ADOBE TOOLS BRING THE LEGENDARY MAGAZINE OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT TO A WIDER PUBLIC
Protecting old and rare works on paper while making them more widely accessible is a problem that comes up frequently with antiquarian documents. In the case of The Craftsman magazine, which was published monthly from 1901 to 1916, it's a problem that has now been solved both elegantly and eloquently by Interactive Bureau's recent publication of The Craftsman on CD-ROM (available for purchase directly from Interactive Bureau).

With Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Photoshop as its main software engines, Interactive Bureau, a digital studio founded in New York City by graphic designer Roger Black, spent three years meticulously converting all 26,989 pages of the original magazine into a high-quality digital replica.

Capturing The Craftsman

Using Adobe Acrobat Capture, every page of The Craftsman, including the covers and advertisements, was scanned at 300 to 400 dpi. "Once they were scanned, we used Adobe Photoshop to sharpen the image. We also did character-smoothing and de-skewing of the live matter, and we used Adobe Photoshop to tune up the pictures," explains co-publisher Samuel "Jock" Spivey. However, The Craftsman on CD-ROM doesn't merely reproduce the renowned periodical, it enhances the original with a comprehensive searchable index featuring 3,639 abstracts that are linked to the corresponding articles.

Some of the cleanup, such as removing stains, was done in order to ensure the functionality of the index. "We did a bit of what I call 'hair and makeup,' " Spivey says. "We wanted to give the text the best possible chance of being accurately interpreted when it went through the OCR process. We wanted every word to be searchable on the page."

An irreplaceable document
And time, unlike creativity, is not something Roxby has in abundance. Along with her ongoing work with Cooper-Hewitt, she stays busy with Web clients such as Ralph Lauren Fragrances, MovieLink, Books Aloud, and Razorfish, Inc. The grammar of Web design, she believes, is in its infancy, and she plans to continue contributing to its development: "The Cooper-Hewitt project was a way of exploring what a museum could be on the Web. I like getting involved in projects that define new approaches, and where a real need is being met. It's very interesting, but also complicated and challenging.

The Craftsman was "the bible" of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the United States, which reached its zenith between 1900 and 1920. The movement began in England as a reaction to both the machine production of the Industrial Revolution and the highly ornamental style of the Victorian era. The movement emphasized spare design, hand-crafting, and the importance of the individual craftsperson. In the United States, the leading practitioner was furniture-maker Gustav Stickley, founder and publisher of The Craftsman.

The Craftsman remains one of the most complete resources for scholars, professionals, collectors and others interested in the Arts and Crafts Movement. However, due to the recent popular interest in this era (today, single pieces of Stickley's furniture can sell for more than a quarter million dollars, and a single issue of The Craftsman recently went for US$225), finding a complete collection of the magazine's 183 issues has become all but impossible. When they can be acquired, even careful handling of the issues can easily damage them.

Stephen Gray, co-publisher with Spivey of The Craftsman on CD-ROM, was a driving force behind the effort. "It's a fascinating project," he says, "and I'm delighted that this material will finally be available to people who haven't previously had access to it."

The PDF edition is fully searchable and can be viewed at high magnification.

Additional scholarship
The New Craftsman Index (and an excellent introduction), written by Arts and Crafts scholar Marilyn Fish, includes author and subject indices that link to the abstracts. With the index there are several essays that elucidate Stickley's ideals and his magazine's place in early 20th-century American art and society. In short, The Craftsman on CD-ROM is an Arts and Crafts aficionado's dream. The entire package - five CDs and two booklets presented in a rustic-looking binder and box - serves as a model for how to preserve and present fragile antiquarian texts.

"We wanted to be sure that everything we did in conjunction with the project was consonant with the ideas and the style of the Arts and Crafts Movement," says Spivey. "We went to every length to recreate the quality of the original in the new medium. We couldn't have done it without Adobe tools."

The Craftsman on CD-ROM uses the latest high-tech tools and media to celebrate turn-of-the-century craftsmanship, print publishing, and design. "It's very appropriate that it's being published this way," Stephen Gray says enthusiastically. "I think Gustav Stickley would be thrilled."