEMBER 29 -
DECEMBER 23, 1979

JANUARY 3-
FEBRUARY 2, 1980

FEBRUARY 7 -
MARCH 8, 1980

MARCH 13-APRi L 5,
1980

COLLECTED BY
COLLECTED BY

INDONESIAN TEXTILES
GRACE RELFE.

TIBETAN AND MONGOLIAN TREASURES.
MOKE MOKOTOFF.

IMAGES OF TRADITIONAL CHINA. STONE RUBB INGS,
WOODBLOCK PRINTS. SILVER JEWELRY. COLLECTED BY
LAURENCE Moss.
KOREAN FOLK ARTS. FOLK PAINTINGS, WOOD CHESTS, BOXES,

BASKETS, BRASS. COLLECTED BYSHULAMITH RUBINFIEN
AND MARY ANN SHALLENBERG.

CENTRAL Asi AN SILKS. COLLECTED BY ANTHONY AND
MARY DE BONE.

TAPESTRIES AND BATIKS FROM THE WORKSHOP OF
WISSA WASSEF, HARRANIA, EGYPT

OLD PHILIPPINE BASKETS. COLLECTED BY GRACE RELFE.
OLD PHILIPPINE BASKETS, CONTINUED.

ART OF WEST CENTRAL AFRICA. TRADITIONAL CARVINGS

OF NIGER, UPPER VOLTA, MALI AND IVORY COAST. WITH

TUAREG AND FULANI JEWELRY. COLLECTED BY PETER
AND NANCY MICHELSEN.

MEXICAN FOLK ART - OLD TOOLS & HOUSEHOLD IMPLEMENTS

I NDONESI AN TEXTI LES. FROM THE ISLANDS OF SUMATRA,

JAVA, TIMOR, ROTI AND SABU. COLLECTED BY MARY HUNT
KAHLENBERG

BEADWORK. EMBROIDERIES AND PATCHWORK. FROM
SAURASTRA AND RAJASTHAN, INDIA. COLLECTED BY VINU
AND KOK i LA SHAH.

MEXICAN CEREMONIAL MASKS. COLLECTED BY CRAIG
ERNEST KODROS AND GEORGE KODROS

323

April 17 - The Quezada Family Potters - Contemporary Casas

May 10, 1980 Grandes

Collected by Spencer Keith McCallum

May 15 -

June 7, 1980 Dance Masks of Bali and Madura. Collected by Leo Brereton

June 12 - Turkish Textiles. Collected by Dorothe Gould-Pratt.
July 5, 1980

July 10 - Weaving and Dyeing of Sierra Leone. Collected by

Aug. 12, 1980 Olive Wong.

Sept. 11 - Japanese Silk Kimonos. Collected by Winifred Dahl
Oct. A, 1980

Oct. 9 -

Nov. 1, 1980 Philippine Baskets. Collected by William Galvin

Nov. 5-22, Dolls. Collected by Dorothe Gould-Pratt and Dorothy

1980 Shelton Gould

Nov. 28 - The Arts of Mexico. Collected by Joan Sommers.
Dec. 23, 1980

Jan. 8-31, Silk Road Treasures from Afghanistan. Collected by

1981 Abdul Abrahimi

Feb. 5 - 28, Tribal Arts of Tunisia. Collected by Juanita Netoff
1981

March 10 - Japanese Kimonos and Haoris. Collected by Winifred Dahl
April 4, 1981

April 9 - Mexican Ceremonial Masks. Collected by Craig Kodros .
May 2, 1981

May 28 - Philippine Baskets, Textiles, Artifacts. Collected by

June 20, 1981 William Galvin

July 23 - Folk Arts and Crafts of Madagascar. Collected by Alan Harnick
Aug. 15

Aug. 18 - 31 Final Folk Arts Show and Sale

324 APPENDIX B

NINE

DECADES

Hi NORTHERN CAL.FORNIA CRAFT MOVEMENT
1907 TO THE PRESENT

E s E N T t D , Y The San Francisco Craft & Folk An Museum

Oliver An Center/California College of Arts and Crafts
The California Crafts Museum

w , T H ESSAYS BY Carole Austin

Dyana Curreri-Chadwick
Ted Cohen

I N T B O D U

c T i o N 6 Y Kenneth Trapp

:f -flft ^- ^: A^S&l^b

; -Hybridization'' ;':V'-^\ . , \2 o

jms;"K : i-ymm^

pste>Siv : . ; .'-. '--- ..-'w' >;-.- :dsr:

; . ..Macky Hall, idminisi ration building of
of Arts and Crafts.
: The Victorian mansion was at the center
:' -'pf the Jbrincr Treadwell estate. Macky
11 photo courtesy- of California Col-
V4egmJVns'an4 Crafts archives. Photo
.Lindi Ijwln : .

PREFACE

Wh .n a discussion was joined among the craft organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area about how best to
celebrate 1993 as the Year of American Craft, it seemed that the time was ripe to document the history of the craft
movement in Northern California. What approach would be more appropriate than to focus on the
contributions of artists affiliated with the California College of Arts and Crafts, the oldest and most important
California crafts institution, from its beginnings in 1907 to the present.

Ever)' significant Northern California artist working in traditional craft media, as well as those
experimenting with new materials, has been involved in one way or another with the California College of Arts
and Crafts. It was at CCAC that the crossover of crafts to an innovative new form of "fine art" was solidified
and the American Craft Museum found its anchor in California.

To illustrate that story, the curators of the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, the California Crafts
Museum and the Oliver Art Center/California College of Arts and Crafts have organized AVw Decades: The
Northern California Craft Movement, an exhibition in three parts. This catalog documents the three exhibitions:
The Beginnings: ioo~ -104021 the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, curated by Carole Austin, Modernism:
Craft Breakthrough in Northern California, 10.50-10.75, The Glory Yean, curated by Ted Cohen, and Hybridization:
Contemporary Northern California Craft, 1975 to the Present at the Oliver Art Center at the California College of
Arts and Crafts, curated by Dyana Curren-Chadwick. All three exhibitions are designed by Ted Cohen. Louise
Gregory, Director, California Crafts Museum, and Jennifer McNerney, Administrative .Assistant, Oliver Art
Center, provided support for the project.

Principal funding for the exhibitions and catalog is provided by the National Endowment for the .Arts.
An accompanying symposium on "The Craft Movement and Cultural Pluralism," held at Fort Mason's Cowell
Theater in San Francisco, was supported in part by the California Council for the Humanities, a State project
of the National Endowment for the Humanities and contributions from individual sponsors.

Thanks are owed to Linda Lawler who generously contributed the design of this catalog. Kenneth Trapp,
Curator of Crafts and Decorative Arts, The Oakland Museum, graciously prepared the catalog introduction.
The curators of the exhibitions wish to acknowledge the assistance of the following persons: Vanroy Burdick,
Director of Libraries at CCAC; Janice Capecci, Researcher at The Oakland Museum; Eric Nelson, Acting
Director/Curator, Sonoma County Museum; Missy Kinder, Arts Coordinator, California Exposition & State
Fair; Don Grant, Preparator, CCAC; Thorn Weyand, Associate Director of Development, CCAC; Sandra
Weber, Director of Alumni Programs, CCAC; Jennifer Friedman, Jennifer Tunny and Suzanne Groth, Gallery
Assistants at the California Crafts Museum; Tara Tucker, Gallery Assistant, CCAC. Finally, we all owe a debt
of gratitude to Hazel Bray, former Curator of Crafts at The Oakland Museum who did so much of the pioneer
work in the history of the American Craft Movement in California.

J. MPELDON SMITH

DIRECTOR
SAN FRANCISCO CRAFT & FOLK ART MUSEUM

327

INTRODUCTION

Nine Decades: The Northern California Craft Movements a three-part exhibition that traces the evolution of the
craft movement in the Bay Area from the early years of this century to the present as the movement was given
form by the artists who were associated with the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC). Organized by
the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, California Crafts Museum in San Francisco, and the California
College of Arts and Crafts/Oliver Art Center in Oakland, the collaborative exhibition also pays tribute to 1995,
The Year of American Craft.

Each of the three organizing museums for Nine Decades has selected a particular era to address. The
Beginnings: 1907-1949, organized by the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum, covers the years from the
founding of CCAC in Berkeley in 1907 following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire to 1949 as the Cold
War escalated in the post- World War II years. Bracketed by the Arts and Crafts movement and the maturation
of Modernism, this time period embraces the Machine Age (1918-1941) and the studio craft movement in which
individual artisans created works of art following their own vision with little or no assistance from others and with
minimum reliance on technologies.

Modernism: Craft Breakthrough in Northern California, 1950-1975, The Glory Years, organized by the
California Crafts Museum, addresses the concept of modernity as it applies to traditional craft media. In the 19505
and 19605 artists who consciously chose materials traditionally associated with the applied arts rebelled against
the stifling limitations imposed by functionality based solely upon materials. Beginning with ceramics, this
"release of materiality" opened the way for the dynamic use of other materials, a phenomenon that became the

328

hallmark of the contemporary craft movement. 5

The third, and concluding, segment of Nine Decades is organized by the California College of Arts and
Crafts/Oliver Art Center. Hybridization: Contemporary Northern California Craft 1975 to the Present examines
the cross-fertilization of the visual arts to produce a craft hybrid, neither fully devoted to tradition and function
nor fully intended to be or yet accepted as so-called fine art. Characterized by diversity of creative expressions
and unconventional materials and new technologies, the recent evolution of the craft movement in the United
States has been particularly strong in the Bay Area, with CCAC playing a pivotal role.

As the craft movement in the United States in the twentieth century has yet to receive serious critical
investigation that will lead to a much needed publication, we can be assured that such an exhibition as Nine
Decades serves to pave the way for such a meritorious study. The history of CCAC and the craft movement as
documented by works produced by faculty members at CCAC can be seen as a microcosm of a much larger
organic movement international in its breadth and scope.

The San Francisco Craft & Folk An Museum, the California Crafts Museum, and California College
of Arts and Crafts/Oliver Art Center are to be commended for organizing Nine Decades. Indeed, they are an
example of how all museums can and should work together toward common goals.

