Crafting a Legacy showcases the Philadelphia Museum of Art's burgeoning collection of contemporary American crafts. More than a hundred color plates illustrate many of the Museum's prime holdings in ceramics, wood, fiber, glass, metal, and furniture. Entries on each of the sixty-three featured artists, including Rudolf Staffel, Sheila Hicks, Dale Chihuly, and Judy McKie, place the artist's work in a broader context. Suzanne Ramljak, editor of Metalsmith magazine, provides an essay on the valuable role that crafts play in contemporary culture, arguing that in a world of mass-produced goods,...

From the beginning of time, armour and amulets have been used for protection and are found in cultures across the globe, and those who crafted them have been esteemed as artists by their communities. The contemporary examples showcased here, in 200 eye-catching images, demonstrate the enduring artistry of the forms and the crucial role such objects can play in safeguarding body and soul, especially in our current Age of Terror. An exciting array of protective hardware (armour, barriers, wearable weaponry) and protective software (charms, amulets, talismans), reveal a broad range of strategies...