A new collection of online materials from the American Craft Council Archives is sure to entice lovers of craft videos and vintage films. In August 2025, the ACC Archives completed a project to digitize 93 sets of analog recordings from the collection. The recordings include nine different physical formats, with content spanning from the 1950s to 2003. A generous grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Recordings at Risk program funded the services of a digitization vendor and salary for temporary staff to process and describe the recorded content.
Historic Recordings from the ACC Archives Now Available Online
By Beth Goodrich
November 3, 2025
Image courtesy of the American Craft Council Archives
Still frame from 1971 Colorado Craft-In footage.
A true gem discovered in the AV collection is a 1969 interview with Paul J. Smith, then the director of the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City. Produced by Rocky Mountain Public Television for their Insight program, the color video recording (which was in excellent condition) features Smith discussing the ACC South Central Craftsmen 1969, an exhibition held at the Gilpin County Arts Association Gallery in Central City, Colorado. This recording is a rare opportunity to see and hear Smith, a prominent figure in ACC’s history and in the field of contemporary American craft.
Image courtesy of the American Craft Council Archives
Paul J. Smith is interviewed about his role as sole juror for the ACC South Central Craftsmen exhibition at the Gilpin County Arts Association Gallery in 1969.
Video recordings of the 1971 Colorado Craft-In, where participants gathered for a week of handcrafting using only the materials they could gather on site, provide a glimpse at the “back to the land” ethos of the era. A video created for the 1974 Museum of Contemporary Crafts exhibition Hands and Heart: Traditional Skills of the Lower East Side documents a bygone era of tight-knit ethnic neighborhoods in lower Manhattan. Included in the video are demonstrations of silver work at the Eastern Silver Company and an interview with Myron Surmach, proprietor of the Ukrainian goods store Surma, which operated for nearly 100 years until its closure in 2016.
Most of the recordings in the AV archives were created by past ACC staff. They document a wide range of programs and events, such as conferences, artist interviews and lectures, ACC Awards programs, and exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Craft/American Craft Museum.
Due to lack of playback equipment for the many obsolete media formats on which they were recorded, these recordings have been heretofore unavailable to researchers and staff. Now, select content is available online in the ACC Archives Digital Collections and on the ACC YouTube channel’s From the Archives playlist.
Image courtesy of the American Craft Council Archives
Still frame from kiln-building footage at the 1971 Colorado Craft-In.
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Image courtesy of the American Craft Council ArchivesStill frame from footage of silver work at the Eastern Silver Company, 1974.
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Image courtesy of the American Craft Council ArchivesStill frame from footage of the Surma Ukrainian Store, 1974.
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Image courtesy of the American Craft Council ArchivesStill frame from footage of backstrap weaving at the 1971 Colorado Craft-In.
Sixty-nine audio recordings—among them lectures by Craft Horizons editor Rose Slivka and renowned artists Judith Schwartz, Otto Natzler, Paul Soldner, Ruth Duckworth, and Sam Maloof —are also available in the ACC Digital Collections, with video content being added regularly. Audio transcripts are included alongside the uploaded recordings to enhance accessibility and make the content searchable within the database. Due to quality or copyright issues, some materials are not published to the ACC Digital Collections, but they are described in the online finding aid for the ACC AV Collection.
Whether you are a craft history researcher, artist, or are simply attracted to the ASMR quality of a pot being thrown on a wheel, you will find something to pique your interest in the newly digitized AV Collection.
Beth Goodrich is the archivist for the American Craft Council. The ACC Archives hold historical documentation of ACC dating back to 1939, as well as the early history of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts/American Craft Museum (now the Museum of Arts and Design) from 1956 to 1990. Many materials from the archives are available online at digital.craftcouncil.org.
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