Join us for our Summer Seminars 2026, “Craft, Design, and the Machine in Modern Life,” a six-part online lecture series!

Led by SMCF Executive Director Jonathan Clancy, Ph.D., this series explores a series of conversations spanning the Arts and Crafts movement to contemporary debates about technology and AI, where we invite you to explore what design means, what it can accomplish, and how the relationship between machines and culture continues to shape our lives. Together, these seminars use moments from history not as a comprehensive narrative, but as opportunities to learn, reflect, and engage in the important discussions that the Stickley Museum at Craftsman Farms seeks to foster.

Lectures may be purchased individually or as a complete series. Click here for the full course description.

Week #6: August 8, at 1:00 PM EDT via Zoom
Our Evolving Craftsmen

Reading the literature of the Arts and Crafts movement and the thinking which generated it, reading the formulations of the ideal of living as expressed in publications of that time, the thought repeatedly and urgently recurred to us that many of today’s craftspeople whose work had been in our shows, and whom we had come to know, were, in fact, now living that ideal articulated at the turn of the century. – Eudora Moore, introduction to Craftsman Lifestyle: The Gentle Revolution (1976).

Writing nearly fifty years ago, Pasadena Art Museum curator Eudora Moore sensed a continuity between the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and contemporary design springing up in California. Rather than viewing mid-century modern as antithetical to craft–or indeed the inclusion of commercial manufacturers as a slight to craftspeople–the museum hosted triennial exhibitions called California Design from 1955-84 that cast a wide net that broadly welcomed good design. By refusing to participate in the craft vs. industry binary, the exhibitions preemptively undermined any claims regarding the hierarchies of craft or design or their fabrication. 1968’s California Design Ten, for instance, featured the pottery of Michael Frimkess alongside a DIY Manx dune buggy kit, Modeline of California light fixtures, Bob Mitchell wallpaper, macrame, applique work, and the jewelry of Arline Fisch. As we look back over the ideas proposed in each of the sessions, we’ll see that rather than finding an ideal solution to Triggs’s question that is universally applicable, each generation is continually negotiating the boundaries between self and machine and culture.

A La Carte
Member Price: $30 / session
Non-Member Price: $35 / session

Full Course
Member Price: All 6 sessions for $150 (one session free)
Non-Member Price: All 6 sessions for $210

Registration is required. Once registered and paid, you will receive an email prior to each session with a link to join.

Do you have a scheduling conflict for the live session? You can still enjoy the program. Register and we’ll send you the recording! All paid attendees will be emailed a private link to the session recording when it is available, typically 6-7 days after the live program.

Missed us? You can also register retroactively. If you register for a session that has passed, you’ll receive access to the recording when it is ready.

Haven’t tried a session yet? Each session is planned as a “stand-alone” lecture, so you can take them all or attend the topics that interest you most.