KENNETH TRAI'P

CURATOR, CRAFTS AND DECORATIVE ARTS
THE OAKLAND M L 1 S E L 1 M

*//H'

329

- V. -.'"I'

t*w

A Xr-

330

THE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA CRAFT MOVEMENT

The Beginnings:

D D

i 9 o - - i 9 4 9

The Northern California Craft Movement can be said to have begun across the Bay at the base of the Oakland/
Berkeley hills, just one year after the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. The story begins with Frederick
Wilhelm Henry Meyer, born in 1872 in Grossbeckel, Germany, who immigrated to the United States intending
to make art his career. After attending several schools in the United States, he returned to Berlin and graduated
from the Royal An School in 1896.

With his schooling completed, he came to San Francisco, where he held a variety of jobs as an artist.
Meyer married Laetitia Summerville in 1902 and soon after left his position as Art Supervisor for the Stockton
Public Schools to open his own cabinet shop. During this time he taught at the University of California at
Berkeley and at the Mark Hopkins Institute in San Francisco. His furniture offered a significant contribution
to the Arts and Crafts Movement in Northern California, but it is yet to be well researched and documented.

Meyer lost his furniture shop during the 1906 earthquake and
started as a designer in the Arthur Mathews San Francisco cabinet shop.
Around this time, at a dinner of the San Francisco Guild of Arts and
Crafts, ofwhich he was president, he spoke of opening an art school where
"design, mechanical drawing, commercial art and the crafts as well as
C teacher's training" would be the focus. 1

A newspaper picked up the story, and there was an immediate

Dhaemcrs, Margaret "California Col
lege of Arts and Crafts." unpublished thesis, public response in favor of such a school. On this impetus, in the summer
Mills College. 1967. pp. 32-60

THE BEGINNINGS

331

Photograph.-. oU-.uly Uailty (clockwise
from top Ictt): 1'erh.im N.ihl, l : n.-Jcrick
Meyer. Lacuna Meyer. Isabel Percy
(West). Courtesy ot'CCAC archives.

of i9O-.Mr.and.Mrs. Meyer conducted the first summer session fortheirschool with approximately 43students.

B\ I9GS. the faculty consisted of Frederick and Laetitia Meyer. Elizabeth Ferrea, Rosa Taussig. Isabelle Feivv
'\Xest' and Pcrham Nahl. The school, situated on the fifth floor of the Studio Building at Shattuck Avenue and
Addison Street in Berkeley . wa<. named School of the California Guild of Arts and Crahs and speciali?ed in
applied and formal arts. Meyer's desire was to enable his students to earn a living \vith their art; he was committed
to the \ie\-. that theory and practice go hand in hand.

The school moved to 2130 Center Street before the end of the first year, and in 1908 five students were
graduated. The name of the school was changed to the California School of Arts and Crafts. By 1910 the school
moved to larger quarters at 2119 AJston Way, Berkeley, and remained there for fifteen years.

Growing pains precipitated the final move of the school to the Treadwell Estate in Oakland. The down
payment and installments were financed with tuition from World War I veterans (the entire debt was paid oft
by the tuition of World War II veterans who filled the school beyond capacity). In 1921, the school was
incorporated as the California College of Arts and Crafts. An enthusiasm for the arts prevailed and students and
faculty worked to restore and repair the buildings and to plant gardens.

The decades from 1907 to 1949 at the California College of Arts and Crafts might be called the "Meyer
years. (Frederick Meyer retired in 1944 and died in 1961.) Over seventy artists taught at CCAC during this
period, and although the college offered a comprehensive program which included design, painting, drawing.
watercolors, sculpture, photography and printmaking. these essays (and exhibitions) are devoted to the craft

1H! BEGINNINGS

332

program. Mu^i ^raft faculty members became- major influences in an education and can be considered pioneer 1 -
in the American Craft Movement on the West Coast. They worked under the philosophy or" the esteemed
ceramics teacher at Alfred University, Charles F. Binns, who believed that craft was a closed and separate field
of activity that defined its own aesthetic.-- Characteristic of the late forties, ceramic artist Robert Turner expressed
belief in craft as an integration of labor and spirit not tainted by the big art world. -^

It was a time of artists coming together to teach what they loved to make art. Enthusiasm and
dedication more than compensated for any shortcomings in technique and discipline. The college offered a crah
curriculum that included pottery, weaving, leatherwork, metalwork, woodcarving and furniture making,
puppetry, interior design, bookbinding, basketry, clothing and costume design. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific
Exposition, the school won the Medal of Honor for a model artist's studio designed and executed by the Students.
Classes at this time were often oriented toward the home and "living the good life," the motto of the Arts and
Crafts Movement that dominated the early years of craft-making in California. 4

World War I and the Depression brought sharp drops in enrollment at the College. These were difficult

~ _ "(.raft I oday: Poet ry of
the Physical," American C.raft Museum,

years when students often worked off their tuition and faculty took heavy
cuts in pay. WPA projects offered work and income to some. World XX'ar
II brought another cut in enrollment and hard times for the college. It was

pp. IO-H.

the end of the forties, with the influx of enthusiastic war veterans and

Trapp, Kcnm-th I he An, and Crafts

f, p 2fV

N'ordncu, Lee 'Obji-us L'.VA ."iy?o.

Movement in California L.ntng the Good
Lift, I9,iv

European immigrant artists with sound technical training, which laid the

333

Above: Ceramic pitcher by California
Faience, early 19005, and nint;> by
Chauncey Thomas, 190^. Photo by
Sibila Savage.

Opposite: F. Carlton Bali at his studio
at Mills College, ca 194-. Courtesy ot
Man 1 Ann Ball.

334 THEEEGINN'NGS

groundwork for the modern era of fine crafts.

The most forward-looking area of the crafts in Northern California at this time was ceramics, where new
ideas and techniques w ere being explored. The early faculty had few if any textbooks, and some of the first potting
wheek were made with sewing machine treadles. It was not uncommon for the faculty and students to work
Together to learn new processes. Sometime in the late forties the faculty made a significant advance beyond the
Denver Kiln by building a reduction firing kiln, naming it "St. Elmer' a result ofa slip ot the tongue by Antonio
Prieto when christening the kiln "St. Elmo." This affectionate name stuck and the kiln was used by the faculty
and students for many years, opening up new glaze possibilities.

The following artists included in the exhibition The Beginnings: 1907-1949 made significant contributions
to the American Craft Movement: William V. BragQOn (1885-1959) studied ceramics 'at Alfred
University, New York and served as chemist to the French ceramic artist Taxile Doat in St. Louis. Moving to
California, he became an instructor at CCAC in 1915. A year later he formed a partnership with (^naunCCV
R. 1 homaS (1877-1950), and opened up a shop which would become California Faience in 1924. Chauncey
Thomas studied ceramics at Alfred, taught at the University of Chicago and at Deerfield Pottery before cominc
to teach at CCAC. (jlen .LuKCnS (1887-1967) moved to California from Missouri around 1924. As professor
of ceramics at USC, he played an important role in the California ceramics movement. He had as students F.
Carlton Ball, Beatrice Wood and Vivika Heino, and Laura Andreson was his colleague. He taught at least one
summer session at CCAC. r. (Canton Ball (1911-1992), a native of California, taught ceramics at CCAC

T H BEG'NNiNGS

335

from 1936 until 1939. when he became the head of the ceramics depart
ment at Mills College, Oakland. A consummate educator, he taught at
many colleges and wrote numerous articles about ceramics.

AntOniO PrietO '1912-196-] immigrated to the United
States in 1916 from Yaldepenas, Spain. After completing his studies at
Alfred University, New York, he began to teach ceramics at CCAC in
1946. A close association developed between Prieto at CCAC and Carlton
Ball at Mil Is, and Prieto succeeded Ball at Mills in 1950, establishing a fine

reputation for himsdfand for Mills. Marguerite Wildenhain

(1896-1985) was born in Lyon, France and received her education in
Germany, studying at the Bauhaus under Max Krehan and Gerhard
Marcks. She immigrated to the United States in 1937 and taught ceramics
at CCAC for two years until she began her own workshop at Pond Farm
near Guerneville.

The artists at CCAC were required to teach more than one craft
in the earl\ years, so out of necessity they learned new skills. Use
jCnulz lilller (1900- ) came from Germany with accomplished
bookbinding abilities but learned weaving as a teaching requirement. It

This page (upper): llseSchulz Hillerat
her studio, early 19405. Counesvot the
artist's family.

This page (lower): Marguerite
^X'ildenhain at Pond Farm, ca 1040-
195:. Courtesy of Tim Steele.

Opposite 'left): Ham St. John OKon.
bctore 1949. Coiiriesv ot Sonoma
C.ounty Museum.

Opposite (right): Bob \\ iiivton wear
ing his own necklace, c.i i040-i-;si.
Courtesv of the artist

336

THE

was in this area thai she obtained most ot her awards, takm<; many medals in the California State Fair which
constituted one of the main showcases for artists at that time. OSfTV bt. John UlXOFl d89O-i96~).
brother of the painter Maynard Dixon, was a metal artist. Influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement, he
studied with Dirk van Erp and worked with Lillian Palmer for many years. A major commission in the 19:0*
was the elevator doors for the San Francisco Stock Exchange Club (now the City Club). He studied design at
CCAC and taught there for many years. DOD Vv inStOH (191^- ) introduced the lost wax method of jewelry
casting into the classroom and .Margaret L)e 1 cltta. had a vision of jewelry design decades ahead of the
period. The well-known sculptor KjCnaTQ O rlanlon, taught ceramics as well as sculpture. ixUdolpn
Schaerrer (1886-1988), born in Michigan, came to teach manual arts at Troop Polytechnic School (later
California Institute of Technology) at the urging of artist Ernest Batchelder. He taught pottery and decorative
design at CCAC before opening his own school of "Rhythmo-Chromatic" design in 1926 in San Francisco, where
he made a lasting impact on Bay Area artists.

This period of the Northern California Craft Movement was a transitional era during which crafts
moved from amateur status with emphasis on manual training and occupational therapy in the schools to the
training of educators and the pursuit of fine craft as an artistic statement. It would blossom during the fifties
when Abstract Expressionism stressed individualism above all else.

