The Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and Domestication 1350007048, 9781350007048

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THE POLITICS OF VIETNAMESE CRAFT

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THE POLITICS OF VIETNAMESE CRAFT

American Diplomacy and Domestication

Jennifer Way

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BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2020 © Jennifer Way, 2020 Jennifer Way has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design: Louise Dugdale Cover image © National Archives All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders of images and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in copyright acknowledgment and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. Disclaimer: The corporate brands/logos contained in this book are reproduced under the fair dealing and/or fair use defenses/exceptions under English, U.S. and international copyright laws. In relation to U.S. law, the author and publishers also exercise their rights to publish these logos under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The author and publishers also rely on the various defenses / exceptions under English, U.S. and international trademark laws. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN:

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To my parents and grandparents

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CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction VIETNAM AT HOME, 19551961

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Chapter 1 STATE DEPARTMENT AND UNITED NATIONS FOUNDATIONS FOR VIETNAMESE CRAFT AID

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Chapter 2 DESIGNER AS DIPLOMAT

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Chapter 3 REFUGEE AS ARTISAN: THE IMAGE OF VIETNAMESE CRAFT

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Chapter 4 THE U.S., NORTH VIETNAM, AND SOUTH VIETNAM: COMPETING NARRATIVES OF CRAFT

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Chapter 5 FROM SALVAGING TO MERCHANDISING: EXHIBITING VIETNAMESE CRAFT FOR AMERICAN CONSUMERS

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Chapter 6 ARTIFACT, ART, CRAFT: DISPLAYING AND COLLECTING DIFFERENT VIETNAMS

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Conclusion

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Notes Bibliography Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS Cover, untitled photograph of female artisan, ca. 1955, National Archives photo no. 286-CF-193-3. 0.1

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Martha Rosler, Cleaning the Drapes, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home ca. 1967–72, Photomontage, © Martha Rosler. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York. “Colorful Fabrics of Vietnam,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), front cover, which depicts two young Vietnamese women in the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon. Russel Wright (1904–76). American Modern brochure with price list, ca. 1950. Published by Steubenville Pottery Company, Printed Paper, 6 x 3¼ inches, Smithsonian Libraries, Gift of George R. Kravis II. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/ Art Resource, New York. Ran In-Ting, covered bowl, New Year’s festivities, BIB 715765, Steuben Collection, The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Wright disembarks from a sampan in South Vietnam, in Avrom Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat: The Government Applies the Designer’s Approach to Problems of International Trade,” Industrial Design 3, no. 5 (August 1956), 68. A young artisan making a basket at the Xom Moi refugee camp, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 94. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, USOM, p. 95. An artisan carving a sculpture, Smithsonian Institution Archives, RU 312, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director Records, 1912–1965, Viet Nam Photographs of Crafts Making, no. 42834. Women working at the Cai-San resettlement village, Secretariat of State for Information, Cai-San: The Dramatic Story of Resettlement and Land Reform in the “Rice Bowl” of the Republic of Viet-Nam (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Kim Lai An-Quan, 1956), 17. Mats, baskets, and lampshades displayed at the Saigon Exhibition Hall, “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 30. Magazine article reporting on Wright’s activity in Southeast Asia for the ICA [International Cooperation Administration], in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 94–5. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95.

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Photo of Vietnamese artisans at work, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 98–9. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95. Wright and his colleague Ramy Alexander watch young artisans working, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 100. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95. Line drawing of Vietnamese artisans by Pierre Huard, in Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand, Connaissance du Viêt-nam (Hanoi: École Française d’Extreme-Orient, 1954), 155, figure 53. Courtesy of École Française d’Extrême-Orient. Back cover, Window Washing in New York, Free World 9, no. 2 (1960), and front cover, Vietnam Handicraft Center, Free World 9, no. 3 (1960). Wright and his team alongside Vietnamese officials examining lacquerware displayed at the Chamber of Commerce in Saigon, Vietnam Folder, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photograph credited to Louis Reens, p. 73. An elevation drawing of the pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi, featuring photographs of two craft items superimposed on the drawing, for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 69. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73. A birds-eye-view drawing of the interior pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73. A young woman modeling the bamboo hat of a Moi warrior, “Coliseum Basket Belle,” New York World-Telegram, June 26, 1956, Section 2, page 1, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Cambodia display at the Coliseum, pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 69. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

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Installation view, Young Americans & Young Scandinavians exhibit, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York City, November 8, 1956, through January 6, 1957, American Craft Council. Courtesy of American Craft Council Library & Archives. Table Settings: The Old with the New exhibit, May 15, 1957, to June 16, 1957, Records of the Department of Costumes and Textiles, Brooklyn Museum Archives. Unistrut structures by Alexander Girard for Hall of Objects, in For Modern Living exhibition, Detroit Institute of Arts, in George Nelson, Display (New York: Whitney Publications Incorporated, 1952), 147. Lacquer artisan Thanh Le’s showroom, “The Lacquer Art of Viet Nam,” Free World 10, no. 1 (1961), 24. A large cutout photograph of President Diem, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. A sign stating “Viet Nam” in English, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Grass rugs displayed at the Saigon Exhibition Hall, “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 30. Display of various fashion items, Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, USOM Vietnam Photo 58767, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Russel Wright, Ramy Alexander, and Ken Uyemura visit a hat maker’s village in Vietnam, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Image connecting the conical hat to labor, land, and the economy in Vietnam, Viet-Nam (Washington, D.C.: Press and Information Office, Embassy of Viet Nam, ca. 1959). Pamphlet. Folder, Foreign Activities, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Home furnishings developed under the guidance of RWA displayed at the Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, ICA, “The Missions Report . . . Vietnam,” Industrial Activities Bulletin, April–May 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Industrial Resources, 1960), 2. W. & J. Sloane, New York City, installation of Vietnamese craft circulating in department stores nationwide, September 1958, “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958. “Siamese” head serving as the base for a lamp as advertised as part of the Far Eastern design movement, “Oriental Lamps—Siamese Bronze Head,” Retailing Daily 30 (August 13, 1956), 81a.

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5.20 Image of the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon, International Cooperation Administration, Industrial Activities Bulletin, April–May 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Industrial Resources, 1960), n.p. 5.21 Ceramic dinner sets developed by Ken Uyemura, USOM Vietnam Photo 55255, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 5.22 Photograph of American tableware designed by Wright on a wall in the Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, USOM Vietnam Photo 45876, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 5.23 Photograph of woman modeling a (modified) rounded hat, Russel Wright Associates Photo Album, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 5.24 Images from the fashion show hosted by the Handicraft Development Center, “First Viet-Nam Fashion Show Features Native Materials,” Free World 10, no. 6 (1961), 23–4. 5.25 Block print on skirt by Ken Uyemura, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 5.26 Film still featuring young women shopping, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection. 5.27 Film still featuring young women shopping, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection. 5.28 Film still featuring artisan’s hands working with natural materials, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection. 5.29 Film still showing a sculpture of a female torso in the craft center, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection. 6.1 President Diem and others view the Applied Arts and Handicraft Room, Saigon Chamber of Commerce, June 1960. Box 3, Papers of Olov Robert Thure Janse, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 6.2 Conical hat, 244852, United States National Museum E400760-0, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

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Exterior, Thanh Le, wooden case with nacre flowers and birds, ca. 1950s. Box 3, Papers of Olov Robert Thure Janse, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Opening of Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures exhibition, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1960, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image #MNH-530F.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project began with a pile of old Interiors magazines slated for removal from an interior design classroom at my university. In thumbing through an issue from 1956 I came upon the article, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia.” Its account of American interests in Vietnamese craft fascinated me and inspired many questions, and from it the discussion in this book gradually developed. I am grateful for the support I received to explore those questions from the Center for Craft, Creativity & Design and the Design History Society. The Smithsonian American Art Museum symposium, East–West Interchanges in American Art, and a subsequent Terra Foundation for American Art Senior Fellowship provided the springboard for my extensive work with archive and library collections in Washington, D.C., New York City, and beyond. At my home institution, the staff of the University of North Texas’s inter-library loan department came through time and again in procuring much-needed material. I am also grateful to Martha Rosler for permitting me to publish her Cleaning the Drapes photomontage, and to the staff that helped me obtain images from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, The Corning Museum of Glass, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Libraries, American Craft Council Library and Archives, National Anthropological Archives and National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution, and Library of Congress Still Images Division. Over the years, as this project shifted from ideas to research to writing, the interest of friends, related collaborative projects, and support from colleagues helped me persist and deepen my thinking on many of the book’s themes; thank you to Sally Packard, my Tai Chi group, Kay Hagen, Ann Graham, Rebecca M. Brown, Irene Klaver, Laurel Kendall, Elizabeth Rankin, Alain Bain, and Elissa Auther. At the University of North Texas, the annual Postwar Faculty Colloquium provided a welcome opportunity to consider the project through larger issues articulated by faculty participants and visiting scholars. At the same university, the Faculty Writing Group established by Teresa Golden supported my work with friendship, space to write, and lunch. I am also appreciative for the work of my University of North Texas Undergraduate Research Fellows—Redd Howard, Tova Anderson, and Hannah Lindsey, and to the many art history, design, and studio students who thoughtfully dialogued with me on topics and methods relating to my project, in courses such as Methodologies in the History of Art and Visual Culture, Questions of Race and American Art since 1945, Cultural Heritage and Memory, Sculpture among the Craft in South Vietnam and the U.S., Artists as Citizens, Critical Histories of Craft, Decorative Arts, and Modernisms, Questions of Art and Suffering, Politics of Exhibitions, Visual Culture of Refugee and Migrant, and Politics of Belonging. xiii

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Acknowledgments

Invaluable opportunities to reflect on material in development for various chapters include participating in the 34th Congress of the International Committee of the History of Art in Beijing, co-chairing Contemporary Asian Craft Worlds at the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York and Mobilities of Craft since 1900: Economics, Politics, Aesthetics at the Association of Asian Studies in Philadelphia with Rebecca M. Brown, and co-teaching the graduate seminar Modernism and South/Southeast Asian Art with Lisa N. Owen. An American Studies Association panel about state-sponsored migrations and U.S. Empire chaired by Karen Miller, Migration Memory and Place, a conference organized by the Danish Network for Cultural Memory Studies & Network for Migration and Culture at the University of Copenhagen, and the Critical Refugee Studies Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, expanded my awareness of methods, historiography, and current work on topics relating to my project. Mustafah Dhada generously embraced my research for the Ways of Seeing, Shaping, and Documenting Subjects under Postcolonial Conflicts session that he chaired at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations emerged on my horizon as a vital resource for reflecting on questions of power and culture at the intersection of diplomacy and domestication. I am very grateful for the generosity of the anonymous readers of the manuscript in sharing thoughtful observations and helpful suggestions. The project also benefited from opportunities to develop parts as chapters and journal articles that significantly improved thanks to their editors’ judicious insights, especially, in memorium, Cynthia J. Mills, and Jim Aulich and Mary Ikoniadou at Manchester Metropolitan University.

ABBREVIATIONS ECAFE FOA ICA NCFA NMNH RWA USIA USIS USOM

Economic Council for Asia and the Far East Foreign Operations Administration International Cooperation Administration National Collection of Fine Arts National Museum of Natural History Russel Wright Associates United States Information Agency United States Information Service United States Operations Missions

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I N T R O D U C T IO N : V I E T NA M AT HOM E , 1 9 5 5  1 9 6 1

In Martha Rosler’s photomontage series, House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, ca. 1967–1972, images of American soldiers and their artillery, battle sites in Vietnam, and Vietnamese people that Rosler culled from American print media appear in the windows, patios, doorways, mirrors, and posters and on the floors of American middle-class homes and in their yards as depicted in home furnishings and popular magazines.1 For example, Cleaning the Drapes depicts a young woman wielding the long hose of a portable vacuum to clean damask curtains. Absorbed in her task, she seems oblivious to several soldiers visible through the window she faces2 (Figure 0.1). With military rifles resting behind them, these soldiers confer with one another in a protective surround made of boulders and sandbags, yet their lack of interaction with the woman cleaning suggests they are unaware of her, too. However, the photomontage invites us to notice some similarities. The wand of the woman’s vacuum echoes the long lines of the soldiers’ rifles. An additional similarity concerns function—vacuums and rifles remove something. In getting rid of dust and dirt as enemies of hygiene, vacuums help to conserve home furnishings. In the context of the Vietnam War, American soldiers fired weapons to remove adversaries—communist troops threatening the sovereignty of South Vietnam and its place in the Free World. Rosler made the photomontage series during the peak of American military involvement in Southeast Asia,3 and Cleaning the Drapes served as one among many “agitational images”4 she presented in slide talks and distributed as photocopies during anti-war marches in New York City and in underground newspapers there and elsewhere.5 Cleaning the Drapes queries how the woman vacuuming can remain unaware of a war happening outside the window where she works. Another odd feature is the way the photomontage locates its viewers inside the home, from where we witness a proto-battle site outside, which the woman seems to reveal dramatically as she pulls back the drapes to clean them. Framed by the window and appearing in black and white, the soldiers in their bunker evoke an image one might have seen on a television set that brought war from Southeast Asia into an American home, while the curtains serve as a reminder that many Americans living in those homes wanted to shut out its presence.6 Despite their wish, Cleaning the Drapes insists on the proximity of the American middle-class home to the deployment of American troops for war abroad, and it also points to 1

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Introduction

Figure 0.1 Martha Rosler, Cleaning the Drapes, from the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home ca. 1967–72, Photomontage, © Martha Rosler. Courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York.

the war and the home sharing a habitus of keeping watch and order, in other words, a surveillance of sorts that aimed at maintaining control, ridding an environment of something unwanted, and cleaning up as necessary. This book explores a period in the decade prior to Rosler’s series, when optimism about American diplomatic relations with Southeast Asia prevailed and American soldiers in Southeast Asia were not yet a recurrent feature of the evening’s televised news. Nevertheless, something from Vietnam was entering American domestic life. From 1955 to 1961, to stave the development of war in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and the loss of South Vietnam and the region to communism, the American State Department fostered connections between its diplomacy of South Vietnam and Americans at home. At the center of these connections was something not yet visible inside or outside the “house beautiful” yet intended for it all the same—Vietnamese craft. The Politics of Vietnamese Craft: American Diplomacy and Domestication examines how, compelled by concerns about American security and economic growth in the face of undeveloped nations decolonizing as a Cold War in Southeast Asia burgeoned, the State Department pursued economic aid with South Vietnam that included Americans intervening in its craft fabrication and serving among its intended consumers. This book’s attention to Vietnamese craft revisits the U.S. engaging with South Vietnam through American Cold War agendas. It reconstitutes features of their imaginings, strategies, approaches, and related actions, showing how they generated a craft assistance program that brought attention to Vietnamese craft in the American

Introduction

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press and displayed examples in trade fairs, department stores, and museums in the United States. As Christopher Goscha notes, at the time, Americans referred to the Republic of Vietnam as South Vietnam,7 and this book follows suit. Anchored in the State Department, during 1955 an American technical aid program emerged to vitalize craft as a native industry in South Vietnam. It aimed to modify the design of the craft to suit American tastes, increase productivity in its fabrication, intensify as well as fine-tune its marketing and distribution in anticipation of its regional and international consumption, consider its appeal to tourists, and train artisans to continue producing the craft for export after the program ended. A cover for Free World (Figure 0.2), a diplomacy-laden magazine published in Manila with support from the United States Information Agency, shows two young

Figure 0.2 “Colorful Fabrics of Vietnam,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), front cover, which depicts two young Vietnamese women in the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon.

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Introduction

Vietnamese women in the Handicraft Development Center located in Saigon.8 American industrial designer Russel Wright and his firm, Russel Wright Associates (RWA), together with contracted specialists and American and Vietnamese government officials, would help establish the Center by 1958 and guide the opening of a retail space the following year.9 The brightly colored textiles the young women examine, together with the handwoven baskets below them and a room divider behind them, index these American efforts at assisting Vietnamese artisans in creating craft for display in Saigon and the U.S. The aid program’s overarching purpose was to guide and support artisans in South Vietnam—many were recent refugees from the North—in revitalizing and maintaining a craft industry that would strengthen South Vietnam’s economy and thereby further position that nation solidly within the Free World—a network of democratic, mostly capitalist nations that sought to increase the vitality of international trade predicated on harmonious relations of mutual support. During a period when the U.S. assumed unofficial leadership in the Free World, its craft assistance program in South Vietnam arose not from any fascination with or knowledge about Southeast Asian craft, or from any interest in directly engaging with artisans to learn about their traditions, interests, and plans; rather, it emerged in the context of technical aid abroad serving as a means to assuage American concerns about American security and economy in a world context. The Free World served the U.S. and its allies as a bulwark against the spread of communism in Southeast Asia and beyond. Shifting the status of northern refugees from their vulnerability to communism and potential political liability to productive workers in the Free World who would take direction from American professionals working in the home furnishings industry and, subsequently, from Vietnamese managers these Americans would train, would significantly contribute to this effort. Rather than emphasize the making of craft by artisans active in Vietnam, or privilege objects in a stylistic or iconographic account, this book explores how records of their actions and thoughts express what mattered to Americans about Vietnamese craft as a strand of the diplomacy of South Vietnam that was developing in the U.S. and taking place there, too. Intersecting this activity were American ideas about the types of interest their fellow citizens brought to craft in general and potentially to Vietnamese craft. We may typically think of diplomacy as expressing national agendas internationally, and this certainly occurred in American hands where South Vietnam was concerned. Also, in communicating with and about government officials and artisans in South Vietnam, the American federal government, State Department, and individuals and institutions from the worlds of design, craft, and art, and from museums, higher education, mass print media, commerce, and merchandising all helped to constitute the meaning and significance of Vietnamese craft for Americans at home. As they came into contact with a cultural form they did not originate, these Americans expressed power through authority and agency. Additionally, they echoed ideas and expectations about craft issued by the United Nations and South Vietnam’s President, Ngo Dinh Diem. The Politics of Vietnamese Craft draws attention to these unstudied connections between diplomacy, design, and craft taking place during Diem’s presidency. Correspondence between the

Introduction

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years of his government and the American craft program is significant in so far as historians point to Diem as a channel for American influence. Diplomatically, the U.S. approached South Vietnam as what Goscha refers to as “a strategic zone”10 by aiming to fortify it militarily and economically. Heonik Kwon urges us to move past notions of the U.S. acting unilaterally, and to recognize that the Cold War was global, in so far as there were multiple cold wars and perceptions in the West and the non-Western world that need to be taken into account in revisiting these years of American and Vietnamese relations.11 In bringing to light American interests in and representations concerning Vietnam and Vietnamese craft, this book does not intend to reduce their significance to “[their] relationship with—outside powers”12 or suggest that only Americans were interested in the craft, especially as export. Nor does it argue that agents were wholly instruments of the state or that the material considered here supports no other narratives. Rather, in initiating a discussion of the American craft program in South Vietnam, The Politics of Vietnamese Craft also invites further inquiry on the crosscultural complexities of discourses of race and ethnicity concerning American and Vietnamese involvements with Vietnamese craft and interactions between mostly white, male American leadership in the State Department and craft assistance program and Vietnamese government officials, scholars, educators, artisans, and individuals hired as translators, technical specialists, and service workers, Asian and Asian Americans in the U.S., Japanese American subcontractor designers Ken Uyemura and Michiko Uyemura, and Japanese technicians working for U.S. Consultants, Inc. To suggest that Americans represented themselves as exercising power is not to claim they set forth to subjugate Vietnamese people or castigate Vietnamese culture, nor is it to ignore glimpses of pushback or complexity in responses to their efforts, including frustrations and failures. The material discussed here warrants further inquiry on many points, such as Vietnam’s “own internal divisions, ethnic diversity, and conflicts,”13 narratives further removed from “state and interstate actions,”14 and the U.S. leveraging design to monetize the craft of other nations as a traded commodity as well as a precursor to Vietnam treating craft as part of its contemporary heritage and tourist industries.

The organization of this book Research for this book is based on archival and primary sources such as State Department field reports, designer contracts, correspondence, and photographs, materials from the Smithsonian Institution Archives and the Russel Wright Papers at Syracuse University, English-language writing about craft published in the U.S., South Vietnam, and North Vietnam, and an English-language film about a craft cooperative in Saigon located in the Library of Congress. In many of these primary sources, the nomenclature for craft includes craft, handicraft, arts, decorative arts, cottage industry, and more. As a way to illuminate its fluidity, this book mostly uses

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Introduction

“craft” in part to underscore by contrast the situations in which an actor or material in question specifically employs “handicraft” or another term for craft. The discussion begins with directives for studying craft in the context of American Cold War interests in Southeast Asia and corresponding American government attention to mutual security, technical cooperation, and economic aid. Subsequent chapters explore the industrial designer as the figure who brought these concerns to South Vietnam through a craft aid program and the ways photographs, writing published in mass print media, and exhibitions messaged Vietnamese craft as a means to address American interests while they also depoliticized Vietnamese artisans and their work.

Domesticating Americans We are familiar with vanguard visual arts, photography, and design participating in Cold War contexts. For example, during the fall of 1958 the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMA) International Council traveled its New American Painting exhibition curated by Dorothy Miller to Basel, Milan, Madrid, Berlin, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and London.15 Rene d’Harnoncourt, Director of MoMA, explained that the impetus to circulate New American Painting came from European institutions, which suggests they not only welcomed, rather, they wanted this temporary access to American painting.16 The catalog MoMA published for its presentation of the exhibition in the U.S. during 1959 included excerpts of the critical reception of New American Painting in Europe. In the aggregate, that reception lauded the painting for its freedom and lack of inhibition,17 and for its quality of newness and its American character, all of which implied that its vitality expressed that of its democratic, capitalist nation. Also, New American Painting referenced a new world order culturally, in so far as the catalog for its American presentation claimed that this “American School” was reversing the flow of culture, from Europe to the U.S. to the U.S. influencing “Europe, including Paris.”18 The same year New American Painting came home to the U.S., as part of the American National Exhibition of 1959 located outside Moscow in Sokolniki Park,19 the “kitchen debate” concerning the merits of capitalism versus communism took place between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev inside a cutaway model for a suburban American home. Its appliances emblematized state-of-the-art kitchen technology, improved efficiency, and time tracked and saved, and their sleek, colorful contemporary appearance promoted the kitchen as the intersection of the importance of the middle-class home, developments in manufacturing for the home, and the importance of marketing and distribution to generate consumer desire for choice in the American marketplace. Together with the abstract expressionist painting of MoMA’s exhibition, these kitchen appliances and home furnishings indexed American Cold War-era programs peddling ideologies of advancement blending creativity, freedom of expression, technology, material plenty, freedom of choice, and optimism about the nation’s future to Europe, South America, and the USSR.20

Introduction

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The U.S. circulated exhibitions comprised of other types of artifacts, too. The Moscow event featured MoMA’s The Family of Man exhibition of photography selected by Edward Steichen. Its photographs of families from around the world aimed to convey a universality of family lives among mankind. Meanwhile, an information machine and a film, A Communication Primer, created by designers Charles and Ray Eames played inside a dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. Its presentation exemplified modern American design performing as an ambassador for communication staged as a basic feature of human culture.21 Images and objects traveled with publicity, and the publicity became more sophisticated as the United States Information Agency brought consumer marketing techniques to American information efforts overseas.22 Additionally, beginning in 1956, the Office of International Trade Fairs contracted with industrial designers to develop U.S. pavilions abroad.23 These pavilions depicted postwar America in its abundance and variety of consumer goods.24 According to Andrew James Wulf, trade fairs and exhibitions focused on domestic things and life while they also signaled a shift in international power from Europe to the U.S.25 These presentations of American material culture in contexts of everyday life had to appeal on foreign soil to the visitors who ostensibly would be subject to the increasing presence of American power in the world.26 Greg Castillo shows how, before he became the Curator of Industrial Design at the Museum of Modern Art, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. worked with Peter G. Harnden in using model homes to stage exhibitions of household goods in postwar West Berlin. These exhibitions aimed to convey an American way of life as more attractive and appealing than socialism. For his part, Kaufmann furnished the homes with the work of renowned modernist American designers and appliances from well-known companies,27 thus promoting an idealized living space for aspirational consumption predicated on notions of American citizen-consumers delighting in their freedom to choose from a cornucopia of goods, styles, and even lifestyles. However, following the division of Vietnam in 1955, South Vietnam was not an auspicious environment into which Americans might circulate a major exhibition of vanguard contemporary art or stage state-of-the-art appliances to convey creativity and abundance as markers of Western-style democracy and capitalism. The problem was not simply that Vietnam’s agrarian-based economy and society lacked a Western modernity, which nations in Western and Eastern Europe had developed, some marginally, and the U.S. could support and help grow following World War II, including as a marketplace for American products. On top of this, decolonization, civil war, and related questions of the viability of its leadership made the region unstable. Furthermore, if South Vietnam was seen to promote American culture or its influence, it could have become vulnerable to more targeting from communists in the North based on Hanoi’s accusations that Americans were imperialists who aimed to repeat the former colonization of Vietnam that had been carried out previously by France. After all, the U.S. continued to affiliate with France. In 1949, the U.S. and France joined forces as founding members of NATO while, culturally, the U.S. vied with France and even replaced it as the center of artistic hegemony in the West.28 Ironically,

8

Introduction

during the early postwar years, gradually more of the French population expressed anti-Americanism based on its distaste for the U.S. handling of Marshall funding for France, meddling in communism in France and French decolonization in Africa, and exporting a consumerist lifestyle and mass-produced popular culture.29 We need to know more about the lack of traction for postwar American culture in Vietnam. Boitran Huynh traces the art of South Vietnam to the Fine Arts College of Indochina that in 1954 shifted from the North to become the National Fine Arts College of Saigon [Fine Arts College of Gia Dinh] located outside Saigon.30 It was founded on the French academic tradition, and Director Le Van De promoted neo-classicism.31 To be sure, some artists worked abstractly; however, the legacy of modernism facilitated through French colonialism and continuing into the early 1960s saw Vietnamese traveling overseas for education in the arts to France and Europe, not the U.S.32 Huynh says especially once the USIA was established in the late 1950s and became the key conduit for news of contemporary American art, awareness of the latest styles seeped into South Vietnam. Still, she observes that, on the whole, artists disdained American cultural influence.33 There were also new art groups developing in Saigon and regional influences that catalyzed artistic activity beyond polarizations associated with the larger national powers of the global Cold War.34 Meanwhile, North Vietnamese artists created work in support of the civil war from 1954 to 197535 emphasizing vernacular themes and people and a revival of folk art woodcuts.36 Instead of abstract expressionism and appliances, the U.S. advanced its messaging about the Cold War in Southeast Asia in part not by commodifying what Americans made and shipped abroad, rather, it communicated to South Vietnam and the world that South Vietnam mattered to the Free World by latching onto what already seemed to belong to Vietnam and could be brought into American channels of consumer capitalism by way of design and merchandising as means to facilitate diplomatic ends. Efforts to adapt Vietnamese craft for American consumption by way of guidance from American designers and their American, Japanese, and Japanese American and Vietnamese contracted staff linked design with fabricating, merchandising, and distributing craft in this conduit connecting Saigon and New York mainly by way of the American industrial designer whose purview already encompassed the trajectory of fabrication to the consumption of things for everyday life. In treating Europe as part of a “unified Atlantic community,” the Marshall Plan used International Style modernism in the presentation homes it displayed in Europe, thus linking both sides of the Atlantic in a shared cultural thread.37 In contrast, the State Department’s craft aid programs targeted the Middle East and Asia for their respective indigenous traditions that could supplement or redress elements lacking in American interiors and lives. Under colonial rule, Vietnamese artisans had produced craft for export to France. After 1954, some Vietnamese artisans continued to sell work in Europe. Although the program that emerged from the State Department’s economic and technical support in South Vietnam was largely silent on this activity,38 it was not silent on how importing Vietnamese

Introduction

9

craft could benefit American needs through affect while contributing to the American nation’s economic, mutual security and cultural diplomacy agendas. During the 1950s, American designers criticized the austerity of mechanization and industrialization that marked mass-produced low-end consumer goods and furnishings made with substitution materials and short cuts in fabrication. Some also voiced the need to humanize the metals, glass, and stone, hard-edged angular shapes and reflective surfaces characteristic of international modernist furnishings. A solution among American modernist designers favored wood, clay, stone, and fiber organic shapes with modest, often abstract repetitive ornament or a single motif. As the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, Twentieth Century Design from the Museum Collection, 1958–1959, attested, the U.S. had become an heir to the International Style and other variations of modernism, and it was codified not only by institutions such as MoMA but also by designers and cultural tastemakers. Wright was both a designer and cultural tastemaker. At the same time, major American museums were exhibiting American craft along with protoblockbuster touring exhibitions consisting of objects from non-Western Asian nations (Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam) made by hand that Americans considered pre-modern on a spectrum incorporating craft, decorative arts, and fine arts, and that they welcomed for embodying spirituality, human-ness, and nature-centricity. Also, craft was achieving greater visibility. In New York City, where RWA had its office, the Museum of Contemporary Craft opened in 1956, the same year Wright and his team visited Vietnam to evaluate the state of native craft production. As the concept and practice of the “designer-craftsmen” emerged in studios and manufacturing and found representation in exhibitions and print media, RWA mobilized Vietnamese craft to intersect continents, historical periods with the present day, tradition and modernism, and makers and markets. Furthermore, Americans contracted by the State Department to work with craft in South Vietnam advanced components of an aesthetic familiar to the American Studio Craft Movement—organic shapes, evidence of the artisan’s hand, natural materials, visible structure, and unembellished surfaces or surfaces with geometric patterning. The appeal of craft for a foreign aid program also linked the growing American interest in Western and Eastern craft to a new orientation in diplomacy that valorized the middle class at home as a home front integral to the success of American Cold War agendas. These efforts reflected American diplomacy “becoming less concerned with relationships among governments and more concerned with relationships among peoples.”39 In contrast to coercion or aggression associated with military action and other types of overt acts of power, early Cold War-era cultural diplomacy aimed to generate appreciation and empathy “among peoples” and “the understanding we can achieve among whole populations.”40 American uses of Vietnamese craft exemplified this development. For one thing, diplomatic activity expanded to incorporate civilians such as designers and museum personnel serving the craft program and representing their nation to another nation. Also, Americans promoted historical connections

10

Introduction

between the U.S. and South Vietnam that facilitated contemporary foreign relations and boded well for future diplomacy efforts, too. It would fall to these many non-state actors to realize State Department agendas for craft aid through its International Cooperation Administration (ICA) programs in the Middle East, Asia, and Southeast Asia. For South Vietnam, in 1955 the ICA contracted with American industrial design and home furnishings expert Russel Wright and his firm, Russel Wright Associates. They would survey craft production and its readiness for export. Wright was an ideal choice to lead this initiative. He embodied a new brand of industrial designer who synced makers historically devoted to craft with local as well as far away markets. Additionally, he was known for enlarging the scale of craft production, clarifying its focus, and creating new linkages between design and craft, including for mainstream American consumption. In his own work, Wright explored craft, design, and machine fabrication as a way of creating tableware and home furnishings to appeal to the American middle class. Some of these efforts emphasized the nation. Overall, the impetus to go abroad to engage with foreign craft and attempt to bring it home reflected developments regarding who is a diplomat, how diplomats work, and also where they work. Related to this last characteristic of diplomacy was a reframing of the location of diplomacy. As Andrew Heywood observes, “As state borders have become increasingly ‘porous,’ the conventional domestic/ international, or ‘inside/outside,’ divide has become more difficult to sustain.”41 Mid-century, the State Department pressed the necessity of bringing foreign relations into domestic America. Livingston Merchant acknowledged the increasing difficulty his colleagues faced in distinguishing between “national and international problems” and separating “domestic policies from foreign policies”42 because the world was an increasingly interdependent world and gave rise to problems of this nature.43 Merchant urged Americans to perceive the implications of domestic issues for international ones and advance them while being mindful of safeguarding Americans at home.44 In Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries, Robert T. Oliver, a scholar of Asian rhetoric and communication, added another layer to the intersection of American foreign and domestic arenas. Oliver urged statesmen to address interrelated policies and problems because they impacted as well as facilitated one another. On matters of foreign policies, governments must “seek to influence their own ‘home’ audience.”45 Relating to this new emphasis in linking the foreign and domestic locations of diplomacy was an ongoing national dialogue about social and cultural characteristics of the American middle class. In The Domesticated Americans, cultural pundit Russell Lynes bolstered these developments in foreign affairs with a claim that, essentially, Americans are predisposed to make sense of the world through the home. According to Lynes, proto-Americans, mainly white AngloSaxons, migrated to what eventually became the contiguous U.S. They would belong to their nation geographically, abetted by common styles of housing and ways of life. Also, they shared a temperament that compelled them to embrace effects of belonging to a place and nation. Additionally, these proto-Americans

Introduction

11

made sense of unfamiliar ideas, places, and things in relation to their home life. Lynes credits these tendencies with constructing a mythology of the American middle class that also shaped its homogenous national and class-based ethos: “It is part of our mythology, rather than of our history or of our longest memories, that the American homestead is the symbol of family continuity and stability and the stronghold of democratic institutions.”46 Lynes believed the myth and the national character to which it gave rise also balanced an opposite reality: Americans do not want to stay put. Moreover, “America is more mobile than it has ever been and mobile in more respects,” he wrote.47 One reason is Americans have long been reconciling a “restlessness and a love of hearth.”48 In bringing Vietnamese craft to the U.S., the State Department would reconcile the tensions Lynes identified in the American impulse to root life in the home while yearning to travel beyond it. Other American intellectuals questioned the ethics of their nation approaching Southeast Asia as vulnerable, problematic, and needing if not awaiting American economic and military assistance. “By whom are such problems perceived and stated, to whom do they have meaning, and for whom are they solved?” philosopher Richard Gard queried.49 “In short, with whose ideology in Southeast Asia are we mainly concerned?”50 Gard implied that powers and interests from outside Southeast Asia were shaping the region’s future instead of those who lived there. To his point, from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, an American framework for engaging with Vietnam and making sense of its craft followed from features of the American nation’s diplomacy and its increasing attention to a white, middle-class disposition. As one example, in 1953, the same year Gard published his concerns, American information officers stationed in Hanoi wondered how to visually promote to future inhabitants in nearby villages the development of a new village south of Hanoi—the Dong Quan Pacification Village. It was purposed for military use to stave off communist infiltration.51 Of interest is the way these officers reached for cultural Americana with which to visually and conceptually represent a new village to its future Vietnamese inhabitants. The American officers wanted to show the Vietnamese what the village would look like when finished, something along the lines of, “ ‘This is to be your new home’ (picture a nice suburban villa complete with an early American bed warmer—Currier & Ives print, etc.).”52 The officers’ reference to a Currier & Ives print summoned the nostalgic imagery of American places and life as depicted in the popular prints that Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives made and distributed beginning in the second half of the nineteenth century and that were printed on a wide variety of objects after the early twentieth century. As these officers toiled in Hanoi, Currier & Ives images circulated in the U.S. on dinnerware produced there by the Royal China Company in Ohio53 for merchandising at department stores and as part of purchasing programs promoted by A&P grocery.54 From the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, The Homer Laughlin China Company manufactured Americana, an inexpensive dinnerware sporting Currier & Ives imagery, too.55 At the end of the 1950s, Assistant Secretary for Educational and Cultural Affairs, Robert Thayer, explained that culture encompasses “the things they make, the things they do—the culture of a people is the life of a people, and cultural diplomacy

12

Introduction

is the act of successfully communicating to others a complete comprehension of the life and culture of a people.”56 Ultimately, the people about whose lives craft in Vietnam communicated were Americans and their cultural imaginary of the U.S., including the position of the U.S. in the world of the Cold War. Arguably, Wright shared the impulse to nostalgia in so far as he perceived Vietnamese craft in terms of what Americans had lost in living with machine-made, mass-produced things. Aesthetically, Wright approached his State Department remit to foster native craft for export less from the look of Currier & Ives images and more from a modern abstract aesthetic akin to an updated sense of what cultural form should signify for contemporary Americans. For Wright, this was American Modern, the affordable earthenware tableware that he designed for daily use by the middle class and whose purchase of the set and its individual, solid color pieces, here in light gray, coral, seafoam green, brown, and chartreuse yellow, made it a popular fixture in American homes during the mid-twentieth century (Figure 0.3).

Figure 0.3 Russel Wright (1904–76). American Modern brochure with price list, ca. 1950. Published by Steubenville Pottery Company, Printed Paper, 6 x 3¼ inches, Smithsonian Libraries, Gift of George R. Kravis II. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum/Art Resource, New York.

