Craft and War

About the Author

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.