CAROLL A tills

CURATOR
S A S FRANCISCO CRAll i fOIK ART MISH M

337

MODERNISM:

Craft Breakthrough in Northern California

1950-1975
The Glory Years

The term Modernism evokes a period of growth from traditional methodology and thinking in sympathy with
what is new and, therefore. "Modern." Innovative and exciting new decades were inaugurated ai the California
College of Arts and Crafts, not unlike the Abstract Expressionist movement in painting which developed in the
same period. Part of this development stemmed from a huge enrollment of veterans from XX'orld XX'ar II and their
serious commitment to establish perimeters as artists first and craftsmen second. One ot the most important
decisions affecting the school after XX'orld XX'ar II was to offer a degree in education for the first time, a decision
based on the availability of funds from the G.I. Bill of Rights, and a direct benefit to attract veterans. In the early
19505, the college became accredited as a specialized institution granting the Bachelor of Arts Education and the
Master of Fine Arts Degrees.

Ceramics has played a major role in the school's curriculum since CjJen LukenS taught at the college
in the 19305. In fact, it was a group of potters, inspired by Lukens in 1938, who presented the first California
ceramic exhibition at the Los Angeles Count)- Museum. The clay instructors were not only well known for their
own creativity but were inspirational teachers. Until 1981, when theNoni EcclesTreadwell Ceramic .Arts Center
was dedicated, artists worked in what was affectionately called "the old pot shop.

Antonio PrietO taught in the early fifties at CCAC and later went to teach at Mills College.
Viola rrey, the well known ceramic sculptor, began her affiliation with the college in the late 19605. She
was called "Resident Potter" and remained so until the middle 19-0$, when the terminology of the traditional
craft artisan was being challenged and her title became more specialized as Professor of Ceramics. Frey and other

338

distinctive specialists in various craft media started to dominate the curricula. The noted teacher, social historian,
and museum curator and director, Peter Selz, said of the creative climate during these times. "It was a freedom
to experiment with inter-cultural influences and exotic techniques."

Fine craftsmanship, however, was not neglected, regardless of the innovative stylistic treatments
emerging from the kiln, wheel, loom, or forge. It is this aspect of learning that always has been such a major focus
of the College. This was partly due to the many European artists and teachers who came to the school just before

and after World War ii. Trude Guermonprez. creating textiles; Marguerite Wildenhain.

ceramics; and V ICtOT KjCS, metal arts; were just a few of the dynamic individuals to immigrate to the Bay
Area and become involved with CCAC. Victor Ries was so well respected as an artist and teacher that even after
retirement, CCAC sent special students to work with him in his studio.

Edith Heath, who took over ceramics when VemOO Coykendall had a leave of absence
in the mid-1950s, continued with the attitude that apprenticeship at the college be required of the students to
learn as much about the process as well as the finished product. Edith, who is still creating today, remarks that
her goals in teaching ceramics were: "First, to make people aware of the abundance of clay all over the world and

of the importance of using the earth to save the earth, which is a cheap
ready supply of material; second, to lower the temperature in the kiln
through finding materials which help each other to melt at the lowest
temperature. Someday we may be firing clay by use of the heat of the sun.

Above left: Viola Frcy, Ceramic CamtL
1974. 42 x 70 x 25, courtesy of Rena
Bran&tcn Gallery, San Francisco, Cali
fornia

Above righi: Portran of Antonio Pneto,
1950, from CCAC archives

MODERNISM

339

Left: Portrait of Edith Heath, 1955.
Collection of Edith Heath, Sausalito,
California

Opposite (left): Trude Guermonprez,
The Neighborhood, woven tapestry, col
lection of Sylvia and Eric Elsesser

Opposite (right' 1 : Barbara Shawcroft.
detail: Screi* ; 19-3. with jrtist. rope
netting, tourtov ot the ,ini>t

Opposite (below : KaySekimachi.de-

tail of room divider, black and natural
linen, private collection

That will be the potter's greatest contribution to human kind and will be an ART." Heath remembers Robert
Arneson, who was one of her students, as possessing a particularly strong level of "political awareness.' Other
ceramic instructors added their luster to CCAC's rolls. EuniCC PriCtO worked alongside her husband
Antonio. Robert Yaryan, who aJso taught at the school in the 19505, remembers Eunice's motto. "It jhe

gia/x-; should be no thicker than a blotter when applied." Jacomena Maybeck, Charles Fiske,

Michael Lopez, and Arthur Nelson were also significant teachers during this period.

Several other departments grew at a startling rate during this expansive period. The textile department
under Trude Guermonprez was a strong force in the transformation of traditional loom weaving for yardage and
interior design to fine art. Guermonprez was awarded the American Institute of Architects prestigious
Craftsmanship Medal (1970) in recognition of "an individual craftsman for distinguished creative design and
execution, where design and hand craftsmanship are inseparable." As Professor of Textile Arts and Chairman
of the Division of Crafts at CCAC, she stated at the time, "During the last twenty years, I have had the great
satisfaction of seeing weaving take its place among the fine arts, and I am proud to say that as a teacher 1 have
contributed to that." Her work has always concerned itself with excellent craftsmanship in the inventive use of
materials and sensitive handling of color and design.

Kay Sekirnachl was asked to substitute for Trude Guermonprez in the summer session at the
college in 1956. Sekimachi says that teaching then was very exciting, because weaving was burgeoning and CCAC
was considered one of the best art schools on the West Coast. Other major artists who taught textiles were

340

M O D E S v

Carol Beadle, Barbara ShaWCroft and Lillian Elliott. Summer sessions also brought in well-
known artists, such as Oiga ClC AlTiaral, to further strengthen the department.

The Metal Arts curriculum also gained stature under Victor RieS, Bob Winston and

Byron Wilson with contributions bv Robert and Penny Dhaemers, Martin Streich.

/ * J

Roger Baird, and Kenneth Cory. The Jewelry Department's frequent summer sessions with
Margaret L)e 1 atta, one of the most innovative jewelry designers of the time, were legendary. De Patta
stated, "An aesthetically satisfying structure calls to mind an artistic mate in chess where each piece bears upon

the solution with its full power, without duplication and without
extraneous or non-active pieces. This points a clear answer to the
question of decoration in art."

The most exciting new development at CCAC came in the late
19605 with the formation of the glass department. Marvin LlDOlsky
held a glass workshop co-sponsored by the American Craftsman's Coun
cil (1970). Lipofsky, who was teaching at the University of California at
Berkeley, was lured by Trude Guermonprez to CCAC to create a ela.v-
studio on 4th Street in Berkeley. It was there that the First Annual
California College of Arts and Crafts Invitational Glass Blowing Compe
tition was held in 19-1. The Great California Glass Symposium also was

C 2 E 8 N S M

341

Upper: Victor Reis, silver candelabra

Lower: Marvin Lipofsky, Venini Stria.
1968, glass sculpture, collection of the
artist

342 M O D R N : S

Above: Margaret DC Patta, pin, 1950,
siKirr. white gold, amber, coral mala
chite, onyx, moss agate, given bv Eu
gene Bielawski to The Oakland Mu
seum, photograph bv Peter Brown, 19-6

organized by Lipofsky and his students during this period. It was held in conjunction with UC Berkeley rrom
1968 to 1972 and with CCAC in Oakland from 1968 to 1986. Lipofsky established one of the most respected Glass
Departments in the country. Ruth Tamiira and C. FfltZ DreisbaCn were early contributors to
this facility, thereby continuing the College's legacy of providing the best and most innovative faculty for its
student body.

Northern California has long been a focal point for the craft arts since 1945, and the California College
of Arts and Crafts in particular has been a catalyst in that direction. The exhibit, Modernism: Craft Breakthrough
In Northern California, 1950-1975, The Glory Years, illustrates some of this movement with prime examples of the
period and leads the way to present and future innovations of the College's faculty. To paraphrase Kay Sekimachi,
"It is still a very exciting period."

TED COHEN

CURATOR
CALIFORNIA CRAFTS M L 1 S L' M

343

HYBRIDIZATION:

Contemporary Northern California Craft
1975 to the Present

Hybridization: Contemporary Northern California Craft is the final exhibition in the three-part series Nine
Decades: The Northern California Craft Movement. The exhibition at CCAC's Steven Oliver Art Center focuses
on the period from the mid-seventies to the present. It examines the movement by both fine artists and fine
craftpersons to expand art definitions by creating hybrid forms which combine the techniques and materials of
the fine and applied arts in the service of content emerging from individual and socio-political experiences.

As the exhibition The Beginnings: 1007-1040. at the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum illustrated,
the early period was marked by a gradual move from amateur status with emphasis on manual training and
occupational therapy in the schools to the mingling of applied art technique and fine an philosophy. While the
initial intent may have been to turn out good metalsmiths, bookbinders and potters, the long term effect was to
lay the foundation for the acceptance of a cross-disciplinary approach at the College.

As artists and craftpersons became more aware of contemporary art theory and issues in the fifties,
particularly of Abstract Expressionism, the prevailing emphasis on traditional methodology and thinking in
both fine art and craft shifted to the creation of more varied forms through violation of established rules and
practices. The exhibition Modernism: Craft Breakthrough in Northern California, ip^o-io^, The Glory Years at
the California Crafts Museum examined a period of growth from traditional thinking to the use of materials
like clay, fiber, metal and glass as a sculptural medium with fine art associations.

The aforementioned exhibitions illustrate that a logical progression to a hybrid form was evident after
World War II, characterized by innovation and the combining of techniques and concepts from both fine art

344

and fine craft. The resulting contemporary Northern California hybrid form can be seen most dramatically in
the work of individual artists like Viola Frey, Ron Nagle, Harriete Herman, Marilyn daSilva, Colette, Nance
O'Bamon, Lia Cook, Julie Chen, Wendy Maruyama, Janice Sandeen, Mark McDonnell, Clifford Rainey, and
others exhibited in Hybridization: Contemporary Northern California Craft (1975 to the Present).