Introduction

13

“Crossing the public/private divide of politics”57 Adrian Leftwich locates the presence of politics “wherever questions of power, control decision-making and resource allocation between two or more people occur in any human society, past or present,”58 and museum studies scholar Sharon McDonald refers to politics as “the workings of power.”59 There is also what Andrew Heywood calls the “power of agenda setting”60 and what follows from that activity. Many of the materials that inform this book express an American politics or “workings of power” engaging with South Vietnam. In aligning South Vietnam with the U.S. economically and militarily, the State Department made assessments and endeavored to act upon them, determined what issues were important, and allocated and managed resources for technical support bolstering American interests there and in Southeast Asia.61 American agenda setting also reflected American ideas about when Vietnam became postcolonial. Patricia Pelley asserts that “in the case of Vietnam, and other decolonizing societies as well, one cannot precisely locate the moment when the colonial period is past.”62 From the perspective of Vietnamese revolutionaries aligning with Ho Chi Minh, by 1945 Vietnam was independent of Japanese occupation as well as French rule.63 Consequently, for the U.S. to treat 1954 as the birth of postcolonial Vietnam and 1955 as the year when South Vietnam emerged as an independent, sovereign nation ruled by President Ngo Dinh Diem, fostered a history and timeline of Vietnamese sovereignty that underwrote American interests in Southeast Asia as authority shifted away from its former French colonial power.64 Regarding this period, Jodi Kim perceives the U.S. behaving imperialistically toward Asia as a result of its own needs.65 On top of this, according to James Carter, Americans thought Vietnam was unable to rule itself and avoid succumbing to belonging to the communist world.66 Therefore, once Vietnam defeated the French in 1954, Americans acted quickly to recognize and shore up the statehood of South Vietnam and take over its management from the French.67 Carter, noting that the State Department observed the results of Vietnam’s colonialism as poverty, a lack of infrastructure, and underdevelopment,68 says it endeavored to modernize and then “integrate [South Vietnam’s economy] into a broader, liberal capitalist system.”69 Yet, in recognizing South Vietnam as the legitimate Vietnam, the U.S. complicated Vietnamese identity for the future. Nora Taylor cautions that the notion of Vietnam as a unified nation is a contemporary idea that took shape in 1975. “It therefore becomes difficult to talk about ‘Vietnamese’ art if the very unity of ‘Viet Nam’ is a questionable idea.”70 American foreign relations that followed from these situations and perspectives conveyed agency and authority in representations of the craft program’s contractees, press, and participating organizations. In the U.S., Americans curated and managed what Americans at home learned about Vietnamese craft by omitting some issues, themes, and people, such as Vietnam’s former colonial rule, civil war, the existence and activity of North Vietnam, and the individuality of artisans. Americans did not “try to grasp what things meant to [Vietnam’s] inhabitants and then attempt to

14

Introduction

understand how they perceived their own encounters with [its] foreignness.”71 Nor did Americans promote the cross-cultural diversity of Saigon or inquire about artisans’ own issues,72 or examine how the craft aid project related to previous French interests in Vietnamese craft production and export. In other words, Americans entered into a politics of belonging where Vietnamese craft’s significance for Americans was concerned. As Nira Yuval-Davis writes, “the inclusion or exclusion of particular people, social categories and groupings within these boundaries by those who have the power to do this”73 expresses a politics of belonging, Craft program managers and administrators of exhibitions expressed a “power of agenda setting”74 in shaping how Vietnamese craft and its artisan makers belonged to American interests and lives. An Orientalist impulse wove through these American discourses. Edward Said outlined how, during the nineteenth century, imperialist European powers and their agents constituted the significance of their colonized Middle Eastern subjects, and they gave themselves greater power, authority, and agency by associating with progress and change as they also removed their subjects from historical time or development.75 Kwon asserts that, during the mid-twentieth century, Orientalism did not pass unchanged from its European forms into the United States. Nor, as Said indicated,76 did the U.S. pursue an Orientalist approach to Middle Eastern and Asian nations based on the older, European models. Rather, according to Kwon, the U.S. “reshaped the conceptual parameters of cultural differences and hierarchy for the purpose of creating a united front against the ‘common’ threat of the ‘American way of life’ in particular and to the ‘free world’ at large.”77 Still, not unlike European governments and private concerns sending forth representatives to discover, document, and know “Orientals,” the State Department supported RWA and other Americans in surveying, analyzing, evaluating, and reporting on artisans and their craft in Southeast Asia. These Americans worked under the belief that their endeavors would improve the lives of needy people residing in South Vietnam, especially those who recently arrived from the North,78 and they would salvage their craft, too. Concerns about the vulnerability of Vietnamese craft to rapid modernization and unchecked industrialization79 were being explored in studies supported by the United Nations Economic Council for Asia and the Far East and in related publications by C. Hart Schaaf80 and Theodore Herman.81 For the most part, however, references to Vietnamese craft bypassed questions of politics and placed diplomacy agendas and their implementation through military aid outside the framework of photographs, texts, and exhibitions meant for American consumption. Instead, American attention to the craft made Vietnam an interesting place and civilization that was increasingly accessible through a growing tourism industry and exports. These efforts tended to celebrate not so much the craft makers but American taste-making leadership in bringing the craft home. Meanwhile, published photographs transposed the artisan subject of the craft aid program from a potential political threat to a worker and goods maker, while museums constituted his craft mostly as an ethnographic object, albeit in some respects a failed one.

Introduction

15

Domesticating Vietnamese craft and its makers for and in the U.S. meant depoliticizing craft objects, makers, and messages. A second component of this activity involved soldering connections between depoliticized objects from abroad to consumers at home. Home, Daniel Miller writes (echoing Lynes), has “a kind of centripetal orientation of [bringing] the world back to the private sphere.”82 In looping American security interests expanding throughout the world “back to the private [American] sphere,” the State Department hit upon “a world of things . . . [that] can be endlessly manipulated to fit with an individual’s requirements for self-expression,”83 like foreign craft that Americans appreciated in terms of its spirituality, effect, and respite for self and home. Perhaps, as Michael Jan Rozbicki and George O. Ndege observe, this is because “people try to make sense of the alien by means of their existing cultural capital, the only resource they have available.”84 Along with lifting up the Vietnamese economy by adding craft to American– Vietnamese trade, Americans consuming Vietnamese craft by reading a magazine article about it or encountering it in department stores or museums would help to normalize Vietnam’s belonging in the Free World. Correspondingly, Vietnamese artisans would take in American culture, technical practices, and ideas concerning craft and a way of life predicated on democracy and capitalism. Overarchingly, questions of belonging shadowed American involvement with Vietnam as the U.S. struggled to gain military and economic traction in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. As Nira Yuval-Davis explains, belonging “becomes articulated, formally structured and politicized only when it is threatened in some way.”85 The threat to the U.S. encompassed security, access to materials and markets, and the continuation of a way of life, including the hegemony of whiteness. Nell Painter considers the postwar period the “third enlargement of American whiteness,” when middle class and whiteness were conflated in part because of the way the G.I. Bill was administered and also from racism in property deeds and home financing.86 Dianne Suzette Harris studied how middle-class housing participated in the “construction of an American iconography of race and class and its impact on the formation of U.S. culture,”87 including “the configuration, décor, possessions, and maintenance of the house. . . .”88 In the aggregate, this scholarship alerts us that race worked in and through things, confirming racial predispositions of American middle-class society including, as Michael Harris shows, white privilege that limited nonwhite people’s access to representation and power.89 The craft assistance program signified Vietnamese artisans and their work as different, exotic, and desirable to middle-class, white Americans. Also, it required salvage, guidance, and management. Yet, like the political significance David Brody perceived in Asian decorative arts and Laura Wexler in photography indexing yet deflecting the violence of American foreign relations ca. 1900 through its imbrication of domestic spaces and life, the mid-twentieth-century craft assistance program and its non-government specialists and collaborators delivered Vietnamese craft mostly shorn of obvious evidence that the U.S. was acting in the world on matters of its own national security and economy. Works of craft avoided materializing these matters as they transposed them into a safe issue. A “safe issue,” according to Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, is established by “status quo

16

Introduction

oriented persons and groups [who] influence . . . community values and those political institutions.”90 Government, leading businesses, tastemaker designers, and cultural institutions treated the American import and distribution of Vietnamese craft as an apolitical “natural, accepted state of affairs” predicated on the craft’s political efficacy for American interests and status internationally. The craft’s natural materials connotated indigeneity and tradition if not timelessness, and its ostensible anonymous makers signified a conflation of a place, nation, and people, and their need for assistance.

Vietnamese craft and American histories of craft and art Craft deserves more scholarly attention to its entanglements in politics and to political involvements in fabrication, uses, and significance without and within the art world. Historical engagements with craft deserve to be studied in relation to all the complexities, conflicts, and discourses through which we approach works of art. So do craft, art, and design warrant study for the proliferation of their interactions and the various types of makers and objects engaged with them, and to understand how their stakeholders represent their aims and interests geographically. Twenty-five years ago, Amy Kaplan reminded us that “The study of American culture has traditionally been cut off from the study of foreign relations.”91 Novelist Viet Thanh subsequently critiqued American Studies for the insularity of its topics and approaches.92 Thanh’s challenge to scholars, to move beyond American intellectual paradigms that are treated as if applicable everywhere, is being met as American Studies inquires about the American nation intra- and inter-nationally.93 American art history is turning in this direction, too.94 Veerle Thielemans observes that “American art has always been made up of encounters between cultures from different parts of the world.” Nevertheless, we now confront “the painful awareness that the writing of its history, even when embracing multiculturalism, has too often been geographically confined.”95 American interest in Asia culturally continues to give rise to major projects, such as Alexandra Monroe’s The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989,96 and David Brody’s Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines.97 Both interrogate the historically specific intellectual as well as cultural, social, and political economic discourses through which Americans interacted with their notions of the East. Also foundational to The Politics of Vietnamese Craft is the scholarship of Claire Wintle and that of Takuya Kida, which expands Christina Klein’s work on Cold War Orientalism by inquiring about American design, craft, and culture engaging with India and Japan, respectively.98 Along these lines, Ching Yang has researched RWA in Taiwan,99 and from the perspective of design, intra-Asian connections, and transnationalism, Yuko Kikuchi studies features of Wright’s and his colleague Ken Uyemura’s work in Asia, focusing on Japan.100

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17

The Politics of Vietnamese Craft builds on this work by exploring American attention to foreign craft in the framework of international politics and politics of culture at home messaged through the activity of designers, images of makers, exhibitions, and collections. In this way, the book contributes to understanding not only craft objects but also desires for them, and it examines some of the key activities and representational practices that followed from these desires. While The Politics of Vietnamese Craft shows Americans treating Vietnamese people and objects as subjects of their own interests and anxieties, Americans did not colonize Vietnam. In South Vietnam, the U.S. aimed to foster a strong economy, create jobs and industries, and shore up democracy—efforts to which it hoped a robust craft export industry would contribute and remain vital after specialists contracted by the U.S. State Department departed Vietnam. Nevertheless, American engagements with Vietnam on matters of craft reflect what John Potvin reminds us is Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of power in the contact zone—“highly asymmetrical relations of power.”101 Ideas about what counted as handicraft versus craft were part of these asymmetrical relations through which nations, including South Vietnam, wrote about Vietnamese craft to define its authorship and claim how it mattered nationally. In English-language publications, for North Vietnam, “handicraft” often aligned with a nationalism that perceived the U.S. intervening in Vietnamese culture and politics and even ruining them. Somewhat for South Vietnam and especially for the U.S., the “hand” of handicraft steeped craft in an indigeneity that was invaluable to a new nation wanting to promote its culture as an authentic cultural index of the Vietnamese nation. For the U.S., “handicraft” signaled a small industry important mainly for what it lacked—mechanization and industrialization—and for its potential to update tradition to appeal to the needs of contemporary American consumers.

18

Chapter 1 S TAT E D E PA RT M E N T A N D U N I T E D N AT IO N S F OU N DAT IO N S F O R V I E T NA M E SE C R A F T A I D

Viet-Nam, a small nation on the east coast of the Southeast Asian peninsula, has an importance in current world history far out of proportion to its size, for it is one of the spots on the globe, like Korea and Germany, where the Communist block and the free world have come to grips. Like Korea and like Germany, Viet-Nam is divided.1

Introduction Craft entered the American diplomacy of South Vietnam before Vietnam divided at the 17th Parallel; however, the aid program took shape after the division. Then, in expressing desired outcomes for American–Vietnamese relations, American government officials and intellectuals privileged mutual security along with technical cooperation in a framework of economic diplomacy and private sector initiatives. The findings of the United Nations Economic Council for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) chronologically and thematically intersected these developments, providing a template for craft-focused aid. Through the State Department’s Foreign Operations Administration (FOA), these themes and approaches resounded in representations of aid in a pamphlet about technical cooperation, recommendations about development and craft in Southeast Asia, and an exhibition of Asian glass.

American involvement in South Vietnam Goscha asserts that during the years following the end of World War II, the U.S. chose containing world communism over supporting the decolonization of Vietnam.2 Understood at the time to be emerging from its “tightly sealed colonial domains,” according to Kenneth Young at the State Department, Southeast Asia amounted to “a critical area in a divided world” located “on the frontiers of freedom, face to face with the real and present danger of violence and subversion.”3 Leading up to World War II, Japan’s desires for an empire compelled it to invade and occupy 19

20

The Politics of Vietnamese Craft

Southeast Asia. This action vitalized decolonization movements there and by 1945, with the Japanese in retreat, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnam an independent, communist nation.4 However, following the war, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 catalyzed American Cold War anxiety about communism spreading throughout Asia.5 In addition, the State Department worried about nations dividing into communist and democratic states. With the emergence of communist North Korea and East Germany, Americans saw a stark contrast to the many freedoms they appreciated in the Free World. Still, after World War II, initially the U.S. remained undecided on whether to back France reclaiming its authority in Southeast Asia. However, the U.S. expressed its support for France in 19486 and soon it was supporting the French with military aid in Vietnam,7 although some American government officials pressed for France to decolonize the region with the U.S. continuing to provide military support.8 As NATO, the North American Treaty Organization consisting of the U.S. and European nations formed in 1949, and the European Defence Community came together in 1952,9 the U.S. backed Bao Dai as emperor of a non-communist Vietnam belonging to the French Union,10 which made Vietnam subject to colonial rule.11 The U.S. hoped Emperor Bao Dai would foster a non-communist future for Vietnam while, through France, the U.S. supported the Associated States of Indochina—Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia—on matters of health, agriculture, public works, and relief.12 Looking ahead to future relations with Asia, American government officials reflected on joining forces with Asian nations to cast out communism. In 1953, the year fighting in Korea ended and that nation divided into a northern communist state and a democratic southern state, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John M. Allison, imagined the costs of spending “American blood or treasure” to safeguard Asia from communism.13 A year later, when France lost to Vietnam at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Under Secretary of State, Walter Bedell Smith, reaffirmed America’s vision of Asia as “a community of free, self-supporting states. That is where our interest is.”14 Before Free World circulated his statements in Southeast Asia, in The Department of State Bulletin Smith argued for the U.S. persisting in keeping Asia free of not simply communism but also colonialism because “hostile imperialism” in Southeast Asia would threaten American security.15 Smith revealed an impulse toward mutual or collective security intensifying in the State Department—“Every free country of the area which is interested in its own selfpreservation should at least be willing to explore the advantages inherent in the concept of collective security.”16 In linking self-preservation to the sovereignty of nations of Southeast Asia, Smith touched on a theme American officials were expressing about the U.S. As the authors of Diplomacy in a Changing World would explain, “The subject matter of diplomacy is the relations of one state to another state or to other states” as well as “relations of states in such alliances to other powers or groups of powers.”17 From a defensive position, concern about its own security and preservation compelled the U.S. to participate in international alliances to support Southeast Asia18 and determine how what the region needed could be tailored to address its own agendas.

Foundations for Vietnamese craft aid

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While the U.S. was supporting France overseeing the Associated States of Indochina,19 France agreed to hold elections with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam within two years.20 However, Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were developing Vietnam as an independent nation.21 Diem withdrew from the French Union,22 and he abolished Vietnam’s ties to France on matters of money, borders, and citizenship.23 During 1955, France and the U.S. agreed that France would withdraw its troops from Vietnam, and this prompted Diem to oust them.24 Meanwhile, Diem’s suppression of sects in the South impressed the U.S., which then more fully supported his nation-building.25 In the summer of 1955 they mounted what Goscha calls a sham election between Emperor Bao Dai and Diem.26 Diem won, and consequently no elections would follow to unify Vietnam north and south of the 17th Parallel.27 Instead, Ho Chi Minh aligned with North Vietnam. Goscha summarizes, “the Americans were now focused on supporting a fully decolonized, anticommunist, economically vibrant, and heavily armed ‘South Vietnam’ capable of holding the Indochinese line in the struggle to contain communism.”28 By 1954 SEATO, The Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, formed to supplement NATO’s efforts at creating America-strong alliances that would hinder the growth and spread of communism beyond Europe. In the month prior to its founding, the American Department of State Bulletin queried, “Why is Indochina important to Americans?,” in response to which the Under Secretary of State, Smith, warned about the USSR and China intending “to dominate all of Southeast Asia.”29 Officials also weighed in on the ways that decolonizing nations were rendering the U.S. vulnerable in its own security, which necessitated a greater level of American involvement in the region.30 Adding to this refrain were government officials who bundled American security interests into economic ones. For example, Smith saw in Southeast Asia the richness of its raw materials;31 the Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, suggested that in addition to mutual security paving the way for trade relations, the opposite held;32 and Senator John F. Kennedy elevated South Vietnam to no less than “the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia,” with an “economy . . . essential to the economy of all of Southeast Asia.”33 The comingling of security interests with the U.S. offering to share its economic know-how with underdeveloped nations originated in the Four Point Program President Harry Truman announced in 1949, which advanced with Congress passing a Technical Assistance program.34 Truman’s Mutual Security Act of 1951 would continue to funnel aid to underdeveloped nations.35 In the aggregate, the legislation showed the U.S. moving beyond rebuilding postwar Europe to designate which additional nations elsewhere in the world counted as undeveloped or underdeveloped and deserving of its support. A State Department pamphlet about mutual security lauded the U.S. as the most called upon, able, and willing of nations to lead in these endeavors.36 Still, the U.S. realized it depended on the nations it aimed to lead by way of providing its assistance. Consequently, Livingston Merchant, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, emphasized that preserving the U.S. meant avoiding displays of naked force and facilitating cooperation with free nations.37 This message prevailed as President Eisenhower asked Congress to

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increase funds for mutual security in 1955. Eisenhower wanted to see partnerships “rooted in the facts of economic and defence interdependence” as well as “the understanding and respect of each partner for the cultural and national aspirations of the other” developing between the U.S. and free nations.38 During his second term, 1956–61, he promoted these themes heavily.39 Michael Adamson shows that President Eisenhower aimed to increase private support for Southeast Asia, too, based on the belief that private capital should fund development abroad in general.40 Congress considered this approach politically expedient, albeit woefully underexplored.41 The craft aid program merged impulses toward cooperation in security-based mutual diplomacy with economic development assistance leading to the American middle class at home. This approach to aiding South Vietnam reflected an inclination to bring private enterprise into American development efforts abroad. Another facet of the U.S. supporting other nations involved Americans at home serving as their market. Accordingly, from this approach to development assistance, South Vietnam would begin to prosper and enjoy participating in the Free World marketplace by fabricating unique things for trade with the U.S.42 Without necessarily publicizing capitalism as a way of belonging to this “free world,” the approach nevertheless promoted it in practice and paved nations’ entry through financial support. Nations where American craft aid programs operated—Iran, Pakistan, Taiwan, Turkey, South Korea, and Vietnam—“received more than half of the U.S. military and economic assistance as of fiscal 1955, and they continued to receive some $2 billion in mostly military and so-called defense support aid annually over the next five years.”43 Two additional features of mutual security and economic-centered diplomacy set the stage for the craft aid program. One shifted more of the organization of foreign affairs to new State Department entities, such as the International Cooperation Administration (ICA).44 The other targeted refugees, and Kennedy highlighted the importance of integrating northern refugees into South Vietnam.45 At the same time, State Department publicity looked beyond the granular level of these operations and the agendas that drove them. Instead, as exemplified by a pamphlet about Vietnam from 1957, the State Department presented technical aid as a reflex of being human; it claimed that aid was as “old as humanity itself.”46 Also, the pamphlet rationalized American aid in Vietnam on the basis of its obligation to Free World leadership. What is new now is that technical cooperation is an important activity of governments and of international organizations, a tangible expression of common interest among the people of many nations. For the first time in history, the proven skills and tested techniques of the more advanced nations are being harnessed consciously, deliberately and effectively—to attack economic and social problems of the less advanced nations on a broad scale.47

In outlining the world as a hierarchy of advanced nations leading undeveloped ones, the pamphlet described American exceptionalism and imperialist desires48

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being broadcast to Asia49 and the rest of the world. Also, the pamphlet normalized Americans leading the weak. It set up a framework for appreciating Vietnamese craft as a humanitarian effort, not one fraught with American concerns in world politics, trade, and economy wrapping craft in commodification.

UN Economic Council for Asia and the Far East: A template for craft development Something else mobilized American attention to Vietnamese craft before Wright and his team visited Southeast Asia in 1956. In 1947, two years before President Truman signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, the United Nations founded the Economic Council for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) to advance economic reconstruction and renewal.50 Its initial attention to craft centered on India and adjacent states; however, by 1953, Vietnam had become an associate member,51 and the Council’s general interests made it a harbinger of the State Department’s approach to craft in Southeast Asia. ECAFE treated economic development as the engine for technological, political, and social progress. In this context, it considered craft in small-scale industries and cottage industries as synonymous.52 By 1954, the organization’s Committee on Industry and Trade rationalized that craft mattered because of the sheer number of people it employed, the goods it produced, and its potential for trade. Its report of that year took Vietnam into consideration, and it urged keeping craft production manual and modest in size.53 ECAFE shared with the State Department the perception that Southeast Asia was underdeveloped. Additionally, a number of American social science-trained individuals working with ECAFE wrote about problems in fostering manufacturing in Southeast Asia while salvaging the region’s traditional culture. C. Hart Schaaf considered how to balance what Asia lacked in the way of consumer goods that Americans and Europeans take for granted, with what would make an appropriate American response to providing economic aid.54 Although Schaaf did not advise replicating an American standard or way of living in Asia, he noted that the governments of Asia and the Far East aspired to increase production and consumption.55 Also, while Schaaf specified that ECAFE was interested in mass production technology,56 he didn’t recommend putting this type of production into place. Theodore Herman, a geographer who earned his PhD in 1954 by studying craft export industries in China, somewhat echoed Schaaf in bringing to ECAFE a sensitivity in balancing the development of cottage and small-scale industries in Asia with maintaining economic and cultural traditions while marketing them to Americans. He explained that a reason to promote craft in Asia is the Western demand for it.57 Herman nuanced the discussion of craft in regard to where it was made and for what purposes. He associated craft as a cottage industry with the home where it was made having a part-time occupation to produce objects mostly for local use, whereas he defined a craft industry as keeping a shop separate from

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the home and providing training for artisans through apprenticeship to make objects intended for various uses in a commercial world.58 On the whole, however, Herman advised preserving the hand-basis of traditional arts while improving craft in its potential as an industry.59 Like Schaaf, Herman worried about the impact mechanization might have on craft qualitatively. Yet, he held out hope for Asian nations trying to revitalize craft as it died out from unsuccessful competition with machine-made goods.60 Schaaf and Herman related Europe and the U.S. to Southeast Asia in ways somewhat thematically reminiscent of colonial-era Orientalism. Chiefly, they asserted binary differences separating Europe and the U.S. in their more advanced progress in economy, technology, manufacturing, and consumption, from Asian nations. To Europe and the U.S., they attributed the ability to value foreign craft. Moreover, they posited a Western nation—the U.S.—as an aspirational model and recipient of goods from Asia, which they perceived as a broad, inclusive region comprised of developing nations. Furthermore, in response to the ostensible demise of craft through Western industrialization, the authors sanctioned American interventions in Southeast Asian economies so native artisans could fabricate craft for a capitalist market. American specialists—not artisans—would oversee this activity. Craft scholars show that such an impulse, along with similar rationales for undertaking it, occurred elsewhere in Asia. For instance, Hwei-Fen Cheah reports that native craft served as a medium for conveying British design and taste in colonial Malaya as British notions of progress reinforced its low cultural status.61 Schaaf and Herman do not take into account that art and craft in Vietnam previously were assessed for their potential appeal as exports by the French. Nor did they reflect on related questions concerning the Asian-ness of Asian culture that likely would lead to an exploration of cultural hybridities marking encounters between aesthetics and cultural forms associated with nations and other types of groups of people. Phoebe Scott points to the hybridity of the colonial artist working in a cross-cultural context following the foundation of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi during 1925 and continuing through the early years of the Japanese occupation of Indochina during World War II.62 In Hanoi, Vietnamese art students trained in French academic ideals treated art from China and Japan in addition to Indochina as resources, and they recognized Chinese art as a source for art in Japan and Vietnam, too.63 Although, later, examples of Vietnamese painting on silk as well as lacquer would be considered Vietnamese, during the first half of the twentieth century notions of what counted as indigenous culture in art genres, styles, and content could vary based on one’s national and ethnic affiliations. Boitran Huynh wrote that the colonized Vietnamese had fabricated what their French rulers perceived as indigenous craft for use by those living in the region and for export. Several applied art schools were established during the first years of the twentieth century for this purpose, including the school at Bien Hoa. Located some twenty miles northeast of Saigon, the school at Bien Hoa specialized in basketry, casting, carpentry, drawing, and pottery.64 Some of the teachers had trained in Paris,65 and Huynh notes that pottery of the 1930s and 1940s combined

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Chinese figures, Vietnamese glazes, and Western aesthetic preferences,66 while workmanship in bronze casting developed in response to colonial interests in Angkor Wat and reproductions of Khmer Buddhist sculpture.67 Huynh points out that Vietnamese artisans copied French and Chinese art because under the colonial system that was what was wanted.68 Designs came from other sites, too, like the palaces and museums at Hue.69 After 1954 some members of the École des BeauxArts de l’Indochine migrated south and in 1954 they helped to found the National College of Fine Arts in Saigon directed by Le Van De from 1954 to 1966.70 An adjacent School of Decorative Arts71 trained artisans in lacquer painting. These schools mediated the cultural legacies of China, Japan, and France in the reproduction of objects. Nevertheless, ECAFE supported what it referred to as traditional craft styled for an American market into which it could be introduced by an expert. Because ECAFE was not convinced that Southeast Asia could furnish enough craft of good quality for export,72 the organization sent a Handicrafts Marketing Consultant to Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, Hong Kong, India, Malaya, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (Saigon and Vicinity)73 to survey these nations’ readiness to export craft to the U.S., as demand for home furnishings and related items was growing due to record home construction following World War II.74 The ensuing report noted items of particular interest to Americans—straw hats, woven wall and floor coverings, leather bags, tapestries, fabrics, and furniture. In a few years, Vietnamese versions of these types of goods filled the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon that RWA would establish, and they appeared in expositions and exhibitions in the U.S., too. According to ECAFE, in Indochina, including in Saigon and Bien Hoa, craft was already “very highly developed” and training facilities were excellent. Yet, ECAFE’s report of 1954 pointed out several weaknesses. For one thing, the region lacked a specialist to link suppliers abroad with American buyers.75 Also, ECAFE identified financial disincentives for Americans wanting to export craft from Indochina, citing “poor quality” and “lack of standardization.”76 Additionally, ECAFE warned about expectations. “The American wholesaler operates in what is probably the world’s most competitive market. Of necessity he must have an intimate knowledge of the needs and tastes of the people in his market.”77 To this last point, ECAFE cautioned Asian craft exporters not to expect that Americans will share tastes with local markets; “The American market is a very critical one and highly competitive.”78 Instead, ECAFE urged exporters to ensure that crafts made abroad were styled “for the [American] buyer’s taste.” Also, Southeast Asian nations aiming to export craft must “study the American market requirements and be prepared to shift production to those items in demand.”79 RWA’s report on surveying craft in Southeast Asia would reiterate these observations, although without crediting ECAFE directly. In 1951—four years before the State Department established a craft aid program in South Vietnam—ECAFE specifically advised the U.S. to hire an American expert in merchandising who knows the market and can ease foreign craft into it.80 Three years later the organization reiterated the necessity of such a figure.81 ECAFE

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elaborated that the specialist must focus on the “good styling, designing, colouring and presentation that are necessary to generate interest in native craft.”82 Essentially, RWA brought the approach and recommendations of ECAFE to bear on South Vietnam. In doing so, they positioned the U.S. as a custodian of craft in Asia, able to redress its problems, safeguard its vulnerabilities, and provide what it needed to flourish.

Foreign Operations Administration Administratively, the craft aid program for South Vietnam emerged from the State Department’s FOA, established in 1953 to coordinate “the future economic stability of the U.S. and of other Free World nations and their long term security [as] indivisible” by increasing trade to expand their economies.83 Its staff and contracted specialists fulfilled their work through the State Department’s United States Operations Missions, or USOMs, which served as the FOA’s presence abroad. In 1954, the USOM in Saigon representing Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos divided. Saigon remained the headquarters for Vietnam, with Leland Barrows serving as its director through 1958, followed by Arthur Z. Gardiner.84 Like ECAFE, the FOA targeted small manual industries for assistance. Also, like ECAFE, the FOA relied on preliminary assessments identifying how to improve products made by hand and market them better, too.85 Its Industry and Mining Division had supported a handicraft center that offered training in Ha Dong, North Vietnam. Additionally, STEM [Special Technical and Economic Mission] provided instructional equipment to the National School of Applied Arts in Hanoi, and USOM would cite the importance of the school for fostering the expression of national culture and training in the arts and in cottage industries.86 In addition to conveying American specialists to Vietnam to troubleshoot the continuum of craft from fabrication to distribution, the FOA hoped to decentralize some aid and “increase a ‘people-to-people’ ” relationship.87 On June 30, 1955, the FOA contracted Russel Wright Associates, with Wright serving as the director supervising two senior designers and one junior designer, for work in and in relation to Vietnam. Their charge: “to increase output, improve quality, extend marketing product variety and reduce costs of village and urban craft industries so as to raise living standards for the large sectors of populations who depend on these industries for most of their livelihood and material goods.”88 The FOA expected RWA to interact with all manner of people on matters of industrial design, product development, and craft fabrication and marketing.89 To become familiar with craft processes and output, RWA would visit many types of places in Southeast Asia. Subsequently, RWA would write a report and then facilitate improvements and improve packaging, labeling, and marketing where crafts were concerned.90 Interestingly, before contracting with RWA, the FOA and the United States Information Agency brought Asian craft to the U.S. by supporting the Steuben Glass Company, who organized an exhibition that would open at the National

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Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and then circulate among major museums. The company described the project as an example of “friendly cooperation” between Eastern and Western creators,91 and it explained that artisans in Asia would provide source material, although it acknowledged that the results should please both Westerners and Easterners. In 1956, Asian Artists in Crystal opened at the National Gallery and then it traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which mounted a concurrent exhibition of work by contemporary American glassmakers loaned by the Corning Museum of Glass.92 After touring the U.S., Asian Artists in Crystal circulated in Asia and the Middle East, beginning with South Korea and ending in Cairo in 1958.93 Karl Kup, Chief of the Art and Architecture Division at the New York Public Library, initiated the project. Between 1954 and 1955, Kup toured sixteen Asian and African nations, including South Vietnam, to select thirty-six craftsmen to create drawings.94 According to the FOA, the museum-quality artifacts that resulted from the drawings made “a collection of vital contemporary Asian art.”95 In addition to the problematic conflation of Africa with Asia, something else indicates the title and thrust of the project was not as it may have been promoted. In reality, the artisans did not fabricate the glass pieces. Instead, they produced drawings that served as suggestions for American designers who etched them into glass and shaped the final results.96 Still, Kup applauded the exhibition’s combination of “divergent cultures and civilizations,”97 and he praised the quality of the Asian artists’ draftsmanship and the way the content of their drawings reflected Asian locales and themes.98 To this last point, reviewer C. Leslie Judd Porter appreciated how the glass objects’ decorative designs indexed artisans’ traditional native cultures.99 Yet, they did so mainly by treating the drawings as a signifier for an Asian artisan and the nation from which he hailed (Figure 1.1). Exhibition materials made no mention of glassmaking in these native cultures or other similar types of craft that flourished in Asia. In the case of Asian Artists in Crystal, Kup credited the project’s success to the Asian artisans’ involvement in the universal aspect of being artists and to the exhibition’s contribution to “our common humanity.” Yet, the exhibition reveals American leadership in cultural and technical prowess in glass transgressing the inviolability of the drawings in this Asian–U.S. craft collaboration. The Asian artists’ contributions appear as ghostly drawings suspended in glass, lacking material form and agency, contained inside the shapes American artists chose to give them. Porter had touched on something that would arc through the American craft aid program in South Vietnam. In records of the program, American involvement overshadowed the presence as well as the agency of artisans. That involvement was likely to be mystified by a rhetoric of human relations commingled with references to American beneficent world leadership, as expressed in the FOA pamphlet.

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Figure 1.1 Ran In-Ting, covered bowl, New Year’s festivities, BIB 715765, Steuben Collection, The Rakow Research Library, The Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York.

Chapter 2 D E SIG N E R A S D I P L OM AT

In every nation he entered, the designer had to clarify his purpose there, not only to the craftsman but to himself.1

Introduction During the fall of 1955, Michigan State University’s Field Administration Project published a report veritably making the case for the State Department’s craft assistance program by asserting that craft could make villages in Vietnam selfsufficient.2 It also stated that Gia Dinh, an industrial area surrounding Saigon, could serve as a center for producing craft in a farm-to-market economy for which Saigon served as the urban market retailing items that former northerners produced.3 Interestingly, the report suggested no one was thinking about such projects, and it did not mention what, if any, craft activity was happening in existing schools in the area, such as the Gia Dinh Art School, founded in 1913.4 However, Wright and RWA were beginning to tackle these issues. By the end of June 1955, the State Department launched Wright as what Avrom Fleishman, writing in Industrial Design, characterized as a designer diplomat.5 Aimed at an American readership, Fleishman’s portrayal of Wright in this role implied that Wright proceeded with the purpose and responsibility of a diplomat overseeing technical aid under the umbrella of economic diplomacy. To this point, RWA was in a position to leverage Wright’s professional experience for the State Department. As an industrial designer, Wright had built his career on projects integrating the design, fabrication, and retailing of furnishings and tableware for middle-class Americans, and his experience made him well suited to carry forth Cold War charges to bring Vietnamese craft to these same Americans. As Masey and Morgan point out, Cold War rhetoric needed to reach ordinary citizens, not just high-class or highbrow cultural elites who might commission a designer to realize their individual vision.6 Craft—in its nimbleness to range in cultural status from handicraft to luxury decorative arts—would scale Wright’s and RWA’s State Department remit. Furthermore, craft allowed for a hazy line between traditional and modern contemporary types of objects and styles,7 which suggested it could be tailored to bring what was important about these objects and styles to Americans. 29

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Increasingly, designers were already introducing craft into the middle-class home. What the craft aid project also leveraged was Wright’s gender as an industrial designer contributing to his authority as a designer diplomat. Consequently, print media and trade, department store and museum exhibitions treated as normative a white, middle-class male charged with pinning together foreign and domestic arenas of craft.

