Deerfield Arts & Crafts home page

Ideas

That "band of industrious and brainy women"

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Metal is just like dough...

Deerfield artisans sought to influence a variety of aesthetic and social issues. Madeline Yale Wynne, Deerfield's most famous proponent for Arts and Crafts social reforms, was likewise confident in her advocacy of metalworking as an apt pursuit for women. She made the following statement to an audience of skeptical female Chicagoans in 1903, which later appeared as a quote in the Chicago Daily Tribune:

...the reason there are not more women engaged in the metal work is because women have learned so little to depend upon themselves that they have neglected their opportunities and disparaged their ability to do things....Metal is just like dough after it has been subjected to heat. Of course this heat feature staggers many women, but there is no reason why a woman shouldn't do anything in the way of metal work without losing any of her dignity."¹

1. Madeline Yale Wynne as quoted in Chicago Daily Tribune March 12, 1903.