Formerly "head potter" and currently tenured professor at CCAC, Viola rTCy uses her exceptional
technical virtuosity to create figurative ceramics which rely on good ceramic technique but aspire to the condition
of sculpture. An alumna (BFA 56) of the College, Frey was originally trained as a painter, and has been engaged
with both two and three dimensional form throughout her career. Since joining the faculty in 1968, Frey has
moved from the early influence of the painter Richard Diebenkorn and the Bay Area figurative school to sources
rooted in the ceramic tradition. She has adopted the ceramic figurine as a signifier of personal and cultural
meaning in ceramic sculpture, painting and drawing since 1975. Colleague IVOn Nelgle joined the ceramics
department faculty from 1973 to 1975, incorporating painting on vessel forms to explore the potential of
traditional china painting techniques. Over the years, the ceramics department has consistently turned out
students who, like Peter Voulkos, were well grounded in ceramic technique but moved in the direction of
innovation and experimentation. This comes as the result of the combined efforts of artists like Frey, Nagle, and

Art Nelson (the administrative backbone of the department from 1969 to

Above; Viola Frey, L'ntitled, 1989-90. his untimely death in 1992), and artist/historian Charles Fiske as well as

ceramic and glaze, 74 x 41 x 27, collec
tion of George and Helen Turin, Ber- a steady influx of energy and ideas in recent years from younger artists

kelev, California

345

including Dennis Gallagher, Arthur Gonzalez, Ann Weber, John Toki, Heidi Ernst, Trez Arnez
and Steven Bradford.

The metal and fiber/textile arts faculry were not far behind in shifting from a media specific to a concept-
based, mixed media approach. By the late seventies, the metal foundry had moved to the Shaklee building. The
addition of new equipment for bench work in jewelry, for the fabrication of larger metalsmithing projects and
for casting, raising and hollowware enabled the department head, 1*10-
rence Kesnikoil, to invite guest artists including June Schwarcz,
Jamie Bennett, Roger Baird, Edward DeLarge, Douglas Steakley, Linda
Watson Abbott, David LaPIantz and Alan Revere to teach summer
session workshops which concentrated on hands-on instruction in a
variety of specialized metal techniques. Part-time faculty included
jewelers Kathleen Doyle andThomas Reardon, and Louis Mueller,
who is currently chair of the jewelry department at Rhode Island School
of Design. Martin Streich continued to teach design and several metaJ
arts and jewelry courses. Their work exemplified ideas which bridged
utilitarian conventional metalsmithing with pure sculptural concerns.
Function remains relevant to concept in the work of current department

i I C'l Opposite: Colette. Rcsijtiifii.it.

head Marilyn daollva. daSilva came to CCAC as a guest artist in cloisonne. jU x :'.,. courtesy ot'Mohilia

Gallery. Berkeley, California

This page (upper): .Arthur Gonzjlez,
The Atmospbert Machine, 1990, mixed
media, :8x 57 x II, courtesy ofNatsoulas

Gallery. Davi-,. Calitomi.i

This page (lower): M.iriK nd.iSiKa. /':
tl'e /-in- Out I. II. 111. 199!. Mi/rlmi; and
copper. 10-12 \ i 1 : x ;' :. courtesv ot the
artist

346

HYBSIDlZATION

1985. and the following year was hired to join the permanent faculty. Marilyn and her husband Jack, good
nerworkers with an interest in internationaJ metalsmithing trends, contributed to the continuing development
of the department by bringing diverse influences, including a team of master artists from Korea, to teach and
exhibit at the College. By the late eighties, the program had over ninety full-time students. In 1992, the Barclay
Simpson Sculpture studio was completed to allow the fabrication of monumental metal and glass works. The
focus of the department had shifted from a media and technique specific approach to one which combined the
utilization of steel and other metals with other media and methods including glass, fiber, ceramics, printmaking,
drawing and sculpture. Recent metal arts faculty include artists whose work illustrates a cross-disciplinary-
approach. (Colette S (1989) narrative enamel jewelry combines enigmatic painterly images and meticulous
craftsmanship. D. X. RoSS work (1989-90) features a distinctive form of enameling, termed "grisaille" from
the French "gris" (grey) which describes a traditionally monochromatic form of enameling which layers black
enamel onto metal. Her imagery is symbolic and allegorical, depicting mythical and wild creatures, liamete
tstei DCrmsn (1991-93) received her graduate degree with a major in metalsmithing, and a minor in fiber.
Her most recent work, a series titled "A Pedestal For A Woman to Stand On," are fabricated from printed steel
dollhouses. The patterns in which the metal pieces are arranged are from traditional quilt designs, referring to
her background in fiber.

Berman's work connects two disciplines, as does the work of several faculty affiliated with the textile
department since the seventies. C^a.rOiC DC3.Q1C initially studied ceramics (with Vernon Coykendall and

HVBSIDlZATION

347

348

HYBRIDIZATION

Viola Frey), later moving to sculptural textiles and becoming the College's first graduate in textile arts. She joined
the faculty to teach textile printing in 1968. NanCC O BaniOn, well known for her mixed media
constructions and installations, taught printing, construction and costume concepts (1974-1982), before moving
to the printmaking department. .Lillian t/lllOtt describes her woven construction as evolving from her
experience with crafting ceramic forms. The combining of painting and textile techniques was an interest shared
in various modes by several faculty including Lia Cook and Emily DuBois. Lia CROOKS work actually
incorporates dyeing, painting and photographic reproduction with weaving techniques to blend the tactile with
the painted image. Fabric is the subject as well as the material art object. Jt ITllly L/UDO1S woven tapestries
were influenced by Lia Cook and by sculptor Delia labaC reldman, who taught a class on fiber and
mixed media in the late seventies, when DuBois was a graduate student in the fiber department. DuBois' work
has consistently dealt with illusion, with occasional attempts to incorporate sculptural dimension, while unifying
tactile qualities, construction and image. Faculty members Janet Levin, Jan Janeiro and Kathleen
LariSCn were joined on occasion by guest artists Joy Stocksdale, Ann Wilson, Marna Goldstein-Brauner,
Susan lamart, and Peter Olsen. As a group, their work addresses the growing movement in recent years away
trom traditional, functional textile construction toward forms which combine craft with content dealing with
contemporary women's issues, ecology, sexuality and personal history. A focus on textile history and the art of
indigenous cultures, the legacy of Ed Rossbach's presence ..: UC Berkeley in the late sixties, continues through
the influence of his students. Lia Cook and Nance O'Banion and the early work of textile historian Ruth Boyer.
The combining of these diverse influences is most evident in the work of recent graduates who have returned to
teach, Shern Simons and Lisa Kokin. Simons builds objects which are primitive in construction, using
processes related to the textile arts (lashing, sewing, wrapping) and the metal arts (bolting) to accumulate
sculptural mass. Lisa Kokin began her series of artist's books in 1991, eventually presenting them in an
installation format with an object that corresponds to each book thematically.

Lisa Kokin's interest in the book form is an indication of a wider connection to the artist book movement
linking various disciplines at the College. Numerous collaborations between faculty in the humanities,
printmaking and fiber/textile departments at CCAC have occurred since the early seventies. An early
interdisciplinary program (1969) involved about one hundred students and ten faculty including Charles Gill
(printmaking), Martin Streich (metal arts), Ken Davids (humanities) and Wolfgang Lederer (design). In 1972,
a letterpress was made available and Vince Perez helped to establish a workspace where renown bookmakers

including Clifford Burke (letterpress/binding), Barry Moser (wood en-
Opposite (upper): Harnete Estel
Berman, My American Kiuhen Saves Me graving) and others taught. Summer workshops attracted faculty mclud-

TwoHouna Day to Keep Myself Looking

Young. 1991. folded and fabricated ln g Betr >' Lou Chaika, Catherine Clarke, Wesley Tanner and kathy

printed steel, elecmc clock, broken dish, .. r . . . . ,, ,

. vC alkup. several collaborations between humanities and fine art faculty

n'/2 x n'/2 x n'/2, courtesy of the artist,

resulted in published books. Paul Harris, Dorothy Schmidt and Charles

Opposite (lower): BellaTabacFeldman, __ . .

Seine, 1979, fiberglass resin and rosecane, Gill published "Torso" (1974). DCtSy L/aVlQS and Jim Petrillo

72. x 48 x 30, courtesy of the artist

HYB8IDIZATION

349

published "Books and Changes" (1981). Don FarnSWOFth, an Oakland artist who had worked with Bella
Tabac Feldman to build a papermill in Africa and knew Betsy and Ken Davids, came to the College (19-5) to
teach papermaking, and attracted a cross-disciplinary group of students from textiles, printmaking and drawing
departments. He taught classes off campus in his workshop and shared his interest in Japanese papermaking.
collage and architectural space with his students. More recently, JullC C^hen taught a class on bookmaking
and did a collaborative piece with Nance O'Banion (1991) which combined furniture and book design. Chen
also publishes limited edition artists' books through her own publishing house, Flying Fish Press. Her goal, as
publisher, "to transcend traditional definitions of both books and art. . . [to] weave the narrative qualities of text
and image into the palpability of a physical structure..." is in keeping with the cross disciplinary approach
apparent in artists' books produced at CCAC.

The presence of women has steadily increased in the areas of metal and book arts, wood/furniture and
glass since the late sixties. The fledgling glass department at CCAC was assisted by the efforts of IxUth
Tamiira and a move to sculptural glass was accomplished by Marvin Lipofsky, a former student of
Harvey Littleton's at the University of Wisconsin. Lipofsky was hired to
start the glass program at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964.
In 1967, Lipofsky came to CCAC. Like Littleton, Lipofsky pursued the
technology for melting and blowing glass on a small scale, freeing the
artist from reliance on the commercial glass industry. This attracted

Above: Lia Cook, New Master Draper
ies: Artemisia CfHtilfsehi, 1993, linen,
rayon, acrylics and dyes, pressed, 61 x
39, courtesy of the artist

Opposite: Lisa Kokjn. Treatment for
Habit of Masturbation, 199;. mixed
media book, 31 x 15^2 x 3. courtesy of the

HVBIlDIZATlON

351

students like Mary ^Wfllte, who were looking for an alternative to running a production glass studio, and
saw the studio glass movement which was proliferating in colleges and universities throughout the country in
the igRos as an alternative. Paul Marion! taught stained glass from 1974 to 19, utilizing graphic im.iges
and surface textures which encouraged a more cross-disciplinary use of the medium, particularly by the tine arts
students in painting and drawing. Another cross disciplinary connection must be attributed to ivlark
McDonnell, a student of Lipofsky's at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the late seventies, who
served as department chair at CCAC from 1987 to 1991. McDonnell has used the glass medium in architectural
contexts, poising his work at the interface of sculpture and architecture related to I9th century greenhouses. He
continued the visiting artist program in glass, in particular with a revived connection to the Pilchuck School oi
Glass in Stanwood, NX'ashington, which brought Dale Chilhuly, Dante Marioni and Richard RoyaJ to the facility
for intensive workshops in recent years. In 1989. C^llllOrd rvainey became department chair. He \\.is
joined by Ruth King, another RISD graduate, who has recently left. Rainey and King treat glass as a sculptural
medium, striking an analogy between the fragility of the human condition and the material substance.