“Need for this type [of] help urgent”8 By the end of June 1955, as Wright and RWA contracted with the FOA, the FOA’s operations were transposed to the State Department’s new International Cooperation Association that would supervise American development assistance for South Vietnam.9 The ICA considered Wright and members of his firm important if not preeminent specialists, and it expected them to bring skills and experience to the “developing people” of South Vietnam, show them what they lacked in craft production and what they could achieve, and assist them in making improvements. On top of this, the ICA charged Wright and his team with helping to diminish the possibility of further conflict, which suggests it believed that industrial designers could make contributions to diplomacy that exceeded their professional specializations. Wright and RWA numbered among several other industrial designers heading across the globe for the ICA. According to the Wall Street Journal, Dave Chapman insisted that foreign craft was not selling well in the U.S. because it was poorly designed.10 His efforts earned support from James Silberman, ICA chief of industrial programs. In the Department of Labor Silberman had worked on productivity issues for the Marshall Plan. Subsequently, a Hoover Commission Report criticized American foreign aid for failing to support craft in underdeveloped nations.11 Together, Chapman, Silberman, and the report helped to shape the ICA’s craft program in the Middle East and Southeast Asia to include American designers guiding native artisans in making craft that would be marketable in the U.S.12 Also contributing to the formation of the project were ECAFE reports and publications by Schaaf, Herman, and others. Design magazine boasted that American craft assistance abroad amounted to the only American technical aid program emphasizing design in an attempt to raise the standard of living in underdeveloped nations.13 In addition to Wright and RWA, the ICA contracted separately with Chapman and his Design Research company in Chicago to survey craft in “Jamaica, Surinam, El Salvador, Costa Rica and Mexico in Latin America and the Caribbean; then Pakistan and Afghanistan later on.”14 By 1957, Chapman completed initial survey trips, and then craft specialist Roy Ginstrom and marketing specialist Frank Carioti embarked on a design assistance program for Iranian craftsmen with ceramicist Sergio Dello Strologo.15 Walter Dorwin Teague Associates directed a program in Greece, Lebanon, and Jordan.16 Smith, Scheer & McDermott of Akron, Ohio, were contracted to establish a Demonstration Center for woodworking, metalworking, and ceramics in Seoul,

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South Korea.17 Peter Muller-Munk Associates of Pittsburgh worked in Turkey and opened a design studio in Haifa, Israel, although the latter’s operations proved vulnerable to the Israel–Egyptian war.18 Meanwhile, the Ford Foundation funded a separate program in India spearheaded by Charles and Ray Eames. The ICA wanted USOMs in Southeast Asia to recognize that American industrial designers and their firms were being hired to provide key support and reinforcement in response to needs the ICA deemed urgent. Correspondingly, Milton J. Esman, Chief of the Program and Requirements Division for USOM Vietnam, held that contracting with a private American industrial design firm amounted to a major achievement because finding highly trained experts in other ways or training people proved too difficult.19 In the U.S., Wright had been a founding member of the Society of Industrial Designers, and he served as its president, too. Additionally, the ICA boasted that RWA had done perhaps the most work in craft in comparison to its peers and the firm had worked internationally.20 The ICA expected Wright to use his firm’s resources to “deal with products as varied as ceramics, metal products, leather goods, textiles, floor coverings, wood products, jewelry, decorative ware, and other products.”21 On top of laying out what RWA would do, the ICA projected that native crafts would benefit locally by costing less to produce and this would improve the standards of living for the significant populations who made and used them.22 An additional reason to undertake this work was “the effect of improvements on the morale of the large numbers of small craftsmen involved.”23 Folded into the remit was the matter of revealing to Vietnamese artisans their ignorance concerning the value their craft held for Americans along with related issues of productivity.24 The agenda correlated with what economist Bert Hoselitz held was missing too often in transforming rural handicraft into small industry—improved techniques, entrepreneurship, and capital.25 On the other hand, Hoselitz cautioned against failing to integrate small industry into the economy holistically.26 Addressing the Vietnamese as craft workers also brought their vulnerabilities into play. At USOM Vietnam, Director Leland Barrows linked this topic to the need for craft development aid and a tense political situation. Need for this type [of] help urgent. Handicraft and small industry activity suffered during war and movement of refugees to Free Vietnam, many of whom were small producers, has increased problem. Political impact resides in giving that portion of population tangible stake in resistance to communism. Most rebellious villages in Tonkin Delta towards Vietminh were those with prosperous handicraft industries. Approximately 10 percent population engage in handicraft.27

Related problems had developed. Barrows said that in the North, the Viet Minh destroyed most of the craft equipment—contemporary craft was not competitive with imports—and the entire craft industry needed rebuilding.28 Moreover, he confirmed that Vietnamese craft lacked styling: “Believe Vietnamese to be clever

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and skillful, but lacking in knowledge and appreciation of what it takes to make a ‘finished’ article. Artistic style not highly developed.”29 On this point, Design magazine cautioned that American aid in Southeast Asia must take a different approach than in industrialized Europe.30 Unlike in Europe, artisans in the Middle East and Southeast Asia “are untrained and unskilled. Many of their crafts have deteriorated below the standards that would be acceptable for saleable goods. Many of them feel a deep insecurity about the value of their handcrafts, comparing them unfavourably with machine made objects.”31 In comparison to itemizing the deficits of foreign artisans, the magazine applauded American designers for undertaking significant work with them in Southeast Asia. “They are being called upon to perform on many levels and in a way not demanded when designing of Western industrialized economies. The urgency of the job and its magnitude are always before them.”32 What remained unsorted was a lopsided account of the status of artisans making craft in South Vietnam. If many or even most were refugees recently arrived from the North, what skills did they bring and would they be willing to use them in an American-led craft aid program? If they had been known for their craft before civil war intensified in Vietnam, what prompted Design magazine to assess their work as subpar? Also, in so far as some refugees had left families in the now communist North, could those who migrated south be entreated to fabricate craft while American advisors in Vietnam treated the Viet Minh as enemies?

Promoting “an obvious desire among the population”33: Recommendations for craft RWA’s itinerary to survey craft brought the team first to Japan during November 1955 and from there they traveled to Formosa [Taiwan], Thailand, Cambodia, and finally Vietnam, where they visited from January 16 to 21 and January 23 to 26, 1956.34 Wright took leadership based on his charge concerning “design and styling for home furnishings products.”35 In addition to members of Wright’s design firm, individuals having extensive practical experience served as key members of the group. They included Ramy Alexander, a craft specialist born in Russia, and Joset Walker, a fashion expert born in France.36 As Wright’s contracted fashion advisor for women’s clothing and accessories, Joset Walker had worked for Saks Fifth Avenue designing clothes for the theatrical department, and then she manufactured and distributed her own sportswear.37 Alexander, in charge of craft trade, had worked as a field representative in Italy for Handicraft Development, Inc., of New York from 1946 to 1952, and during the 1950s he served at the Institute for International Education for the Ford Foundation.38 Prior to joining with Wright, much of Alexander’s work made him a valuable asset for the South Vietnam project. In his capacity as vice president of the Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana, Alexander served on the selection jury for Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today, an exhibition of mostly postwar Italian craft that toured major art museums in the U.S. between 1951 and 1953. It followed

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the inauguration of the House of Italian Handicrafts in New York City during 1948 as well as an exhibition of Italian craft held at R. H. Macy and Co. Industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague served on the jury with Alexander and he wrote the Foreword to the exhibition catalog.39 The catalog for Italy at Work linked the benefits of Marshall Aid and the importance of Italian craft in an age of industrialization, mechanization, and Fascism. Also, it detailed the relationship of Handicraft Development, Inc., in the U.S. and a cognate organization—CADMA (Committee for Assistance and Distribution of Materials to Artisans)—in Italy, along with House of Italian Handicrafts, which gave Italian craftsmen access to the U.S. market. During 1949, on CADMA’s behalf, Alexander toured craft centers in Italy to report to the Art Institute of Chicago whether there was sufficient work of quality to develop an exhibition of Italian craft and industrial art for the U.S.40 Deciding there was, a jury selected items, mostly made since 1945 and emphasizing the “adaptation of traditional forms to contemporary use.”41 An article about the exhibition published in Handweaver and Craftsman noted a pervasive aesthetic consisting of local, everyday, simple materials, original design and decoration, and emphasis on invention, irregularity, lack of standardization, and plain materials, such as straw, used in ways that heightened their texture. The journal urged American artisans to take note of this aesthetic. Touring a foreign nation to evaluate the state of its craft fabrication and the potential of its craft for success in American exhibitions and markets, and positioning the craft as a salvo for a mass-produced material culture, were some themes in Alexander’s Italian experience that would resurface in regard to South Vietnam. There, during January 1956, Wright’s team examined ceramics at artisan cooperatives in Bien Hoa and at a semi-mechanized factory in Thu Dau Mot, textile weaving practiced on handlooms in refugee camps and in an automated factory in Saigon, wooden furniture at a mechanized factory in Saigon, lacquerware at craft cooperatives and in artisans’ shops in Saigon, needlework and mat weaving in refugee camps, silk finishing in craft shops along with handloom cottage production in Tourane, and basketmaking in refugee camps and in a prison shop at Fai Foo.42 Although their itinerary included people already living in the South, it devoted significant attention to northerners recently arrived in refugee camps, a setting that brings to mind Liisa Malkki’s point that refugees are subjects whose locations help organize them for control and study.43 In Washington, D.C., the Embassy of Viet Nam observed that a motivation for RWA’s trip was Wright’s own interest in Asian design.44 Yet, Wright’s post-trip accounts offered more about his noticing boys working as potters, women decorating pottery, and artisans employing woefully primitive technologies than it commented on ideas for his business or personal projects.45 Wright mentioned people struggling in poverty and aspiring to improve their circumstances, too.46 In response, Wright put forth the possibility of “a new variety of an over-all industrial development” that would avoid imitating the U.S. yet would still manage to improve Vietnamese life, although he wondered if the craft he saw could be made to sell well in the U.S.47 He was especially alert to questions of styling craft for an

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American market, distributing it, and training Vietnamese artisans to produce it. Wright didn’t advocate taking over native culture. Like reports from ECAFE and comments from Schaaf, Herman, Hoselitz, and Thomas Beggs, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA) at the Smithsonian, Wright worried about the impact mechanization and mass production could have on Vietnamese craft. Yet, based on his charge from the State Department, he did not hesitate to evaluate its current state or prescribe what it required for development. Nor did he problematize his status as an outsider arriving in South Vietnam to gather data for assessment on site and in the U.S. During early February 1956, RWA drafted recommendations for a China Refugee Development program in Hong Kong, a Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center, and projects for Cambodia, Thailand, and Vietnam.48 In March, Wright, Alexander, and Herbert Honig of RWA met with ICA officials to present their recommendations.49 “Recommendations for Development of Production of Goods for Local Consumption in Viet Nam,” the title of one of their reports, referenced making craft for local use, although its contents emphasized export and education, too.50 The report acknowledged “an obvious desire among the population to engage in industrial production—witness the hundreds of primitive workshops trying to eke out a living, as well as a few newly organized small and medium plants.”51 Although RWA perceived in Vietnamese artisans a desire to produce craft, they did not deny the State Department assertion that the artisans were ignorant of the interest their craft would hold for an American market.52 RWA recommended design and technical education for Vietnamese artisans53 to learn marketing, textile fabrication, metal fabrication, ceramics, building construction, basketry and rattan furniture fabrication, tailoring, plastic fabrication, and shop management and methods. Additional suggestions for design education included fashion clothing and accessories and ceramic design. An overarching goal was to “teach adaptation of their products to twentieth century use but retain their native traditional character, basketry and rattan furniture, textile designing, metal design, wood design, architecture.”54 “Adaptation” signaled a synthesis of contemporary Western styling and product types with indigenous materials and “native traditional character.” RWA’s report proposed Wright as “Director and Supervisor of the project,” and it recommended that the project take on an industrial engineer, production methods consultant,55 with a “stylist-designer to provide styling for export and merchandizing [sic] and to select pottery from the Chinese Coolie Pottery Cooperative at Lai Thieu-Thu Dau Mot” along with lacquerware, basketry design, bronze and cement castings, and marble and stone carvings from Bien Hoa School Cooperative, and fashion accessories, too.56 It asked for a handweaving designer to work on grass rugs for export to the U.S.57 and a trade researcher and an industrial designer.58 Eventually, Ken Uyemura would be contracted as a designer and stylist overseeing operations in Saigon at the Handicraft Development Center and facilitating the establishment and revitalization of other nearby craft centers. Jack Lenor Larsen would serve as a handweaving designer. The expanded team would endeavor to help RWA realize its recommendations. As a related benefit, taking

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care of the work that was necessary to succeed in South Vietnam meant that in New York, RWA could continue pursuing other projects, including an exhibit for a U.S. Department of Commerce-sponsored trade fair in Brazil.59 RWA secured amendments and additional contracts for South Vietnam that would extend the firm’s involvement there through 1961. Not all of the other projects the firm proposed met with approval. In informing RWA there was no support for its efforts in Thailand, the director of USOM there posed tough questions about whether design assistance or the training of new artisans should be offered before it was known if foreign markets would accept the results. Additionally, he asked, “should the handicraft worker be trained or would it be a better use of resources to train only design and methods technicians, managers and distributors?”60

American frameworks for Vietnamese craft Wright’s ideas about craft and his work amalgamating craft with design during the World War II years gave his team a foundation from which to approach their ICA remit for South Vietnam. Importantly, his own difficulties in integrating handwork with manufacturing on a large scale likely predisposed Wright to approach Vietnamese craft alert to the possibility of needing to safeguard it from being absorbed into emerging efforts toward machine-based manufacturing there. Links to the nation arose in Wright’s activity at home and informed his attention to craft in South Vietnam, too. Wright transposed these links—nation, craft, and design for consumption on a mass scale—aimed at the American consumer in his own work, to Vietnamese makers of craft producing for that same consumer. During the 1940s, Wright asserted that hand-produced craft has a visible authenticity that eludes mass-produced things. In an interview with an “unnamed voice” who, in actuality, was Mrs. Aileen Osborn Webb, founder of the Handcraft Cooperative League of America, the “voice” asks Wright, “How do you feel about the term ‘Hand Arts’ as against the term ‘Handcrafts’?” Wright responds that he likes the former “better for the new role Hand Crafts will play.” However, he clarifies that both terms emphasize the role of the artisan’s hands in making craft, a characteristic that Wright believes machine mass production cannot create or replicate in the U.S.61 They have attempted in this country as well as abroad to make Hand Crafts on a mass production basis. In doing this they have given the products a synthetic, fake, “craft-look.” The real “craft-look” is an important, live, and wonderful quality—impossible for the machine to attain—a quality wonderful when real, but dead and disgusting when imitated or faked.62

For his Oceana Line of the mid-1930s, Wright attempted to machine produce wooden serving pieces. The undulating planes of these organically shaped objects offered unembellished expanses of wood and clay. Still, Wright considered the

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results unsatisfactory in part because their curvilinear shapes were difficult to manufacture, and he discontinued the project.63 Moreover, Wright’s conviction that American industry cannot make a “craft-look” prompted him to suggest that craft may best thrive in non-professional, non-industrial contexts.64 This idea put Wright at odds with some of his colleagues, such as Arthur Drexler and Greta Daniel at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1956 they would present the exhibition Textiles U.S.A. premised on industry and the machine advancing textile development to generate a new concept of reality as well as “maximum production and consumption.”65 Drexler claimed the machine could output what handweavers create and even achieve minute variations in texture and pattern.66 In contrast, Wright professed support for handwork and in South Vietnam, RWA aimed to enhance its presence even as machine technologies intensified their role in a burgeoning textile industry. Despite Wright’s early preference for not commercializing craft, New York City, where he lived and worked, saw efforts in this direction consolidate. During 1940, Webb opened America House as a gallery and store to give craftsmen in rural areas an urban foothold for displaying and selling their work in the city that was rapidly assuming leadership in the arts nationally and galvanizing arts attention internationally. Wright himself had been moving in the direction of selling work with a modern design aesthetic merging with craft. Since the mid-1930s, Wright had been displaying and retailing the wooden furniture he designed for home settings in major American department stores such as R. H. Macy’s. In the late 1940s, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. lauded Wright for designing furnishings with an eye to coordinating their features for popular taste and affordability.67 By the early 1940s, Wright invested in bringing craft to a mass audience. Wright and his wife, Mary, launched American Way, a national home furnishings program consisting mostly of dinnerware that aspired to capture a “visible authenticity” in craft. The Wrights brought together artisans, designers, and manufacturers to combine an American craft-based attention to ceramics and wood with organic, unfussy silhouettes and rich, solid colors and bring the results to mass production.68 Like America House, the project privileged the urban setting with “an exclusive one-store-in-a-city franchise” that showcased furnishings in room settings or departmental displays.69 Through their shopping, women would prove key to its success. For example, in promoting the program in Boston, Wright saw in the material culture of everyday life a case for national expression by urging women to embrace American Way products as examples of American taste as opposed to European traditions.70 Connoting century, modernism, home, and design, the reference to American indicates the Wrights associated the nation with culture and vice versa. They considered craft a vital component of this linkage and they searched for talent nationwide to express it in material form.71 In addition to wanting to achieve a “real craft-look” by working with American artisans, American Way expressed national pride, a theme that intensified in consumerism following the U.S. entry into World War II in late 1941. Implied was an appreciation of not simply the skills of American artisans but also an integration of native craft talent with modern design in a world where for too long Americans had perceived themselves inferior

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in comparison to Europe in having an aesthetic as significant as the greatness their own nation warranted.72 That the modern design component—clean lines and edges, organic silhouettes, and solid, rich colors—owed something to International Style modernism hailing from Europe was not really discussed. Instead, on the home front, American Way invited women to show their patriotism by selecting furnishings that conflated their nation with notions of progress associated with “modern” yet acknowledged tradition in its craft dimensions, too. Presumably, women’s shopping aligned the home and family life with a national cultural expression arcing from past to present and into the future as connoted by references to modernity and its connotations of progress and development. Something else linked the project’s attention to craft with war. Early publicity noted that craft was growing in its importance for the American Way program, leading it to include a “correlation of handicrafts and machine-made products” that constituted “one of the striking elements of the program.”73 During the mid-1950s, industrial designer Don Wallance praised Wright specifically for working closely with craft potters to capture the handwork aspect and ceramic glazes for mass-produced ware.74 Wright scholar Dianne Pierce estimates there were slightly more craft sources than artists and designers in American Way.75 Also, advanced publicity treated personal expression, authenticity, and indigeneity as craft’s indices of a primitive urge to create.76 In so far as American Way linked craft features to primitive urges, the items afforded its makers and users the opportunity to satisfy fundamental needs in their identities as citizens and humans. Nevertheless, design seems to have superseded craft in practice. According to Pierce, the Wrights heavily managed artisans’ work.77 Also, Pierce detected an imbalance of industrial and craft products, and she noticed the mass print media representing them differently; whereas craft featured as objects, industrial products were presented in room ensembles.78 The styling of objects and overall focus of the line lacked consistency, leading to the possibility that the Wrights did not achieve their hoped-for integration of handwork and machine production.79 Due to complexities in its fabrication, for example, in organizing the work of more than sixty designers and artisans, along with frustrations related to wartime shortages, the American Way program ended in 1942. Yet, in his own work Wright attempted to bring craft features into mass-produced tableware, especially with American Modern, manufactured by Steubenville Pottery of Ohio between 1939 and 1959 (see Introduction, Figure 0.3). Here was modernism vitalized as informal, everyday dinnerware that set the middle-class table with rimless, undecorated, abstract, organic form expressed in solid, rich colors. A brochure from Steubenville Pottery credited Wright as the designer while it also removed mechanical manufacture from ideas of how American Modern was made by emphasizing its “handmade” fabrication. Other features were strategized to appeal to American middle-class consumers, too. For instance, items were affordable and invited seemingly endless mixing and matching yet invariably created a harmonious, coordinated table setting.80 Nevertheless, problems concerning foreign imports impacted U.S. industries and outputs. Inexpensive products exported from Europe and Asia poured into the U.S. thanks to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, which created competition

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The Politics of Vietnamese Craft

for a native pottery industry, including Steubenville Pottery.81 Blaszczyk suggests Wright wanted American manufacturers to attempt designs they could not accommodate.82 Wright would experience difficulty with other lines, such as the delicately matte-colored, curvilinear Botanica series of the mid-1950s.83 Perhaps these setbacks concerning his own work compelled Wright, in his capacity as a designer diplomat, to appreciate Vietnam as a place that lacked some of the difficulties inherent in working at home while it also offered deep roots in handmade craft. The incorporation of materials and items having a long history in craft informed Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living, too. In this book, published in 1951, the Wrights guided everyday Americans to select home furnishings without feeling conflicted about the previous generation’s home-decorating choices or expectations pushed by magazines. In reality, the Wrights focused less on recommending specific items or styles than they promoted a lifestyle expressed in the selection, arrangement, and effect of material features of the home, which in a design sense they treated as an organic whole resulting from an abundance of possible consumer choices plus choices in organizing furnishings to facilitate comfort and informality. The Wrights implied that Americans have freedom to think and do for themselves and plenty in the choices of materials and goods from which they can enjoy selecting in the American marketplace.84 Like American Way, the Wright’s book underwrites the consumption of craft-informed consumer goods with messages about the beneficence of capitalism and Americanness intersecting the marketplace and middle-class home and lifestyle. For floor and wall coverings, the Wrights discuss wood, glass, stone, ceramics, cork,85 wool, cotton, flax, hemp and manila, sisal, rush and grasses.86 They mention synthetic and man-made materials, too, such as asbestos, plastic, and linoleum.87 In addition to using natural materials to cover surfaces in the home, they recommend incorporating wood, clay, wicker, handweaving, and blown glass items in a furnishings plan.88 Although in these ways craft enters the home, visually, craft items do not feature in the book’s several pen-and-ink illustrations. On the other hand, a two-page color photograph of a living room opens the book, inviting readers to dwell not on the glass, steel, or metal of International Style modernist furniture, but on materials and shapes associated with craft, such as wall and ceiling wood paneling and organically shaped wooden furniture upholstered in a saturated solid color, and a wall of wood-framed and partitioned glass panels permitting expansive views of nature.

Craft and design in production Most people have a feeling for good taste but it is likely to be latent and needs to be awakened, stimulated, and developed. The industrial designer plays a leading role in this awakening.89

Developments in craft in the United States also contributed themes that would be central to the American aid project in Vietnam. During the 1950s, the U.S. saw

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craft emerge as a vital cultural and market interest. The editors of Craft Horizon’s appreciation of the “artist-craftsman” hinted at a burgeoning support system for craft that was buoying the rapidly developing Studio Craft Movement and welcoming new creative roles—artist-craftsman, designer-craftsman—alongside new organizations having a national purview. Craft and design professionals, museums, and journals embraced craft for its material elements associated with nature, evidence of the maker’s hand, and one-of-a-kind quality. They valued these characteristics that treated craft as an antidote for materials and things that were mass-produced mechanically. Some expressed disappointment that craft had ceded its hold on fabricating things of everyday life to mechanized mass production.90 On the occasion of the Midtown Business Center of City College launching courses in textile design and weaving in New York City, Herbert D. Wojan, the program coordinator, noted the extent to which the American textile industry suffered from the loss of handweaving because machines were dominating the design of textiles, and he urged craftsmen to produce and market their work for American homes.91 Museum exhibitions explored the relationship of craft to industrial manufacture and society. In October 1953, the Brooklyn Museum and American Craftsmen’s Educational Council together opened the invitation-based Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. exhibition that traveled to major American art museums and then toured nationwide through the auspices of the American Federation of Arts. Its purpose was to give the American public “a greater understanding of the inherent value of the hand arts in their daily lives.”92 The title of the exhibition referenced the blending of craft and design in the practices of makers who fabricated things for everyday life. In her catalog essay, Dorothy Giles wrestled with equating the craftsman with a “highly skilled worker at the factory bench or assembly line.”93 She settled on crediting the craftsman with the agency to make things using “basic materials” along with his own design, skills, and craft techniques ultimately to satisfy users.94 For Giles, the artisan made what industry could not, in ways that were pleasurable and individual.95 Interestingly, Giles observed that émigré artisans became Americanized by absorbing and responding to the American environment and reiterating elements inherent in American craft.96 Three years later, another major exhibition of craft called attention to design.97 In 1956, the Museum of Contemporary Craft—incorporating Webb’s America House—opened with the inaugural exhibition, Craftsmanship in a Changing World, which followed a wide remit in surveying the social significance of artisans and their work.98 Unlike Giles, in this exhibition’s catalog Webb made a case for merging craft, the arts, and design with industry.99 Webb held that craft serves as the memory and trace of those who are victims of mechanization on the grounds of creativity and respect.100 Yet, she observed, craft offered an opportunity to redress these failures, and the American Craftsmen’s Council counseled artisans to use machines as necessary—as a means, not an end—and the Council would help with marketing, too.101 Its Board of Trustees included renowned designers Jack Lenor Larsen, Dorothy Liebes, and Henry Varnum Poor, all of whom worked in the intersections of craft and design. Larsen showed work in the exhibition, and

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Wright would contract Larsen to oversee redesigning traditional woven mats to be marketed as rugs from South Vietnam. Richard Petterson, who helped select items for Craftmanship in a Changing World, was a ceramics professor from Scripps College, Claremont, California, who would help lead a ceramics project for Wright and the ICA in Taiwan. Although Webb championed the activity of artisans, largely it would fall to industrial designers to incorporate craft in mechanized production having a mass output. Valued as a cultural and economic figure, the industrial designer of the 1950s managed the styling and appearance of an increasingly diverse range of objects manufactured for the mass market.102 A report on the Third Annual Conference of the American Craftsmen’s Council even confirmed design as a meta-discipline encompassing “the entire product itself—the planning, the materials used, the craftsmanship, the appearance, etc.,” and this purview made the designer intrinsic to craft.103 In his role of linking, making, and using things for everyday life, Walter Dorwin Teague perceived the industrial designer as a middleman representing the public to the manufacturer ultimately to serve the public,104 while Henry Dreyfus encouraged his fellow industrial designers to serve as tastemakers guiding the public’s consumption.105 The early decades of industrial design in America took industry and mechanized form as their subject and style. However, by the mid-twentieth century, many design practitioners appraised craft and design intersections as a good if not necessary development. Designer and artisan Charles Counts carefully worked out the manifold distinctions and overlaps linking the contemporary artist, craftsman, designer, and industrial designer.106 Henry Varnum Poor urged “craftsmen designers” to focus on materials and process, whereas Don Wallance added producer and consumer to the mix of agents who impact visual form.107 In particular, Wallance championed integrating design and craftsmanship in smallscale industries aimed at making upscale products for modern living.108 Overseeing the process would be a “master craftsman,” a resourceful individual who served as the head of a firm, participated in all aspects of designing and fabricating its products, and contributed to modern living by addressing the needs of an industrial society.109 Wallance’s position exceeded the American Craftsmen’s Council’s somewhat lukewarm appraisal of craft’s interface with machines also by urging the American designer-craftsman to redress the shortcomings of machines in the fabrication of work designed by craftsmen designers.110 Wallance’s research highlighted topics he examined in the exhibition Design and Craftsmanship, for which he had served as a consultant.111 Additionally, Wallance published three related articles in Industrial Design that were amalgamated into a book, Shaping America’s Products (1956). Organized by the Walker Art Center and the American Craftsmen’s Educational Council, the exhibition reported on Wallance’s two-year study of case histories of “the things we live with and the men who made them,” such as ceramics, furniture, and tableware. RWA figured among the firms Wallance studied to learn how the work of the designer-craftsmen and independent industrial designer related to mass production.112 In line with the ICA’s references to craft as a small industry, Wallance

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urged Americans to recognize that small industries best bring together craftsmanship, progress in design, and new, better products.113 However, because they are advanced, the firms and their products may not be well known, so they need “creative merchandising methods.”114 Wallance articulated a way out of the impasse of craft either subsumed by mechanized mass manufacture or devoid of any machinery in its fabrication, and it resonated for Wright and RWA in South Vietnam. He introduced a type of hybrid object generated by the merging of craft and design, created by a hybridized maker amenable to light mechanization. According to Wallance’s criteria, Wright veritably exemplified this master craftsman, and he worked in the arenas Wallance and his colleagues studied. Since the late 1930s Wright had established and directed his own firms, and he designed objects that others executed. Also, through his American Modern line he brought craft into projects intended for mass consumption.115 Because of its popularity, by the end of the 1950s RWA claimed that Wright’s “name has become the Best Known Design Trademark to the American housewife” and he was unsurpassed in tableware design and merchandising experience.116 A few years earlier, the Society of Industrial Designers observed that attention was paid to Wright’s work less for the names of its various lines than for Wright’s own renown, especially in regard to American Modern.117 Wright’s status as a tastemaker in matters of home furnishings and tableware also rested upon his extensive work intersecting craft and design with merchandising the results in retail associated with the Museum of Modern Art, such as exhibitions of the 1940s that promoted “well-designed objects.” For example, the museum’s Useful Objects under Ten Dollars exhibition, November 26 to December 24, 1940, presented Wright’s metal Tidbit Tray retailing at Lewis & Conger, and a white china celery dish and hazelwood nut dish for American Way being sold at Macy’s.118 Wright contributed objects to this exhibition series in 1942 and 1946, and some of them retailed at Bloomingdales as well. He contributed to a spin-off exhibition, Useful Objects in Wartime, too. During the next decade, the same museum’s Good Design exhibitions included Wright’s work in its similar matrix of craft, design, retail, and exhibition. Good Design consisted of twice-yearly exhibitions held at the Chicago Merchandising Mart that targeted retail buyers for home furnishings industries and then the items were displayed at an annual exhibition hosted by the Museum of Modern Art. A committee consisting of businessmen interested in art, a designer, a craftsman or teacher, and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. selected the items. Manufacturers and retailers sent them items to consider as well.119 The Good Design exhibitions proved enormously influential to consumers and retailers.120 Items selected for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art were retailed in department stores in New York City, and they bore labels indicating their status in the program.121 Catalogs listed items according to their use within a home and also by designer, manufacturer or distributor, and retailer. Among those by Wright that Kaufmann selected for the first exhibition were items retailing at Bloomingdales and B. Altman & Co. Subsequently, Kaufmann selected works by Wright for every exhibition from 1951

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to 1955, and Wright served on the selection group for the January 1953 installation at the Chicago Merchandise Mart.122 The Society of Industrial Designers noted that his folding chairs, textiles, and cutlery featured in the exhibitions.123

Expanding America’s geography of craft Although Kaufmann may not have overtly associated good design with any particular nation,124 contemporary thinking contextualized his Good Design exhibition series and other institutions’ efforts in an American framework. For example, Henry Dreyfus perceived the work of his fellow industrial designers contributing to domestic nation-building. It is my contention that well-designed, mass-produced goods constitute a new American art form and are responsible for the creation of a new American culture. These products of the applied arts are a part of everyday American living and working, not merely museum pieces to be seen on a Sunday afternoon.125

Don Wallance cited the distribution of consumer goods as the key contribution the U.S. made to democracy during the twentieth century.126 Wallance also suggested that mass-producing goods for the world spread the benefits of a democratic way of life, a claim that anticipated the spin resulting from Nikita Khrushchev surveying consumer appliances and modern furnishings with Vice President Richard Nixon in Sokolniki Park.127 On the other hand, Wallance criticized the U.S. for removing workers from making things in ways that satisfied their desire for beauty and their psychological need for the satisfaction that comes from creating an object from start to finish.128 On this point Wallance even accused the West of bankruptcy;129 however, he stopped short of saying that a solution existed abroad or in the East. At home, however, some champions of craft were considering nations and international networks, too. At the School for American Craftsmen in Rochester, New York, the American Craftsmen’s Council discussed a training program for an international craft association.130 What drove the idea was an altruistic notion that culture can unify people where politics cannot,131 and by 1964, Webb organized a World Association of Craftsmen, a non-political organization meant to foster cooperation, not competition.132 On the other hand, by the early 1960s, some in the American craft world warned about linking distant markets with traditional craftsmen.133 Others voiced ambivalence about foreign craft, seeing it as the competition Webb wanted to diffuse and calling into question its status as craft.134 Somewhat reiterating Wallance’s critiques about the deleterious effect of the American material culture environment, Wright stressed to the State Department that Vietnamese craft would help counteract the effect of precision and sameness in consumer goods and their additional unsavory features like synthetic materials dissembling natural ones and shoddy construction. In this respect, craft would

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participate in an American impulse to look to Asia for material culture signifying nature, solace, spirituality, and simplicity. By 1960, New York City would see the opening of the Rockefeller-supported Asia House, which featured art and craft,135 and consumer goods were entering the U.S. from Asia, too. In the meantime, exhibitions such as Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, 1955,136 evidenced government sponsorship and interest in trade focusing on indigenous textiles137 from an area of the world that Americans considered Asian. Interestingly, for Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, catalog essayist Pupul Jayakar said the designer is an alien concept, as is mechanization in the creation of textiles in India, and he indicated they have a deleterious impact on the industry.138 American Fabrics magazine regularly published on non-Western textiles,139 and non-Western craft appeared in the marketing of modern interiors. In their work for Herman Miller and other corporate clients, Charles and Ray Eames, and especially Charles, collected Native American, early American, and foreign craft. The Eameses inserted some of these objects into modern corporate spaces and furniture140 to humanize the hard edges and rational appearance of their modularity, which George Nelson and his designers at Herman Miller were promoting in their catalogs141 to corporations and to upwardly mobile, young white educated professional couples and families.142 On top of this, Kristina Wilson suggests, in the marginal spaces where the Eameses photographed small craft and folk items in their shelf and furniture units for Henry Miller catalogs,143 the items emblematized the manageability of the non-Western world, “firmly kept in a place subordinate to the rational, modern Western world.”144 Wright and RWA set out to obtain non-Western craft for retail aimed not at corporate offices but at the homes where their officers and rank and file lived. Yet, unlike American Way turning to American artisans to address American needs, for the State Department, RWA’s efforts supported prevailing government-based aims to resettle refugees in Vietnam and buoy the economic status of this underdeveloped nation by shaping its craft for consumption through international trade and thereby easing its entry into capitalism.145 A byproduct of that activity included the ways Wright’s involvement with Southeast Asian craft informed his own exploration of tableware.146 As early as 1956, the press was noticing “the natural themes somewhat oriental in flavor” that Wright brought to his Esquire line for the Edwin M. Knowles China Company.147 For example, the light blue background of the Grass series set off delicate, gold and blue blades of grass expressively drawn in irregular lines evocative of delicate Asian brush painting.148 During the 1960s, Russel Wright’s home in Manitoga, New York, would be designed by David Leavitt whom Wright scholars Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce note had worked in Japan, and Wright placed items he collected from Asia throughout the house.149 In the scope of Wright’s foreign and domestic activity, including his management of fabricating products to facilitate their domestic consumption, some gleaned the presence of a diplomat. J. Gordon Lippincott referred to the designer’s need to negotiate and accommodate,150 while Avrom Fleishman wrote about designers having to behave diplomatically.151 Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe recommended that designers actually serve as diplomats.

