The Hand Workshop Craft Fair evolved into the Visual Arts Center of Richmond’s Craft + Design show, held in recent years at Main Street Station. It will be a virtual event this year due to the pandemic. (Photo by Joey Wharton)
Artist Clifford Earl remembers Elisabeth Scott Bocock arriving by carriage at several early versions of the Hand Workshop Craft Fair, as she did at the first, on Oct. 2, 1964, held at Church Hill’s Whitlock House, 316 N. 24th St.
This event became what today is the Visual Arts Center of Richmond’s annual Craft + Design show. Now in its 57th year, the museum-quality juried show attracts some of the best contemporary craft artists from across the country.
In 2017, the show moved to Main Street Station after runs at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and the Science Museum of Virginia. Last year, it was held online due to the pandemic, and it will again go virtual on Nov. 19-21, with livestreamed events and opportunities for online shopping.
Tricia Pearsall, former board chair of the Hand Workshop, wrote in a monograph about the institution’s early days: “The Hand Workshop spilled out of Mrs. Elisabeth Bocock’s brain — probably in the middle of the night — from a sincere desire to do good, revitalize Church Hill, to work with the Historic Richmond Foundation and the restoration effort, to save her investments, to insure a trust tax write-off, etc. I expect she read Jane Addams and knew of the Settlement House tradition and success of craft venues in New York.”
Bocock, a wealthy widowed socialite philanthropist and historic preservationist, wanted to change the world — or at least the part containing Richmond. She gathered her first group of seven trustees in 1962 at her columned mansion at 909 W. Franklin St. and created an organization to promote and support high-quality crafts with a retail outlet and classes.
She called the project the Hand Workshop, a name that remained until 2005. A crafts shop was incorporated on Dec. 26, 1962, and the Hand Workshop opened for students on May 2, 1963, in the Whitlock House. A year later, Bocock donated the residence to the school.
Those early Hand Workshop Craft Fairs began with an aesthetic flair. Bocock collected antique horse-drawn carriages, several of which are now in Maymont’s collection. Whether Bocock motored from home and then climbed into the carriage to make an impressive entrance isn’t clear.
Earl, a lifelong artist and sculptor, received invitation to Bocock’s soirees, and the two casually knew each other. Then she revealed one of her ideas. “‘We’ll put the word out and let you set up a card table on Church Hill,’ ” Earl recalls her saying. “‘We’ll invite people to come and see what you do.’ You have to remember that this was one of the few venues for craftspeople and artists in Richmond. There weren’t many galleries, and the high-falutin’ ones wouldn’t take crafts. People were anxious to do it. And not as many people made art then.”
Elisabeth Scott Bocock arrived at the first Hand Workshop Craft Fair in 1964 in an antique horse-drawn carriage. (Photo courtesy Richmond Times-Dispatch Collection, The Valentine)
Earl, who was at the time enrolled in the arts program of Richmond Professional Institute, remembers about a dozen artists setting up card tables on a slanted sidewalk. “I had my trinkets on display,” he says. “Those days, I made wooden carvings with a sabre saw I bought at Sears.”
At some point, he says, Bocock showed up, riding inside a shiny carriage with a liveried driver. Passengers included well-dressed children and grandchildren.
“Quite a sight,” Earl says. “Looking down the street, everybody stopped, and their mouths dropped open.”
An account in the Richmond News Leader provides details about the premiere weekend event, mentioning horse-drawn surrey rides “through the restored area on Church Hill.” The Times-Dispatch identified the driver as Steve Suggs, himself an avid collector of wagons and carriages who ultimately amassed some 75 of them.
“Crafts went underground today in Church Hill as the historic Richmond area featured its first annual craft fair in spite of the weather,” the News Leader reported. Scheduled for the Hand Workshop courtyard, the show’s first day took place instead in the basement, from which the proceedings emerged the next day.
Members of the Richmond Craft Guild, along with makers from Hampton Roads and the Washington, D.C., area, displayed ceramics, textiles, woodwork, enamel and porcelain. The fair included display booths showing works in progress, a “bargain box” and a plant booth. Richard C. Spraggins taught a furniture refinishing class for “young men in the Church Hill area,” while Fran Kegley, crafts director at the city’s Pine Camp center, ran a “primitive kick potters wheel.”
Doris Sutton demonstrated the making of silver jewelry. She taught at John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson high schools from 1946 to 1976.
Alex Dunton, by day a business executive, occupied the wood carver’s bench for the weekend.
“I would suspect he was there to show off his expertise,” Earl recalls. “In his spare time, often at shows, he demonstrated carved bowls — with a chisel, not on a lathe.”
“You have to remember that this was one of the few venues for craftspeople and artists in Richmond. There weren’t many galleries, and the high-falutin’ ones wouldn’t take crafts.” —Clifford Earl, artist
Betty Conway Thompson, the Hand Workshop’s second and then-new executive director, oversaw the event. Her awareness of the contemporary crafts movement in larger cities and her desire to exhibit the work of regional and national artists, along with her knowledge of how their efforts could influence students, proved a dynamic that affected the course of the institution. Bocock provided stability in 1965 by setting up a 10-year fund to supply the Hand Workshop with an annual dividend.
A tug of wills developed between Bocock’s desire for a self-sustaining loop of children’s art classes feeding into a craft store and director Thompson’s wider view. But for this weekend in 1964, the art was the thing.
Alongside the traditional crafts, musicians performed, some playing instruments they’d made. The roster included James Moore III, a classical guitarist, lutist and folk singer who became active in efforts to preserve the James River & Kanawha Canal through Richmond. Doug Zeno played a handmade mountain dulcimer, accompanied, the Times-Dispatch noted, by “Mrs. Zeno,” who “will play and sing native American ballads.” Present, too, were the guitar and banjo duo of Bing Colognori and Mel Hughes. Classical guitarist and singer Loraine Fels also entertained.
While Craft + Design has become a nationally known showcase for handmade fine crafts, Earl compares the character of those early craft shows to the present 43rd Street Festival of the Arts and its combination of arts, crafts, music and food. “It’s a low-key chance for beginning people,” he says. “A kid still in high school gets to show. [Organizer] Robin [Cage] looks for these people just beginning. What goes around comes around.”