In the areas of glass and furniture, more artists emerged from the universities in the mid-seventies to
establish small shops which supplemented incomes from teaching. The availability of tools and equipment
encouraged experimentation with new technologies and revived the apprentice system, which increasedtechnic.il
inventiveness and refinement. As the work became more widely available, "art glass" and "art furniture" which
was functional yet unusual, found a ready marketplace by the early eighties, further deteriorating the dividing

352

HYBRIDIZATION

line between fine and applied arcs. Work by Wendy Maruyama.Tom Loeser, Gail Fredell

and others competed with sculpture and painting for display in commercial and domestic interiors. By
combining the intrinsic qualities of fine materials with advances in technology and virtuoso execution, these East
Coast trained and influenced woodworkers made a noticeable jump into the realm of art: the object became a
significr or symbol of contemporary thought and culture. Gail Fredel! began teaching at CCAC in 1980, and
worked in the woodworking and furniture design area until 1988. Her teaching and work were distinguished by
an intensive use of hand tools, traditional joiner)- and complex projects which taught and celebrated the integral
skills and techniques in which Fredell had been trained at the Rochester School of Technology.

The head of the wood/furniture department at CCAC from 1985 to 1989, Wendy Maruyama, also
brought a strong technical background to her teaching through training at the Haystack Mountain School of
Crafts, Boston University and the Rochester Institute of Technology. It was an encounter with the work of East
Coast sculptor/furnituremaker Tommy Simpson which encouraged Maruyama to focus on furniture as both
humorous subject matter and functional object, less a process oriented product than furniture art as a form of

communication. In 1989, Tom Loeser took over the program in
woodworking and furniture. He had attended the innovative Program
in Artisanry at Boston University in 1982, which has been attributed with
changing the conceptual development of studio furniture in the United
States. Loeser used the ideas or approaches of traditional furnituremaking

Opposite: Mar>- B. NX'hite. Waitingfor
Godot. 1982, glass. 5x16. courtesy of the
artist

Above: Gail Fredel], Mirror, i975,glais.
corrugated metal, wood, 48 x 24, collec
tion of Levy Design Partners, San Fran
cisco

353

HYBRIDIZATION

as departure points for new work. Loeser's interest in the interaction between form and surface color, developed
in the early eighties, evokes the dimensionality of sculpture and is central to his work. The current department
head, Janice Sandeen, studied film and television at New York University prior to pursuing a BA in
Sculpture and Women's Studies (1983) at Colby College, Maine and an MFA in Furniture at the Rhode Island
School of Design (RISD) (1989). At the Haystack School (1988), Sandeen became preoccupied with the notion
that her work was neither purely sculptural nor functional, but rather represented a truly hybrid crossover which
defied classification. The program at RISD provided the opportunity to redefine her furniture forms in a fine
art context and incorporate sculpture based techniques into her work. She teaches that materials are to be
employed to match a concept or idea, rather than the inverse, a philosophy shared by John and Carolyn
Grew-Shendan. The most recent additions to the woodworking/furniture faculty, the Grew-Sheridans
studied with several renown furnituremakers while operating rheir own San Francisco based furniture studio
since the late 19-05. Jere Osgood, AJfonse Mania, and Sam Maloof have influenced their work, which is often
done collaboratively. The work is sculptural in appearance, and draws from numerous historical precedents. The
Grew-Sheridans attempt to bring concern about the depletion of natural resources to their teaching, and recent
sculptural work addresses timber use and deforestation issues as they relate to mass consumerism.

The blurring of boundaries berween fine craft and fine art is the educational and political legacy of the
past twenty years of contemporary work by fine artists and craftpersons. CCAC survived the downsizing of craft
programs which occurred at other institutions beginning in the early seventies by allowing faculty to strengthen
its cross disciplinary programming to create options for students whose work might not fit into a traditional fine
art college curriculum. The freedom to experiment with a variety of fine and applied art mediums enabled
students to adapt functional forms to make concept-based statements. Fine artists on faculty with an appetite
for alternative media have pushed students to absorb the materials and techniques associated with traditional craft
forms just as the craft faculty have freely utilized fine art materials and concepts to engage students in a
redefinition of craft forms. The positive result is apparent in the work of graduating students, which grows more
exciting each year.

The Northern California Craft Movement has forced a reassessment of the current hierarchy of artistic
values and definitions. Whether an object is "art" or its maker an "artist" depends on the individual's training,
standard of skill, and ultimately, their primary aim in making the work. Contemporary art practice and theory
will begin to embrace the hybrid approach as makers articulate shared fundamental assumptions about the scope,
quality and changing perception of their work. The debate continues in the classroom and the studio, driven
by a desire to articulate the criteria for a hybrid form that eventually will add a new component to the ever growing
lexicon of objects we call "art."

DVANA Cl RRERI-CHAD1 ICK
DIRECTOR AND CURATOR

OLIVER ART CENTER
CALIFORNIA COLLEGE OF ARTS &: CRAFTS

354

Y B R . D : A C

{ ; Us.-:

< . I': ; , -

/^r^urr :v sv . MUI-, satin wiMid.caH-in

pa;:.: V 4 x 1C v :f-. uj!!i.v:ior! o! Michael
and N::-.J /.aujr;^. Moik-sTo. California

355

ARTISTS

F. Carlton Ball
Carole Beadle
Harriett Esiel Berman
William V. Bragdon
Clifford Burke
Julie Chen
Dale Chilhuly
Colette
Florence Cook
Lia Cook
Kenneth Con
Vernon Coykendall
Jack daSilva
Marilyn daSilva
Betsy Davids
Margaret De Patta
Harry St. John Dixon
Emily DuBois
Lillian Elliott
Don Farnsworth
Bella Tabac Feldman
Charles Fiskc
Gail Frcdell
Viola Frey

Trude Guermonpre?
Dennis Gallagher

Charles Gill

Marna Goldstein-Brauner

Arthur Gonzalez

Caroline Grew-Sheridan

John Grcw-Sheridan

Jean Stewart Crotry Guthrie

Paul Harris

Edith Heath

IlseSchulzHiller

Jan Janeiro

Candace Kling

Lisa Kokin

David LaPlantz

Kathleen Larisch

Man'in Lipofsky

Tom Loeser

Michael Lopez

Vara Lortsch

Glen Lukens

D.inte Mariom

Paul Marioni

Wendy Maruyama

Jacomena Maybeck

Mark McDonnell

Frederick W. H. Meyer

Louis Mueller

Ron Nagle

Arthur Nelson
Nance O'Banion
Richard O'Hanlon
James Petrillo
Antonio Prieto
Eunice Prieto
Clifford Rainev
Florence Resnikort
Alan Revere
William S. Rjce
Victor Ries
D. X. Ross
Richard RoyaJ
Janice Sandecn
Rudolph Schaeffer
Kay Sekimachi
Barbara Shawcroft
Sheri Simons
Herman Steinbrunn
Joy Stock.sd.ile
Martin Streich
Chauncey R. Thom.is
Man- White
Byron Wilson
Bob Winston
Marguerite Wildenh.un
Robert Yarvan

LENDERS

Archer Press

Oakland, California
Mary Ann Ball
Jonas A. Barish
Dr. James Barr
Sara Bowden
John Bransten
California Exposition and

State Fair Collection

Sacramento, California
Beth Changstrom
William Cook
The diPalma's
Steven & Bonnie Drucker
Claire Edershcim
Sylvia &i Eric Elsesser
Alice Erskine
Flying Fish Press

Berkeley, California
Foster White Gallery

Seattle, Washington

Anna Gardner
Monica Haley
Robert & Virginia Hanna
Carl Jennings
Penelope Khounta
John Natsoulas Gallery

Davis, California
John Lowell Jones
Philip Kolb
Marianne Lepman
Elaine Levin
Levy Design Partners

San Francisco, California
Forrest Merrill
Mobilia Gallery

Cambridge, Massachusetts
Noe Moholenc
The Oakland Museum

Oakland, California
Randy & Scott Paine
Peter Joseph Gallery

New York, New York

William Randal
Rena Bransten Gallery

San Francisco, California
Mr. & Mrs. Emil Rjsi
The Schulz Family
Sight and Insight
Sonoma County Museum

Sonoma, California
Tim Steele
Bob Stocksdale
Susan Cummins Gallery

Mill Valley, California
Kenneth Trapp
Mr. & Mrs. Frank Trescder.

courtesy ot the Annex Gallery

Santa Rosa, California
Helen &: George Turin
John White
William T raver Gallery

Seattle, Washington
Michael & Nina Zagaris

Published and copyrighted "L 1993 by the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum.

Forl Mason Center. Building A, San Francisco. California 94123-1382. (4151 7~5 0990 in association with

the Olivet Ajt Center/California College of Ajts and Crafu. Oakland and the California Crafts Museum, San Francisco.

AJI rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval svstem. or transmitted, in anv form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

ISBN 1-877742-03-1

Design by Linda Uler Printing by Robert Collins Lithography, San Franco Separation* bv ReproMedia. San Francisco

356

APPENDIX C
1997

landmark Building A Port Mason San Fram-isco. California 94123-1382 (4IS) 77.VOWO

SAN FRANCISCO CRAFT & FOLK ART MUSEUM

Mission Statement:

A Fact Sheet

The Museum's mission is to foster an appreciation of the artistic
qualities of contemporary craft and recognition of the vigor and
richness of folk art from diverse cultures through exhibitions,
educational programs and research publications

The San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum opened in 1983-using donated space in a
residential street in the Richmond District-as the only institution in Northern California
showing contemporary craft, American folk art and traditional ethnic art In 1987 the
Museum's move to Fort Mason Center precipitated 10 years of extraordinary growth.