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The Politics of Vietnamese Craft Nowadays it seems that some of Uncle Sam’s best ambassadors are designers. Nations may disagree on politics, tariff and disarmament, but the language of fashion and design is universal. So is the problem of making a living and learning a business.152

Unlike some of her peers having an interest in advancing an American aesthetic, Roe claimed design is a universal language. She did not explain why design may look different in different geographies, or whether she meant that the designs Americans convey had universal relevance. Yet, designer diplomats would galvanize criticism, too. In the Chicago Daily Tribune, Philip Warden denigrated the State Department for hiring RWA ostensibly to show the Vietnamese how to make their native craft.153 Warden omitted details of RWA’s remit and subsequently his newspapers published a retraction assuring readers that restyled foreign native craft would not compete with American goods at home. The implication was that Vietnamese craft would supplement American home furnishings, not offer a substitute or provide an alternative.154

Design diplomacy: A “hard-headed business”155 “Russel Wright, far-flung designer, disembarking on the banks of the Mekong (Vietnam).”156 “Sometimes only a designer’s imagination can find a potential outlet for a present native skill.”157

Nevertheless, Warden correctly intuited that Wright’s activity exemplified an expanding definition of diplomacy.158 What Wright also contributed to designer diplomacy was the masculinized gender of American industrial design. As well, his contributions to diplomatic agendas resonated what Robert Dean considers dominant ideals of masculinity,159 a standard of power and privilege,160 informing Cold War diplomacy. The coupling of masculinized industrial design and diplomacy shaped visual representations of Wright, too. Although RWA’s team included women, they did not appear as leaders in the project’s textual or visual messaging, nor was their presence foregrounded in profiles of the designer diplomat. Joseph McBrinn shows that in middle-class, mid-century America, men interfaced with craft as a potential “site of disempowerment” due to associations, for example, of needlecrafts with “emasculation, feminization and homosexuality.”161 This matrix of craft and gender suggests why industrial designers engaged with craft and home furnishings from a position of detachment and dominance that reinforced their distinction from and power over femininity and queerness. Also, as design more fully entered the middle-class home in shaping and styling things of everyday life, the industrial designer needed to maintain his masculinity as a difference from femininity, which he expressed as empowerment in authority and agency. Boundaries of masculinity had shaped the development of design as a profession. Design historian Peter McNeil traced a gender shift in the design of

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home furnishings extending from Victorian-era design reformers who criticized professionals in a burgeoning home furnishings industry during the late nineteenth century,162 to the recognition of women professionals after 1900.163 During the interwar period of the early twentieth century, McNeil says more women working and associations between women, home, and decorating created opportunities for women, leading to their work as interior designers.164 Nevertheless, by the 1920s, things were changing. The work of Frank Alvah Parsons helped to masculinize interior decoration as a taught profession,165 while the notion of the home as a gendered space, and “decorating one’s self and one’s domestic setting,”166 reinforced the identity of the modern consumer as female.167 Additionally, gender binaries culturally split femininity, intuition, sensation, and sensuality from masculinity, which ruled a domain of rationality and truth.168 Another thread in the lineage of the gender of design includes the practice, from about the 1870s to the 1920s, of male design authorities guiding upper-middle-class women in selecting Asian objects for public cultural venues and as decorative furnishings for their homes.169 These objects often eluded historical specificity, favoring instead the Aesthetic Movement’s amalgamations of time and place. Mari Yoshihara characterizes these men as “male practitioners of Orientalism” who coupled white women and Asia in ways that maintained gender and race hegemonies.170 During the 1950s, newspapers and trade magazines promoted another Asian turn in home furnishings. In some cases they referenced Asia broadly and vaguely, as a homogenous pan-Asian geography, for example in an article appearing in Interiors about the Oriental mood in an apartment home designed by William Parker McFadden—“It is the best of the East and the West, old and new.”171 In 1956, Wright’s article in the same magazine would leverage his taste leadership in home furnishings design for authority as a designer diplomat. A few years later, in proposing a line of fine china to the Takashimaya Company of Japan, his firm would restate that Wright’s authority in tableware was unrivaled, and Wright was the most renowned designer among American housewives.172 What also underwrote masculinity as a key dimension of Wright’s authority as a designer diplomat was the “industrial” of industrial designer signifying men who managed machines and their industries geared to the expansive domain of domestic life. As Edgar Kaufmann Jr., curator of the Department of Industrial Design at the Museum of Modern Art, explained, industrial design encompassed “the objects and machines used in an industrialized community . . . All are shaped by man for use today in his life as it has developed since the industrial revolution.”173 Moreover, by the mid-1950s, “industrial design” encompassed the design of everything, from the grand to the banal, including the home furnishings and tableware that Wright concentrated on for much of his career. On top of this, industrial designers linked production, distribution, and consumption, that is, the entire spectrum of making to using things. Interestingly, RWA, Wright, and the State Department referred to craft as a particular type of industry—a cottage or a small industry associated with the home and domesticity as opposed to an “industrialized community.” Defining craft as an industry gave the industrial designer the “power and privilege”174 to shape it and, by extension, oversee the

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activity of its makers and consumers. Arguably, this authority reflected the privileging of masculinity in the design. The readership of Interiors consisted of Wright’s peers—“The Interiors Group”—who were “all concerned with the creation and production of interiors—both residential and commercial.”175 Although the magazine did not spurn an avocational consumer audience, more directly it addressed professionals, to whom it offered “the chance of a lifetime for enterprising developers and designers in our field;”176 in other words, to men who considered themselves ambitious and enterprising in the mode of a “certain way of imagining and acting in the world.”177 Trade magazines profiling Wright’s first trip to South Vietnam represented Wright in the masculinized professional role of an industrial designer. Fleishman confirmed that “the men the ICA selects” were nationally renowned in the field and they managed their own significant design agencies, and he detailed their State Department objectives of improving the standard of living of the everyday man abroad and diminishing his attraction to communism.178 For Wright, improving their lot required meeting with other men whose significance flowed from their managerial and governmental authority. Wright’s participation in this power found visible expression. On the first page of Fleishman’s article about designer diplomats, Wright disembarks from a sampan in South Vietnam (Figure 2.1). Behind him stands an oarsman and in front is an entourage of male officials and staff. In profiling the activity of this cohort for Craft Horizons, Conrad Brown reiterated the “rational and unsentimental” nature of their efforts in learning the ins and outs of craft abroad.179 Wright’s methodology mainly consisted of gathering information through surveys and first-person observations. Then, he analyzed the data and made recommendations to the State Department. Interiors reported that even before embarking, Wright undertook a survey of business leaders in the U.S.180 In Craft Horizons, Brown reiterated in detail Wright’s practice of gathering information from these leaders about their interests in importing craft along with any questions they had about standards and potential problems.181 On top of this, the Wall Street Journal pegged Wright and his fellow industrial designers as intrepid adventurer-discoverers who, collectively, “by plane, jeep, train, canoe, camel, and on foot,” visited nineteen nations.182 The newspaper reiterated that these professional men undertook significant work, the success of which depended on their judicious use of good business practices and exhaustive information gathering. All the traveling, hundreds of thousands of miles in the past two years, is done so American industrial designers can determine what natives of many lands are capable of doing and what raw materials they have to work with. When visiting “huts and bazaars” the designers shoot roll after roll of film photographing baskets, pottery, bowls and scores of other items from every angle. They fill notebooks with information on how native craftsmen carve, weave and hammer. Samples of handicrafts also are brought to this country for further study.183

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Figure 2.1 Wright disembarks from a sampan in South Vietnam, in Avrom Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat: The Government Applies the Designer’s Approach to Problems of International Trade,” Industrial Design 3, no. 5 (August 1956), 68.

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Interiors made sure readers knew Wright was not souvenir hunting or purchasing items for personal satisfaction by sharing that Wright collected 1,500 artifacts for display at home on matters of improving foreign economies.184 All of these efforts, Interiors assured, were amplified by the copious data Wright’s team amassed and that Wright produced in his diary and as statistics.185 With government officials and design professionals, Wright reflected on these statistics concerning craft labor (size of labor force), details of labor status (refugee or native), technology (hand, machine, factory), type of material or product, and availability in the U.S.186 Wright treated his exhibition of items that he gathered abroad, held at the Coliseum in June, 1956, as an opportunity to supplement his data.187 The New York Times, extolling the craft aid project, applauded Wright’s subsequent Traveling Department Store Exhibition of 1958–9, praising the work of the designer diplomat as a “hard-headed business” as opposed to “soft-hearted charity,”188 implying a gendered difference between a business that makes deals, watches the bottom line, and achieves a profit in competition, and gestures of giving money to causes that tug at the heart. Associated Press writer Dorothy Roe similarly characterized design diplomacy as realistic, hard-headed, businessoriented, and technical, too, and she quoted Wright underlining his ties to industry and nation while speaking on behalf of the Vietnamese: “We are a country of industrial know-how, of skilled machine production, but nobody has the time here to make things by hand. This is where the people of the Orient can cash in on their skills. There, millions of people are dependent on their handskills for a livelihood.”189 Upon returning from a meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles spoke to this last point by mentioning the outstanding beauty of Southeast Asian craft as part of the basis for American relations with Vietnam predicated on craft: “they also have things to give.”190 As Cheryl Buckley observed, “the codes of design, as used by the designer, are produced within patriarchy to express the needs of the dominant group.”191 Although Wright and RWA did not couple paternalism with violence, their serving as the face of American design aiding craft while conveying power and agency resonates in Heather Marie Stur’s research about gender and representations of American serviceman in Vietnam.192 According to Stur, the tough-guy persona of John Wayne mediating between good and bad on the frontier and modeling how to face whatever exists beyond civilization as Americans knew it,193 served as an avatar in popular culture for the “gentle warrior” American soldier in Vietnam who proceeded, through paternalism, to salvage and bring aid to those whom his nation identified as both worthy and needy.194 The conflation of these traits in John Wayne and the gentle warrior soldier resonated in Wright’s media profile, too, alongside what Fabian Hilfrich shows is the gendering of 1960s foreign policy concerning Southeast Asia. It favored manliness as realism, emphasized “a supposedly hard-nosed and dispassionately analytical theory,” and put aside sentimentality for facts.195 Correspondingly, trade magazines reporting on RWA’s trip to South Vietnam avoided emotive language and any associations of craft materials and processes with feminized space, taste, or perspective. Despite referencing Vietnamese craft as

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a cottage industry, they did not address craft as a practice that takes place in a home or within a family or community. For that matter, they provided no information about personal interactions between Wright, his colleagues, and the people he met as he traveled. Instead, they folded the domestic agency of the industrial designer into the empowered mobility of the designer diplomat. To be sure, femininity enjoyed a modicum of power as a diplomatic relation. Liza Condin, formerly of Penn State University, contracted with the ICA to serve as a home economist in Southeast Asia, “a jungle republic where American taxpayers have bet a great deal of money that the country will not be swallowed up by red China.”196 Through white privilege and American citizenship, Condin shared with Wright an ability to subject locals to her interests, like the Vietnamese maid who served her an iced drink in her Saigon apartment, as profiled in Look magazine. The magazine’s brief account of Condin’s activity assured American readers that her “life in Vietnam is not all hardship.”197 Still, as the title of her article—“Babies and Biscuits in the Jungle”—confirms, a feminized domestic life surfaces, no matter the geography.198 Even in the “jungle” of South Vietnam, the article followed Condin as she taught women about diet and family care, demonstrated cooking, and bathed an infant while dressed in Western-style clothing, pearls, and open-toed, high-heeled shoes. Whereas Wright appears in a leadership role, distanced from his subjects in attitude and comportment, Condin interacts closely with women and children, sharing laughter and information. On balance, media attention to Wright and Condin respectively affirmed for Americans that far across the world, designer diplomats behaved as men, and home economists like women in American homes. What it also messaged was that Vietnamese people patiently awaited guidance from them all. The message may have been meant to assuage American anxiety about Americans being unwelcome outsiders in Vietnam. Journalist William Attwood broadcast the sentiment to Americans at home: “We are outsiders, no matter how disciplined and wellbehaved. We are like the houseguest who stays on and on. What American community would want to play permanent host to a bunch of clannish and often patronizing foreigners who don’t even bother to learn English?”199 The possibility that the South Vietnamese or newly arrived northern refugees did not wish to play host to Americans intensified other worries. By way of referencing European white privilege and imperialism, the former Hungarian diplomat Stephen Kertesz offered Americans additional caution. In recent decades an anti-colonial movement has been sweeping through Asia and Africa. The ascendancy of Europe and the white race, taken for granted in the nineteenth century, is no longer passively accepted. Some colonial people are eager to retaliate for alleged or real injustices. The anti-colonial feeling sometimes generates obsessions which make reasonable political orientation and actions difficult.200

Adding to the “anti-colonial feeling” in South Vietnam was the communist threat to Western power.201 The New York Times said South Vietnam was unstable and the

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Viet Minh wanted to influence refugees and peasants there to accept the communist regime in the North.202 At the helm of USOM in Saigon, Leland Barrows linked the necessity of documenting the occupation, education, and political beliefs of northern refugees as information to safeguard against the infiltration of communist agents who would agitate in the South.203 The profile of Wright—former president of the American Industrial Design Society, exuding masculine empowerment, aligned with business and industry at home, ably representing his government and nation abroad—added strength to the American presence in South Vietnam for Americans at home. A significant component of his profile involved representations of Wright and his male colleagues in relation to refugee artisans.

Chapter 3 R E F U G E E A S A RT I S A N : T H E I M AG E O F V I E T NA M E SE C R A F T

Introduction How did a photograph of a refugee basketmaker published in Interiors magazine support American Cold War efforts in South Vietnam? The photograph in question depicts a young artisan sitting alone on the ground making a basket at the Xom Moi refugee camp north of Saigon (Figure 3.1). It belongs to the period when South Vietnam enlisted the United States to help with refugee resettlement. The photograph lacks some of the elements found in others representing Vietnamese artisans in the same article appearing in Interiors magazine. For example, one photograph depicts an artisan whose moustache, goatee, and receding hairline suggest he is older than the basketmaker (Figure 3.2). In addition, he wears glasses and a shirt, and the photograph captures his intense concentration as he carves a sculpture. Also, the background of the photograph suggests the artisan had access to an environment beyond his workspace. Behind him, a bicycle leans against the wall not far from what looks like an opening to another space. In comparison, the basketmaker appears young and less physically active, and he wears less clothing, too. The velvety black background of his photograph obscures any references to the way his immediate environment connects to other spaces and it makes the space appear somewhat claustrophobic. Accounts of refugees published by the State Department sometimes featured images of groups of artisans. In 1956, for example, the United States Operations Mission in Vietnam authored a report illustrated with photographs showing artisans seated on the ground weaving mats indoors as others prepare weaving materials out of doors. The caption credits American support for their endeavors to help refugees become self-sustaining.1 The South Vietnamese government published English-language material depicting artisans, too. A booklet touting the contribution of American aid in developing the Cai-San resettlement village included a photograph of women weaving baskets indoors (Figure 3.3). The caption spoke of gendered craft production and cross-generational harmony.2 The photograph of the basketmaker stands apart from this type of image and from the photograph of the man carving. The basketmaker appears alone in a 51

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Figure 3.1 A young artisan making a basket at the Xom Moi refugee camp, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 94. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, USOM, p. 95.

carefully composed and dramatically lit space that reveals few details about his location. Although the basketmaker’s body is framed to give visibility to his weaving, he appears physically less active in practicing his craft than artisans in the other photographs. Additionally, he looks younger than most. Surrounding the basketmaker are a number of unfinished and completed baskets. Neither the photograph of the sculptor, nor the photograph of artisans that USOM published or the photograph of women at Cai-San, depict completed works of craft. Furthermore, the activity of the older artisan carving suggests noise, as does socializing by the women weaving mats at Cai-San. In contrast, a quiet stillness envelops the basketmaker’s isolation. His photograph also distinguishes the basketmaker from Native American and foreign artisans whose photographs the American journal, Handweaver and

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Figure 3.2 An artisan carving a sculpture, Smithsonian Institution Archives, RU 312, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director Records, 1912–1965, Viet Nam Photographs of Crafts Making, no. 42834.

Figure 3.3 Women working at the Cai-San resettlement village, Secretariat of State for Information, Cai-San: The Dramatic Story of Resettlement and Land Reform in the ‘Rice Bowl’ of the Republic of Viet-Nam (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Kim Lai An-Quan, 1956), 17.

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Craftsmen, published during the 1950s. These photographs typically emphasized artisan’s hands working with materials or they took in the artisan making works of craft in broad daylight, sometimes out of doors with another person participating, such as a woman practicing “primitive spinning” in the Near East,3 Navajo women weaving,4 weavers in Siam5 and North Africa,6 and artisans in Israel,7 Cyprus,8 and India.9 As a typical cover, an artisan weaves on a traditional loom that juts into the foreground to connect her space with the reader’s.10 The image has a documentary feel that by contrast makes the basketmaker’s photograph appear carefully composed to capture extreme darks and whites, stillness, and quiet. What also distinguish the basketmaker’s photograph are nearby piles of baskets in process or completed. Three years later, very similar baskets surfaced in Free World in an article about the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon. A color photograph reveals the reddish ochre color of their zigzag patterns (Figure 3.4).11 The color is echoed in nearby woven fans and a lampshade. Interestingly, this reddish orange color as well as yellow and blue ultramarine in the fans and lampshades together resemble the palette of Wright’s American Modern dinnerware (see Introduction, Figure 0.3). Their presentation suggests these craft items were made with an eye for consumption in so far as a shopper might select containers, place mats, fans, and lighting accessories all of one hue or combine hues to mix and match. Certainly, the coordination of color in craft items, something their display subtly highlighted, distinguished them from woven articles associated with the Vietnamese ethnographically, such as large woven baskets used for carrying raw materials, foodstuff, weaponry, and textiles as typically appeared in early twentieth century photographs depicting the natives of Indochina.12 Interestingly, both the quiet mood and the basketmaker’s isolation contradict the reality of his life in a refugee camp. Historian Ronald Bruce Frankum observed that at one point the Xom Moi camp held over 8,000 refugees.13 Therefore, probably for most of the time the basketmaker was not alone in the camp. The realization asks the question why an article about Russel Wright’s and his team’s activity in Southeast Asia begins with a full-page photograph of a basketmaker that ignores elements of his reality and departs from other contemporary photographs of refugee artisans working in South Vietnam and elsewhere. In its American circulation, the basketmaker photograph resonated as what Laura Wexler refers to as a “domestic image.”14 In Interiors, the photograph referenced the plight of northern refugees in the South while it elided direct references to civil war there and to American concerns about refugees’ potential political leanings. Instead, the photograph represents the refugee artisan in such a way as to entreat the American private sector to engage with his services and import his craft.

The United States in South Vietnam, and South Vietnam in the United States Wright saw the photograph of the basketmaker and others depicting refugee artisans during January 1956 as part of a display of Vietnamese craft organized for

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Figure 3.4 Mats, baskets, and lampshades displayed at the Saigon Exhibition Hall, “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 30.

him and his colleagues at the Saigon Chamber of Commerce.15 Eight months later, the photograph of the basketmaker featured on the first page of an article published in Interiors magazine. The article reported that Wright was overseeing an American State Department-led craft export program in Southeast Asia.16 The photograph likely originated prior to 1956. Six year earlier, the State Department was relaying to STEM [Special Technical and Economic Mission] in Saigon that American aid in northern Vietnam included handicraft as part of the training for Administrative Assistants.17 Subsequently, the State Department identified handicraft as a subject of interest for photography in 1951, 1952, and likely for additional years, too.18 By 1952, Houston photographer Everette Dixie Reese had established the Photo Lab for the United States Information Agency-United States Operations Mission in Saigon [USIA-USOM].19 President Eisenhower launched the USIA in 1953 to administrate information about the U.S. distributed overseas. Also established in 1953, USOM served as an umbrella to implement technical support as well as economic, health, infrastructure, and educational development aid issued through the Foreign Operations Administration, which the State Department oversaw to coordinate security and economic relations mainly through trade in the Free World.20 Leland Barrows, who served as the director of USOM Vietnam from 1954 to 1958, likened these efforts to “the cost of maintaining peace through giving aid.”21

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In Saigon, Reese and his colleagues in the Photo Lab printed images for distribution locally and for the U.S. Army and additional official governmental agencies.22 Also, the Photo Lab worked with the graphics section of USOM Saigon preparing “posters, maps, training manuals, brochures, briefing documents, quarterly reports, self-help education material, etc.,” along with “art preparation and the layouts used in support of USOM divisions.”23 Reese’s staff included Henri Gilles Huet, to whom the Interiors article credits the basketmaker’s photograph. Reese, Huet, and other photographers affiliated with the lab recorded the civilian population and environment of Vietnam. Their activity probably generated Huet’s photograph of the basketmaker and other photographs of artisans published in the Interiors article concerning Wright’s and RWA’s activity in Southeast Asia. Photographs of refugees migrating south or recently arrived there began appearing in U.S. media during a key period of migration that followed the Geneva Accords of July 1954, specifically the thirteen-month period between August 1954 and May 1955, just prior to partition, when people could regroup on either side of the 17th Parallel that ultimately would divide the north from the south.24 American support of South Vietnam aimed at resettling the nearly one million refugees from the North. In so far as that support involved channeling refugee artisans into craft industries, RWA had to persuade American importers, business owners, and distributors as well as fellow design professionals that Vietnamese craft was desirable and available. Representing the basketmaker alone instead of in a large group and seemingly dedicated to his work offered Americans an approachable subject who is skilled in his craft and amenable to hard work. In the context of refugee resettlement, the State Department was assuming the role of the strong partner in a diplomatic relationship25 by identifying which facets of Vietnamese life should remain pre-modern, if not largely unchanged, yet requiring rescue. In other words, the U.S. decided how refugees in South Vietnam mattered for its own goals of bringing that nation into the Free World. The situation echoes Liisa H. Malkki’s observations about the ways refugees are created discursively, for example in knowledge domains such as anthropology and foreign relations, and through developments in capitalism and international relations.26 According to Christina Klein, during the early Cold War, to forge bonds between Asians and Americans, American cultural producers organized narratives of popular culture fiction and films concerning the U.S., Asia, and the Pacific around the theme of national and international integration.27 These bonds shaped representations of Asians to the interests and desires of middle-class American consumers of popular entertainment. In the case of the craft program, the photographic representation of the basketmaker equally reflected American interests and desires, although not in the context of entertainment but one of salvage, recuperation, and support. Civil Americans worked under the belief that their endeavors would improve the lives of needy people residing in South Vietnam, especially those who recently arrived from the North.28 At the same time, concerns about the vulnerability of Vietnamese craft to rapid modernization and industrialization29 were being explored in studies

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supported by the United Nation’s Economic Council for Asia and the Far East and in related publications by C. Hart Schaaf and Theodore Herman, respectively.30 These beliefs and concerns intersected in photographs of artisans and craft in South Vietnam. As an example, the photograph of the basketmaker conjured a vulnerable yet productive subject meant to appeal to Americans who might be interested in importing and merchandising foreign craft. Its existence was made possible by American government officials and diplomatic officers as well as military aids supporting their own nation’s national security and economic interests in the region together with troops from France and Great Britain that assisted with refugee migration southward. However, the photograph avoids showing Americans at home these efforts, nor does it dwell on related aspects of ongoing conflict. On this last point, the photograph takes on some of the ideological work that American photography performed during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon what Anne McClintock shows are etymological links between the verbs dominate and domesticate, design historian David Brody suggests that as the U.S. coupled its aims for overseas expansion with notions that it was spreading American democracy and progress to more of the world,31 upper-middleclass Americans incorporated Asian artifacts from these places and American copies of them into their homes as part of a “civilizing trope” that elevated their cultural status and, by extension, that of the Asian people who made them. Photographs contributed, too, like the ones Frances Benjamin Johnston made of Admiral George Dewey and his men who became famous for their violent, rapid routing of the Spanish navy in the Bay of Manila early in the Spanish–American War. In Johnston’s photographs, the men’s poses, settings, and activities helped to “make the visible [traces of imperialism] disappear”32 by conveying the decorum, civility, and sentimentalities of life at home for white middle-class Americans. Although the basketmaker photograph was likely made possible by diplomacy and military aid activity that preceded its creation in Vietnam, it also, like the turn of the century photographs, “signifies the domestic realm.”33 In this case, by omitting obvious references to civil war and violence, the photograph addressed the basketmaker to the American home front of the Cold War by promoting him as a maker of interesting contributions to interior furnishings. The photograph underscores its status as a “domestic image”34 further by presenting a subject appearing to need looking after, one that deserves such a response from Wright’s peers in the home furnishings industry, too. It was their opportunity to accept Wright’s invitation to forge a new trade pathway linking the U.S. to Vietnam and thereby ostensibly raise the basketmaker’s standard of living and hopes for a better future.

Pathos English-language publications about Vietnamese migration portrayed southbound northerners as agents for freedom and people suffering in its pursuit.35 Meanwhile,

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the State Department claimed that northerners were self-motivated, ambitious people comprising a broad social spectrum of religious, armed forces, and professional people along with workers and farmers.36 They chose to forego “being placed under the Communist yoke, [and they] are moving outward to Free VietNam” where they could farm and “work out new lives in freedom.”37 Correspondingly, the U.S. Navy labeled its participation in Operation Passage to Freedom as Operation Exodus and the U.S. distributed funds to help integrate northerners in their “new lives” in “Free Viet-Nam.”38 In addition to the network of support led by the Catholic priesthood, the State Department helped, too, and in early August 1954 the State of Vietnam requested its help with resettlement.39 National Geographic reported on these U.S. efforts by representing northerners as a collective “human tide” awaiting the U.S. “Freedom Ships” docked near Haiphong in the Gulf of Tonkin.40 The cover of the Catholic publication Resettlement of the Refugees of North VietNam proclaimed, “The Refugees fled for the sake of their Faith.” The publication noted the effects of American aid on refugees and classified them according to their Protestant, Buddhist, or Catholic beliefs. Adopting Western biblical narratives shared by the name of the U.S. Navy’s Operation Exodus for its contribution to Operation Freedom, the publication’s vocabulary evoked the migration of the Jewish people in their struggle to leave enslavement in Egypt to bond as a nation in the Promised Land. Among the nearly million refugees fleeing the North during 1954–5, some two thirds were of the Catholic faith, and the caption of a photograph which showed people crowded onto a small vessel described their migration as “The beginning of the Exodus.”41 Attention to the difficulty of southward migration also surfaced as a characteristic of refugee suffering because so many people had left their homes under trying circumstances and they experienced difficulty while traveling and upon their arrival in the South. Lt. Tom Dooley’s publications as well as popular literature emphasized refugee suffering. In Dooley’s first book, Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Viet Nam’s Flight to Freedom, black-and-white photographs show refugees in North Vietnamese processing camps where Dooley treated their illnesses before they migrated south. One in particular focuses on the children of women whose husbands had been “slaughtered in the eight years of war” between the French and the Vietnamese.42 Others depict mothers and grandmothers with children blankly staring at the camera. Historian Jessica Elkind observes that Dooley’s publications helped to galvanize U.S. policymakers and the American public in support of American intervention in Southeast Asia.43 The New York Times among other publications circulated a photograph of refugees in crowded, makeshift conditions,44 while other articles examined additional problems. For instance, some refugees were placed on land reclaimed from local warlords or rebuffed by locals who would not welcome or integrate them.45 Catholic-sponsored publications such as Resettlement of the Refugees of North Viet-Nam stopped short of stating outright that refugees were being persecuted on religious grounds. Nevertheless, their characterization of refugees as innocents compelled to leave their homeland may have helped to persuade fellow Catholics to support the State Department’s aid to northerners arriving in the South. Also, the topic of migration

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hardship deflected attention away from internal conflict that, in South Vietnam, saw the government forcing the movement of Montagnards, or “mountain people,” to free up their ancestral lands for resettling northerners. Refugee suffering in Vietnam likely seemed acute due to suffering associated with recent wars, too. Following upon the movement of millions of people displaced by the events of World War II, in 1950 the United Nations established the High Commissioner for Refugees to work mostly with refugees in and from Europe. Soon media around the world were reporting on war in Korea. American media said hundreds of thousands of Koreans had fled communists in the North, and it described them as refugees yearning for freedom, assisted by Americans in fleeing “advancing red” communist forces.46 Photographs showed enormous numbers of people on the move47 on foot,48 rail, and river.49 Occasionally, stories featured biopic treatments of a few individuals or they named families.50 Headlines aimed for reader affect by evoking the pathos of the uprooted—“River of Human Sorrow Flows into U.S. Lines”51 and “Korea’s Refugees—Misery on the March.”52 At the same time, the fate of refugees from World War II continued to fill the mainstream press and inform cultural activity, even late into the 1950s. As one example, during 1959 the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey held a two-part exhibition about the mobility of migration and migrants settling in a new place. In the first part, photo-journalists told the story of people leaving their nations and waiting for asylum. The second part comprised the art of fifteen refugees who came to the U.S. as “evidence of a long national tradition that prizes freedom of the individual.”53 American attention to Vietnamese refugees helped to add Southeast Asia to the geographic areas of concern that efforts like these highlighted and culminated in the UN designating 1959–60 as World Refugee Year.54 In “We Strangers and Afraid: The Refugee Story Today,” Elfan Rees situated Vietnam in this broader migration discourse, claiming, “this is the Age of the Uprooted and the Century of the Homeless Man” of which “900,000 homeless came from the territory of the VietMinh.”55 In Interiors, the photograph’s dramatic angles and black-and-white contrast as well as the basketmaker’s location in a corner contribute to connoting the basketmaker’s loneliness and inward turn, to which the very beginning of the article attests on the adjacent page: “The young basketmaker in the Xom Moi refugee camp, Vietnam, is typical of millions of willing but helpless Southeast Asians who, cut off from their past, look to the United States for a road to the future.”56 Together, the photograph and the text that follows amplify the artisan’s vulnerability by rendering him anonymous. Darkness shrouds him, reifies his separation from a community, and underscores what Americans perceived as social, economic, and political vulnerabilities that could compel him to seek aid from communists. Peter Gatrell, a historian who studies migration and refugees of the twentieth century, realized “the unnamed individual embodies the condition of refugees everywhere who cannot avoid their amalgamation into a collective category of concern,”57 reminding us that any suffering conveyed in the basketmaker’s

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photograph likely aimed for reader attention in light of this “category of concern.” In addition to treating the basketmaker as a representative of millions of refugees, the word “helpless” and the phrase “road to the future” in Interiors associated him with the State Department’s anxiety about resettling so many refugees who seemed helpless, and suggest that taking on this task constituted a problem for Americans to resolve by providing refugees with a pathway forward. In Vietnam, once northerners arrived in the South, they went to reception centers, then to resettlement camps, and finally to places where they were intended to settle permanently.58 Refugee centers having the largest populations were located near Saigon in Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh, Cho Lon, My Tho, Tay Ninh, and Binh Thuan. Central Vietnam had large centers in Tourane, Ben Tre, Thu Dau Mot, and Blao.59 The Xom Moi refugee camp where Huet photographed the basketmaker was located outside Saigon in the Gia Dinh area.60 Although, given the population of the camp, the basketmaker’s isolation was unlikely, on the other hand its evocation by the photograph along with the photograph’s attention to his work likely helped the article summon members of the American design trades to help solve the “problem” of this and many other refugees. The expectation that photographs of refugees could compel people in resolving the “problem” was not new. In studying the publication of photographs of refugees in Britain that supported the pro-Republican cause during the Spanish Civil war, Caroline Brothers inquired about the purpose of showing suffering and further articulating it through captions. She referenced historian and photography theorist Allan Sekula by claiming that these photographs of refugees mobilized compassion and pity for their subjects instead of compelling readers to pursue a collective struggle to change the underlying reasons why people became refugees in the first place. Furthermore, according to Brothers, their “refugee passivity” rendered these subjects dependent on “the ministrations of foreign authorities.”61 The composition of the first two pages of the Interiors article, contrasting the insularly oriented basketmaker and active designer diplomat, transports these themes into a different time and geography (Figure 3.5). The photograph of the basketmaker denies him any visible, active struggle regarding his loneliness and homelessness, and it affirms his status as a representation of hundreds of thousands of refugees awaiting help from the Americans. In comparison, across the page Wright is shown filming as refugee children look on. The relationship of the designer to the basketmaker speaks to the designer’s agency to travel, observe, record, and communicate about the basketmaker as his subject, in contrast to his subject’s silence, stillness, and disempowerment. The discrepancy in their behavior invites Wright’s peers in the design trades to see themselves in Wright, bringing a curiosity and interest to working with a skilled, docile, foreign artisan. Wright also guides the consumer tastes of the American middle class whose expansion into suburbia coupled its whiteness with property ownership and a corresponding need to decorate new homes. The latter activity generated an American iconography of race and class in its “configuration, décor, possessions, and maintenance.”62 Wright and his wife Mary even wrote a book about organizing the many possessions that were soon cluttering American homes.63 These homes

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Figure 3.5 Magazine article reporting on Wright’s activity in Southeast Asia for the ICA [International Cooperation Administration], in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 94–5. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95.

and the fashions into which white Americans would absorb Vietnamese crafts spanned the middle to the upper-middle classes. This was evident in the stores RWA approached to import craft, which ranged from Sears, Roebuck & Co. to Lilly Daché and W. & J. Sloane in New York, and upscale department stores in other urban centers at the higher end of the range. Without necessarily realizing it, Americans would look at, shop for, and purchase Vietnamese craft initially made by refugees who lacked a permanent home and whose resettlement would be vitalized by American consumption for home and self.

“The refugee problem” and solution The photograph of the basketmaker also served American interests by casting the artisan as a problem that belonged to a larger narrative in which the United States identified who counts as a problem and helped to determine how the problem would be resolved. American art historian Linda Nochlin offers a glimpse of this narrative that continued into the years of the Vietnam War. In 1971, writing about the marginalization and erasure of women from art history, Nochlin touched on U.S. attitudes toward nonwhite America, the Global South, and Asia. “We tend to take it for granted,” she pointed out, “that there really is an East Asian Problem, a

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Poverty Problem, a Black Problem and a Woman Problem. But first we must ask ourselves who is formulating these ‘questions,’ and then, what purposes such formulations may serve.”64 In regard to refugees, according to Gatrell, asymmetries of power and disempowerment inform “how the modern refugee came to be construed as a ‘problem’ amenable to a ‘solution.’ ”65 Americans contributed craft aid grounded in economic assistance and technical support to the problem– solution framework he examined. Another dimension of this framework involved signifying a problem to deflect attention from other issues. Malkki observes: how often the abundant literature claiming refugees as its object of study locates “the problem” not in the political conditions or processes that produce massive territorial displacements of people, but, rather, within the bodies and minds (and even souls) of people categorized as refugees.66

The photograph of the basketmaker deflects attention from these “conditions or processes” by training the Interior magazine reader’s focus on a subject who in reality is located far away yet who one could imagine seems near because his image and environment fill an entire magazine page continuing to the edge of the foreground, and they lack any physical barriers that preclude entering his space. The presentation brings to mind what Deborah Poole notes about the work of photographs published in Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux’s The Study of Culture at a Distance (1953). Photographs are “privileged sites for communicating a feeling of cultural immersion, a sort of substitute for the personal experience of fieldwork”67 or an experience of being in the field, to which Wright’s image on the page opposite the basketmaker testifies. As the U.S. shifted from highlighting U.S. armed forces helping Vietnamese northerners migrate to claiming they needed and deserved support in resettling, Wright delivered this view of the artisan refugee not simply as a problem, one that Interiors readers might imagine themselves facing in the manner of Wright appearing in the photograph on the page opposite, filming in order to document the problem, but also as its post-migration resolution. For Wright, RWA, and the State Department, the “refugee problem” was twofold: identify and alleviate the refugees’ dire circumstances and leverage their potential to contribute to craft production and export. In reporting on his trip, Wright contrasted metropolitan life in Saigon with “the pitiful poverty” of the northerners,68 noting that their dire circumstances were unique among RWA’s remits.69 RWA cemented South Vietnam’s need for aid not by elaborating on U.S. resources or showing what refugee agency, on its own, could achieve. Nor did these Americans mention the importance of the American aid they brought in the wake of France leaving Vietnam,70 or as a component of the monies the ICA was pouring into Vietnam in response.71 Instead, they linked refugees with a “road to the future” provided by the U.S. and the “Passage to Freedom” resettlement efforts.72 These references tethered notions of the progress, destination, and future of former northerners to a momentum fueled by the U.S.

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Inherently, the “refugee problem”73 established the political necessity for American aid. For the State Department, refugee resettlement amounted to a resolution of where and to what the refugees belonged. For them, the refugees held several potentials for “destabilizing” South Vietnam. In Belonging and Globalisation, Ken Lum explains that refugees are “an ‘unfixing’ figure” operating “at the thresholds of space and politics, language and power. They negotiate and produce new concepts of transcultural identities, both personal and collective that are destabilizing to established orders, systems and codifications.”74 Refugees in South Vietnam had connections to ongoing civil war, they came from the North and likely they had a family there, hence they could repatriate to join communist forces or spread communism in the South. The New York Times said South Vietnam was unstable because a “network of Vietminh agents” wanted to influence refugees and peasants there to accept the communist regime in the North.75 A major way to demonstrate the solution was to show how refugees belonged to their new nation and forego alternatives.

