In Good Hands: The Women of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild

In 1905 two Montreal women, Alice Peck and May Phillips, founded the Canadian Handicrafts Guild and created an organization that revived popular interest in traditional handwork done by women. In Good Hands is alive with the interplay between art and social history, and the issues this dialogue raised at the time and those we bring to it now constantly overlap. It deals with noblesse oblige and the era’s patronizing attitude to cultural difference, but shows how the Guild consciously fostered an inclusive national feeling by exhibiting and selling crafts of all Canadians on an equal footing. It also draws a much broader perspective of women’s role in shaping our culture than has been the norm in Canadian art history.