Currently the Museum offers a schedule of six to ten exhibitions per year, accompanied by
lectures and demonstrations for the public. A library of craft and folk art research materials
and the Museum's own award-winning scholarly journal, A REPORT, published quarterly,
indicate our serious commitment to the field. An immensely successful outreach program,
"Folk Art in the Schools," brings hands-on encounters with folk traditions to 10,000
public school children a year. Attendance at the Museum is now averaging 6,000 per month.

The original three-fold focus of the Museum is unchanged: 1) the exhibitions of contemporary
fine craft for which the Bay Area is justifiably famous, remind us of the personal
satisfaction derived from beautiful handmade objects: 2) the displays of folk art show us the
astonishing power of untrained artists whose "naive" work would never reach a more
conventional museum; 3) traditional ethnic art both as shown in the gallery and used in
the school program, provides a first level of understanding between the diverse cultures living
side by side in the San Francisco Bay Area.

A series of groundbreaking exhibitions has captured the attention of museum-goers around the
country. Rve recent exhibitions have travelled to other sites, and one exciting exhibition,
IMPROVISATION IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN QUILTMAKING, has appeared at more than twenty-five
other institutions, including the American Craft Museum in New York, the Field Museum in
Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

Exhibitions at the San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum are regularly supported by the
National Endowment for the Arts. Among current honors is a General Operating Support grant
from the Institute of Museum Services, a Federal agency whose annual grants are the
Academy Awards of the museum world. Locally, the Craft & Folk Art Museum has been honored
with the Arts Excellence Award from Business Volunteers for the Arts of the San Francisco
Chamber of Commerce.

The Museum's enthusiastic Board is generous with both time and money; the organization's
membership has grown in 1997 to more than 900; the annual budget approaches $400,000.
FOLK ART OF THE SOVIET UNION, a blockbuster show, was presented in Herbst Pavilion at Fort
Mason in I990 as the institution's most ambitious city-wide event.

The San Francisco Craft & Folk Art Museum won major three year support from the
Advancement Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, designed to aid organizations
of the highest artistic quality develop adequate support structures. Recently, the NEA has made
a $40,000 grant as seed money for development of the Museum's fledgling endowment fund.

357

INDEX OF CRAFT AND FOLK ART EXHIBITIONS DISCUSSED IN THE ANNEBERG ORAL
HISTORY 1

African Folk Crafts, Ann Maurice, 1973, 147

African and New Guinea Sculpture, Uzbek and Afghan Textiles, Will Collier,
1977, 198

African, Chinese, and European Beadwork by Noel Michelson, 1977, 203-204

Andree Thompson, New Ceramic Forms, 1974, 162-163

Andree Thompson, Mountain Landscapes, 1972, 135

Animals, Demons, Men, Mexican Dance Masks, Grace Relfe, 1978, 207-209

Ann Christenson, Porcelain, 1977, 202

Ann Christenson, SFC&FAM, 293

Ann Christenson, Porcelain, 1975, 173

Antique Japanese Baskets, Kasuri and Stencilled Textiles, Cynthia Shaver,
1979, 210

Art in Haitian Vodou, and Shelley Jurs, Architectural Glass, SFC&FAM, 295-296

Art of West Central Africa, 1979, 224-225

Arts of Indonesia, Hadidjah Fielding and Irwan Holmes, 1972, 136

Barbara Comstock, Pieces of an Early World, 1975, 1977

Barbara Shawcroft, SFC&FAM, 292

Barbara Shawcroft, 1968, 98

Beadwork, Embroideries and Patchwork from India, Vinu and Kokila Shah, 227-228

Bedouin Textiles and Jewelry from Tunisia, Caroline West, and Ann and Nassib
Hemaidan, 1971, 133

'Anneberg Gallery exhibitions are listed here by the name given the
exhibition rather than by chronological order. A chronological list of
exhibitions is included in the appendix. Collectors names are highlighted by
boldface type. Exhibitions mounted during Anneberg 's time at the San
Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, 1983-1986, are indicated with the acronym
SFC&FAM.

358

Berber Weaving and Jewelry from Morocco, Caroline West, 1969, 122

Boats, Trains, Cars, and Planes, SFC&FAM, 291-292

Bruce Anderson, Ceramics, 1968, 100

Carl Jennings, Forged Iron, 1967, 87

Carole Small, Metalsmith, 1970, 125

Carole Beadle, 1968, 97, 182-183

Central Asian Silks, Mary and Tony DeBone, Steven Shucart, 1979, 217

Ceremonial Ikat Weavings and Artifacts from Borneo, 1978, 204-205

Chaika Marbled Paper, Betty Lou Beck and David Henderson, 1977, 202

Child Weavers of the Atelier of Ramses Wissa-Wassef , 1969, 107-111

Christmas Exhibition, 1967, 88-90; 1968, 107; 1969, 124; 1970, 120; 1971, 134;
1972, 145; 1973, 160; 1974, 170-171; 1975, 190-192; 1976, 187; 1977, 204;
1978, 210; 1979, 225-226; 1980, 239-240

Cloth of India, Haku Shah, 1969, 94, 118-119, 124

Collectors' Folk Art, 1976, 187

Comstock, Barbara, Pieces of an Early World, 1975, 177

Contemporary Bobbin Lace, 1976, 186

Contemporary Southwest Indian Crafts, Phyllis Seidkin, 1974, 162

Coptic Textiles, Ancient Textiles from Egypt, Gordon Holler, 1966, 55ff-65,
247, 250

Dance Masks of Java, Bali, and Madura, Leo Brereton, 1980, 231-232
Diana Leon, Porcelain and Stoneware, 1976, 183-185
Diana Chrestien, Wall Hangings, 1971, 129

Dolls: Folk, Souvenir, and Costume Dolls, Dorothe Gould-Pratt and Dorothy
Shelton Gould, 1980, 238

Dominic Di Mare, Fibre, Feathers, and Clay, 1970, 125
Dominic Di Mare, Recent Works, 1973, 145-146
Domonic Di Mare, Recent Work, 1975, 178

359

Early Islamic Textile Fragments from Egypt, 1968, 95-97

Edward Curtis, Original Photogravures, 1974, 170

Elaine Henning, Woven Kinetic Forms, 1969, 119-120

Fabrics and Figures of Southern Mexico, Fred and Barbara Meiers, 1969, 120

Felt, Carole Beadle and Gayle Luchessa, 1976, 180-181

Fiber Forms: Carole Beadle, Ted Hallman, Candace Crockett, Jacquetta Nisbet,
Trude Guermonprez, Barbara Shawcroft, 1973, 148

Fiber Sculpture by Barbara Kasten, 1971, 132
Fiber Jewelry, Susan Green, 1975, 177

Fiesta Mexicana, Mexican Folk Art from the Collection of Fred and Barbara
Meiers, 1970, 128

First People of the First World, Barbara Shawcroft, 1969, 100, 122
Folk Arts of Mexico, 1977, 204

Folk Tapestries from Colombia, The Young Weavers of San Isidro, Robert and
Judith Blomberg, 1974, 161

Folk Tapestries of Egypt, Mr. and Mrs. David Williams, 1972, 139-140

Folk Art for the Holidays, Christmas, 1974, 170-171

Folk Art East and West, Christmas 1970, 128

Folk Arts and Crafts of Madagascar, 1981, 243

Four Different Things, 1972, 141ff-145

Guatemalan Textiles, Caroline West, 1967, 77-78, 87-88

Guatemalan Weaving of the Past Fifty years, 1975, 176

Hal Painter, Tapestries and Wall Hangings, 1970, 128

Handmade Papers of Eishiro Abe, 1976, 187-190

Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand, Trudy Clark, 1972, 137

Horvath Costumes and Folk Textiles from Hungary, Laura Schiff, 1975, 178-179

Howard Kottler, Decal Plates and Ceramics, 1969, 112

360

Hugh Aanonsen, Elegance, 1973, 156

Ikats and Batiks from Indonesia, Joseph Rischer, 198

Images of Traditional China, Laurence Moss, 1979, 212-213

Indian Arts of Peru, Caroline West, 1971, 131

Indian Arts of Peru, Caroline West, 1968, 104

Indian Textiles from Guatemala, Caroline West, 1969, 118

Indonesian Ikat Textiles, Grace Relfe; Borneo Baskets and Artifacts, Robbie
Bennett, 1979, 211-212

Indonesian Textiles and Other Handcrafts, Old Carved Wooden Wayang Puppets,
Traude Gavin, 1978, 207

Indonesian Ikats and Baskets from East of Java, Michael Yerby, 1975, 177-178
Indonesian Textiles, Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, 1980, 226-227
Jan Wagstaff, Tapestry Constructions, 1975, 174
Japanese Kimonos and Haoris, Winifred Dahl, 1981, 241

Japanese Silk Kimonos: Weaving and Dyeing of the Past Hundred Years, Winifred
Dahl, 1980, 237

John Lewis, Blown Glass, 1970, 128

Journey to Tibet, 1977, 192

June Schwarcz, SFC&FAM, 292

June Schwarcz, Enamel and Electroformed Metal, 1974, 169

June Schwarcz, Enamels and Electroforming, 1970, 125-126

K. Lee Manuel, Amulets, Painted Leather and Cloth, 1975, 174-175

Katherine Westphal, Recent Textile Works, 1973, 156

Kay Sekimachi, Monofilament Woven Constructions, 1971, 129-130

Kilims and Decorated Textiles and Jewelry, Juanita Netoff, 1981, 241

Korean Folk Arts, 1979, 214-215

Kurdish Wedding Carpets, James Greenberg, 1975, 175-176

361

Lillian Elliott, SFC&FAM, 292

Lillian Elliott, Wall Hangings, 1967, 85

Lillian Elliot, Miniature Tapestries, 1975, 173-174

Lillian Elliott, Nets and Other Works, 1972, 140

Little Black Dress, Winder Baker, SFC&FAM, 306-307

Luminous Impressions, Imogene Gieling, 1967, 85

Lynn Mauser, Screened Images on Cloth, 1974, 161

Madhubani Folk Paintings from Bihar, India, Mary and Tony DeBone, 1978, 210

Marvin Lipofsky, Glass from Berkeley, 1966, 60-62, 79-80, 247

Mats from Borneo, Robbie Bennett, Don Bierlich, Michael Yerby, 1977, 194-195

Max Pollak Collection, Guatemalan Folk Textiles, SFC&FAM, 303-305

McClary, Larry, 1967, 80

Metal Containers, Miniature Containers and Silver and Brass, Eileen Gilbert
Hill, 1976, 181