Occupation: From refugees to citizens During the heightened period of migration from 1954 to 1955, along with presenting refugee suffering the government and media treated Vietnam as a place of opportunities and showed refugees beginning to contribute to some of them. The White House sketched “Free Viet-Nam” as a country having abundant natural resources and land for farmers from the North.76 From Saigon, Resettlement of the Refugees of North Viet-Nam presented photographs of refugees clearing land for settlement,77 and U.S. media described refugees farming and building homes, churches, schools, and markets.78 These activities promoted the lives refugees were building in the Free World. U.S. media claimed that their self-sufficiency helped refugees resist communism after having resettled “on the land fighting for their own rice,” as the New York Times stated.79 Nevertheless, the State Department and the South Vietnamese government deliberated on the economics of resettlement. Although the State Department hoped refugees would be able to “continue their old occupations,” it acknowledged that “many will have to be trained for other gainful employment” to “complement the economies of their new settlements.”80 To these efforts, the Embassy of Viet Nam stated that U.S. aid was organizing the refugee population by skill and trade, with craft among the vocations.81 As aid efforts homed in on resettling refugees, RWA reported that they were willing to provide design services to facilitate native craft production in South Vietnam on a contract basis. Before they embarked on their initial survey trip, Leland Barrows, Director of the United States Operations Mission in Saigon, wrote to Washington, D.C., identifying native craft as a “tangible stake in [the] resistance to communism.” Barrows also summarized the refugee problem as the degree to which artisan refugees from the North had lost their craft industry82 and, somewhat paradoxically, that the artisans’ work lacked artistic style and “what it takes to make a ‘finished’ article” of craft. However, regarding his trip to Vietnam, Wright observed that craft

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did not seem ready to sell locally or abroad; he was concerned about the artisans’ skills. He also reported on being told that giving employment to refugees mattered because of the political situation and he wondered about the types of organization that would facilitate craft production such as cooperatives or factories.83 Despite his reservations, optimistically, Wright claimed in Interiors, “Vietnam, where I expected to find little or nothing to export . . . is bursting with opportunities for the American importer or developer who goes there with designs and merchandising know-how.”84 Huet’s photograph helped Wright assure these Americans in the potential chain of the production and consumption of Vietnamese craft that artisans would not take up arms and join the communists. Rather, they would remain in the South, where Americans could rely upon them to dedicate their skills to making goods to fill orders for export. Interestingly, the photograph pre-figured a report that USOM addressed to South Vietnamese President Diem in 1956. The artisan’s pathos echoes in the report’s account of the “tragic figure in your country’s first period of independence . . . the refugee, symbol of your nation’s defiance of communism.” Then, the report addresses refugee homelessness and lack of employment: “The step which is now absorbing our attention is to supply these new citizens with a means of livelihood.”85 This step recast refugees’ identity. As “new citizens,” the report continues, refugees would make craft and thereby contribute economically to the nation and help stave off the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. The report clarified, “In this operation, all aspects of the problem were studied carefully with the intent to fit the new citizens into the new state.”86 However, Interiors represented the basketmaker less as a “new citizen” of South Vietnam and more as a potential worker awaiting American entrepreneurs to guide and monetize his artisanry. To shore up this possibility, Huet’s photograph provided the solution to the refugee as a problem in the work ethic he demonstrates, one akin to the U.S. Protestant work ethic. It signified that the refugee works hard, therefore he is good, and he merits American aid. In addition to documenting him making a basket, the photograph illustrates his productivity by including finished baskets piled next to him. In this way, the photograph transposes the refugee from being an unknown political liability into a maker whose skills and demeanor advertise value for the American merchandisers who would relay foreign craft to American consumers. Moreover, the photograph and article make this point also by what they don’t present. For example, the article avoids attributing to foreign artisans the type of personal pleasure Americans were associating with making and using craft, including as a type of freedom of expression.87 Besides the basketmaker, other artisans photographed by Huet figured as “opportunities” for Americans (Figure 3.6). These artisans turn natural materials into a wooden carved sculpture, conical hats, textiles, lacquer panels, embroidery, and ceramic pottery. A caption for the group of photographs explains, “With guidance, these skillful hands can serve the decorative trades and enable designers to carry out developmental experiments.”88 The man carving takes his place among the others working alone or in small groups. As the State Department worried about the political status of South Vietnam and Southeast Asia in the Free World, Interiors articulated

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Figure 3.6 Photo of Vietnamese artisans at work, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 98–9. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95.

how refugees belonged in a production and consumption loop perceived by the American government as, to borrow from Wexler, a “peace that keeps the peace.”89

Depoliticizing artisans Ultimately, photographs in the Interiors article indicated that power lay with Americans. A good example is a tiny, blurry photograph appearing in the middle of the Interiors article. It shows Wright and his colleague Ramy Alexander standing above young men pounding dye on the ground (Figure 3.7). Wright’s and Alexander’s Western business clothes contrast with the artisans’ “jungle” attire of naked torsos and bare legs. As Louise Edwards and Mina Roces observe, in the history of American–Asian relationships and from the perspective of those in power, “dress was regarded as a marker of a particular people’s level of civilization” and then as a sign of a nation’s modernity.90 In contrast, the body, undressed or entirely naked, signifies “marginal political status and lack of civilization.”91 Wright and his male colleagues signify the power of modernity without having to revert to military attire. As new types of diplomat who hail from civil society, they wear Western business jackets, or Wright removes his jacket and rolls up his sleeves, indicating his involvement. These sartorial differences mark the men’s authority and hint at their agency to judge the artisans, standing as they do to observe the young men who sit beneath them, working and being observed,

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Figure 3.7 Wright and his colleague Ramy Alexander watch young artisans working, in Russel Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 100. Photograph credited to Henri Huet, p. 95.

wearing little clothing. Additionally, these differences evoke the trope of Western male authority journeying to the interior of a non-Western place to study natives in their natural habitat with the intention of capitalizing on their findings. In this regard, they put American forays into Vietnam in a familiar albeit broader context of colonial-era Western travel and discovery in the East. Additional photographs reiterate these East–West asymmetries of power. Depicted filming in the Lac An basketmakers’ village, as published in Interiors, Wright appears to look across the page at the basketmaker and film him, a gesture that further binds the politics of the American diplomacy of South Vietnam to this larger context. As Margaret Olin explains, “The gaze colors relations between the majority and minorities and between the first world and the third world, whose inhabitants can be the object of the gaze because they are viewed as exotic and as living in a timeless presentness outside history.”92 Together with the “white-nonwhite” habit of colonial gazing that Terence Heng also associates with colonial photography, which objectified subjects of the Western gaze and conveyed new or unfamiliar people and things to Western audiences or responded more directly to commercial interests through romanticism or sentimentality,93 the photograph of

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Wright, Alexander, and the dye pounders also subordinated the physical power of the latter to the verticality of Wright and Alexander. The basketmaker’s photograph subordinates his masculinity and agency, too, by arcing towards feminization. The basketmaker’s smooth face and body, shiny hair not clearly cut yet not visibly styled to curve away from his face, his quietness and subtle engagement in detailed handwork as opposed to powering a hammer or shovel, combine to distinguish him from other artisans exhibiting markers of masculinity in the same article in Interiors, such as the dye pounders, the man with the beard carving, and a muscular, bare-chested man shoveling kaolin.94 In these ways the empowerment of Wright and his colleague develops in relation to the disempowerment of the subjects of their interest and the interests of American readers of Interiors magazine. Strengthening their position were implications that the Americans in charge had the wherewithal to identify who and what deserved salvaging, and why. Wright and other Americans appreciated Vietnamese craft as pre-technological emblems of traditional cultures of Southeast Asia. They wanted to import craft artifacts having “the character and personality of the particular foreign country from which they come.” Their mid-twentieth-century “hankering for the hand crafts”95 of a pre-industrial age correlated with what Herman characterized as “turning the clock back” to preserve Asian cottage and small industries.96 Without explicitly engaging the national discussion about identity and civil rights that was intensifying in the U.S., the Interiors article iterated the coupling of empowerment and whiteness in distinction from ethnic others. These efforts may explain why the Interiors article is silent about Huet, the creator of most of its photographs. Born in Da Lat, Vietnam, to a Vietnamese mother and French father, Huet went to France prior to the Second World War.97 There, he studied painting at the École des Beaux-Arts in Rennes. When drafted in 1949, Huet earned a certificate in aerial photography and volunteered for Indochina duty. He flew aerial reconnaissance, ran the Photo Lab, and accompanied troops.98 After being discharged from the military, he remained in Vietnam where he worked at a photo studio in Saigon and then, by 1954 if not earlier, he was working for the United States Operations Mission.99 Huet represents the erasure from the American side of a class of professional people in Vietnam who were highly trained and working in an international context. To bring attention to Huet’s authorship of his photographs would have introduced his mixed national heritage and potentially raised questions concerning the status of colonial-era intersections of Europe, French colonialism, and Asia in a postcolonial context of Vietnamese sovereignty and the whiteness of mainstream American culture. These intersections could have problematized the power structure underpinning the article’s invitation to American designers to participate in craft merchandising based on a clear separation of Western whiteness from Southeast Asian otherness. After all, in addition to publicity, the Interiors article proffered an invitation to American professionals in the design and home furnishings industries to invest in helping refugee artisans whom the article constituted as subjects of American diplomacy in their pathos and need. This is why “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia” ultimately fails to treat the new arrivals in

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South Vietnam as “new citizens” and instead holds them forth as resources for Americans to use. “There are between 500,000 and 800,000 refugees in Vietnam eager to work but with little to do,” a caption asserts.100 Mining and refining this human resource would be the task for some of Interiors’ readers. Interestingly, the basketmaker’s simple pose, visually intensified by its graphic contrast to the dark background, together with examples of work in process and some finished examples that fill out the scene, recalls images of Hanoian “indigenous craftsmen” and “peasant-workers” that Vietnamese artists depicted in drawings for Frenchman Henri Oger to print in his ambitious Study of the Mechanics and Crafts of the Annamites (1908–9).101 In republishing Oger’s work, Philippe le Failler and Olivier Tessier remind us that Oger aimed to show sequences of mostly individual artisans working with tools he considered representative of Indochinese civilization, based on his French bourgeois notions of mission civilisatrice.102 The style and content of these drawings were echoed a half century later in Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand’s Connaissance du Viêt-Nam (1954) (Figure 3.8). In that book, typically, line drawings describe one or two artisans intent on their work surrounded by materials, tools, and finished artifacts.103 Huet’s photograph supplements this lineage with a quiet mood and a basketweaver’s aloneness. Beyond this, silence permeates the article, which refrains from discussing what artisans bring to their activity or want from it. For that matter, the article lacks interviews with the artisans or with any South Vietnamese government officials representing them. Instead, photographs maintain the lines of leadership for which Wright and his firm were known in the U.S. and the evidence shows the transferability of their agency into foreign domains.

Refugee as artisan

Figure 3.8 Line drawing of Vietnamese artisans by Pierre Huard, in Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand, Connaissance du Viêt-nam (Hanoi: École Française d’Extreme-Orient, 1954), 155, figure 53. Courtesy of École Française d’Extrême-Orient.

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Chapter 4 T H E U. S . , N O RT H V I E T NA M , A N D S O U T H V I E T NA M : C OM P E T I N G NA R R AT I V E S O F C R A F T

Introduction English-language discourses of Vietnamese craft took shape as mobile, geographically wide-ranging accounts of why the craft mattered. American government, trade, and serial publications, nationally circulating newspapers, and records of RWA’s activity relayed the importance of Vietnamese craft ethnocentrically, based on its significance for Americans. Information about Vietnamese craft surfaced through Englishlanguage publications hailing from North Vietnam and South Vietnam, too.

American perspectives Many references to Vietnamese craft emerged in the context of Americans characterizing their nation as a highly advanced industrialized economy and society1 capable of guiding “the less advanced nations on a broad scale.”2 This selfproclaimed status pointed to what it was about Vietnamese craft that would matter to Americans at home, which amounted to providing them with items that emblematized a nation that was not advanced or industrialized. Craft would answer a desire that industrial designer Don Wallance characterized as “an expanding market for hand-made things”3 and “a real need for things that are personal in character, for accidental irregularities, for natural materials and textures.”4 According to Wright, the mass-produced, machine-made consumer goods that Americans give the world nevertheless generate for Americans an effect of “monotony and repetition.” In redress, Wright recommended craft because it has “a personality and a charm which the machine-made products cannot have.”5 A material culture untouched by highly advanced industrialization offered respite: “We want handmade products from foreign countries but we want them to have the character and the personality of a particular foreign country from which they come.”6 Beyond the generality of “foreign countries,” the answer to their needs pointed Americans to Southeast Asia, which held “great numbers of skilled handicraftsmen” who “can supply a goodly amount of the vast and increasing and eternal need for handicraft products.”7 71

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It was not always the case that Americans sought the work of foreigners to provide what they lacked at home. In calling for a resurgence of craft during the 1920s, Americans examined their nation-based traditions. “Crafts in America,” an essay appearing in the first issue of the New Hampshire-based journal, The Handicrafter, championed a domestic “indigenous American art”: Every craftsman should strive for an American style, something that appeals to himself and the public. Popular interest should be aroused in the Crafts, people educated to the value of handwork replete with design and story. The Crafts have their place in life and it is the interest of all to attain this to its fullest extent.8

In addition to urging Americans to identify and embrace their native craft, by the early 1940s a related idea about craftsmen in the U.S. circulated. This one encouraged the nation to repopulate its creative reservoirs with craftsmen: “America was once a nation of craftsmen. In a sense it still is, or still could be.”9 Russel and Mary Wright contributed to this observation by treating craft and design as a means to produce an American aesthetic in tableware and home furnishings. By the next decade, while some critics said American craft was “trivial . . . inconsequential and . . . downright bad,”10 the authors of Vanishing Crafts and their Craftsmen reiterated the importance of increasing numbers of craftsmen in response to the disappearance of craft as a vocation.11 They claimed craft could “keep alive traditional skills, and maintain self-reliance and personal dignity” for its makers and, for these reasons, craft “deserves preservation.”12 Interestingly, the type of artisan who would maintain traditional skills and offer a palliative for mechanization and homogeneity in the material culture of American middle-class life did not exactly fit the profile that Craft Horizons sketched for “the American craftsman” in 1959.13 The journal averred that “in this Industrial Society,” the American Craftsman is “basically an intellectual, the product of universities, more often than not, and frequently possessing a master’s degree in the Fine Arts, or the equivalent when trained in Europe.”14 Furthermore, “lacking an American folk base of his own,” he draws from university training, published knowledge, travel, and his own aesthetic, and he has “substituted the world heritage for lack of an indigenous one.”15 While some of these characteristics that Rose Slivka attributed to the American Craftsman applied to RWA, they do not describe Vietnamese artisans. To be sure, Slivka profiled the American Craftsman as taking in influences from artisans who emigrated from abroad to the U.S. as a component of what enabled them to foster a “handcraft culture . . . vigorously within a powerful industrial society.”16 However, on this point, RWA bypassed the Craft Horizons profile to embrace traditions and skills that they and other Americans associated with Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian artisans who continued to live and produce craft abroad. Conrad Brown said that in engaging with these foreign artisans, the State Department’s craft aid projects bridged “the enormous gulf that separates an industrial nation like ours from the nations of the world whose basic economies are rooted in the crafts and

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agriculture,”17 and RWA proceeded from such a gulf. For one thing, they treated the American economy as a standard for assessing development throughout the world. In the process they treated Vietnam as a component of a pan-Southeast Asian region known for its lack of development. A major goal of aid was to guide the work of artisans in becoming “more marketable, especially in the United States.”18

Outsourcing otherness: Palliative dimensions of native craft Fleishman reported that for Southeast Asia, “design assumes a very different meaning from the one it has in industrial nations,”19 therefore, industrial designers working for the State Department had to reassure artisans in Southeast Asia about their work and also about what contributions they could expect from designers.20 In this capacity, Wright, his team in South Vietnam, and the retailers with whom they connected in the U.S. became what Jennifer Esperanza considers one of many “hidden hands” in the historical development of a commercialized world craft industry. As Esperanza explains, these “producers, designers, brokers, distributors, and other representatives spread across the globe . . . collectively influence the aesthetics, authenticity, economic value, and cultural meaning of commodities before finally reaching the consumer.”21 For example, these Americans helped to outsource their fellow citizens’ domestic needs for cultural otherness along the lines “imagined by retailers based in the industrialized north.”22 Low on the scale of modern methods of mechanized, industrial manufacturing, the way Vietnamese craft was made—in its locally sourced materials and fabrication conducted more by people than machines or wholescale mechanization—in combination with ideas about the region being underdeveloped economically and, in some ways, different socially and culturally from the U.S., encouraged Americans to “imagine Otherness” comparatively, from a perspective of their political economic power and influence.23 They used nomenclature to distinguish this Otherness, too. Whereas “craft” surfaced in Wright’s discussions and publicity for his American Way program of the 1940s, “handicraft” often was mentioned in regard to the ICA project. The word connoted non-American, non-Western, if not also a pre-modern and “native,”24 anonymous, collective mode of making craft for everyday use. Many Americans involved with the craft aid program reiterated this attitude, although they did not indicate if it was shared by Vietnamese officials or artisans. On the other hand, artisans were also recognized as masters and artists. Nora Taylor writes that Vietnamese art historians associate Victor Tardieu’s founding of the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine in Hanoi during the colonial period with a new interest in Vietnamese themes in art. In this she sees evidence of an impulse toward a Vietnamese cultural nationalism buoyed by Tardieu raising painting on silk as well as lacquer to the status of fine art.25 During the mid-twentieth century, Free World highlighted Vietnamese culture by acclaiming artisans as “experts.”26 They were “highly skilled artisans” and “master-artists.”27 In an article about crafts from the Buon Kroa Handicraft Center that RWA helped to establish in 1958, Free

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World also exulted handicraft “as an honored skill in Vietnam” and credited it with elevating the “average Vietnamese home” into “a museum with its collection of pieces handed down through generations—embroidered carpets, engraved ivory and silver objects, elaborate blinds.”28 Importantly, these ways of referring to artisans and their work indicate a high level of acclaim and respect. In comparison, RWA inconsistently treated handicraft as museum-worthy and, with few exceptions, neither RWA nor other Americans associated with the ICA project referenced craft as a vehicle to create and maintain national identity for Vietnamese citizens, even though in the U.S. the craft signified Vietnam to Americans. Instead, what the craft aid program helped to outsource centered on Wright, his team, and his colleagues in the American design and home furnishings industries responding to an American “emotional need for objects” with “individual personality and [that] are handmade.”29 Many designers spoke to these themes. Arthur Houghton associated standardization, lack of variation, design for the machine, lack of adornment and decoration, and efficient and aesthetically “empty” artifacts with modern technological production.30 George Nelson criticized rapid change in the design and production of home furnishings as part of what he described as America’s “Kleenex culture” in which consumer products are increasingly obsolete and disposable.31 Don Wallance linked “an expanding market for hand-made things” to “sleek new synthetic materials.”32 Henry Varnum Poor observed, “When we go to buy the plates and cups and bowls and the things we use and spend our lives with, the common things, we get sanitary, cold, mechanically perfect machine made objects, perhaps well designed by some efficient industrial designer.”33 Furthermore, Poor summarized: “We have lost touch—close, warm, loving daily touch—with materials. This is our most tragic weakness.”34 The published photograph of the basketmaker weaving acknowledges and helps to redress this weakness (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.1) by showing his hands coiling and twisting reeds into patterns taking shape as containers. The image of him working conflated the basketmaker’s touch with his baskets and thereby related to Americans that Vietnamese craft, in its conveyance of human touch, offered a palliative for what designers highlighted as a substantive lack in their world. The affect Wright and his peers said Americans desired from handmade things35 approximated a sentiment that economist Theodore Herman characterized as “turning the clock back.” Yet, Herman was critical of those who said Asia required rapid development to offset unemployment and underemployment.36 Wright, too, criticized rapid growth in urban centers and manufacturing. However, rather than analyze the impact on population growth and daily living, he presaged the ruin of a tradition-based small industry: “The shapes, colors, and styles of the new urban Asia make even American roadside horrors conservative by comparison.”37 Anthropologist Manning Nash hypothesized that industrialization was shriveling handicraft production,38 and in Craft Horizons, Kathleen McLaughlin reported on the results: “Everywhere in Asia new factories are springing up, turning out in almost dizzying quantities volumes of household articles, toys, clothing, footwear and containers at prices far below levels the handworker can afford to meet.”39 As Wright indicated, a related fear was that Vietnamese craft would end up imitating

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Western culture. At Craft Horizons, Brown asked, typically, what goes wrong when non-Western craftsmen create for Western markets? The artisan, Brown conjectured, “will aim to become Westernized based on what he sees in magazines, [and this will] diminish the importance of hand work” and “bastardize the indigenous qualities in the design of the things he produces himself.”40 In attempting to safeguard craft from Vietnam from these dangers, Wright suggested setting limits to artisans’ consumption of American culture. He told American readers of Interiors that he wanted the artisans to “improve their condition within their actual potentialities, rather than concentrating on an unhappy, piece-meal imitation of us.”41 Optimistically, Wright urged, “Instead of becoming the helpless victim of industrialization, village crafts, revitalized, could play a minor, perhaps, but active part in a new kind of over-all development.”42 However, endeavoring to “rescue ‘authenticity’ out of destructive historical change”43 denied Vietnamese artisans the opportunity to make their own judgments about their history and their contemporary world, including ties to conflict of a political or social nature that could interfere with U.S. interests in Southeast Asia. Instead, conflating the artisans with nature and timelessness helped Americans locate their craft in a cultural binary that circumscribed its significance in tradition, nature, and beauty.44 Pictorially, the theme surfaced in Free World (Figure 4.1). On the back cover of an issue for 1960,45 a color photograph of “window washing in New York” celebrated the city under a soft blue sky punctuated by skyscraper corporate office buildings made of industrial materials and technologies towering above Park Avenue’s busy

Figure 4.1 Back cover, Window Washing in New York, Free World 9, no. 2 (1960), and front cover, Vietnam Handicraft Center, Free World 9, no. 3 (1960).

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vehicular and pedestrian traffic. In the foreground, a tiny window washer hangs from Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Lever House, 1952, located at 53rd and Park Avenue. This corporate headquarters for a soap company was the second building in the city to feature an international modern-style, sealed-glass, curtain wall exterior. At 52nd and Park Avenue, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson’s Seagram Building, 1958, towered just outside the picture frame, balanced on pillars from which it rose symmetrically, clad in bronze and glass. Further down the street buildings sport modern austere styles or they rise in glass, stone, and concrete, ornamented with references to great historical eras of architecture. This was Park Avenue serving as home to international and multinational corporations in the center of America’s urban hub of commerce, a place that was attracting the newest modern architecture style to embody these corporations’ messages about the American economy and its place in the world—progress, power, and optimism. Free World followed this issue with a front cover for the next one featuring Vietnamese modernity in Saigon, expressed as four pretty young women posing inside the gallery and shop for the Handicraft Center in Saigon. Wearing a modernized version of the traditional Ao Dai garment with a high collar, long sleeves, and tight-fitting bodice, each woman sits or stands on the main staircase. Together, the fabrics of their garments course down the stairs as a confluence of shiny blue, pink, white, yellow, and gray silk. These fabrics from the nation’s contemporary looms represented efforts to combine ancient crafts with new production methods and marketing aimed at tourists and Westerners.46 In addition to the connotation of a colored river of silk, other references to nature surround the women—a sculpture of temple dragons from which enormous ivory tusks erupt, and silk screens conveying delicate images of plant life. Together, the back cover of Free World, hailing busy American urban modern architecture, economy and society, and the front cover of the next issue, promoting tradition in Vietnamese textiles and clothing modified for contemporary Vietnamese and Western if not American consumption broadcast from Saigon, offered two dimensions of an American view of a beneficent modernity linking geographies through capitalist trade. The one advanced unimpeded, reaching for the sky as its economic network expanded across the international Free World. The other reiterated modernism as a craft commodity conflating tradition, centuries-old materials, and slightly modified fashions, femininity, and nature.

Reclaiming craft for the nation: Hanoi’s Vietnamese Handicrafts Vietnamese Handicrafts, published in Hanoi during 1959, offered an Englishlanguage translation of a slim book that appeared in French the previous year. In artisans and their craft in the North it perceived the cultural core of an authentic Vietnamese nation that is incomplete without reunifying with the South, and it blamed the United States for ruining crafts there. The book contends that Vietnamese craft originated in and remains an integral part of an agrarian way of life associated with peasant farmers. These farmers

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“carried on a supplementary craft to increase their incomes or provide their families with household goods. Thus, men periodically forsook the plough for the plane, the trowel for weaving baskets. Women wove, spun or prepared food products.”47 The observation that craft arose from the interstices of farming was not new. Around the same time, News from Viet Nam, published by the embassy for South Vietnam in Washington, D.C., offered a similar account of craft and associated peasant artisans with devotion to family, home, and village.48 Still, in the context of civil war and its competing ideas about who and what constitutes Vietnam, Vietnamese Handicrafts asserted that the nation’s way of life and culture arose in the North, not in the South, and not from Western aid or modernity. Moreover, the book warned that preliminary work must be accomplished before craft can thrive once more. To this point, in promoting artisan collectives and cooperatives, Vietnamese Handicrafts may have seemed to support resettlement efforts in South Vietnam by emphasizing the need to reorganize craft production by craft and region.49 However, the book promoted this theme to distinguish North Vietnam’s political ideologies from South Vietnam’s and to widen the political gap between North Vietnam and the U.S. Mainly, the book treated craft as an industry not on the basis of technology, whether mechanized or not. Rather, it perceived craft as a tool for linking the political consciousness of the artisan to shared conditions for making craft and to the state. Through this framework, it claimed, craft will cede to the state’s agendas.50 In its report of 1957, the United States Senate’s Special Committee to Study the Foreign Aid Program ultimately hoped Americans could dispel criticism at home and abroad that associated its aid initiatives with colonialism in Southeast Asia. Too many people in Southeast Asia believe that “capitalism” and “colonialism” are synonymous and that both mean “exploitation.” A generation must pass and educational standards must be substantially raised before our friends in Southeast Asia will understand what Americans mean when they talk about free enterprise and a competitive system, and before they themselves can follow our private enterprise example.51

However, on its part, North Vietnam directly associated American capitalism and free enterprise with imperialism. Targeted for special criticism were Americans and other foreigners who ruined the nation’s craft industry. On this point, Vietnamese Handicrafts considered France especially guilty based on its “80 years of colonialist exploitation” in Southeast Asia.52 Also, the book linked Americans with “their henchman Ngo Dinh Diem” who intended to re-colonize crafts for purposes of “systematic economic control.”53 In serving as a mouthpiece for the government of North Vietnam, Vietnamese Handicrafts aimed to get rid of these malevolent forces and reclaim its agency: “The time of putting Vietnamese handicrafts into the power of foreign competition is now a thing of the past so far as the North is concerned. Our regime knows how to take care of the interests of our craftsmen.”54 Speaking less to South Vietnam and more directly to English-language American readers and their allies,

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Vietnamese Handicrafts encouraged the Vietnamese nation to reclaim its craft from “the power of foreign competition” specifically by doing away with the American-supported division of Vietnam at the 17th Parallel: Just as the Vietnamese people are one, their handicrafts form a single whole that completes itself. The North and South should, as common sense bids, exchange their raw materials just as they ought to help each other in the production and sale of goods and work together for the development of national industry and handicrafts, which are the basis of a genuinely independent economy.55

Furthermore, Vietnamese Handicrafts considered craft so powerful a native industry that, rid of a polluting American influence, craft would galvanize the nation through economic reconstruction, including by creating products for export throughout the communist world.56 Moreover, craft would transform the status of Vietnamese people from passive consumers to active craft makers and thus transform “consumer into producer towns and cities.”57 Ultimately, the book indigenized craft in a conflation of land, place (country and city), people, and nation. Interestingly, it considered craft so resilient it could come into contact with non-Vietnamese influences yet remain true to the national ethnicity of its makers: “The merit of our artisans lay in their understanding of the artistic genius of other peoples and use of foreign techniques without altering the Vietnamese character of their work.”58 North Vietnam and the U.S. opposed each other politically in the Cold War in Southeast Asia. Yet both nations were convinced they knew what Vietnam required for its sovereignty and political economy. Both professed that craft must engage the agrarian character of the Vietnamese nation and that artisans belonged there, too, rooted to place and the materials that place supplies. On the other hand, for North Vietnam, these aspects of craft justified a mission to unify Vietnam as one nation extending north and south along the entire peninsula. Throughout, the North Vietnamese government would supervise the maintenance of traditions of artisanry for the benefit of the Vietnamese at home and champion a national economy independent of American interference.

Marking success in South Vietnam: Modernization and mobility Publications associated with South Vietnam invited craft to intersect with machine manufacture and the aspirations of a modernizing nation. This is evident in News from Viet Nam reports, issued in serial, from the Embassy of Viet Nam in Washington, D.C. To be sure, South Vietnam lauded aspects of the program RWA was administering, such as Wright’s travel to Vietnam to determine what craft from there merited export.59 Also, the publication reported on RWA supplying technicians to the Center of Artisan Development in Gia Dinh, an industrial area adjacent to Saigon that aspired to “develop the artisan trade and its markets at

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home and abroad.”60 The same publication reported that the Saigon government accepted three craft aid programs that RWA organized: “an export project, a plan to boost tourist consumption, and the establishment of a weaving center.”61 On the other hand, News from Viet Nam focused on craft as a component of its nation’s industries, and it highlighted South Vietnam’s agency more readily than Americans were wont to do. In another departure from American communications, the publication stressed not RWA’s authority but the South Vietnamese government’s ability to establish and oversee craft programs. As a result of a recently signed presidential order, a craft development center is to be established in Saigon. The center will be an autonomous public organization with a legal entity. Its functions are: to promote craftsmanship; to encourage production of new commodities for export; to provide technical assistance; to provide loans on easy terms; to secure markets; to help craft centers recruit graduates of schools of crafts and applied arts and to assist these students in setting up craft centers. The management of the Craft Development Center is entrusted to a board appointed by the President of the Republic. It is made up of delegates of the Department of National Economy, Finance, the National Bank, and craft and artistic circles. The Center’s Director will be appointed by the President of the Republic upon the recommendation of the management board.62

In this passage, the newsletter omits mentioning RWA’s efforts in Saigon. Instead, it stresses how the South Vietnamese government proceeded to organize new craft endeavors. Nor did News from Viet Nam promote what mattered to North Vietnam, such as a re-united Vietnam as a “single whole that completes itself ” and generates “a genuinely independent economy” autonomous of “the power of foreign competition.”63 Instead of focusing on citizen-collectives making craft, the passage emphasizes a government led by the president who serves as the head of the board for the Handicraft Development Center. While it does not disparage American aid, neither does it identify or credit it. Stressing the participation of refugee artisans in building a free nation also set South Vietnam apart from the U.S. and North Vietnam. News from Viet Nam highlighted refugees’ potential to own a home and land. In comparison to Wright claiming that without American aid, helpless refugees risked having no homes, jobs, or futures,64 News from Viet Nam asserted that refugees were integrating into a free nation and making rapid gains on their own initiative. Techniques in Vietnamese Handicraft, published in Saigon, associated artisans with freedom in modern Vietnam and it also made the more expansive claim that “craftsmen have always been free in this country.”65 In contrast to North Vietnam blaming the U.S. and France for ruining Vietnamese craft, the Economic Development of the Republic of Vietnam, also published in Saigon, blamed the ruin and vanishing of “the village crafts, which used to be so flourishing” on the “scorched earth” policy of the Viet Minh.66 Perhaps in response to these claims, News from Viet Nam published stories about mat

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making, embroidery, and bamboo weaving in South Vietnam that is based on parables accounting for their origins in circumstances showing how the Vietnamese people overcame struggles during the reign of wise leaders.67 Also, it shared tales of refugees succeeding thanks to each other, rather than from American beneficence.68 Furthermore, South Vietnam perceived migration from north to south as a foundational moment of its own nation-building, one it would feature on national stamps during the late 1950s.69 Of related interest are some similarities and differences in American and South Vietnamese references to refugee artisans. The article in Interiors portrayed the basketmaker as an anonymous individual making craft in a space that amplified his isolation yet allowed him to transform raw materials into works of craft. News from Viet Nam highlighted natural resources for making craft, too. Bui Van Luong, the South Vietnamese general commissioner for agricultural development, said that as part of resettling refugees from the North along with “the original inhabitants of the provinces of the Delta and the Center” in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, for the half of the year when they did not work in agriculture “the government felt that they should learn a craft which would require the use of raw materials found near their homes such as bamboo, rattan, etc.”70 Nevertheless, South Vietnamese publications emphasized refugees making crafts in social settings associated with an economic mobility they had some control in directing. A good example comes from a South Vietnamese account of Cai-San, “the first attempt of a permanent resettlement of refugees on the land.”71 Located about ninety miles south of Saigon, Cai-San’s combination program of resettlement and land reform integrated “50,000 refugees from the communist North” with “20,000 former inhabitants of the region.” Together, these citizens reclaimed ostensibly abandoned land for farming and living. South Vietnam planned to add an estimated 50,000 additional refugees in the future.72 The New York Times opined that, supported by the Rehabilitation Division of USOM, Cai-San was considered a major success.73 In comparison to the photograph of the isolated basketmaker in a refugee camp (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.1), a photograph from Cai-San promotes basketmakers’ collective presence (see Chapter 3, Figure 3.3). Its deeper perspective takes in a simply constructed building where nuclear and extended family harmony balance gendered and generational tasks: “while husbands are working hard under the hot sun,” “at home the grand mothers are taking care of the little children, and the young wives with their dexterous fingers are making hats and baskets.”74 From the accompanying text readers also learn that some husbands worked the land manually, at least at first: “For many workers no machine is better than two robust arms. Feet clenched in clod, with shovel in hand, which manner is the same for centuries, these peasants strive to discipline earth and water.”75 Gradually, the South Vietnamese government gave these men tractors: “Modernizing: powerful tractor companies . . . battalions of ploughs are ready to multiply the human efforts and restore the earth to give it fullness.”76 Along with tractors, in Cai-San the South Vietnamese government contracted with each family for a house and land, thus fostering “the further possibility of [their] becoming an independent land owner

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by means of [their] own hard work.”77 The social context, built environment, social harmony in extended families balancing gendered work tasks, and the possibility of these families owning a house and land all bespoke a measure of progress and what South Vietnam referred to as modernism for refugees who became residents of Cai-San. These themes of ownership, agency, family, and economic stability transposed refugees’ prior physical mobility as migrants into the promise of not simply economic and social ascendance but an ascendance into modernity that would follow from living as farmers and artisans whose labor helped to construct South Vietnam into a “modern Vietnam.”78 The case was being made that to lift up the family unit was to elevate the nation in its progress to a modern nation state. Officials in South Vietnam associated artisans’ efforts with nation-building, too. H. E. Tran Ngoc Lien, commissioner general for cooperatives and agricultural credit, attributed “cooperation” to the peasantry and reported on the existence of fifty-six craft cooperatives and 5,696 handicraft families.79 Lien associated cooperation as a social relation that involves brotherhood, with cooperatives. In underdeveloped countries the economic and the social aspects are always closely linked together. For Viet Nam, especially after the long war, it is essential to reinforce the basic social substructure prior to any endeavor for economic expansion. In other words, it is essential to consolidate the producers’ individual action before initiating any collective development action.80

Lien explains that rural life consists of close-knit communities enlarging to become “intercommunal and interprovincial,” approaching “a national scope.”81 He also asserts that “cooperatives are regular schools of civics where our people acquaint themselves with the citizen’s duties, with the sense of national discipline and with group action and responsibilities as well.”82 Lien thought of cooperatives as social and economic units that distribute information to people as part of an inclusive coalition scaling up to the nation as its largest manifestation. If in some respects the notion of the cooperative resonated with ideas North Vietnam was publishing about craft to English-language readers, what South Vietnam omitted in its English-language narratives of craft were the former’s references to political consciousness and state-controlled industry. To this point, President Diem spoke about economic growth, not the “social substructure,” and Diem cited both Japan and the U.S. as models. News from Viet Nam reported that Diem praised “the powerful industrialization of the United States which is able to produce everything that is needed. The example of this great country shows that the improvement of the standard [sic] of living of our fellow countrymen depends on industrialization.”83 In a break with some of the American and United Nations-related rhetoric about Vietnamese craft, the newsletter even quoted Diem pointing artisans toward, not away from, industrial methods. Let me take this opportunity of referring to the craftsmen of the country for whom the Government has so much regard. We are trying to find every possible

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The Politics of Vietnamese Craft way to help you, economically and technically. But let me give you some friendly advice. Keep up with progress, take the initiative, do not let yourselves be slaves to systems that are outmoded and behind the times, modernize your production methods and follow the example of the Japanese who are forever trying to step up production by new means.84

Diem’s references to economic and technical progress, innovation, and advanced production methods, including mechanical methods, evoked the modernization of weaving and textile industries with which the U.S. and Japan were familiar. On top of this, efforts were being made to industrialize weaving in South Vietnam. There, as News from Viet Nam reported, contracted aid workers were “setting up, in refugee villages, small weaving plants to provide employment for highly skilled weavers from the North. These people are from areas which specialized in textile production and many of the weavers have remained together in Free Viet Nam providing an excellent nucleus for a new textile industry in the South.”85 The new cooperative for refugee weavers that opened at the Tan Mai Resettlement Center in Bien Hoa featured machinery such as an electric generator to support weaving.86 USOM even anticipated that textile production could soon shift from manual labor to machines, “when electric power is connected to the refugee centers. The looms will be able to produce silk, rayon and cotton textiles and can be converted from one type to another according to variations in market demand.”87 In combination with mechanization, improving tools and standardizing materials would advance skill and increase productivity in craft.88 Other features of modern weaving and textile production would leverage artisans’ skills and agency. These refugees were professional weavers in the North of Viet-Nam and are wellqualified to do the work which is being planned. Moreover, they have shown themselves capable of taking initiatives on their own: they have already set up a group among themselves which installed workshops for weaving, and thus [have] become self-supporting.89

