Forrest Pelsue

A major obstacle in considering the history of French craft is that the concept does not exist in French, or it remains unnamed as such. Instead, a network of French terms is needed to fully embody the meaning contained in the English word “craft.”

The intention of this paper is to rearrange the existing French categories—métier, artisanat, folklore, etc.— following my English understanding of craft in order to bring to light details obscured by previous arrangements: some categories center on tradition, others on creation, sometimes in terms of anti-industrialism, and other times as examples of regionalism. In order to understand how the many facets of craft have been situated in French cultural history, I focus on the two major French collections that stand closest to craft: that of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (MAD) in Paris and of the Musée des Civilizations de l’Europe et de la Méditerranée (Mucem) in Marseille which includes the collection of the former Musée National des Arts et Traditions Populaires (MNTAP).

Craft is unique in that it touches on fields of art, anthropology, folk traditions, technology, and material culture, among others. This allows my research to synthesize topics that have remained isolated in previous studies of French design and decorative arts by proposing a third category: French craft.