Mexican Folk Art, Christmas, 1980, 239-240

Mexican Day of the Dead, Day of the Dead Altar, SFC&FAM, 305-306

Mexican Ceremonial Masks, SFC&FAM, 293

Mexican Folk Art, Christmas, 1971, 134

Mexican Ceremonial Masks, George and Craig Kodros, 1980, 228-229

Mexican Folk Art, Fred and Barbara Meiers, Christmas, 1972, 145

Mexican Folk Art, Ellen Kernaghan and Margery Anneberg, Christmas, 1976, 190-
192

Mexican Ceremonial Masks, Craig and George Kodros and Scott Marshall, 1981,
242-243

Mexican Folk Art, Old Tools and Household Implements, Christmas 1979, 225-226
Mexican Folk Art, Candelario Medrano, Christmas 1978, 210
Milagros and Old Dance Masks of Mexico, Grace Relfe, 1977, 200-201

362

Native Arts of Luzon, William Galvin, SFC&FAM, 1984, 294
Nik Krevitsky, Stitchery, 1969, 114-115

Nomadic Rug Weaving and Jewelry from Persia and the Ancient Caravan Route,
Joyce Hundal, 1970, 127

One Hundred Years of Mexican Ex-Voto Folk Painting and Milagros, 1977, 203
Patricia Scarlett, Painted Ceramics, 1971, 131
Patricia Scarlett, Paintings on Ceramic, 1974, 168
Paula Bartron, Glass, 1971, 129

People of the Upper Amazon and their Arts, Collection and Color Photographs,
Lisa McCreery and Robert Duncan, 1977, 200

Philippine Baskets, Grace Relfe, 1979, 221
Philippine Baskets, William Galvin, 1980, 239

Philippine Baskets, Joyce Yee and David Holden; Indonesian Baskets, Michael
Yerby and Robbie Bennett; Abaca Ikats from Mindanao, Kate Morris and Peter
Gest, 1976, 187

Philippine Baskets, Grace Relfe, 1979, 218

Quezada Family Potters, Contemporary Casas Grandes, Spencer McCallum, 1980,
229-231

Rita Yokoi, 1968, 97

Ron Wigginton, Ceramic Sculpture and Drawings, 1973, 147

Sarojben, Cloth Applique Paintings, 1969, 94, 118-119

Serapes and Blankets from Northern and Central Mexico, John Mendenez, 1978,
207

Shipibo Pottery of the Peruvian Amazon, Lisa McCreery and Robert Duncan, 1978,
209-210

Silk Road Treasures from Afghanistan, 1981, 240

Southern Black Visionaries, John Turner curator, SFC&FAM, 1986, 296
Souvenirs of a Traveler Along the Silk Road, Alice Erb, 1973, 157
Tapestries and Batiks, Wissa Wassef Workshop, 1979, 217-218

363

Textile Fragments from Egypt, Gordon Holler, and Peru, Nik Krevitsky, 1972,
136

Textiles of Old Japan, Mary Dusenberry curator, SFC&FAM, 1985, 297
Textiles by Ed Rossbach, Planar Weavings and Photographic Pieces, 1972, 140
Threads of India, Old Textiles, Gyongy Laky, 1973, 159
Tibetan Art and Artifacts, 1976, 183
Tibetan and Mongolian Treasures, 1979, 212

Tin Can Craftsmen of Mexico, Stephen and Melissa Kassovic, 1973, 160
Traditional Arts of Botswana, Tim Young and Diane Jolin, 1974, 163-164
Traditional Javanese Batiks, A Woman's Art, Beverly Labin, 1976, 180

Traditional Expressions, Textiles and Figures of Asia, Africa, and the
Americas, 1978, 209

Traditions in Japanese Folk Art, Joe and Katherine Cook, 132
Trude Guermonprez, Recent Weavings, 1974, 168-169
Turkish Textiles, Dorothe Gould-Pratt, 1980, 232-233

Votive Arts of Mexico, Old Santos and Religious Paintings on Tin, 1978, 206-
207

Weaving and Dyeing of Sierra Leone, Tie Dye Tritik, Batik, and Handwoven
Cotton, Olive Wong, 1980, 233-236

West African Folk Textiles, Traditional Weaving of West Africa, Ann Maurice,
1977, 196

West African Textiles from Ghana and Upper Volta, Bonnie Britton, 1978, 210
Wick's Books, Journals with a Textile Basis, 1976, 179-180
Yolanda Garfias Woo, Textiles Woven on the Backstrap Loom, 1970, 124-125
Zapotec Rugs from Southern Mexico, 1976, 188

364

INDEX- -Margery Anneberg

A Report from the Center for Folk
Art and Contemporary Crafts, See
Center for Folk Art and
Contemporary Crafts.

Aanonsen, Hugh, 156

Abe, Eishiro, 187-190, 277

Abrahimi, Abdul, 240

Albright, Thomas, 287-288

Allrich, Louise (Allrich Gallery),
99, 130

Altman, Pat, 106

American Craft Council, 38, 131,
188; Fellows, 219-220, 250-252

American Craft Museum [New York] ,
81-82, 188, 284, 310

Anderson, Bruce, 32, 107

Anneberg Gallery, 55ff-250; logo
and announcments , 68-71, 73, 122-
124, 131-132, 152, 184-185, See
Harry Murphy; pricing, sales, 65,
68-70, 89-90, 99, 143-144;
newspaper listings, 71; reviews,
71-74, 288; installations, 75-76,
84, 113-115; mailings, 182-183,
See announcements; staffing, 76,
83-84, 86; exhibitions, See index
to Exhibitions; openings, 89;
slide record, 116-117; packing
and shipping, 133-134; physical
arrangement, 142-143; economics,
148-156, 171-172; bargaining,
150-151; hippie art, 155, 175;
folk craft and tourist art, 158;
interest in the gallery from
ethnic groups, 197-198; erotic
art, 205-206; other craft art
galleries, 81, 105 216-217, 222;
authenticity, See Mexican mask
shows discussions; closing the
gallery, 243-250

Anneberg, Margery: family, 1-5;
schooling, 5-7; University of
Washington, 7, 12, 16ff-23; New
York, 1944-1945, 7-10, 12-16; Far
Eastern studies, 12, 17-21, 35;
jewelry-making, 13-14, 21, 24-27,
34, 43-50, 264-270; UC Berkeley

Anneberg, Margery (cont'd.)
library, 35-36; living in
Berkeley, 51; move to Hyde
Street, San Francisco, 51-54;
references to illness, multiple
sclerosis, 83-85, 97, 243-246;
comments on taste, 100-104;
collecting in Mexico, 190-192;
American Craft Council Fellow,
219-220, 250-252; closing the
Gallery, 243-250; on feng-shui,
263-265; Day of the Dead altar,
305-306; leaving San Francisco
Craft and Folk Art Museum, 310-
313

Apple, Pamela, 302

Art Students' League [New York],
13, 15

Austin, Carole, 312

Bains-Mesa, Amalia, 306

Baker, Winder, 306

Bartron, Paula, 129

Beadle, Carole, 89, 97, 107, 148,

181

Beard, Caroline, 141
Beck, Betty Lou, 202
Benderson, Nanni, 43-45
Bennett, Robbie, 187, 195, 211
Bertoia, Harry, 26-27
Bierlich, Don, 195
Blomberg, Robert and Judith, 161
Breier, Virginia, 216
Brereton, Leo, 231-232, 277
Britton, Bonnie, 210
Brynner, Nena, 44
Burns, Vivian (importer), 93, 271,

291-292

California College of Arts and
Crafts [Oakland], 41, 61, 98,
181, 221

California Council for the
Humanities, 261

365

California Craft Museum, Ghirardelli
Square [San Francisco] , 279-281,
289

California Palace of the Legion of
Honor [San Francisco], 37

California State Fair [Sacramento],
42

Center for Folk Art and Contemporary
Crafts [San Francisco], 188,
233, 254ff-end; supporters, 257,
270-272; mailing list, 257-258;
creating A Report, subscriptions,
articles, 261-263, 273, 275-279,
307-309; board of directors, 270-
272, 278-279, 281; exhibitions,
272-273; activities, film
showing, 276-277; establishing
San Francisco Craft and Folk Art
Museum, See San Francisco Craft
and Folk Art Museum.

Chrestien, Diana, 129

Christenson, Ann, 173, 202, 293

Clark, Trudy, 137, 170

Cobalis, Vincent, 170

Cohn, Murray (gem dealer), 50

Collier, Will, 198

Comstock, Barbara, 177

Connell, James, 299

Cook, Joe and Katherine, 132

Cook, Lia, 99

Cootner, Catherine, 223

Cornish School [Seattle], 28-29

Cost Plus, and folk art, 93-94

craft, defining, 37-39, passim;
Oriental influences, 40-41, 115

Craft and Folk Art Museum [Los
Angeles], 188, 274

Craft Horizons, 39, 268

Cranston-Bennett, Mary Ellen, 89,
107

Crockett, Candace, 148

Cromey, Ed, 107

Curtis, Earle, 89

Dahl, Winifred, 237, 241

Day, Crane, 107

Dayton, Mayga, 257, 271-272

de Young Museum [San Francisco],

37, 57, 67, 94, 136, 165, 223,

240, 272

De Patta, Margaret, 27, 277
DeBone, Mary and Tony, 210, 217
Designer Craftsmen of Northern

California, 36-39, 60, 85
Di Mare, Dominic, 25, 125, 145-146,

169, 178, 190, 219, 269
Dickenson, Robert, 299
Duncan, Robert, 197, 209
Durbin, Helene, 89, 107
Dusanne, Zoe [gallery, Seattle],