In these glimpses of aspirations for a weaving industry, South Vietnam appears to shift some craft fabrication methods from manual labor to mechanization while increasing the scale of production. References to equipment and contracted personnel associated with USOM indicates that American forces if not personnel associated with Wright’s program participated. Yet, Wright elided mechanization and technical progress for artisans in order to accentuate the affect of their craft for Americans. Nor does his program’s communications lay emphasis on the autonomy of the artisan, individually or collectively. South Vietnam dispatched a subtle critique on this last point. In the journal Asian Culture, author Le Khoa, in referring to American craft and technical aid, complained of “defects” such as difficulty in getting machinery and materials.90 Also, the author asked for professional experts, as well as machines and materials, and for the withdrawal of such experts when the task is done and may be turned

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over to local experts.91 As if anticipating this stance, News from Viet Nam proclaimed that weavers from the North would eventually gain control of their own production, not to eschew foreign contact, rather, to find their own success in the world through export.92 If they are properly aided, these craftsmen will be able to recreate the weaving industry in Free Viet-Nam. Their production will enable us to decrease our imports in foreign material. The quality of Vietnamese materials has always been appreciated. At New York Vietnamese satin attracted as much attention as handcraft products coming from other Far Eastern countries. It is thus to be hoped that Vietnamese materials will be successful in the foreign market.93

According to Edward Miller, Diem was motivated by a French-based notion of Personalism upon which he drew to establish an anti-communist, anti-colonial Vietnam.94 Diem selected from tradition elements to abet South Vietnam’s development as a modern nation,95 while he also conceived of the nation as a “fusion of the best of ‘the East’ and ‘the West.’ ”96 Furthermore, Miller attributes a wiliness to Diem’s conception of Vietnam that he explains through contemporary scholar Xiaomei Chen’s ideas about Occidentalism. Chiefly, Asia appropriates what it likes from its Western Other “even after being appropriated and constructed by Western Others.”97 The sentiment may have resonated in South Vietnam. There, the Embassy of Viet Nam and the South Vietnam government issued subtle critiques about American aid in serial publications. Also, although contracted American and Japanese specialists aimed to accommodate Vietnamese craft to American taste, for example, based on past familiarity with exporting craft to France, it may have been that Vietnamese officials and artisans anticipated what Americans would want in terms of craft items and their export, and they steered development in that direction. In the scenario of silks and satins winning success in foreign markets, pathways of mobility and modernization for South Vietnam converged. One former pathway of mobility saw northerners migrate south. Now, a modernizing textile industry in the South advanced the mobility of Vietnamese craft internationally.98 Reporters covering this development omitted that aid from the American craft program and perhaps American materials contributed to its success. Consequently, the international mobility of textiles indexed new economic relations linking South Vietnam and the world, not necessarily mediated by American interventions. As markers of economic success, these trajectories foreground the agency of South Vietnam in claiming authorship of craft, distributing craft to international destinations, and forging its own relationships with the world. A series of articles about craft published in Saigon supported these themes. Each discussion focused on the detailed work of handicraftsmen—tinmen, goldsmiths and jewelers, and coppersmiths,99 lacquerers,100 votive paper makers,101 mat weavers and blinds makers,102 and those who worked with inlay, and made sculpture in stone,103 demonstrating how Vietnamese people use craft and that it appealed to tourists, too. To be sure, the series linked the Vietnamese craft industry

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to an American market simply by appearing in the English-language Times of Viet Nam Magazine published in Saigon. Yet, the articles supported themes of South Vietnamese autonomy by withholding credit to the American craft aid program and by linking historical references and discussions about Vietnamese craft tradition to observations about its contemporary practice and excluding references to American interventions. South Vietnam’s shift away from acknowledging direct links to American craft aid surfaced elsewhere, too. As South Vietnam was putting plans in motion to achieve its aspirations for craft, in the U.S. the San Francisco Museum of Art opened “Art in Asia and the West, dedicated to UNESCO and its project of encouraging mutual appreciation of the cultural values of Asia and the West.”104 The exhibition highlighted “artists in the great cities of Asia turn[ing] to Western art centers like Paris, London and New York in the endeavor to find their place within the framework of the international art movements of today.”105 However, in contrast to “turning to Western art centers,” in some of its publications about craft South Vietnam imagined other circulations. In praising an installation of craft at an International Fair in Rangoon, now Yangon in Myanmar, the Times of Viet Nam highlighted the wares’ combination of modern design and design methods with bamboo, rattan, and wood,106 and the newspaper praised “the special attention of the Vietnamese Government during the last five years [to] handicrafts in Vietnam” in rendering it an organized industry.107 Leaving aside mention of American aid, South Vietnam narrated its national development as an achievement in craft, intra-Asia. Through these publications circulating beyond their national borders, North Vietnam and South Vietnam treated craft as an occasion to address the American presence in Southeast Asia. Taking into account American commentary, too, all three nations narrated a vision of craft as an expression of national identity, heritage, and economy, and they underscored its relationship to modernity, too. Together, their commentary constituted “a site of struggle”108 on topics such as the extent to which Vietnamese craft fabrication should modernize. That struggle also involved nation-centric narratives having additional complexity. According to Elkind, Cai-San was not a shining success, given its anti-refugee and antigovernment violence.109 Refugees learned they had to purchase the land they were promised there and that they had already worked,110 and violence and instability diminished hopes of the early promise of resettlement there.111 The gap between representations of harmonious living conditions that a photograph of artisans conveyed and the reality of their experience calls into question the narratives promoted by images of refugee life aimed at English-speaking if not American audiences.

Chapter 5 F R OM S A LVAG I N G T O M E R C HA N D I SI N G : E X H I B I T I N G V I E T NA M E SE C R A F T F O R A M E R IC A N C O N SUM E R S

Introduction In mobilizing Vietnamese craft to cross national borders and seek markets along the American domestic front of the Cold War, the American craft aid program depended on the exhibition of Vietnamese craft to provide a means of achieving this goal. Mobilization refers to something being put into action for military or national significance. These exhibitions also mobilized American awareness of Vietnam as a nation and a place from where interesting artifacts originated. However, Wright and his colleagues did not integrate examples with American or European craft, decorative arts, or consumer goods. Although many works of craft that Americans brought to the U.S. to exhibit could claim lineages in Vietnamese, Chinese, Cambodian, Japanese, French, and American culture, none of the exhibitions explored this theme. On the other hand, some of Wright’s involvement with Japan impacted RWA’s presentation of Vietnamese craft in the U.S. This was a delicate matter because during World War II, Japan occupied Vietnam. After the war the U.S. supported Japan’s technological development, the State Department facilitated cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Japan, and American museum and popular culture fostered American interest in Japanese artifacts based on their connotations of spirituality, attention to nature, integration of craft and design, and creation by anonymous folk as well as masters—attributes that would be associated with Vietnamese craft. Japan even served as Wright’s team’s point of departure for their initial survey trip throughout Southeast Asia. In the U.S., Wright used objects from Japan to furnish a room at the Brooklyn Museum, and he would return to Japan as a craft and design advisor.

Saigon Chamber of Commerce, 1956 By 1958, the American Women’s Association of Saigon promoted Vietnamese craft to American tourists and the families of American government workers. Their recommendations included ceramics made at Bien Hoa, lacquer from Thu Dau 85

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Mot, and items available in Saigon craft stores, including at the Handicraft Development Center that RWA helped to establish that year.1 Two years earlier, Wright and a small team had visited Saigon and other places in Vietnam to study the craft made there. Lawrence Morrison, chief of industry, Division of Mining for USOM, 1955–7, arranged their visit. Wright, Joset Walker, and Ramy Alexander arrived in Saigon on January 17, 1956. Wright would leave on January 22, and his team on January 24.2 Upon their arrival, they received a briefing and then they attended an exhibition of handicraft organized by the Chamber of Commerce.3 USOM photographs show pottery arranged on a large central table surrounded by shelves displaying vases, baskets, textiles, and lacquer items. Directly behind these items, approximately twenty black-and-white photographs depicted artisans making craft. Although collectively they attested to the artisans’ skills and the diversity of items they could make, the craft shown in the photographs did not correspond to any specific works of craft placed nearby. In August, the Interiors article detailing their survey trip to Southeast Asia included a small image of Wright and his team alongside Vietnamese officials examining lacquerware displayed at the Chamber of Commerce. Although it depicts some photographs of artisans placed above the craft, it leaves out many others that were on view, including the photograph of the basketmaker that served as the first page of the Interiors article, which is visible above and to the right of Joset Walker in the uncropped original photograph (Figure 5.1).4 By cropping the image to home in on Wright and his colleagues, visually, the published photograph iterates the purpose of their trip—to examine craft expertly, assessing its quality

Figure 5.1 Wright and his team alongside Vietnamese officials examining lacquerware displayed at the Chamber of Commerce in Saigon, Vietnam Folder, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

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and suitability for production for export by studying examples, and conferring with one another and with Vietnamese officials. To this point, Morrison reported that the exhibition in Saigon enabled the Americans to efficiently select items having export possibilities and reject others that were “unattractive.”5 The event also facilitated the team networking with “approximately 300 businessmen, government people, and press representatives,” and Wright gave an illustrated slide talk, too.6 In South Vietnam the team met with Morrison, USOM Director Leland Barrows, United States Ambassador to South Vietnam, G. Frederick Reinhardt, and the Vietnamese Minister of Industry and the Governor of Bien Hoa.7 Sites of craft production the team visited served them as points of purchase. As they toured artisan activity, they obtained “pottery, porcelain, sculpture, lacquer ware, baskets, textiles, embroidery, hats, shoes, and a host of novelties,” either “on the spot when possible and in other cases they placed orders for future delivery.”8 As they explored these items, the team reflected on circulating craft to the U.S. and identified problems in its worthiness and availability. They considered a modest export trade for “inexpensive Chinese porcelain, dinnerware and specially textiles” along with lacquer “giftware, tableware and furniture”; however, they realized that costs must be contained.9 The Americans felt a bit overwhelmed in imagining an export project involving South Vietnam achieving success. According to Morrison, even thinking about overseeing craft production for local use likely exceeded the experience and perhaps the competence of local artisans and managers.10 Nevertheless, ultimately, RWA’s final report on the trip would strike a positive note. It recognized a local demand for craft caused by Vietnam’s inability to manufacture goods to satisfy the nation’s future needs. “HANDCRAFTS ARE THE INDUSTRY OF THE REGION,” the report proclaimed in capital letters, and it suggested that improvements in design and production would improve the standard of living there.11 Optimistically, the report concluded that improvements in styling also would likely position craft to sell well in the U.S.12

Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, New York Coliseum, 1956 Exhibitions of Vietnamese craft held in the United States during 1956 and 1958 emphasized trade in part because they occurred in the midtown New York Coliseum, a new space intended to foster international imports.13 Previously, foreign goods had circulated from abroad to the U.S. as part of the Marshall Plan shoring up foreign economies to avoid financial depressions and the concomitant rise of totalitarian governments in Europe.14 However, Americans had reason to question the efficacy of a similar program for South Vietnam. Director of the ICA, John Hollister, stated that a key feature of the Marshall Plan’s method—give European nations money to use in purchasing goods from the U.S. to revitalize their economies and trade and jumpstart their industries—wouldn’t work in “underdeveloped areas of the world.”15 Moreover, Europe belonged to the Free World, whereas “underdeveloped areas” comprised already unfree or

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“enslaved” regions or those vulnerable to incorporation in the communist world.16 Furthermore, in Southeast Asia, especially during President Eisenhower’s second term, 1957–61, American economic aid programs aimed to increase private support, as the U.S. government hoped private capital would fund development abroad.17 Correspondingly, the participation of non-government actors would strengthen American national security by thwarting communist advances by way of the “economic sphere.”18 Despite ambivalence about the success that governmentsponsored aid might have in Southeast Asia and the push to anchor and fund aid programs in the private sector, nations where ICA craft aid programs operated received significant aid from the U.S. Held June 25–9, 1956, the International Housewares Show hosted 178 firms in New York City’s new Coliseum. There, the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit gave RWA an opportunity to present Vietnamese craft to American merchandisers, obtain information about their interests and needs, and convince the ICA to continue contracting with RWA. The event followed from an amendment to RWA’s initial contract with the ICA that provided for a New York exhibition of craft. Given the strategic role an exhibition of these items would play in determining whether the aid program warranted continued support from the State Department, the ICA approved the exhibition to present items from all the nations RWA visited.19 The ICA rationalized its support as necessary to obtain the “comprehensive marketing evaluation of Far Eastern products” that would decide which aid projects continued.20 In the fall of 1955, as Wright and his team embarked for Southeast Asia, they aimed to collect works of craft based on their “intrinsic design” and the economic needs of the particular nation.21 The ICA would cover the “costs of designing, planning, constructing, arranging, and repacking [a craft] exhibition together with announcements, consultations, interviews, and evaluation of trade comment.”22 During the spring of 1956, U.S. Navy ships transported craft items from Southeast Asia to New York City, including from Saigon.23 In late June, the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development’s “tent-like enclosure” presenting craft24 took its place among the housewares exhibits “expected to attract 15,000 buyers—all from trade.”25 In bringing Vietnamese craft to the U.S., RWA also followed the practice of the Good Design exhibitions presenting work first to retail buyers in trade expositions before making items available in department stores. According to RWA’s report, the exhibition became a popular feature of the International Housewares Show.26 The word rehabilitation in the title of the exhibition suggested that something or someone had been harmed and needed to be restored. However, the aim of the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit was to present the knowledge Wright and his team gained in surveying craft in Vietnam and other nations. It offered no indication that ideas, observations, or comments from insiders were represented. Craft, too, served as a form of knowledge—about fabrication, materials, and styles that were available at present—and this information would be acted upon by the Americans invited to examine it. Any feedback that was going to occur was not between the Americans and collaborating Vietnamese artisans, rather, it was between the Americans and American leaders in merchandising and retail and, next, their

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customers. To be sure, publicity about the exhibition said the craft aid program aimed to educate natives and “raise their standard of living by creating an American market for their products.”27 Yet, the exhibition lay emphasis on identifying Americans who could import and distribute the craft in the U.S. and it elicited their information as responses to questionnaires. The craft aid project treated the information as feedback for shaping the design and fabrication of “those products and areas for which there are realistic expectations of demand in local and export markets and which have been tested by design evaluation and market opinion.”28 Wright committed to taking a “hardhearted business approach” that set the exhibition apart from previous U.S. sponsored aid abroad,29 and he was savvy about the benefits of presenting craft at the Coliseum. The venue served as a “customs bonded warehouse area”30 where “goods may also be displayed under all the advantages of a premier trade show.”31 Therefore, in launching the results of the Southeast Asian tour there, RWA avoided the costs of importing craft to other locations in the U.S. In addition to saving money and diminishing red tape significantly, this strategy afforded RWA the “freedom to try out the market potentials of new or unusual products.”32 RWA capitalized on this freedom by taking a creative approach to presenting craft. Items displayed in the Coliseum were not intended for sale but to entice representatives to order them for retail and, more specifically, to share why they would or would not be so moved to place these orders.33 Hollister noted that the presentation was developed to “win the attention of members of the trade.”34 Hollister intuited correspondence between how craft was presented at the Coliseum and a contemporary strategy in merchandising. According to Don Wallance, to ensure the existence of a healthy market for “well-designed and wellmade products for modern living,”35 industrial designers must market them using “creative merchandising methods and informed and sympathetic sales people.”36 Wallance wrote that the strategy came down to “creative merchandising” on a mass level, like the: new ‘contemporary’ specialty shops, a direct outgrowth of the ‘good design movement.’ These small shops have performed a pioneering role in the promotion and display of well-designed modern home furnishings. Their influence is increasingly evident in department stores and other channels of mass distribution.37

Into this strategy Wright bundled his hopes that the craft aid program would last: “Government programs come and go. I hope my program has more vitality because it connects the customer here with a producer over there.”38 He realized the craft his team surveyed was not yet “acceptable in design and quality” to warrant promotion in department stores.39 In the meantime, however, in accepting an offer to use 6,000 square feet free of charge in the Coliseum, RWA developed a presentation that conjured the aura of a foreign place having potential allure to Americans. In other words, he drew upon contemporary presentation and retailing methods to market the craft in ways that resonated qualities of contemporary American craft yet also leveraged geographic and ethnic difference following from the presentation.

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RWA exhibited craft in a pavilion consisting of “two large vinyl plastic tents” enclosing a bazaar (see Figures 5.2, 5.3, 5.4). The tents aimed to set forth craft as “oriental objects in an atmosphere natural to them, which would communicate the spirit of the places where they were collected” and point to where they are sold in Southeast Asia.40 These tents conjured a non-Western if not also pre-modern (from the West’s perspective) location where Houseware attendees could act as “cosmopolitans [who] tend to want to immerse themselves in other cultures, or in any case be free to do so.”41 Fleishman suggests Wright associated “oriental” craft with a place where it existed for consumption, a place that also alluded to where it was made and from where he and his team collected it. A related implication is that the tents provided “an atmosphere natural to them” that differed in “spirit” from mid-twentiethcentury America, which presumably offered an unnatural context or one that might not reflect the authentic indigeneity of Southeast Asian craft, including its sites of distribution. The pavilion addressed these contexts for craft by conjuring an environment intended to attract the curiosity of American “widespread interest in the alien and unusual”42 and simulate “an atmosphere natural to . . . oriental objects”; in other words, augment their authenticity by showing how they belonged in a native place. Fleishman further observed that by “carefully placing the pottery, metalwork, and other small objects on low tables, the designers caught the predominantly horizontal spirit of an oriental trading place without being literal.”43 Fleishman indicates that “oriental objects” belong not only in sites where artisans made them but also in places where merchandisers arranged them for customers to see and handle. The task of constructing this site went to two young East Coast designers who brought international experience to designing the pavilion. Romaldo Giurgola, who taught at the University of Pennsylvania, was born in Italy and had worked there as a designer. He served as the director of Interiors magazine with Roberto Mango.44 Paul J. Mitarachi trained at Harvard and then he designed exhibition installations in the U.S. and El Salvador. Although it is likely that neither Giurgola nor Mitarachi had visited Southeast Asia, perhaps each man’s interest in the traditions of built environments having been located outside North America helped them evoke “an oriental trading place” expressing “the atmosphere of an oriental bazaar.”45 To express this atmosphere, the architects adapted features of an oriental bazaar into modern materials. Mainly, they calibrated how to balance sleek white plasticity commensurate with the materiality and sheen of modern international design in corporate Manhattan with a structure consisting of poles and cloth. Metal scaffolding supported cantilevered sheets of vinyl along the sides and looping bands as roofing to effect a semi-enclosed space emphasizing interior display (Figure 5.2). Inside, in groups distinguished by nation, craft appeared on platforms, walls, and ceiling, albeit arranged with some freedom but without the “random clutter of the conventional bazaar”46 (Figures 5.3, 5.4). Elevation and birds-eye-view drawings show that generous space marked by the edges of platforms and other museum furniture separated the display for each

Figure 5.2 Pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photograph credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

Figure 5.3 An elevation drawing of the pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi, featuring photographs of two craft items superimposed on the drawing, for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 69. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

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Figure 5.4 A birds-eye-view drawing of the interior pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 72. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

nation. These drawings also reveal a gridded floor, which further avoids “random clutter” by mapping the installation according to geometric plan. Replicating an environment that appeared cluttered would have gone against Russel and Mary Wright’s advice in their book about organizing household items and it could have put off Americans who were being persuaded to shop in department stores that reified goods as fetishes by spectacularizing their display and experiencing works of art and craft in white cube environments. Also, clutter may have connoted the disorderly confusion of refugee centers crowding South Vietnam. Other features indicate that the nation’s displays were carefully unified. The exhibition space was “divided visually with a single bold color as background for each of the five nations, and with mats and fabrics hung on the frames and partitions.”47 Wright suggested the craft of each nation was unique, although it had gone unnoticed commercially,48 and he offered no explanation why the exhibition combined craft from the nations it did and not others. The presentation also conveyed careful organization in so far as it was decided that the contents of the two tents would perform different yet complementary purposes. Whereas one of the tents displayed craft, the other housed “conferences with various trade groups” and it served as the interface between RWA and invited representatives of American business and commerce. There, these representatives watched “regional survey movies,” including “6,000 ft. colored 16 mm movies and slides, [and an] 18 minute movie of Vietnam” that Wright made during the survey trip to Southeast Asia.49 For the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, RWA and the ICA contacted department store and retail managers “best qualified

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by their experience and foresight to give suggestions on general policies and on methods of distribution and of development.”50 Those solicited specialized in hats, jewelry, textiles, baskets, lamps, mats, wall coverings, or giftware. RWA also wrote to some journals, such as American Textiles, to the head of Thaibok Fabrics Ltd., and to other venues located in New York City. They contacted major retailers there, too.51 RWA saw an advantage in bringing American department store executives and managers of import–export companies into the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit so they could assess its craft and offer assistance with merchandising and distribution more rapidly than other approaches might achieve.52 Among the questionnaires RWA distributed to them was one asking for advice on the appeal for sales.53 Another inquired if after viewing the craft merchandisers would consider “running a store promotion on Far Eastern products.”54 With the face-to-face contact, RWA could distribute and collect questionnaires while responding to questions and providing additional information immediately. RWA was aware that questionnaires already featured in design and merchandising circles. Retailing Daily sent questionnaires to Good Design exhibitors, inquiring which of their items sold well.55 Together, the content of the tents addressed mobility. The bazaar presented items in a loose simulation of their indigenous place of exchange and it connoted somewhere foreign to the U.S. as the place where they were made and had traveled for exchange, too. The other tent conveyed an aspiration to circulate craft via new transnational trade pathways that American merchandisers and distributors would map. In referencing RWA’s travel, the movies and slides also promoted mobility in the service of a craft trade. Additionally, the design of both tents portended mobility; the “tent-like enclosure made of white vinyl strips and scaffolding . . . could be easily moved or replaced in the event of a road tour.”56 Furthermore, the portability of the exhibition confirmed that Americans were expanding their role in commodifying foreign things to merchandise at home. To be sure, by joining Vietnamese craft with the craft of other Southeast Asian nations inside the Coliseum, the bazaar served the theme of a region needing to be rehabilitated, perhaps from decolonization processes, refugees, and civil war. At the same time, the installation deflected American anxieties of the Cold War by affording “a unique experience for members of the trade.”57 That experience underscored attendees’ likely expectation that exhibits in the Coliseum would amount to “show business,”58 that is, a spectacular presentation of commodities. The press helped the exhibition make good on this by publicizing a pretty young white woman modeling the bamboo hat of a Moi warrior (Figure 5.5).59 What also gave the venue a veneer of “show business” was the glamour of the Coliseum in its newness and modernity. Press for the International Housewares Show acclaimed the two-month-old venue’s enormous size and number of elevators, state-of-theart lighting and air conditioning, and its quantity of infrastructure hook ups and generous seating space. Together, these features superbly equipped the Coliseum to facilitate the display of international merchandise to circulate into and beyond New York City.

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Figure 5.5 A young woman modeling the bamboo hat of a Moi warrior, “Coliseum Basket Belle,” New York World-Telegram, June 26, 1956, Section 2, page 1, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

In contrast, its exterior amounted to a somewhat unremarkable international modern profile despite the reference its name made to the magnificent engineering feat of ancient Imperial Rome. To be sure, a writer for Time hinted that the Coliseum qualified as “oriental.” This “Temple for Mecca,”60 with “Mecca” being a

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Western transliteration of the Arabic “Makkah,” called to mind large numbers of people meeting along routes of pilgrimage and trade. Yet, images published in the mass print media mostly stayed away from depicting individual exhibits. Perhaps the Coliseum’s features and its aspiration to bring world products and international commerce to the U.S. seemed grander and more ambitious than photographs or drawings could capture. As a result, representations of the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit are limited to an article in Industrial Design featuring a tiny black-and-white photograph by Louis Reens, showing the exterior of one of the tents as a dark linear armature holding taut a series of rectangular, cantilevered white vinyl strips as walls and supporting longer versions that dip downward as a ceiling, and several drawings (see Figures 5.2, 5.3, 5.4). Interestingly, a photograph of the Cambodia display reveals some commonalities with contemporary American studio craft and Scandinavian craft exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City, namely, an emphasis on biomorphic organic and geometric forms, and natural materials, too (Figures 5.6, 5.7).61 Similar to the presentation of craft at that museum, in the Coliseum the materiality of foreign craft served as a counterpoint to the minimalist platforms, pedestals, and walls constructing the installation. These similarities suggest affinity

Figure 5.6 Cambodia display at the Coliseum, pavilion designed by Romaldo Giurgola and Paul Mitarachi for Russel Wright Associates, Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, International Housewares Show, in Avrom Fleishman, Industrial Design 3, no. 4 (August 1956), 69. Photographs credited to Louis Reens, p. 73.

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Figure 5.7 Installation view, Young Americans & Young Scandinavians exhibit, Museum of Contemporary Crafts, New York City, November 8, 1956, through January 6, 1957, American Craft Council. Courtesy of American Craft Council Library & Archives.

between “Oriental objects” and Western craft being vetted through the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City. On the other hand, the tent aspect, the presentation of some items in glass-top display cases, and disparity in the size and mass of items placed next to one another reads as an ethnographic presentation of foreign specimens in contrast to the sleeker display furniture, presentation of more items in the open, clustering of items sharing size and volume and sophisticated play of light familiar to craft installed in the Museum of Contemporary Craft. It holds this reading in comparison to another exhibition that offered Americans an opportunity to explore foreign craft in a bazaar setting—Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, April 31–September 21, 1955.62 The exhibition featured textiles with metal jewelry and objects, woven basketry, and bowls, and their installation—the work of Alexander Girard, who was then employed by Herman Miller to design fabrics —conjured “an imaginary bazaar or marketplace.”63 Visitors walked past layers of textiles, metalwork, and pottery alluding to stalls populating a bazaar. However, Girard organized the abundance of things and patterns along vertical or horizontal sightlines, and he composed them into larger, geometric shapes, too. Like the Arts of India exhibition, the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit thematically reinforced the identity of object and place contextualizing one another, in this case, a locality— Southeast Asia—that signified a place having a particular type of economic exchange—trade in a marketplace full of stalls, perhaps where bartering or other types of exchanges occurred. However, for both exhibitions, the granular feel of a bazaar was jettisoned for controlling the flow of visitor traffic and access to viewing expanses of textiles or looking at objects in the round, and for the Rehabilitation

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and Trade Development Exhibit, the density of items grouped into nation-based installations conjured a slightly more ethnographic feel than the installation of Indian craft at the Museum of Modern Art. Interestingly, by a few months the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit anticipated the Museum of Modern Art’s Textiles U.S.A., August 29–November 4, 1956, which displayed textiles outside of cases, hanging against walls and serving as vertical space dividers.64 The ICA’s relationship with Southeast Asia indexed what Edward Said labeled as “views [of] the Orient as something whose existence is not only displayed but has remained fixed in time and place for the West.”65 This seems ironic in so far as RWA spoke about adaptations in craft to appeal to Americans, which meant craft was not “fixed in time and place,” at least not until Americans came along to make their adaptations. However, the contrast of a modern, forward-advancing West to a static, less advanced Southeast Asia nourished American ideas about Vietnam’s need for salvage that was publicized in the title of the exhibition at the Coliseum and found expression in its theme of rehabilitating a region via trade, and it contributed, in Said’s terms, to a relationship “between a strong and a weak partner.”66 In this case, the strong partner reimagined craft from the weak partner as an accessory to its uses of modern materials and the organization of space, emphasized its identity craft as nation-based and needy, and situated its primary value in the capitalist economy of an industrialized nation expanding its markets and trade internationally, without hinting about what craft brought into those pathways had meant to its makers. Following Said’s work, Ali Behdad studied how Europeans worried about Middle Eastern societies and cultures that they believed required “intervention for historical preservation and cultural renewal”67 so these societies could avoid becoming “deteriorated and decadent civilization[s]”68 that are no longer vital. Anxiety about industrialization in Vietnam wiping out “native handicrafts” encouraged Americans to conflate the necessity of saving it while they commodified it. Speaking at the opening of the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. waxed on American economic development serving as a good custodian of tradition in Southeast Asia: “Economic development should not mean disrupting old cultures, uprooting people or throwing away the best heritage of the past centuries.”69 However, Virginia Dominguez’s description of the impulse to salvage explains the political dimensions of Lodge’s assertion. We assert the need to salvage, rescue, save, [and] preserve a series of objects or, we announce our fear of [their] destruction, our inability to trust others to take appropriate action and our sense of entitlement over the fate of the objects. Our best liberal intentions do little other than patronize those slated for cultural salvage.70

To be sure, Wright seemed to promote change. “I am impatient with all those Americans I encounter—those sentimentalists who are only interested in

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preserving oriental culture traditions, and art. These things are dead.”71 Nevertheless, Wright, RWA, and American business and commerce, and politicians and diplomats vocalized standards and expectations for Southeast Asian artisans using American criteria and chronological horizons: “[c]ulturally, we must help them to find and evolve their own kind of 20th century customs and expressions and adaption [sic] to our times.”72 In statements like these we can perceive the U.S. attributing a hopeful agency to Vietnamese craft, and critiques of the modern American life suggested Americans needed what the Vietnamese fabricated. As Wallance summarized, “Western man seems to have lost the capacity for making things beautifully as a matter of course. Industrial work, usually fragmentary and repetitive, does not provide the satisfaction and psychological balance that derives from making a complete object through personal skill.”73 With its association with makers skilled in fabricating specific types of objects with traditional materials, Vietnamese craft could rehabilitate postwar America in recovering from its own significant losses. At the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit opening,74 Lodge reiterated the importance of mutual security, reminding attendees of the necessity for sovereign nations to cooperate on friendly terms, and he perceived the exhibition as proof of this “intelligent cooperation among nations.”75 Nevertheless, not Southeast Asians but the American middle class are the people whom Lodge identified as the ultimate recipients of cooperation that mutual security diplomacy wrought: “these products help the American citizen and consumer. Among them he can find something new and valuable for his home, something graceful or ingenious which adds to the quality of his life.”76 A key outcome of the exhibition was its linking American foreign diplomacy and domestic consumption. RWA reported receiving 600 questionnaires indicating immediate interest in importing and retailing Vietnamese craft.77 From these, they identified more than fifty firms78 expressing a willingness to import mats (Lord & Taylor); hats (Lilly Daché, Neiman Marcus, Lord & Taylor, Lerner Shops, Inc.); lacquerware (Neiman Marcus, Pepsi-Cola); ceramics (B. Altman & Co., Gimbels, Pepsi-Cola); and fabrics (Thaibok, Far Eastern Fabrics); with possible cooperation with Claire McCardell and Jack Larsen for basketry.79 RWA would use information from the questionnaires to prepare proposals for individual nation projects in Southeast Asia. Also, Wright publicized the project in Interiors. References to the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit appeared in the 1956 August issue advertising a “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia” to Wright’s peers. Crucially, the article extended this exhibit to them and beyond by providing a subject—an anonymous maker embodying both pathos and skill for Americans having the wherewithal to import his goods. In the same article, Wright’s invitation to his design and home furnishings peers to participate in developing Vietnam through its craft industries dovetailed with English-language material circulating from South Vietnam, such as the booklet, Investing in Viet-Nam (1955).80 The merchandising of Vietnamese craft for American consumption would go forward without explanations of its historical, cross-cultural influences, such as “a Vietnam Khmer sculpture reproduction of a bronze standing Buddha.”81 Was this

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artifact considered Vietnamese because the Khmer kingdoms encompassed part of a historical geography that eventually would become Vietnam, or because of the Buddhist theme, or due to the fact that as a reproduction the object was made in South Vietnam? Nor did the craft aid project explore connections between its artisan makers and contemporary Americans of Asian descent. For Americans experiencing the lack of rights and respect for African Americans, or participating in the civil rights movement, the issues of Asian Americans were not in the forefront. Apparently, RWA could refer unreflectively to “coolie” pottery ware, including to the “Chinese Coolie Pottery Cooperative,” with coolie perhaps referencing the pottery used by Chinese or Asian laborers or associated with everyday workers and life having a legacy in indentured labor in Asia and South America,82 associations that scholars have traced to the nineteenth century, to the Caribbean, American South, and South America.83

Table Settings: The Old with the New, Brooklyn Museum, 1957 In South Vietnam, Wright endeavored to intersect Asian craft and designing for an American market. But it was in the U.S. where he and RWA managed the presentation of Vietnamese craft in exhibitions. For them Wright likely drew upon his experience curating an installation that brought American, European, and Japanese artifacts into a home setting for the Brooklyn Museum. Also, a contemporary cultural interest in Japan offered the Vietnam project an example of how an American audience for Asian craft grew from diplomatic interest to garner widespread commercial and cultural support, including for home furnishings. In 1957, Wright explored combining artifacts made in different places and eras in a project launched as “At Home with Art” that featured an exhibition called Table Settings: The Old with the New, originally scheduled May 15–June 16, 1957, and extended to September 15, 1957, due to its popularity. Wright and designers Eva Zeisel, Raymond Loewy, and Ed Langbein each received a room measuring approximately 15 x 16 feet to furnish with a mixture of old and new items.84 From his glazed earthenware series “Botanica,” which he designed for the Edwin M. Knowles China Company, for Table Settings Wright selected dinner plates, bowls, cups and saucers, salad plates, a covered sugar bowl, a large vegetable bowl, a covered vegetable dish, and salt and pepper shakers. Lightly drawn white lines etched ferns and vines onto their matt beige round and oblong shapes nuanced by gentle dips and crisp unarticulated edges. Wright also featured two Isamu Noguchi Akari lamps from his personal collection, although in photographs of the installation only one lamp is visible in the corner. There, it glowed between walnut shelves designed by Georg Jensen, Inc., and a late sixteenth- to early seventeenth-century Chinese scroll. Wright furnished the remainder of the room with American pieces—a bench, a tea cart, an RCA portable television set, and a handwoven rug and drapery by Jack L. Larsen, two eighteenth-century Pennsylvania slat-back rocking chairs, a nineteenthcentury Carolina earthenware jar, a nineteenth-century Bennington Parian ware pitcher, and a nineteenth-century New England teapot. Several additional items

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Figure 5.8 Table Settings: The Old with the New exhibit, May 15, 1957, to June 16, 1957, Records of the Department of Costumes and Textiles, Brooklyn Museum Archives.

pointed to Japan—silk floor cushions for the long, low table; a lacquer box serving as a rice container; a gourd jar holding saki; a hibachi; and a seventeenth- to nineteenth-century painted screen (Figure 5.8).85 Significantly, the room shifted the status of Asian artifacts as Wright and his team treated them the previous year—as evidence of their diplomatic significance displayed in a quasi-ethnographic setting and as culture presented in its indigenous setting—to furnishings belonging with items representing other times and places in a space combining a dining room and living room. Here, the amalgamation of these artifacts illustrated what the popular furnishings press was telling the American middle class was their opportunity to seize. As House Beautiful described, Americans had “The Whole World to Choose From” in selecting things with which to furnish their homes.86 The conceit less ascribed importance to the status of foreign things as indexes of their makers and from where and what conditions they hailed, than it highlighted the opportunity to appreciate goods from an international marketplace where American consumers could choose as they wished. On Wright’s part, for Table Settings he brought together items from his personal collection, the marketplace, and the Brooklyn Museum’s holdings based on their shared simple silhouettes, organic or geometric shapes, and diverse natural

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materials and textures, and he arranged them along horizontal and vertical sight lines. As occurred for the earlier Good Design exhibitions in which Wright participated, for Table Settings at the Brooklyn Museum most of the non-Western works came from Asia, and most of these originated in Japan.87 The backdrop to these curatorial choices on Wright’s part included growing American interest in Japanese artifacts on a spectrum ranging from common household goods made by unnamed folk and craft artisans to works of craft and decorative arts and examples of painting, sculpture, and architecture created by master craftsmen and internationally renowned contemporary artists. This spectrum of value and authorship resonated in the artifacts Wright and RWA would bring to the U.S. for exhibitions from South Vietnam in 1958. There was another connection between Wright’s treatment of Japanese artifacts in his room for Table Settings, The Old with the New, and his approach to Vietnamese craft. The catalog for Table Settings quoted Wright on ideas he advanced about Vietnamese craft as an antidote to machine-made, massproduced materials and products in its material components, handmade origin, and effect.88 What also mattered about the introduction of Japanese material culture into the U.S. for Americans handling the import of Vietnamese craft was that the U.S. supported the domestication of Japanese craft and everyday objects in its museums and in the marketplace.89 Some of these efforts, such as the 1951 exhibition, Japanese Household Objects, held at the Museum of Modern Art, featured things for daily life used mostly at the table—mats, basketry, ceramics, and lacquerware.90 RWA would retail these types of objects in Vietnam and in the U.S. Interestingly, the rhetoric that would characterize Vietnamese craft resonated in the language and ideas of the press release for Japanese Household Objects, which described household objects as exemplars of “good modern design—directness, simplicity, beauty of form, and integrity in the use of materials” having a timelessness in a culture that does not distinguish between “great and minor arts.” The press release for Japanese Household Objects also reveals that the items were not available in the U.S., and it quotes Assistant Curator of Design Greta Daniels explaining that their very existence was vulnerable to Japan’s inexpensive massproduced manufacture in response to American desires for “cheap replicas of Western design,” and she hoped a Western market could develop for them. By the mid-1950s, Japan was well-embarked upon rediscovering its traditional craft, for which the government founded an association in 1955 and department stores exhibited Japanese craft91 and the nation was renewing its interest in folk arts, too.92 Daniels’s call for safekeeping Japanese household goods’ authentic integration of timeless tradition and modern design was echoed in Wright’s and RWA’s attitude toward Vietnamese craft. At the same time, Wright’s involvement with Japanese craft and design built from his visits to Japan in December 1956 and his return during each of the next two years.93 Kikuchi notes that Wright submitted a proposal to the government of Japan to promote Japanese handicrafts in the U.S., emphasizing their retailing at American department stores, with American design experts and stylists traveling

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to Japan to improve design for exports, and the idea that museums could sync with these efforts through exhibitions. In 1957 Japan agreed to a project called Promotion of Japanese Handcrafts Export to the U.S.A.94 American designers traveled there to survey crafts and then they submitted recommendations about items for export according to criteria ranging from objects that were ready as is, to those requiring redesign. Household items made of wood, bamboo, and ceramic that could be exported without redesign were exhibited in February 1961 at the Japan Trade Center in New York and then at the Japan Trade Center in San Francisco.95 In 1962, a second exhibition focused on redesigned items.96 Wright’s efforts resulted in the Japanese Good Design Product Selection System based on modern design criteria369 and the vitalization of a modern genre of craft called Kurafuto that emphasized traditional Japanese handicraft geared to modern life.97 In the room Wright designed for the Brooklyn Museum, Noguchi’s lamp embodied the confluence of several cultural strands—European International Style modernism, American design and modernism, and Japanese contemporary and traditional arts.98 Using mulberry bush paper and bamboo ribbing, Noguchi had made lamps that would be known as Akari that revitalized a paper lantern industry in the Mino region of the Gifu prefecture of Japan99 for local consumption and for export, as manufactured by Ozeki and Company, which had been designated a “craft preservation factory” by Japan during World War II.100 The lamps were merchandised in Japan, Europe, and the U.S. During 1955, Bonniers, a Madison Avenue store known for selling modernist furnishings, featured Noguchi’s work.101 In combining modern shapes and silhouettes with paper, wood, and bamboo used in traditional processes, Noguchi would claim that modernism encompassed authenticity and originality, which suggested that tradition informed and resonated in modernism.102 Wright reiterated that claim in communicating about Vietnamese craft for American retail.

