Using Technology To Bring Us Together
Welcome to Arts & Crafts Collector – and thank you! I hope you have enjoyed what you have seen so far.
Like many of you, I have been an Arts & Crafts collector for several years.
Like all of you, my home consists of a little bit of everything Arts & Crafts – old and new, original and refinished, pristine and chipped (actually, more chipped than pristine).
In 1979, when I literally stumbled over my first Roycroft chair, there were only a few reference books, an occasional Arts & Crafts auction, no G.P.I. conference, no shows and no magazines devoted to the Arts & Crafts style.
And no one to ask for help.
Times certainly have changed, as you and I have witnessed a virtual explosion of Arts & Crafts businesses offering us nearly every imaginable service or product, from antiques, architects and auctions to ceiling lights, floor plans, house numbers, upholstery fabrics and vacation rentals.
And they’re all on the internet.
Today, anyone – business owner, artist, artisan, antiques dealer or collector – who wants to do business, to build a bungalow or a collection, to do research, to check prices, or to restore or furnish an Arts & Crafts home needs to use the internet. It has gone from being an occasional toy to a valuable tool.
But the explosion of websites has left Arts & Crafts collectors, businesses and homeowners adrift in a turbulent ocean with no map, no compass and no directory to help us.
And so I have launched Arts and Crafts Collector.com.
Right now it like a small child just beginning to walk, but with your input and your suggestions it can become our means of meeting anyone and everyone who shares our passion for the Arts & Crafts style.
Over the years my experience organizing the annual Grove Park Inn Arts & Crafts Conference has taught me a great deal, but nothing more important than this: just as I can reserve a meeting room or assign a title to a Small Group Discussion, I can reserve a space on the internet and pick out a name for a website. But until people like yourself drop in, offer an opinion, share an experience or simply absorb the information, it won’t do any good.
With your help, this website can do what the Arts & Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn has done for more than two decades, but on an even larger scale: to provide a place where collectors can meet other collectors and where homeowners can find in seconds every Arts & Crafts business clearly organized under more than seventy different categories.
But, please, don’t judge us by what you see here today or these first few weeks. Instead, imagine what this site will soon become: your source for everything Arts & Crafts.
The more you use this website, the more you browse it and the more you talk about it, the better it will become – and the stronger the Arts & Crafts revival will grow.
Bookmark it.
Share it.
Use it.
And tell me how to make it better…. for you.
Again, my thanks,
Bruce Johnson
PS – You have Arts & Crafts friends that I might never meet. Encourage them – and the Arts & Crafts businesses you use – to take a look.
Thanks!
– bj