29-30

Dusenberry, Walter, 107
Dusenberry, Mary, 297

Earl, Grace, 144, 155

Edwards, Tom, 107

Egg and The Eye Gallery [Los
Angeles], 81, 105, 274

Elliott, Lillian, 36-37, 85, 89,
98-99, 107, 113, 140, 173-174,
178, 219, 264, 285, 292-293, 300

Elsesser, John, 169

Emerson, Erin, 302

Erb, Alice, 157, 248

Fiberworks [Berkeley], 99, 159,
182, 221, 285, 312-313

Fielding, Hadidjah, 136

Fischer, Joe, 198

Flanagan, Ann, 261, 263

folk art, defining, 255-256;

importance for contemporary craft
artists, 264. See Rossbach, Ed.

folk art collectors, 77-82, 87-88,
90-91, 100-104, 150-151, 158,
171, 243-250. Also see names of
individual collectors in index
and in exhibition index and list

Frankenstein, Alfred, 71-72

Frey, Viola, 98

Fried, Arthur, 72

Friends of Ethnic Art, 312

Galvin, William, 221-224, 239, 298
Cause, Richard, 89
Gavin, Traude, 207
Gest, Peter, 189

366

Ghirardelli Square [San Francisco] ,

53, 150, 281
Gieling, Imogen Bailey, 21-23, 26,

43, 51, 85, 89
Gieling, John, 89
Girard, Alexander, 93
Gould, Dorothy Shelton, 238
Gould-Pratt, Dorothe, 232-233, 238
Grae, Ida Dean, 89
Graves, Morris, 11-12, 20, 29-31
Green, Susan, 177
Greenberg, James, 175
Guermonprez, Trude, 39, 77, 98,

107, 132, 148, 168-169, 174, 219
Gump's [San Francisco], 92, 137

Hallman, Ted, 148, 219
Hanamura, Bob, 285, 289-290
Heath Pottery [Sausalito], 89
Heller, Lisa, 308
Hemaidan, Ann and Nassib, 133
Henderson, David, 202
Henning, Elaine, 119-120
Hickman, Pat, 292-293
Hill, Eileen Gilbert, 181
Holden, David, 189
Holler, Gordon, 55ff-65, 68, 75,
83-84, 87-88, 95-97, 117, 136
Holmes, Irwan, 136
Honig, Victor, 257, 270, 272
Hundal, Joyce, 111, 127

Jennings, Carl, 72, 87, 89, 107,

219
Jewelry Shop (later Anneberg

Gallery), 58
Jolin, Diane, 163
Jones, McCoy, 165-166, 223, 240

Kahlenberg, Mary Hunt, 226
Kassovic, Stephen and Melissa, 160,

262

Kasten, Barbara, 132
Katten, Jan and Andy, 299
Keith, Graeme, 37, 67
Kernaghan, Ellen, 190-192
Kliot, Kaete, 179, 186

Kodros, Craig, 208, 228, 242, 276,

278, 293, 308

Kodros, George, 228, 242, 308
Kottler, Howard, 112
Kramer, Sam, 15, 27
Krevitsky, Nik, 89, 114-115, 136

Labin, Beverly, 180, 276

Laky, Gyongy, 159, 313

Lamoureux, Dorothy, 308-309

Lane, Kay, 89, 107

Larsen, Jack Lenor, 28, 31, 177,

183, 220

Layton, Tom, 272-273
Leach, Bernard, 100
Leeper, Arthur Alden, 193
Leon, Diana, 183-185
Lethin, Lisa, 278
Lewis, John, 128
Liebes, Dorothy, 74
Lipofsky, Marvin, 41, 60-62, 68,

79-80, 89, 128-129, 219
Littleton, Marvey, 61
Livingston, Margery, 124
Lowie Museum [Hearst Museum] , UC

Berkeley, 272-273, 277-278, 297
Luchessa, Gayle, 181

Macchiarini, Peter, 44

Madrono, Candelario, 135

Manuel, K. Lee, 174-175

Marshall, Scott, 242

Maufres, Karen Naima, 141-142

Maurice, Ann, 147, 196

Mauser, Lynn, 161

McCallum, Spencer, 229-231

McCann, Candice, 290, 301

McClary, Larry, 80 -

McCreery, Lisa, 197, 209

Medrano, Candelario, 210

Meiers, Fred and Barbara, 120, 128,

133-134, 145
Mendenez, John, 207
Metal Arts Guild, 36-37, 87
Mexican folk art, 92-93, 120-122,

128, 133-135

Mexican Museum [San Francisco], 166
Meyer Breier Weiss Gallery [San

Francisco], 216, 249

367

Michelson, Noel, 203-204

Miller, Dorothy, 307

Miller, John Paul, 43, 267-268

Millman, Susanna, 293-294

Moketoff, Moke, 183, 193

Monroe, Michael, 269

Morris, Kate, 187

Moses, Elizabeth, 37, 44

Moss, Laurence, 198, 212-213

Moya, Victor, 272-273

Murphy, Harry, 123-125, 129, 131,

261, 263
Museum West [Ghirardelli Square, San

Francisco], 38

Nagle, Ron, 98

Nason, Louise, 279, 281, 302

National Museum of American Arts

[Smithsonian] exhibition of craft

artists, 1995, 268-269
Nelson, Karin, 295, 298, 303, 312
Netoff, Juanita, 241
Neumen, Rae and Joe, 203-204
Nisbet, Jacquetta, 72, 89, 107, 148

O'Banion, Nance, 99

Office of War Information, 13, 17

Oyaraa, Patricia, 107

Pacific Basin Textile Arts

[Berkeley], 221
Painter, Hal, 51-52, 89, 128
Parker, Gertrud, 282ff-311
Parker, Harold, 282, 312
Pearson, Ronald Hayes, 27
Pennington, Ruth, 14, 24, 27, 43
Pietsch, Eliza, 53-54
Pimentel, Sonja, 107
Playhouse Theater [San Francisco],

53-54
Pollak, Max, collection, 88, 303-

305
Pond Farm, art community, 42-43,

46, 98, 169

Poon, Vivian, 307-308
Pope, Helen Wood, 107
Potter, Elaine, gallery [San

Francisco], 216, 249

Prieto, Anthony, 24-25
Puffert, D.J., 308-309

Relfe, Grace, 200-201, 207, 211,

218, 221, 228

Renk, Merry, 89, 107, 219
Richmond Art Center Annual, 36, 41-

42, 44

Ries, Victor, 43, 98
Rodrigues, Rosendo, 134-135
Rodriguez, Peter, 166
Rogers, Leonard, 299
Rossbach, Ed, 28, 31, 41, 78-79,

140-141, 177, 219, 264, 269, 293,

300
Rubinfien, Shulamith, 214-215

Saltzman, Warren, 257, 270, 272

Salvador, Mari Lyn, 254, 257-258,
270, 272, 275, 279, 284

San Francisco Art Festival, Civic
Center, 36, 85

San Francisco Craft and Folk Art
Museum, 116, 175, 222, 253,
285ff-313; Balboa Street
location, 1983, 285, 288-289;
mailings, 285-286, 294-295;
reviews, 287-288; volunteers,
289-290, 311; shows, 285-287,
291-297, Also see individual
shows in the exhibition index,
marked SFCFAM; sales, catalogues,
297-298; directors, and advisory
board, 298-301; library, 301-302,
310; folk art in the schools,
302-303

San Francisco Museum of Art (now
San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art), 37, 74

Sarojben (folk artist), 94, 118

Scarlett, Patricia, 131-132, 168

Schafer, Rudolph, 300

Schiff, Laura, 178

Schwarcz, June, 89, 94, 107, 125-
126, 141, 169, 219, 269-270, 281-
282, 292, 300

Schwarcz, Leroy, 89, 169

Seattle, WA, art world, 9-12, 28-
34, 40-41

368

Seidkin, Phyllis, 162

Sekimachi, Kay, 89, 98, 107, 129-

130, 168, 219
Seligman, Otto [gallery, Seattle],

30, 33-34

Shah, Haku, 94, 118, 124, 159
Shah, Vinu and Kokila, 227
Shallenberger, Mary Ann, 214-215
Shaver, Cynthia, 210
Shawcroft, Barbara, 98-100, 107,

122-123, 148, 292, 298, 300
Shucart, Steven, 217
Silk Road, shop [San Francisco],

240

Small, Carole, 125
Smith, Weldon, 312-313
Sommers, Joan, 239-240
Stevens, Ann, 299
Stocksdale, Bob, 89, 219, 285
Straw Into Gold [Berkeley], 195-196
Sudkin, Phyllis, 170

Tawney, Lenore, 25, 145

Textile Museum [Washington, D.C.],

57, 67

Thompson, Andree, 89, 107, 135
Thompson, Jim, 138
Thornton, Patricia, 295
Tobey, Mark, 11, 30-31, 33-34
Turner, John, 296-297
Tuttle, Lyle, 232, 277

University of California, Berkeley,

Department of Design, 41, 61
University of California, Davis,

Department of Design, 98
University of California, Los

Angeles, Cultural History Museum,

105-106
University of Washington, 7, 12,

16ff-23; Henry Art Gallery, 24-

26, 28-29

Watkin, Joan and Malcolm, 104

Weiss, Dorothy, 216

West, Caroline, 77-78, 87-88, 104-

107, 118, 122, 131, 133, 170
Westphal, Katherine, 140, 156, 219
White, Florence, 257, 271
White, Ian McKibben, 257, 271
Wick, Susan, 179-180
Widenhofer, Al, 107
Wigginton, Ron, 147
Wildenhain, Marguerite, 98
Wiley, Edith, 81
Wilhelm, Hellmut, 20
Williams, Antonia, 145
Williams, Cynthia Sterling, 107
Williams, Mr. and Mrs. David, 139
Willis, James, gallery [San

Francisco], 222
Winitz, Jan David, 308
Winston, Bob, 27
Wissa-Wassef , Ramses, workshop,

107-111, 139, 217-218
Wittman, Sally, 107
Wong, Olive, 233-236
Wyckoff, Donald, 188

Yee, Joyce, 187

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts [San

Francisco], 259-261
Yerby, Michael, 177, 187, 195
Yokoi, Rita, 97, 107
Yonker, Dolores, 296, 308
Young, Tim, 163

Voulkos, Peter, 24-25, 28, 41

Wagstaff, Jan, 174
Wall, Ruth, 225-226

U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES