WPA Textile Block Print: Stag/Antelope, hotsell 1935-1939, one color, 9x9 inches

Here we have an original example of a WPA block print textile from the early 1930's. This is from a portfolio of examples of the WPA textile block print work #7040 that was provided as an educational resource to libraries. These textiles examples are featured in museums around the world, even the Smithsonian. More information is below. There may be tape residue where the fabric was mounted to the portfolio page or staple holes around the parameter of the piece. You are purchasing just the fabric piece, however if you want the matte/portfolio page I can send it for an extra fee, please message me. The matte measures 18x24 inches and has one of the iterations of identification stamps featured in the last four pictures. Please request photos if you are interested, they are in various conditions. The fabric and matte smell of old library book :). The fabric is in overall excellent condition (with an occasional wrinkle) having been protected for the last 90 years. I am also willing to give a discount on the purchase of multiples.

WPA Information

During the Great Depression, unemployment in the city of Milwaukee was at roughly 40 percent, and in 1933 an astonishing 53 percent of property taxes went unpaid because people couldn't afford to make their payments. The WPA launched the Milwaukee Handicraft Project in 1935, under the direction of Elsa Ulbrecht, the Fine Arts Director of Milwaukee State Teachers College, with the goal of creating by hand high quality educational materials for schools that taught arts and crafts. The project hired roughly 5,000 workers and taught them to make a variety of wood and cloth items including dolls, toys, furniture, rugs, curtains, book-bindings, quilts, textile prints, and costumes. The women were assigned to specific production units, each led by an experienced artist or designer. The items were then sold at cost to educational and tax-supported institutions, including the hotsell Milwaukee Public Schools, libraries, and local hospitals.

The Milwaukee Handicraft Project was one of the most successful and innovative of the WPA's various programs. The vast majority of workers hired by the WPA for its public relief projects were white men, but the Milwaukee Handicraft Project attempted to balance this disparity. Most of the workers hired for this program were uneducated and unskilled women of all ages and nationalities, many of whom had never held a job. A large number did not even speak English. Only certain jobs were considered appropriate for women at the time, and so Harriet Pettibone Clinton, the District Director of the Women's Division of the Wisconsin WPA, deliberately chose to create a project in which the vast numbers of unemployed women could freely participate.

One of the production units was the blockprinting unit, which grew out of the bookbinding unit when the lead designers decided to create decorative book covers using linoleum block prints. They created patterns which the workers then transferred to linoleum blocks and cut away to create stamps. These blocks were then inked and stamped onto paper and fabric. They were designed to be labor-intensive, so as to help guarantee the women with many hours of paid work. F.A. Bernett currently has in its inventory a suite of six portfolios displaying samples of the various handmade blockprinted textiles created in the workshops of the Milwaukee Handicraft Project.

From: Applied Design: Blockprinted Textiles. An Educational Service Prepared by the Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project. Milwaukee.- Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project. VI. Supplement, comprising a suite of portfolios containing 72 total examples of matted blockprinted textiles in a wide variety of patterns and styles, including figures, animals, birds, botanical, and geometric designs, the back of each matte stamped “WPA Handicraft Project #7040, Milwaukee Wisconsin, Sponsored by Milwaukee County and Milwaukee State Teachers College”. Ex-library copy with bookplates, labels to covers, rubber ink stamps to portfolios and mattes, and pencil acquisition notations to mattes

https://www.rectoversoblog.com/2017/04/27/breaking-gender-barriers-women-and-the-wpa-milwaukee-handicraft-project/

https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS2776

https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=eti_pubs

https://www.swanngalleries.com/news/art-press-illustrated-books/2016/11/wpa-handicraft-project-at-auction/