Craft and War

Examining the diverse ways in which craft has participated in wars from the mid-19th century to the present day, this book brings together a wealth of scholarship to redress an understudied area of modern craft history. Craft and War explores issues of fabrication, makers, objects, uses and users throughout conflicts across the world to provide a critical understanding of the relationship between craft and contexts of war.

Chapters look at the impact of colonization on making practices and acts of preserving cultural heritage in times of dislocation and migration. Authors provide insights into repurposing tools of oppression and the appropriation of material culture as a device of warfare, in addition to embroidery and tactics of resistance, and the role of craft and folk art in international feminist peace activism. Organized into four thematic sections, this book reveals how craft developed in different regions during and after armed conflicts, including research on trench art and objects, quilts and rugs commissioned in wartime, and ceramics and the art of commemoration. Craft and War also provides a breadth of analysis on crafting as a rehabilitative activity and traces government initiatives across different countries for postwar healing involving crafts.

This important contribution to modern craft history addresses multiple facets of a rich and complex subject to provide cross-national, cultural and chronological comparisons of craft’s participation in situations of conflict and stages of war.

Jennifer Way is a scholar and educator in art history at the University of North Texas, USA. Her current research explores craft history and intersections of art with conflict, gender, race, caring, and healing, especially in U.S. and transnational settings from the 19th century to the present. She recently published chapters in Craft in Extremis: Survival and Creativity in Modern War and Genocide c. 1890-1950 (2026); Medical Care, Humanitarianism, and Intimacy in the Long Second World War, 1931-1953 (2025); Fallingwater: Living with and in Art (2025); Modernism, Art, Therapy (2024); and Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges through Art, Architecture, and Design from 1945 (2023).
Heather Smith has 30 years of experience working in art and history museums and art galleries in Canada. She organized numerous travelling exhibitions such as Quilting for a Cause: Red Cross Quilts for the Great War (2019); Vaughan Grayson an Artist in the Canadian Rockies (2006); Keepsakes of Conflict: Trench Art and Other Canadian War-Related Craft (2006); and Fred Strickland’s War Sketches (2002). In 2013, she won the publisher of the year award from the Saskatchewan Book Awards for Hansen Ross Pottery: Pioneering Fine Craft on the Canadian Prairies (2012).
Alida R. Jekabson is a PhD Candidate in the History of Art and Architecture at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA. Her research explores histories of modern craft and consumer culture in the United States and occupied territories, exploring textiles and their role as mediators of value.