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New Releases: Winter 2026

Six new craft books featured in the Winter 2026 issue of American Craft.

By Jon Spayde
November 6, 2025

Winter 2026

Books

Free To Read

Detail from the inside of Contemporary Basketry book

Detail from the inside of Contemporary Basketry: New Directions from Innovative Artists Worldwide by Carol Eckert and Janet Koplos.

Contemporary Basketry: New Directions from Innovative Artists Worldwide

By Carol Eckert and Janet Koplos
Schiffer, 2025
$40

The idea of a basket as a simple carryall vanishes as you peruse these photos of artworks, ranging from Pat Hickman’s netlike creations made of dried hog-intestine fiber, to Joanne Lamb’s ultra-delicate paper/wool/mohair cups and Nathalie Miebach’s explosive, colorful wood-and-reed sculptures, which seem to fuse basketry and molecular physics. An essay by Koplos guides readers through the diversity of forms.

Contemporary Basketry: New Directions from Innovative Artists Worldwide

Jeffrey Gibson: The Space in Which to Place Me

Edited with text by Abigail Winograd and Christian Ayne Crouch; foreword by Brian Ferriso and Louis Grachos; text by Kathleen Ash-Milby, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, Philip J. Deloria, Evan Garza, Jeffrey Gibson, and Richard Shiff; contributions by G. Peter Jemison, Elizabeth Alexander, and Layli Long Soldier
DelMonico, 2025
$75

This extensive volume, combining work and studio images with in-depth discussions of Indigeneity in contemporary art, documents Gibson’s work as he served as the first Indigenous artist to represent the US at the Venice Biennale. Art blogger Cory Reynolds summed it up: “Printed with special papers, custom inks, multicolored ribbons, gatefolds and fold-out posters, [this] is unlike any other book.”

Jeffrey Gibson: The Space in Which to Place Me

Lives of the Great Makers: 500 Years of Creative Excellence

Edited by Rebecca Knott and James Robinson
Thames & Hudson / Victoria & Albert, 2025
$50

Moving from Léonard Limosin (ca. 1505–ca. 1577), enameler to several French kings, to British ceramist Alison Britton (b. 1948), this amply illustrated volume traces the emergence of the celebrity maker in the Renaissance, then provides succinct biographies of the renowned (Wedgwood, Lalique, Chihuly) and the lesser-known, including Scottish arts and crafts pioneer Phoebe Anna Traquair and Augustus Pugin, a pioneer of Gothic Revival architecture.

Lives of the Great Makers: 500 Years of Creative Excellence

Textile Fine Art: Conversations with Artists Creating by Hand

By Helen Adams; foreword by Anne Coxon
Laurence King, 2025
$50

Adams, a writer and stylist known online as the Textile Curator, asserts that contemporary textiles belong in the world of “fine” art by including gallery stars such as cover artist Simone Pheulpin, Tracey Emin, and Do Ho Suh in these pages. In interviews with all 50 makers here, she explores the imagery, cultural heritage, and motivations of landmark textile artists.

Textile Fine Art: Conversations with Artists Creating by Hand

Eventually Everything Connects: Mid-Century Modern Design in the US

Edited by Andrew Satake Blauvelt; essays by Bridget Bartal and others
Phaidon, 2025
$89.95

These well-illustrated, in-depth essays on people and projects acknowledge icons such as Charles and Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen, but go beyond them to broaden the canon. Lesser-known female designers and designers of color here include Jane Doggett, who pioneered wayfinding signage; Danny Ho Fong, who ran a curio shop before designing furniture; and Howard Smith, a Black textile artist who worked in Finland.

Sheila Hicks: A Little Bit of A Lot of Things

Edited by Gianni Jetzer; text by Jetzer and Robert Storr
Hatje Cantz, 2025
$65

Hicks’s long career as a textile artist has seen her combine material and form in unique ways—playing, for example, with the distinction between crafted and found objects. This striking book, with its lay-flat binding and outsize typography, presents a gallery of pieces, a discussion of a major Swiss show, a transcript of a lively artist’s talk, and previously unpublished photos.

Jon Spayde is a contributing editor of American Craft.

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