United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum, 1958 Following the Southeast Asian Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, RWA secured contracts to oversee Vietnamese artisans making craft for export. The firm had to grapple with the ICA Industry and Mining Division’s estimated prices for items having “immediate export potential” as mostly too high for the U.S. market. The ICA counseled Vietnam to find a way to “reduce these export prices, considering the opportunities for employment in the production of these products by the refugees.”103 RWA also faced pushback from the ICA regarding South Vietnam’s lack of readiness to make the best of American aid. Morrison cautioned: There is no Vietnamese agency, public or private, that is engaged in organized activity in any phase of the handicraft field; consequently, any highly specialized technical assistance would lack the organizational support and management so necessary to insure the success of such assistance and continued attention to handicraft problems.104

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However, Barrows assured RWA that USOM would meet with the Vietnamese government and offer to provide technical and financial assistance if they are willing to start a craft program.105 Still, complications arose. Barrows mentioned that a firm in Saigon offered “top quality twisted seagrass rug” that could be shipped directly to the U.S.,106 and Sears Roebuck Carpet Division, among other businesses, was willing to place substantial initial orders based on viewing samples to assess design and quality in the U.S.107 Eventually, Barrows reported that the “trial order for 6,000 square meters of twisted seagrass rug [was] received and then cancelled indefinitely because of [the] United States’ requirement for certificate of origin which does not as yet exist in Vietnam.”108 At issue was whether Federal Advisory Committee Regulations prohibited the import of mainland Chinese-type goods, which would make it impractical to import craft from Vietnam. The prohibition continued to frustrate RWA, despite the fact that the State Department said “products of non-communist Far Eastern handicraft” could be exported to the U.S.109 The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, even urged Wright to advise the governments of Southeast Asian nations on what goods were marketable in the U.S., and he suggested that an embassy or ICA officer could liaise with the local government.110 On top of legal frustrations confounding the import of Vietnamese craft was the perception of its lack of distinction from “mainland Chinese-type goods.” None the less, RWA proceeded with plans to showcase craft from Southeast Asia. Nearly two years after the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, a trade fair in the Coliseum would reveal the aid program changing its focus from salvaging a region to merchandising the wares of another nation. For the United States World Trade Fair held at the New York Coliseum, May 7 to 17, 1958, Wright “selected, supervised and staged the exhibition”111 of craft on behalf of the Embassy of Viet Nam (see Figures 5.11, 5.12). RWA had recently contracted with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of International Trade Fairs to design the U.S. exhibit at the Rio de Janeiro International Trade Fair for 1957.112 For the World Trade Fair of 1958 at the Coliseum, RWA’s presentation of craft numbered among several installations created by American designers hired by a foreign government.113 Among the 3,000 exhibits, representing sixty nations, the Viet Nam display, located on the second floor, showcased “lacquer furniture, paintings, folding screens, and trays, ceramics, embroideries, matting and rugs, ivory and bronze sculptures, table linen, dress and decorative fabrics, millinery hats and bodies, jewelry, tortoise shells, and other Handicrafts of silver and ivory.”114 Although the catalog listed the names of “participating firms” supplying items, it did not reference makers for the hats, mats, or textiles. In Industrial Design, Jane Mitarachi wrote that American participation in trade expositions jumped after the USSR “peddled its goods at 133 Fairs in four years.”115 By 1956, an act of Congress had given trade fairs a permanent status.116 Mitarachi observed that the U.S. was using trade fairs to spread its “influence in politically uneasy countries, to promote capitalism as a system superior to communism. The first goal, then, is eminently political despite its commercial garb.”117 The commercial garb served a politics of capitalist trade, too, as the American press announced that wares of the world had come to New York in a battle for world

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markets.118 A benefit for Americans loomed large. “With New York the key buying and distribution center for the nation, the fair here marks renewed efforts to woo the American consumer.”119 South Vietnam seemed receptive to this wooing. In News from Viet Nam, the Embassy of Viet Nam in Washington, D.C., boasted that the Vietnam exhibit “promises to become a gateway to broader economic relations with the United States and other countries. The contacts to be made with American foreign companies are many, considering a total expected attendance of over 700,000, last year’s figure.”120 The presence of Vietnamese dignitaries at the opening, like Tran Kim Phuong, first secretary of economic affairs for the embassy, underscored the South Vietnamese government’s recognition of the fair as an important economic opportunity.121 Americans also treated the opening as an occasion to interweave South Vietnam’s sovereignty with an opportunity to trade with the U.S. According to General John W. O’Daniel, representing the American Friends of Viet Nam: This exhibit demonstrates that the Free Vietnamese are well on their way to encouraging not only an expanded trade relationship with the United States and other nations but also greater understanding of their way of life in this country. The Republic of Viet Nam is to be congratulated for this effort especially when we are reminded that only a few years ago that country was ravaged by war and internal strife. It has been only two years since full independence was achieved and the road toward democracy paved. The Vietnamese have achieved much in this short span of time and their participation in a world trade fair is a symbol of their growth on the economic front as well as a symbol of their interest in promoting better relations on the international front.122

In recognizing South Vietnam’s rapid progress and achievements, the World Trade Fair exhibition’s message and appearance differed significantly from the presentation of Southeast Asian craft held at the Coliseum two years earlier. That exhibition placed Vietnam in a larger region marked by decolonization and civil wars, a theme that other fairs had touched upon. In 1955, South Vietnam presented craft in the U.S. as part of the Washington State Fourth International Trade Fair held in Seattle, Washington, March 11–March 25,123 with the Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States, Tran Van Chuong, in attendance.124 News from Viet Nam said the Vietnam exhibit placed many photographs of northern migrants alongside craft items. Perhaps these were the same photographs of refugee artisans that Wright would see in Saigon during January 1956 and publish in the August issue of Interiors.125 These references to refugee artisans anticipated the theme of rehabilitation in the 1956 Coliseum exhibit. The World Trade Fair of 1958 eschewed these earlier couplings of refugee makers and regional rehabilitation. Instead, it positioned craft as a national commodity within a world linked by trade. The shift was occurring as President Diem hired Harold L. Oram’s public relations firm “to promote the interests of the Republic of Vietnam in the United States.”126 Correspondingly, the ICA expected RWA to peddle the Republic’s craft in the U.S. Towards this end, South Vietnam’s

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Figure 5.9 Unistrut structures by Alexander Girard for Hall of Objects, in For Modern Living exhibition, Detroit Institute of Arts, in George Nelson, Display (New York: Whitney Publications Incorporated, 1952), 147.

exhibition at the trade fair helped to shift the status of craft from what Arjun Appadurai calls “commodities by metamorphosis, things intended for other uses that are placed into the commodity state” to “commodities by destination, that is, objects intended by their producers principally for exchange.”127 The appearance of the Vietnam exhibit followed this change by drawing from mobile, temporary exhibition structures that presented goods to an audience mixing “both commercial buyers and the general public on designated days” (see Figures 5.11, 5.12).128 In its geometric display, hardware, and organization of space, the Vietnam installation resembled temporary displays used at international expositions, trade fairs, and other public events designed by Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen, Edward Wormley, Herbert Bayer, Paul Rudolph, and Alexander Girard for Good Design—all were cited in George Nelson’s book, Display (Figure 5.9).129 Slim vertical pillars, panels, and horizontal shelves organized the exhibition space as a three-dimensional, grid-like composition of open and filled-in shapes. By

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Figure 5.10 Lacquer artisan Thanh Le’s showroom, “The Lacquer Art of Viet Nam,” Free World 10, no. 1 (1961), 24.

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Figure 5.11 A large cutout photograph of President Diem, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

contrast, this austere minimal appearance played up the range of textures, colors, and shapes characterizing bronze, ceramic, stone, and lacquer objects. Thin pillars supported panels displaying textured rugs to mark visual and physical boundaries, too, while horizontal shelves elevated at various heights accommodated small groups of artifacts that track lighting picked out for visual emphasis. The back area displayed larger lacquer pieces—screens, a chest, and a low table. In comparison, in Saigon, lacquer artisan Thanh Le’s showroom presented all sorts of wares crowded onto tables and shelves and on the floor (Figure 5.10). Nelson described display as “calling someone’s attention to something by showing it in a conspicuous way.”130 The idea correlated with the merchandising of goods in American consumer culture and related expectations about consumer behavior. As historian David Potter and sociologist C. Wright Mills indicated, American commerce was expecting consumers to be good shoppers based on having a connection to goods, not because of any ties to who made them or how they were made, rather, because consumers compared goods to one another and purchased and used them. By so performing as “goods consumers,” Americans appreciated commodities “apart from and outside the producers.”131 Two years after associating craft with Southeast Asia as a region needing American assistance in its rehabilitation, the trade fair delivered Vietnamese craft in a polished, international-style modern exhibition format framed by signs of the nation. A large, cutout photograph of President Diem appeared on the left

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Figure 5.12 A sign stating “Viet Nam” in English, Republic of Viet Nam, United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

side (Figure 5.11), and a simple sign stating “Viet Nam” in English, on the right (Figure 5.12). Although by 1958 Wright and his team were active in South Vietnam with the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon, not everything displayed in the trade fair came from there. Instead, Wright included items he had collected in Southeast Asia during the survey trip of 1955–6, such as “a conical-shaped hat worn by Vietnamese women and a basket made by ‘Moi’ tribes.”132 Perhaps this was the same hat that a young American woman modeled two years earlier in the Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit (see Figure 5.5) If so, the reinstallation of the hat indicates that some works of craft appearing in 1958 had not changed from those RWA first presented in the Coliseum during 1956. Rather, the discursive framing shifted from a regionally-based rehabilitation survey courting trade to salvage its craft, to the trade of nation-authored wares with others from the Free World. A map of Vietnam appearing in the World Trade Fair’s exhibition program used dots to mark craft activity, including in the North, likely in Hanoi and Lai Chau. However, publicity was silent on whether northern craft centers or former refugees from the North fabricated any items on display. Instead, the printed program

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provided names of makers and some of their locations in the South: brassware candle holders (Duc Hung); brassware candle holders (Thai Thi Sac, Saigon); brassware tray (To Than Thuy, Saigon); brassware tea samovars (Nam Hai Chieu, Cholon); embroidery (Hop Tac Xa Cong Hoa and Les Merveilles, both of Saigon); ivory fairy (Chan Nguyen, Saigon); Cambodian bronze statuettes (Phuoc Loc Tho [meaning happiness-fortune-longevity] and Bien Hoa Pottery); lacquerware furniture, screens, panels, ash trays, footed bowl with cover, cigarette boxes, and figurative sculpture (Thanh Le, Saigon); lacquer panel banana motif (Tran [Van] Ha, Thu Dau Mot); lacquer panels (Le Thy, Saigon, and Truong Van Thanh, Saigon); Chinese dancer, head of Buddha, concrete cast Cambodian heads, a smiling head, and a sitting Khmer Buddha (from an original at Angkor, Cambodia), and a woman’s head (from Bali held in the Blanchard de la Brosse Museum, Saigon [now the Museum of Vietnamese History]); Cham-era head of Buddha, Tang horse, Dia Tang decorative plate, Chinese goddess head (from Société Coopérative des Potiers et Fondeurs, Bien Hoa); ceramics green enamel beetle, lobster, crab, temple lion and chop sticks box, temple dragons (Lai Thieu Pottery); tortoiseshell (P. Chauvin, Saigon). Exceptions include ceramic cocks fighting, grimacing lion, dog, and dragons (from Vietnamese highland people); bronze castings including a Khmer god (from Angkor, Cambodia, from the Albert Sarraut Museum, Phnom Penh, Cambodia); and Kwan Yin, a bodhisattva of compassion, with a basket, in meditation (based on a fifth-century work in a collection from Japan).133 However, as with American exhibitions of Japanese art and craft, items such as fans and mats and accessories like hats were not credited to individual makers. The press quoted Wright mentioning the need for “a great deal of development for adaptation to the highly competitive and selective Western market.”134 “Adaptation” suggests RWA thought native craft required changes to accommodate it to American markets and tastes, and the perception dovetailed with the firm’s remit to use design to tailor craft for American consumption. Neither that remit nor RWA mentioned that in their own work prior to American intervention, Vietnamese artisans would have been familiar with using pattern and color to intriguing effects, and with adapting items to appeal to French tastes. Adding to the complexity of what adaptation meant was that Wright and RWA were working in Taiwan, too.135 They helped found the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center and agreed to provide technical and marketing assistance through 1961.136 Apparently, some contracted staff, such as Ruben Eshkanian, hired as a handweaving methods specialist, and Jack Lenor Larsen, hired as a handweaving specialist and designer trainer for textiles and grass carpeting projects, worked on both the Vietnam project and the one in Taiwan.137 The craft items produced in Taiwan—numerous baskets as well as place mats, bowls and platters, ceramic animals and figurines, hats, and toys138—bring to mind the heterogeneity of materials and types of Vietnamese craft that Wright presented in the U.S., and they raise questions about the practice of adaptation. Were Taiwanese craft products adapted to a Taiwanese market, or were Taiwanese artisans adapting their work for American consumption? Was RWA promoting a similar type of adaptation in Taiwan and Vietnam, and what did it consist of?

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Another layer of complexity concerning what Wright meant in referring to adaptation came from some items appearing in the run of exhibitions of Vietnamese craft held in the U.S. It was not clear how any could have been adapted if they didn’t change from one exhibition to the next. Still, other items showed minor adaptations, such as the large geometric abstract patterns and bold colors, likely inspired by Larsen, that were used in the design of grass mats traditionally made for sleeping but transposed into indoor floor rugs (Figure 5.13). These resembled weaving Larsen undertook in his own work during the 1950s to create varied textures marked by subtle patterns in natural materials and technique.139 Additional examples included the creation of rectangular clutch bags and sacks ornamented with variations on Hmong-style patterns, and woven hats with wide brims and square instead of pointy caps and geometric bands of ornament rather than images of dragons, flowers, or clouds as appeared traditionally on the hats. The display grouped these items together as fashion ensembles consisting of highheeled shoes, purses, clothing, jewelry, and scarves (Figure 5.14).

Figure 5.13 Grass rugs displayed at the Saigon Exhibition Hall, “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 30.

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Figure 5.14 Display of various fashion items, Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, USOM Vietnam Photo 58767, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

The English-language Vietnamese press published other types of adaptations for export through VIDECO, a Vietnamese export company. One of their advertisements featured a ceramic horse resembling the animal as depicted in China during the Tang Dynasty. In this case it was covered partly by a saddle and a blanket having decoration similar to Dong-Son Drum decorative features and bands, against a backdrop of semi-abstract design motifs of a horse, vegetation,

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architectural motifs, and a head. The ad promoted Bien Hoa Pottery for “your home” as a combination of modern techniques and traditional art form.140 Following the 1956 Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit at the Coliseum, Wright specifically identified the conical hat for adaptation. Morrison of the ICA reported: “there is a possibility of having U.S. milliners send new designs and shapes for manufacture” to South Vietnam. Furthermore, “The most interesting feature of this export is the possibility that U.S. designers will be enthusiastic enough to use the technique and skills in Vietnam moulded by their knowledge and feel for the U.S. fashion trends.”141 These comments shift agency from Vietnamese artisans to American designers while they also treat the artisans as the technology that will realize these Americans’ designs and shapes. In Vietnam, Americans traveled to conduct some research to come up with these. Wright, Ken Uyemura, serving as RWA’s manager in Vietnam, a Vietnamese assistant, and a Vietnamese translator traveled to a village of hat makers in South Vietnam. The group met the Director of the Province, received a letter of introduction, and proceeded to a cooperative where they observed women weave slivers of bamboo, which they cut with razors into thin sections and layered into conical shapes. Upon trying on a hat lacking its typical final inner layer of white palm leaf, Wright liked the transparent effect and thought the hat would make a unique product among straw hats on the American market.142 A photograph of Wright studying hats with dragon and floral imagery and Ken Uyemura standing over him to see the hats indicates the intensity of the situation of encounter, with Wright crouching down to be at floor-level among the hat makers and examine their work, in a small space crowded with women working and children nearby, and women and children watching, including a young woman suckling a child to the right of Wright (Figure 5.15). Adaptation for the conical hat involved transferring its association with the laboring body and everyday wear in Vietnam (Figure 5.16) to treating it as a fashionable accessory for retail in the U.S. and in Saigon. Free World showed an elaborate display of conical hats at the Buon Kroa Handicraft Center. Some tilt to reveal embroidery on the underside or scalloped edging and a Western-style cap. In so far as the hat appeared in other guises, too, it suggests the Americans conceived it as a labile form, that is, a design having diverse applications. A USOM report depicted a Western home interior outfitted with rattan furniture covered in woven cushion covers, metal goblets sitting on lacquered tables, checkered curtains resembling the twill weave tablecloths Wright designed in the 1940s for Simtex Mills,143 a striped woven rug on the floor, traditional musical instruments on the wall, and what resembles a conical hat serving as the shade for a lamp perched atop a metal tripod base (Figure 5.17).144 The report affirmed that craft issuing from the aid program successfully combined “excellent native skills” with “modern techniques and better equipment” to produce bamboo-rattan interior furnishings.145 Leading up to the 1958 World Trade Fair in New York City, Harriet Morrison reported that Wright “calls the Vietnamese hat one of the most beautiful native products in Asia. The hat is worn by native women and is designed with all the decorative elements on the inner surface.”146 A week before the fair opened, at the

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Figure 5.15 Russel Wright, Ramy Alexander, and Ken Uyemura visit a hat maker’s village in Vietnam, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

Overseas Press Club apparently Wright unveiled an example constructed with layers of carefully worked bamboo and embroidery decoration.147 Wright reminded his audience that he turned to Southeast Asia in “adapting [natives’] skills to products we can enjoy.”148 When asked if he planned to use pure native design, Wright answered, “I’m adapting designs all over the place.”149 Apparently, RWA

Figure 5.16 Image connecting the conical hat to labor, land, and the economy in Vietnam, Viet-Nam (Washington, D.C.: Press and Information Office, Embassy of Viet Nam, ca. 1959). Pamphlet. Folder, Foreign Activities, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

Figure 5.17 Home furnishings developed under the guidance of RWA displayed at the Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, ICA, “The Missions Report . . . Vietnam,” Industrial Activities Bulletin, April–May 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Industrial Resources, 1960), 2.

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experienced some success. By November 1958, News from Viet Nam reported that the milliner Lilly Daché “ordered 500 conical hats worn in Viet-Nam.”150 Adaptation also meant deploying materials and processes traditionally used to fabricate everyday objects in Vietnam for tableware and fashion accessories. In addition to transposing the conical shape into a fashionable accessory and a lampshade, Wright revealed that orders were being taken by Americans for craft made by materials and fabrication methods traditionally used for something else, like the Ulman Company of New York ordering 3,200 place mats made by the process used for making sails on local fishing boats.151 RWA’s iteration of the hat with delicate interior layers and embroidery and in some cases external stripes and other design elements corresponded to a development in American consumer culture. The adapted conical hat signified the widening horizon of consumer choices and, in the words of Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly, “greater freedom of choice. In a world where freedom of every kind seems to be shrinking, not expanding.”152 In calling attention to freedom in the context of middle-class consumption, Barron’s championed the intersecting role of citizen and consumer. “The growing American demand for imports has opened up new opportunities to businessmen and investors. It has served the interests of that long-suffering citizen, the American consumer.”153 From this perspective, not refugee artisans but forbearing citizen-consumers were the subjects whose desires mattered most. Variations in craft appealing to these consumers’ diverse tastes and budgets foregrounded issues of consumption and deflected political ones. Castillo noticed a similar situation in postwar Germany, abetted by Marshall Plan-sponsored exhibitions of model homes and their furnishings.154 By the late 1950s, American economists were advocating market segmentation to spread consumption across the middle class as a way to increase and control consumer desire to maintain national economic growth.155 Market segmentation also involved putting aside the assumption that people desire and purchase goods according to class; instead they were encouraged to fulfill the diverse consumption interests of all social groups, including women and men. Wright selected a wide range of items—from fans to lacquer furniture—with which to represent South Vietnam at the 1958 World Trade Fair. Diversity in their size, material, imagery, and historical references also spoke to middle-class Americans expecting that objects from around the world would come to them in their local places of commerce.156 Some of these objects spanned geography and time, such as Cambodian heads and a Cambodian bronze statuette from the Bien Hoa Cooperative School of Ceramics that likely were reproduced from works dating from pre-Angkor to the Angkor-era.157 Yet, the catalog for the 1958 World Trade Fair did not specify the diversity of cultural provenances assembled under the designation of “Viet Nam,” or explain why the Vietnam exhibition presented a few Japanese items, items referenced for their Chinese influence, and reproductions of objects from presentday Cambodia. Nor did it explain how and why the Bien Hoa potteries had access to reproducing Khmer artifacts for export to the U.S. Did the artifacts belong to the Bien Hoa school or come from museums in Saigon or elsewhere? Did anyone

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consider the reproductions as adaptations? Free World reported on the Phnom Penh molding workshop in the School of Fine Arts reproducing Khmer carvings in the National Museum for retail as a means of preserving national heritage.158 What did reproductions of Khmer artifacts mean in the context of an installation attributed to “Viet Nam” that was organized by an American industrial designer contracted by the government of Vietnam through its American Embassy? If the inference was that Khmer culture was part of Vietnam’s past, how did it relate to ongoing efforts on the part of Cambodia to establish its own national identity, internationally? Free World reported that Cambodia was “patterning modern arts and crafts on the unique and classic designs of historic Khmer art,159 and that Wright facilitated “the nation’s artisans in producing more and more objects of Khmer design” for export.160 Was Wright treading a pathway laid by French colonialist George Groslier, who founded the School of Cambodian Art and Albert Sarraut Museum ca. 1918, to produce traditional craft for foreigners?161 After all, the New York Times reported that Cambodia was opening up to Western tourism.162 Did the Embassy or the government of Vietnam have thoughts about the politics of this practice? To that point, Free World also publicized the ceramic reproductions of ancient Vietnamese art that Bien Hoa School of Applied Arts was producing.163 The World Trade Fair exhibition did not address these complexities or American anxiety about Vietnam possibly becoming financially depressed and beholden to the communist world and what impact that situation would have on American security and economy interests. Nor did it indicate that North Vietnam was criticizing the U.S. for expressing imperialist tendencies in Southeast Asia and ruining native crafts.

Traveling Department Store Exhibition, 1958–9 Four months after the World Trade Fair exhibition ended, a “distinctive collection of handicrafts, artware and furniture from Vietnam”164 launched in a corner of the first floor of W. & J. Sloane, an upscale home furnishings store founded in the 1840s, located in midtown Fifth Avenue and 47th Street (Figure 5.18). The installation did away with the gridded organization of the trade fair and evoked a more domestic appearance by placing rugs on the floor and arranging ceramic pots and figurines in front of a lacquer screen as one might do in a home. A stone reproduction of a Buddha head and a ceramic dragon from Lai Thieu sat atop a lacquer table, and shelves and walls held ceramics, cast stone heads and figures, and woven grass rugs and brass pieces.165 Following its opening in midtown, the exhibition traveled coast to coast to eleven upscale urban anchor department stores.166 Sponsored by the government of Vietnam, its embassy in Washington, D.C., said the exhibition followed from Americans’ very favorable reception of craft displayed at the World Trade Fair.167 In response, by late June RWA was developing an inventory for the department store project, one that would transfer many items from the trade fair to this new exhibition. For example, a USOM photograph of that installation shows a dragon from Bien Hoa Pottery with a number corresponding to an inventory

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Figure 5.18 W. & J. Sloane, New York City, installation of Vietnamese craft circulating department stores nationwide, September 1958, “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958.

for a “Vietnamese Traveling Promotion Exhibition in U.S.” dated June 26, 1958.168 American and Vietnamese press published an image of a dragon exhibited at W. & J. Sloane that resembles the one installed at the World Trade Fair.169 The USOM photograph depicts additional items that match descriptions in the inventory for the Traveling Department Store Exhibition, such as a lacquer panel featuring banana leaves by Tran [Van] Ha (see Figure 5.11). The reverse of another photograph states that the lacquer panel by Tran [Van] Ha was “sold from exhibit at [J. L.] Hudson’s [Department Store]”170 in Detroit. That store received the traveling exhibition following its opening in New York City. As part of the Marshall Plan, American department stores had imported goods from Europe.171 The Traveling Department Store Exhibition innovated by introducing American shoppers to items from an unfamiliar place—Vietnam— with emphasis on the period “since Viet-Nam achieved independence.”172 A press release attested to the authenticity of the items by clarifying that RWA safeguarded

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their native features and “retained the essential characteristics which are uniquely Vietnamese.”173 The American press spoke to the beauty and exotic character of Vietnam conveyed by these artifacts.174 Acknowledged as “concrete examples of this country’s government-sponsored program to help small nations,” Harriet Morrison reiterated their indigeneity yet she credited Americans for steering native makers to address American tastes: “Objects on view are typical of ancient crafts exceled in by natives. In some cases, the natives have been encouraged to adapt proportions and design changes suited to our needs. Objects can be ordered.”175 None of the publicity spoke to ongoing developments in contemporary craft initiated by Vietnamese artisans. American media lauded the selection and organization of items on exhibit. The New York Herald Tribune remarked on the “notable exhibit” and collection, and it credited Wright with selecting authentic examples of Vietnamese craft.176 An implicit branding of the significance of the items followed from the imprimatur of Wright having served as the creator of the “collection.” Press duly celebrated the items “selected and coordinated by Russel Wright, industrial designer. A man with a great affinity for the Orient, Mr. Wright has been associated with Vietnam since 1956.”177 From Saigon, the Times of Viet Nam relayed the same message.178 In the U.S., Tran Van Chuong, ambassador of Vietnam, joined Wright in attending a luncheon celebrating the exhibition at Woodward and Lothrop in Washington, D.C.179 The same article reporting on the event featured a photograph of Wright’s eight-year-old daughter standing near what it called a domesticated dragon in reference to a reproduction ceramic temple dragon on display. The Traveling Department Store Exhibition reflected a broad cultural interest in Asian and especially Japanese craft and design on the part of Americans. By 1955, Marshall Field & Co. was flying out executives “to utilize the Orient’s skills in making goods for the American public” and to establish a pathway for store buyers to make return trips.180 The American embrace of an Asian turn in home furnishings eschewed the connoisseur’s precision for provenance and cultural purity and accepted a wide range of forms and details connoting Asia. At the same time, care was taken to assure American shoppers that items were “designed for Western-style living,”181 as House Beautiful claimed. As a guide to home furnishings and how to arrange them, House Beautiful insisted that the introduction of Asian artifacts and influence into the American home should be contained and controlled, that is to say, “carefully modified to fit gracefully into American homes” and mixed with furnishings from other periods and places.182 Wright already had practice in this arena with his 1957 installation at the Brooklyn Museum. Meanwhile, House Beautiful urged careful assimilation of Asian objects on American terms: “one society adapts, trims, and models to its own peculiar needs the designs and customs of another society to which it has been exposed.”183 RWA avoided adaptations that amalgamated figurative forms to utilitarian features in the manner of some wares, such as a “Siamese head” consisting of a reproduction Buddha head serving as the base for a lamp as advertised as part of the “Far Eastern design movement” having “Oriental influence” in the U.S. (Figure 5.19).184 In contrast, Design magazine published a tall, cylindrical, abstract

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Figure 5.19 “Siamese” head serving as the base for a lamp as advertised as part of the Far Eastern design movement, “Oriental Lamps—Siamese Bronze Head,” Retailing Daily 30 (August 13, 1956), 81a.

floor lamp Wright designed to be made in Vietnam.185 Its shade resembled the application of textured, colorful, abstract weaving designed by Dorothy Liebes for Frederick Cooper Studios and sold at Rees & Orr,186 while its tripod bottom evoked a feature of the Noguchi lamps Bonniers was retailing during the mid-1950s.187 These correspondences between a lamp designed to be made in Vietnam and the contemporary work of an American designer and a Japanese American vanguard artist likely helped associate the former with the high end of furnishings and even attain status in an art context. To this last point, the “Art Shows opening” column in the New York Times mentioned the installation at W. & J. Sloane as a group exhibition of art objects from Vietnam.188 The same newspaper characterized a six-panel lacquer screen evoking a “picturesque Vietnamese landscape” with people working and sampans, and lotus blossoms and foliage represented on the other side, as a “collector’s item.”189 RWA’s placement of craft in upscale department stores reflected

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a desire to accommodate it to shoppers in American cities who were becoming accustomed to seeing exhibitions of Asian art and craft in numerous museums and experiencing American craft as museum-worthy, too. Instead of broadcasting that unnamed refugee artisans may have made some of the craft, such as mats, textiles, bamboo products, wooden items, conical hats, handbags, scarves, and shoes, publicity for the Traveling Department Store Exhibition assured shoppers that “many of the ceramics are signed works by highly skilled craftsmen from the noted Bien Hoa Ecole,”190 and print media favored lacquerware furniture and small items, ivory figures, ceramic animals, brassware, and reproductions.191 Wright hoped to show Thanh Le’s wide range of lacquer work to Tiffany & Co., and Thanh Le attracted attention as a lacquer master wanting to expand his export to the U.S. when he traveled to New York for the opening of the Department Store Exhibition at W. & J. Sloane.192 In Philadelphia, John Wanamaker’s held a luncheon for him as part of its Gift Department’s programming for the exhibition in late October, 1958.193 None the less, a short editorial appearing a week before the Department Store Exhibition opened in New York interjected another reality: “This is not a ‘museum’ exhibit. It is presented in and by our own retail stores.”194 Moreover, it insisted, “The basic idea is to give help to Vietnam by helping the Vietnamese to help themselves. This is no soft-hearted charity. It is, as it ought to be, hard-headed business.”195 Hoffman praised Wright for distinguishing his work in Southeast Asia from “Marshall Plan offshoots” that exported goods from Europe to the U.S. yet lacked attention to marketing and merchandising.196 The press also focused on the salability of Vietnamese objects and their status as samples meant to attract orders.197 In South Vietnam, the Times of Viet Nam reminded readers of the “long and arduous task” of transposing craft as a cottage industry “[in]to organized rational production employing modern time and cost saving techniques” to make craft more affordable abroad.198 Learning what suited the American home apparently compelled RWA to incorporate feedback into the project continuously, so as to place items in an expanding network of retail venues.199 Rita Reif related that once “the traditional crafts” of Vietnam and other nations arrived in the U.S., Wright’s “New York staff went into action. They pounded New York City pavements laden with baskets, lacquer bowls, jewellery and pottery to test the reaction of importers and retailers.”200 The Brooklyn Museum ordered dolls and “a supply of bright inexpensive temple ornaments and small household items,”201 while Bonniers imported baskets. Visual references to artisans, practices, and artifacts appearing in 16mm films the United States Information Agency created about Vietnamese music and art schools, and Bien Hoa pottery accompanied the Traveling Department Store Exhibition along with a film Wright made featuring “lacquer and ceramic craftsman, the Moi aborigines tribe and the grass weavers who make the rugs and matting shown in the exhibit,” which he hoped department stores would screen.202 These American-authored representations rooted craft in fabrication processes that referenced makers without providing biographies or sharing their own accounts of their work. At the same time, American representations of Vietnamese craft continued to flatten its cross-cultural dimensions concerning who, where, and what “Vietnam” signified historically and in the present day. It is not clear

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whether this was intentional; however, it put aside potentially complex questions. For the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit of 1956, a pretty young white woman posed in what newspapers referred to as the hat of a Moi warrior (see Figure 5.5).203 More than two years later, the Traveling Department Store Exhibition still refrained from explaining that “Moi” referred to Montagnards, or mountain people perceived as savages, whom the South Vietnamese government had displaced from ancestral land to make way for northerners.204 Instead, Wright treated craft as a medium for blending cultural traditions across a spectrum of anonymous to authored creations ranging from low cost, easily reproduced items to expensive, nearly one-of-a-kind objects. As he explained to readers of Home Furnishings Daily, “Viet Nam is a different Oriental, with Chinese as well as French overtone.”205 The statement invites understanding Vietnamese craft as a synthesis of multiple cultures,206 although it left out any explanation for the reproductions of ancient Khmer and Cham sculpture and works from Angkor Wat in Cambodia that had appeared in the 1958 World Trade Fair. A press release emphasized their fine quality, age, simplicity, and elegance.207 Conceptually, RWA amalgamated these items through the signifier “Vietnam” and somewhat on the basis of formal qualities such as simple geometric shapes, texture, refined color palettes, and diverse ways of using material to emphasize its tactile qualities. On the other hand, in the aggregate, the items ranged from bold and simply patterned objects such as conical hats, rugs, baskets, and some ceramics and lacquer objects, to intricate, delicate, and richly detailed examples of ceramics, lacquer, ivory, and brassware, as well as figurative reproductions. The Department Store Exhibition sidestepped disjointed political views, geographies of resettlement, the chronology of items’ originality and reproduction, and their cultural geographies and cross-cultural references, too.208 One other feature of the Department Store Exhibition depoliticized the significance of “Vietnam.” RWA hired a young woman named Huynh Thi Ly to travel with the exhibition from January 2 to June 7, 1959. They limited her role to serving as “information officer and attendant,” noting that “Any political matters that may arise in the course of the tour we will immediately turn over to the Embassy of Viet Nam, and will not become involved with these in any way.”209

Craft centers in South Vietnam, 1957–61 By the spring of 1957, RWA’s remit began taking shape in Saigon and nearby sites,210 and RWA would cite October as the beginning of its work in establishing and contributing to craft centers. In Saigon, Ken Uyemura led the effort.211 Uyemura trained in ceramics at Alfred University and exhibited work at the Ceramics Nationals during the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s. In 1952, he won an award for his ceramics in the Young Americans exhibition, which was displayed at American House, and during this period he was also showing ceramics in New York City.212 Before arriving in Vietnam, he stopped in Tokyo to “study basket-making tools and equipment along with pottery production machinery.”213 On behalf of Wright

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and RWA, Uyemura managed the Handicraft Development Center, which opened in 1958 on Rue Tu Do on the site of the former Saigon Bazaar department store (Figure 5.20).214 In his notes for a lecture in Miami, Wright credits Ken’s wife, Michiko Uyemura, a fashion designer whom Wright hired to work on design and fashion, with developing the center in the three-story building provided by the government of Vietnam.215 The Uyemuras and RWA staff took on craft for export and local use, established a program assisting artisans, helped them obtain raw materials, established quality standards, provided styling and design, and worked on grass textiles.216 Craft Horizons credited the center with raising the quality of craft in its vicinity in Saigon.217 In 1959, the Uyemuras began overseeing the store-component of the center. After Ken Uyemura’s contract ended in Vietnam, he worked at the Taiwan Handicraft Promotion Center from 1961 to 1963,218 and he taught clay, metals, fibers, and wood in the Art Department of the University of Miami Coral Gables. In the early 1970s he established weaving as a major there. The Uyemuras’ work with RWA is particularly deserving of additional research, given that craft writing since the mid-twentieth century identifies them as Japanese American and attributes features of Ken’s work to an Oriental aesthetic.

