Craft In America

The first episode takes a personal tour through craft's history in America.

This program celebrates some of our most important traditions.

"Service," part of the PBS veterans initiative Stories of Service, is the story of craft and the military.

Focus on the makers of finely crafted handmade instruments - guitar, ukulele, trumpet, banjo and timpani - and the renowned musicians who play them, including Joan Baez, Jake Shimabukuro, Rhiannon Giddens, Scotty Barnhart, Tony Ellis and Joseph Pereira.

This episode explores craft artists, objects and traditions of various holidays, featuring Lion Dancers and float builders of San Francisco's Chinese New Year Parade, ceramic artists in Detroit making festive pieces at Pewabic Pottery and Motawi Tileworks, Kwanzaa celebrations in Chicago and Oakland, and woodblock Christmas cards made by Yoshiko Yamamoto in Washington state.

Follow artists committed to passing on their skills and passion for craft to new generations.

Explore the relationships and influences Mexican and American craft artists have on each other and on our cultures.

Travel to and from the U.S. and Mexico to explore the people, history, traditions and crafts, noting how aesthetics cross from one country to another and back again in an organic and ongoing cultural exchange.

Explore craft practices definitively Californian, from Native Americans continuing ancient traditions, to contemporary artists expressing new iterations of the art of the handmade.

Meet artists, curators and collectors who envision limitless possibilities of craft and imagine new methods of achieving that vision.