Figure 5.20 Image of the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon, International Cooperation Administration, Industrial Activities Bulletin, April–May 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Industrial Resources, 1960), n.p.

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Additionally, the State Department hired United States Consultants Incorporated, with offices in Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Southeast Asia, including Saigon. Their technicians assisted with weaving, including at the Cong Thanh Weaving Cooperative and the Thanh Tam Weaving Mill, and they assisted with work in ceramics, bamboo, and rattan, and with using equipment, too. Also, they lectured at the Bien Hoa School of Applied Arts.219 RWA employed local Vietnamese artisans and workers, too;220 many were likely former refugees.221 Among the American designers and artisans contracted to aid in weaving, revise existing products, and provide new designs were Jack Lenor Larsen, for grass carpeting and specialty weaving, and handweaving specialists Ruben Eshkanian, Kenneth Beattie, and Paul E. Nicholas.222 With these personnel, Uyemura developed women’s accessories, shoes, clothing, and jewelry along with textiles and mats for furniture and upholstery, and wooden and lacquer home furnishings and screens as well as ceramic dinner services (Figure 5.21).223 Apparently, the staff was demonstrating how items would figure into American lives using photographs, drawings, and films (Figure 5.22). Photographs of American dinner tables diversified “according to taste and wealth and the season,” including with furniture and tableware designed by Wright, covered a wall in the Handicraft Development Center surrounded by products from these efforts—a woven lampshade, curtains, and place mats, ceramic and

Figure 5.21 Ceramic dinner sets developed by Ken Uyemura, USOM Vietnam Photo 55255, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

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Figure 5.22 Photograph of American tableware designed by Wright on a wall in the Handicraft Development Center, Saigon, USOM Vietnam Photo 45876, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

wooden tableware. Wright and his team lectured to artisans on American tableware, home interiors, and a way of life, Oriental influence in American home furnishings, and about the American Craftsmen’s Council’s exhibition, Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. (1953), as well as The Logic and Magic of Color: An Exhibition Celebrating the Centennial Anniversary of the Cooper Union, and they showed films about American housewares, American culture, and the arts of Japan.224 RWA’s Manual for Handicraft Import Promotion Program for Vietnam Handicraft Promotion Center, anticipating the American teams’ withdrawal from South Vietnam, enumerated steps to follow in sequencing projects in development, and listed who oversaw and guided them, with attention to pricing, samples, and oversight.225 Wright visited Vietnam again during early 1958. During the fall, as the Traveling Department Store Exhibition circulated in the U.S. and experienced some success in receiving orders, the Embassy of Viet Nam reported achievements in Saigon as well—“a $5000 export order for grass rugs and another for $3500 for ceramics and lacquer were received.”226 Interestingly, the embassy mentioned an exhibition in Saigon that “shows the progress made thus far in the joint Viet-Nam–American aid project to develop new designs for handicraft products, for export and for an increasingly important domestic market.” Items appeared in Saigon that the

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Department Store Exhibition did not feature prominently in publicity, namely, “weaving designs for upholstery materials, mats, wall hangings, table cloths and screens designed for a private weaving concern . . .”227 Also on display were “fiber rugs, ceramics, baskets and fans” along with “bamboo and rattan products from the Buon Kroa Handicraft Center.”228 Personnel in Saigon helped to establish several centers in South Vietnam, and some were sending items to the Saigon site for merchandising. Neither the World Trade Fair exposition, 1958, nor the Traveling Department Store Exhibition taking place in the U.S. during 1958–9, mentioned refugee resettlement or included photographs of refugee artisans. However, in Saigon, photographs of the inside of the Handicraft Center reveal images of refugee artisans, including the basketmaker who appeared in Interiors, 1956. With support from USOM, the Buon Kroa Handicraft Center opened in Ban Me Thuot in the central highlands on July 18, 1958, in the presence of the Vietnamese Secretary of State, Nguyen Dinh Thuan, and the Commissioner General for Refugees, Bui Van Luong. The latter explained that northerners, people from the delta and the central highlands had resettled in the High Plateau, and the government wanted them to learn a craft using local materials such as bamboo and rattan. Although Thuan said time and productivity can yield profits, he implied that having free time would allow former refugees to become involved with communists.229 Ostensibly, keeping former refugees busy would curtail this possibility. The Buon Kroa Handicraft Center offered a training course, and the first enrollment consisted of “50 apprentices: 24 refugees and 26 farmers from agricultural development centers at Banmethuot” who would study the use of rattan and bamboo for six months.230 USOM’s Leland Barrows said there would be “an exhibition hall where handicraft articles would be sold and exhibited.”231 The campus already supported “a reading room, an office, a large workshop equipped with modern machines for the treatment of bamboo and rattan, a powerful electric generator, a lecture room, a dormitory and a dining room.”232 Director Thanh Phong explained that the training course had two parts: “the theoretical part in which use of raw materials is taught and the practical part in which trainees learn how to make objects of art fashioned after models designed by the Japanese expert, Mr. Uemura [sic], and the Russell [sic] Wright company. The courses are given by a Japanese professional and translated by an interpreter.”233 The next year, Free World published a photograph showing Vice President Nguyen Ngoc Tho and Uyemura inspecting fabric.234 The accompanying article reported that Buon Kroa, a complex “built with American aid,” was preserving Vietnamese cultural traditions in things of beauty in everyday life and enriching them with modern design to expand the market at home and abroad.235 Together with the Buon Kroa Handicraft Center, in 1958 the Embassy of Viet Nam announced the establishment of a Center of Artisan Development in Gia Dinh. In 1913, the French had established a school for drawing and the decorative arts there. After 1954, it became the Gia Dinh National School for Decorative Arts.236 From the vantage point of his National Fine Arts College of Saigon, Director Le Van De said the Center of Artisan Development resulted from USOM working with the South Vietnamese government to develop a pavilion to sell Vietnamese art and establish “an Institute of Design where technicians can experiment with new

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methods of fabrication and furnish models and patterns.” Apparently, work already existed to be sold to help finance the new project, which would be built adjacent to the National Fine Arts College of Saigon/ National School of Fine Arts.”237 RWA offered to provide a permanent technician to work with private artisans and two others to help produce household goods, while Japanese technicians would teach modern methods of fabrication. Unaffiliated artisans could receive loans for their cooperatives through the Handicraft Development Center.238 Things were happening in Saigon, too. During June 1959, Uyemura wrote the director of USOM Saigon about a new gallery for the Handicraft Development Center, noting that for the purposes of giving Vietnamese employment, “handicraft is crucial for the four to six months when agriculture work drops,” and he mentioned more craft activity that the Japanese technicians could facilitate.239 For the next few years, Free World, Times of Viet Nam, and the American government published images of installations of craft displayed there, sometimes arranged as if in a Western-style living room (see Figure 5.17).240 USOM’s annual reports also published photographs of items intended for women—Western-style hats, clutch and handbag purses, scarves, and backless, high-heeled, open-toed shoes. Decorative patterns emphasize their shapes.241 The aid program was also producing photography of Western women wearing some of these items; in some cases, they were wrapped in textiles generated by the program or wore hats modified with abstract patterning. Most striking were the photos of rounded caps modeled by women whose frank gaze and décolleté would have been highly unusual in a Vietnamese woman (Figure 5.23). The Times of Viet Nam promoted the success of the Saigon gallery’s display of place mats, grass carpets, women’s handbags, carved ivory tusks, straw hats, and silk scarves. The paper said Europeans and Americans were buying items RWA helped to design, such as rattan and cloth place mats.242 Also for sale was a bronze head representing a Laotian heroine, and ceramic vases and lamps from Bien Hoa desired by French women and “Saigon elegantes.”243 The paper reported that the Handicraft Development Center facilitated a contract for khaki cloth used in making uniforms for the Vietnamese Civil Guard.244 Along with enumerating types of goods and customers, the newspaper highlighted the center’s national importance by showing President Diem attending the gallery’s opening with Director Nguyen Duoc.245 Interestingly, on the facing page, an editorial—“Are the Vietnamese AntiAmerican?”—pushed back at articles the American reporter Albert M. Colegrove had published about American money supporting Americans in Vietnam living high and other forms of financial mismanagement where Vietnam was concerned.246 We have fought bitterly against foreign domination and interference in our internal affairs for many years. We have suffered so much from the evils of imperialism that we are very sensitive to everything that could be construed as a revival of it in Vietnam. It is normal that in our relations with foreign nations, with American no less than with others, the slightest suspicion of imperialism would ring a strong alarm bell in our minds. The anti-imperialist bell has not rung in our minds so far. This should be attributed to tactfulness and wisdom of the American officials who are living and working among us.

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Figure 5.23 Photograph of woman modeling a (modified) rounded hat, Russel Wright Associates Photo Album, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

The editorial further asserted, “We consider ourselves allies of the American people in a common struggle against communism.”247 Overall, the editorial conveyed a heightened awareness of power and its misuses that must have pervaded American–Vietnamese relations in the context of American aid efforts in South Vietnam and compelled the author to address them.

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The Handicraft Development Center would see several additional developments around 1960. One was the presentation of bamboo, rattan, wood, porcelain, and lacquer items from Saigon and also from Thu Dau Mot and Bien Hoa at the International Fair in Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, in Myanmar), on the occasion of its anniversary of independence from the British Empire.248 The Times of Viet Nam credited the government of Vietnam for the nation’s rapid achievement in developing “an old part-time occupation of the farmers” into a national industry. During October, 1960, the center hosted a major fashion show (Figure 5.24). Vietnamese women modeled traditional dress and then Vietnamese and American women alternated in wearing evening wear and day wear outfitted with hats, scarves, purses or bags, sandals or high heels, and jewelry. Some items featured Cham-inspired designs or Ken Uyemura’s block-printed designs on locally produced textiles such as khaki (Figure 5.25). A few young girls modeled beach wear and school clothing. Additionally, RWA hoped to realize the Russel Wright Program Silk Screen Workshop. However, archival records reflect their frustration with the ICA on funding a silkscreen technician. In 1960, the ICA and USOM argued it was too late to hire another technician because RWA’s contract was winding down. Wright protested by pointing out the loss of American taxpayers’ investments and the political urgency of the project. He connected the last point to anxiety about communism and the importance of diminishing Vietnam’s “need to import this merchandize [sic] from other countries including Red China.”249 His comment reveals how closely Wright must have been connecting his staff ’s activity with craft

Figure 5.24 Images from the fashion show hosted by the Handicraft Development Center, “First Viet-Nam Fashion Show Features Native Materials,” Free World 10, no. 6 (1961), 23–4.

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Figure 5.25 Block print on skirt by Ken Uyemura, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

to Cold War agendas, at least when it came to pressing American authorities. Additionally, Wright reiterated the need for two technicians, one for the Silk Screen Workshop, and one to replace Ken Uyemura, whose contract expired in October, 1960.250 Eventually, the ICA approved Robert Von Erben as a silkscreen specialist contracted through January 1961.251 Wright claimed that the Saigon center, as a retail outlet, was the “most successful single handicraft project ever created by a U.S. aid program,” and he credited its success to the implementation of American marketing and merchandising methods.252 Among the methods was the use of women to model merchandise for the press, a method that reached back to the young white woman modeling a hat at the Coliseum in 1956 (see Figure 5.5). In 1959, the cover of The Times of Viet

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Nam Magazine featured a Vietnamese woman wearing an adapted conical hat posing in front of a display of hats and purses at the center.253 A key example of women factoring into the consumption of Vietnamese craft also involved the moving image. Likely produced between 1959, when the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon opened a retail venue, and 1961, as RWA was ending its contract in Vietnam, a roughly eighteen-minute, black-andwhite film taking place in the center’s retail space indicates the centrality of women to the aid project’s intention to sell craft as home furnishings and fashion accessories in both the U.S. and Vietnam.254 In English, the film’s male narrator describes the activity of two young Vietnamese women who enter the retail space from a busy urban street. They pass a white woman shopping inside, and eventually they join a third friend. As a trio, they walk through the store, pausing to linger over some items (Figures 5.26, 5.27). At this point the film shows how a work of craft is made by “skilled workers.” Nothing about the film suggests these artisans are refugees, nor does it name them as renowned artisans. Over the melodic sounds of a flute and drum, the narrator outlines the transformation of a raw or natural material into an artifact for the home or self, commenting on the artisans’ careful skill, devotion, and traditional processes in what appear to be small workshop environments devoted to craft. Close up shots feature artisan’s hands working with materials (Figure 5.28). In this manner, the film integrates craft fabrication—unmoored from a specific artisan,

Figure 5.26 Film still featuring young women shopping, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection.

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Figure 5.27 Film still featuring young women shopping, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection.

location, or time—with the practice of urban shopping practiced by young Vietnamese women and a white woman. As the film cycles through several of these fabrication passages, it follows the women pausing in front of various types of craft and looking at and handling hats, lamps, lacquerware, small figurative sculpture, ceramic containers and tableware, metalware, jewelry, tortoise shell items, bamboo mats, silver jewelry, wooden shoes, and dolls. Many of these items are arranged together, although additional items appear, too. One grouping includes an oversized candle; a freestanding lamp with a geometrically patterned, cylindrical, bamboo lampshade; a ceramic ashtray; some beaded jewelry; a tiny carved wooden water bucket carrier; and a large, classically inspired plaster or ceramic nude female torso (Figure 5.29). As indicated by the clustering of these items, the film suggests the craft center employed a style of display quite different from the American-based World Trade Fair and Traveling Department Store Exhibition. In the Saigon Handicraft Development Center, items are closely grouped together and random in their groupings in contrast to the more grid-like alignment of stone and metal historical reproductions, lacquerware, ceramics, and ivory and textiles at the Coliseum in 1958 (see Figures 5.11, 5.12). The film concludes with one of the young women making a purchase. This showed to film viewers that the aid program in Vietnam was succeeding. If the film

Figure 5.28 Film still featuring artisan’s hands working with natural materials, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection.

Figure 5.29 Film still showing a sculpture of a female torso in the craft center, The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and its products, black-and-white film digitized, Library of Congress Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Library of Congress, Still Images Division, South Vietnam Collection.

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circulated among American embassies and USOMs in Southeast Asia, its combination of showing the craft center’s retail space, highlighting specific items, accounting for their hand-intensive manner of fabrication, and closing with a sale, would advertise to other embassies the result of American achievement in Vietnam and display the variety of goods available for tourists or Westerners residing there, or people living in other Asian nations. The film raises questions about the geographical limits of styles of merchandising. In the aggregate, the young woman modeling a hat at the Coliseum in 1956, the young Vietnamese woman hired to accompany the Traveling Department Store Exhibition of Vietnamese craft in the U.S. in 1958–9, and the Vietnamese women featured in the film, together with the masculinization of the designer diplomat and its dynamics with photographic images of artisans, warrant attention— specifically in regards to the contributions gender made to the American project to make and sell Vietnamese craft.

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Chapter 6 A RT I FAC T , A RT , C R A F T: D I SP L AY I N G A N D C O L L E C T I N G D I F F E R E N T V I E T NA M S

Introduction The craft aid program developed while an exhibition about Vietnamese culture came together at the Smithsonian, and personnel from each project were aware of the other one. At the Smithsonian, Thomas M. Beggs, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts, worked for the better part of a decade organizing Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures, which opened at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C., on October 26, 1960.1 The exhibition constituted a major effort of cultural diplomacy and it supported mutual security interests, too. Exhibition archives show that Beggs wrote to Russel Wright to inquire about meeting him and to secure his assistance in developing an exhibition of Vietnamese arts and crafts.2 Also, Beggs told Annemarie Pope, director of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), that he hoped to attend the opening of the Traveling Department Store Exhibition at W. & J. Sloane.3 When Beggs’s contracted assistant on the exhibition project, the wellknown archaeologist Olov Robert Thure Janse, reported to Beggs from Saigon about selecting art and craft for the Crossroad exhibition, Janse encouraged Beggs to liaise with Wright “so all our activities could be coordinated.”4 Several additional aspects of the respective projects linked them. Both operated largely at government levels and involved government staff in the U.S. and South Vietnam. Also, both projects had connections with the American Friends of Vietnam advocacy group, and they made much of President Diem’s visit to their respective events. During August 1959, Diem attended the opening of the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon that RWA helped to establish. Less than a year later, during June 1960, in Saigon Diem toured the South Vietnamese iteration of the Crossroad exhibition before it shipped to Washington, D.C. (Figure 6.1). On top of this, Wright’s embrace of hand-based, traditional features of Vietnamese craft dovetailed with Beggs’s appreciation of its pre-modern, non-industrial, unchanging qualities. The provenance of objects interconnected these projects, too. Invoices for the exhibition point to some of the craft items hailing from craft centers in South Vietnam,5 including those in Saigon and Buon Kroa that RWA helped to establish. 135

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Figure 6.1 President Diem and others view the Applied Arts and Handicraft Room, Saigon Chamber of Commerce, June 1960. Box 3, Papers of Olov Robert Thure Janse, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

The “Contemporary Crafts” section of the Crossroad exhibition catalog credits the Handicraft Center in Saigon with no fewer than sixteen items, among them a lacquer cigarette box, wooden urns, leaf-and-fish-shaped wooden dishes, a silver tea-strainer, a child’s plate and spoon, a silver tray, necklaces, a bracelet, pipe and chalk pot, and an ivory elephant tusk carved to represent the Trung Sisters, who were renowned in Vietnam for leading a military rebellion against the Chinese in A.D. 40. During the 1950s, this historical event iterated the theme of Vietnamese sovereignty, which the State Department promoted in the face of the potential spread of communism in South Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia. Also, craft on sale in the Handicraft Development Center in Saigon, such as conical hats, featured in craft gifted to the Smithsonian from the Crossroad exhibition (Figure 6.2).6 A good example of an object having ties to both projects came from Thanh Le. Wright included a number of his lacquer works in the 1958 World Trade Fair and the 1958–9 Traveling Department Store Exhibition. Around the same time, Thanh Le was contributing approximately fifteen percent of the ceramic items in the Contemporary Craft section of the Smithsonian’s exhibition, together

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Figure 6.2 Conical hat, 244852, United States National Museum E400760-0, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution.

with lacquer works. Among items the government of Vietnam gifted from the exhibition to the Smithsonian was a lacquer photograph album illustrated on the external cover with nacre, or mother-of-pearl, representing flowers and birds (Figure 6.3). Thanh Le’s name was stamped inside. Today, the lacquer album lives among Janse’s archival papers, where it contains a black-and-white photographic archive of the Saigon installation of Vietnam’s contributions to the Smithsonian exhibit. What made craft items like the lacquer photo album appropriate for economic diplomacy mediated through RWA, made them inappropriate for the standards for ethnographic objects in the Smithsonian’s cultural diplomacy effort culminating in its exhibition. In the Smithsonian’s world, craft in the Crossroad exhibition did not convey the historical gravitas and cultural value of archaeology or fine art. In that same world, craft was deemed not authentic enough to be embraced as truly ethnographic, despite the fact that publicity for the Traveling Department Store Exhibition emphasized authenticity as a selling point for Vietnamese craft.7 One consequence is that the sizeable collection of Vietnamese craft the government of Vietnam gifted from the exhibition to the Smithsonian Institution (accession number 244852) has not been exhibited and remains unstudied.

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Figure 6.3 Exterior, Thanh Le, wooden case with nacre flowers and birds, ca. 1950s, Box 3. Papers of Olov Robert Thure Janse, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

Vietnamese craft as knowledge of the region, culture, and nation In 1951, the same year President Truman asked Congress to support The Mutual Security Act, Thomas P. Mack of the United States Special Operations Missions to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam advised Beggs to ask Vietnam to exhibit their art in the U.S. as a show of friendship and trust.8 Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures emerged from Beggs responding to this request with a project he first called “Arts of Indo China Past and Present.” Craft would play a role in representing a region comprised of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. These states belonged to the Associated States of Indochina established by France, through which the U.S. began giving aid around 1950. Beggs visited several American museums to identify potential loans of Southeast Asian objects, which he tentatively scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., during 1955.9 However, a letter from Beggs to Mack indicates Beggs was alert to conflict in Southeast Asia, and he realized it could jeopardize the exhibition timeline. Beggs also worried about civil war shifting the significance of craft away from peace and “the wholesome creation of beauty” to “more of distress and disaster.”10 When fighting between French and Vietnamese forces intensified, Beggs tabled his plans for the exhibition. More than two years would pass before Beggs confirmed to Leonard Carmichael, Secretary of the Smithsonian, that Kenneth Landon of the State Department’s

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Oriental Division urged the Smithsonian to revitalize it.11 Carmichael, writing to Beggs in 1957, suggested that an exhibition about Vietnam “should do a great deal to cement friendship for this country not only with Viet Nam, but also with other countries in Southwest [sic] Asia.”12 Beggs, however, credited the revitalization of an exhibition project to “the stabilization of political affairs in Viet Nam” along with South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem’s visit to Washington, D.C., during May, 1957.13 The go-ahead to proceed with organizing an exhibition included confirmation that participating organizations did not “appear on the official lists of subversive groups.”14 Meanwhile, Beggs’s correspondence reveals that the initial focus for an exhibition had changed. The new plan jettisoned Laos and Cambodia due to “political changes and the insecure positions of these governments.”15 Instead the exhibition would showcase the heritage and influence of culture on Vietnam: “it is proposed to place when possible objects of antiquity showing Indian influence in the alcoves on the East side and those showing Chinese on the West side.”16 Political developments likely disinclined Beggs from addressing several states in a region instead of focusing on the art of one nation. For instance, Laos gained its independence from France in name during 1950 and fully in 1953, but the nation experienced civil war with communists in North Vietnam. Cambodia, which became independent from France in 1953, thereafter struggled with maintaining political neutrality in the early years of the Cold War. Additionally, the “Arts and Crafts of Viet Nam,” as Beggs referred to the exhibition in 1957, would “reflect the essential character of the country in which they are made—its terrain, its climate, the habits and dress of its inhabitants are revealed by the material[s] used and the way they are put together.”17 Here, Beggs attests to the capacity of craft to express “the essential character” of Vietnam as a nation, perhaps with the realization that other non-Western nations were sending objects and exhibitions to the U.S. to profile their identity as a nation in the Free World. For example, Japanese Painting and Sculpture from the Sixth Century A.D. to the Nineteenth Century had opened at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1953, and subsequently traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955, and in 1960, The Arts of Thailand exhibition at the Indiana University Art Museum would feature works of ceramic, silk, jewelry, and works on paper, among other objects. This exhibition would circulate to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Toledo Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, and Honolulu Academy of Arts.18 The Arts of Thailand would introduce Americans to ancient, historical, and contemporary objects touted as masterpieces, a conceit that was sometimes claimed about Vietnamese craft in books that referenced it as art and were intended for a Western readership.19 At least one reviewer would mention that Thailand is a SEATO ally of the U.S. and that the exhibition developed from difficult arrangements.20 Interestingly, while at this point Beggs framed an exhibition about Vietnamese culture in regard to

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Indian and Chinese cultures acting upon it, Korean National Art Treasures, an exhibition supported by the State Department, with most works coming from museums in Seoul,21 promoted the national character of Korean art withstanding the influence of China.22 Eventually Beggs would iterate this approach in Crossroad. By 1958, the Smithsonian’s Vietnam exhibition was scheduled to open in Washington, D.C., during the fall of the following year.23 Eventually, this new timeline would change, too. What did go forward was Beggs contracting archaeologist Olov Robert Thure Janse to help him with developing the exhibition. Janse would travel to Europe and Southeast Asia to develop a checklist and secure loans for objects, some that Janse had disinterred in the fieldwork he undertook in Southeast Asia for the École Française d’Extrême-Orient during the 1930s. Smithsonian documents show that the Ministry of Education in Saigon aimed to assist the Smithsonian in “present[ing] life in Viet Nam today in terms of its arts and crafts” by providing “the best possible examples of contemporary Viet-Namese craftsmanship in lacquer, silver, ivory, wood and ceramics.”24 A year before the exhibition opened, the Smithsonian drafted a press release crediting the Vietnam government for its “special efforts to obtain the finest available examples of the work of living craftsmen who demonstrate traditional techniques and motifs of the country’s great national heritage.”25 Yet, instead of emphasizing heritage, the press release suggested the exhibition would privilege contemporary craft. In a complicated move, it also charged craft with representing the past and the present simultaneously, mainly by materializing an unchanging tradition. It is likely that at least some members of the “Viet Nam Organizing Committee” listed in the Crossroad exhibition catalog selected craft for the exhibition, a task for which they obtained items from craft cooperatives if not also from the studios of renowned artists and artisans. Among the participants on the committee from South Vietnam were members of the Cultural Division of the Department of National Education, the Institute of Historical Research, and the National Museum. The committee also included representatives from the Cultural Institute of Hue, and the Schools of Applied Arts in Bien Hoa and Gia Dinh, respectively, along with the Thu Dau Mot College of Fine Arts.26 These schools were known for commingling French and European academic traditions with regional and local ones. Beggs and Janse participated, too. Correspondence from Beggs reveals that the Embassy of Viet Nam invited him to “spend two weeks in Saigon selecting from collected arts and crafts work those items desirable for showing in Washington next October.” In declining the invitation due to scheduling conflicts, Beggs sent the embassy “a list from the photographs and illustrated booklets” that it had given him.27 On top of this, the NCFA spearheaded the Crossroad exhibition under the authority of the Smithsonian, guided mainly by Beggs with assistance from Janse, and with Beggs also in communication with staff at the State Department. The government of Vietnam was purchasing items from the “selection of specific objects of present-day arts and crafts work [then] being assembled in Saigon and Hue.” Representatives of the Embassy of Viet Nam in Washington, D.C., participated with these individuals and with staff from the NCFA in shaping the checklist and aggregating the craft in Saigon that was intended for Washington, D.C. As arranged

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by the State Department, the United States Operations Mission there photographed the craft along with the art and archaeology that museums in Southeast Asia were loaning to the exhibition.28 Items assembled for Crossroad belonged to one of three types—ancient archaeology, art, and handicrafts. Smithsonian staff referred to handicraft as “arts and crafts” as well as “ethnology and crafts.” Together with their South Vietnamese colleagues, Smithsonian staff and project personnel favored examples that seemed typical as opposed to exceptional, and contemporary rather than ancient. Individuals who aggregated items for the Crossroad exhibition may have used age, material, manner of making, or contemporary ideas about what constituted types of artifacts to distinguish handicraft from art and ancient archaeology. On the other hand, they noted qualities and traits that all of the artifacts shared, for example, heritage. Memos credited craft with bringing forth “traditional techniques and motifs of the country’s great national heritage.”29 In lectures at the University of Saigon and the University of Hue, Janse also imputed a political dimension to heritage by suggesting that it had the capacity to unify a new nation.30 Others spoke to transnational connections. The Times of Viet Nam addressed Vietnam’s identity as a crossroad immemorial. Consequently, the “importance of [the] archaeology of Viet Nam goes far beyond its national boundaries, and orientalists all over the world are genuinely interested in the matter.”31 Smithsonian staff, staff at the Embassy of Viet Nam, and the English-language press in Vietnam largely stayed away from crediting the French, such as Louis Malleret, for conducting archaeological research leading to the rediscovery of items that would appear in the exhibition.32 The archaeology, art, and craft that South Vietnam loaned to the Smithsonian first reached the Directorate of Fine Arts in Saigon by May 31, 1960.33 There, from June 1 to 20, the government exhibited these items in the former French Chamber of Commerce, which was functioning as an exhibition hall and headquarters for South Vietnam’s Trade and Industry Department.34 Whether this was the same space where Wright and his team first saw Vietnamese craft exhibited along with photographs of artisans during January 1956 is unclear. The installation heading for the Smithsonian separated craft from archaeology and fine art. Examples of craft appeared in rooms themed as “Mountain Tribes,”“Applied Arts and Handicraft Room,” and “Modern Applied Arts and Handicraft Products” (see Figure 6.1). In the latter room, inside the display case a large flat lacquer item on the second shelf from the bottom resembles the photographic album the government of Vietnam would gift to the Smithsonian (see Figure 6.3). Then, after traveling to the U.S. on Navy ships, items loaned by South Vietnam joined examples of art and archaeology that Janse and Beggs selected from European and American collections. Together, these artifacts made up the Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures exhibition, which opened at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Building on October 26, 1960. The exhibition remained on view there until December 8, 1960. Throughout ten alcoves the exhibition represented the history of Vietnamese civilization. Alcove seven, the “Ethnological Section,” presented eighteenth- and nineteenth-century handicraft and art from Saigon. South Vietnam attributed some of the craft to Mountain

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Tribes, which it considered an “ethnic minority group.”35 The remainder of that section consisted of paintings (lacquer panels and screens and oil paintings), sculpture (bronze heads and figures of Buddha, stone and ceramic heads, carved ivory figurines and dragons), ceramics (jars, bowls, and vases), textiles (costumes, rugs, embroidered and applique mats), and items of miscellaneous materials (tortoise shell, mother-of-pearl, horn objects, and instruments).36 Other than archaeological objects, the materials, subject matter, and appearance of the items resembled those RWA had presented in the Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit (1956), the World Trade Fair exposition (1958), and the Traveling Department Store Exhibition (1958–9). Upon closing in Washington, D.C., the exhibition divided. Archaeology and art traveled to American museums, while craft went to universities and galleries.

Acquiring Vietnamese craft Before the exhibition opened, the Smithsonian considered acquiring items from its checklist. Pursuing this possibility involved Eugene Knez, the Smithsonian’s new associate curator in ethnology. By 1960, Knez represented anthropology in planning meetings for the exhibition because, as John Pope of The Freer Gallery of Art explained, the part of the Smithsonian that dealt with Asian art “does not participate in exhibition activities outside its own galleries.”37 Smithsonian administration supported Knez’s interest in visiting Saigon during early December 1960 to acquire ethnological objects for exhibitions at the Smithsonian and to develop research contacts.38 In June, Knez had approached the Embassy of Viet Nam for help in redressing a collection gap at the NMNH for “traditional and modern aspects of contemporary life in Asia” to be represented in new permanent Asian exhibits.39 Knez hoped the embassy would want its nation represented among others in the esteemed halls of the U.S. National Museum, and he hoped the embassy would commission Vietnamese scientists and scholars to assemble examples of “socio-cultural objects in Viet-Nam.”40 A few months later, Gus [Willard] Van Beek, the Smithsonian’s curator of Old World archaeology, asked Beggs to inquire if South Vietnam would present “one or more” of “five listed works” slated for the Crossroad exhibition that the National Museum of Saigon owned. Van Beek pitched his request in terms of diplomacy— “a gesture of appreciation and good will” on the part of the Vietnamese government, whom he expected would meet the Americans’ request for items having archaeological significance by donating them—“whether [to the] NCFA, the Division of Ethnology, or the Division of Archeology.”41 Van Beek especially wanted South Vietnam to gift the Smithsonian examples of ancient Vietnamese archaeology. Although the South Vietnamese government declined his request, through its embassy it extended “a willingness to present examples of contemporary crafts work and possibly ‘minority group’ art objects to the Division of Ethnology.”42 Knez followed up by asking the embassy about acquiring ethnological objects from the traveling Crossroad exhibition.43 Alluding to the difficulty of selecting

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examples from “lists or photographs,” he mentioned “products of the Highlander and Cham handicraft.” He checked plates in the exhibition catalog “to indicate useful objects for the Smithsonian Institution” and he also suggested, “A few musical instruments with music books, and one or two objects to represent the various crafts would be acceptable.”44 Previously, Knez had sent the embassy a list of items from the Crossroad exhibition. However, he insisted, “No item made primarily for export is requested.”45 The list—a two-page document called “Items desired from Viet-Namese Collection”—appears in the exhibition archives and in Knez’s papers.46 During March 1961, Knez again asked the embassy for help in representing the everyday life of Vietnamese people within the “exhibit space on the main floor of the U.S. National Museum, e.g., India is sending twenty-one crates of high-quality ethnological items, and, for this reason I have assumed that perhaps Viet-Nam is similarly concerned.”47 By the end of 1961 the Embassy of Viet Nam wrote Beggs that the Department of Education in Saigon permitted the Smithsonian to maintain the items Knez requested from Crossroad in appreciation “for what you have done during our Cultural Exhibit” and to “continue to promote a better understanding of Viet Nam.”48 On February 8, 1962, the Smithsonian acknowledged the gift of a carved chest with bone shutters; wooden printing block; ceramic fighting cocks; lacquered, brass and silver trays; carved wooden, inlaid, and silver boxes; a brass perfume brassier; a brass tea kettle; a silver desk set; silver betel boxes and a spittoon; a chalk pot; tortoise shell fans; glasses; silver spoons; a brass powder case; a woman’s scarf; an embroidered curtain; a coat with silver buttons; a pink dress with white flowers; material for a blouse and embroidered material for a coat; a silk-patterned belt; a bamboo hat; and a conical hat.49 Officially, the items entered the Smithsonian as a collection of sixty-seven ethnological specimens on August 7, 1962, as a gift from the government of Vietnam, Department of Education.50 Papers attached include a “History of Collection,” and documents linked the gift to the Crossroad exhibition: “This collection constitutes a selection made and requested by the Division of Ethnology from a large loan exhibition of Vietnamese treasures—largely archaeological—which was sponsored by the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1961.”51

Crossroad and cultural diplomacy These activities galvanized the Crossroad exhibition as cultural diplomacy. Cultural diplomacy expected Americans to serve as unofficial diplomats by promoting American ideals abroad and helping their fellow Americans, at home, to understand the cultures and ideals of foreigners. To this latter point, Robert H. Thayer, who served as a diplomat in Europe during the 1950s and wrote about developments in diplomacy, noted that cultural diplomacy cultivated citizens to appreciate the internal or domestic affairs of the nation as world affairs.52 Beggs exemplified such an “individual ambassador of goodwill” by pursuing a good working relationship with the Embassy of Viet Nam through organizing an

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exhibition to the mutual benefit of the U.S. and South Vietnam that would develop an appreciation of Vietnamese culture among Americans. In his contracted work for the Crossroad exhibition, Janse facilitated these aims, too. Under Beggs’s direction, Janse traveled in Southeast Asia thanks to a grant facilitated by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which asked Americans to promote a better understanding of their nation by sharing knowledge, skills, the arts, and science abroad. On this point Thayer explained, “The objective of American cultural diplomacy is to create in the peoples of the world a perfect understanding of the life and culture of America.”53 The emphasis on American citizens serving their nation as its unofficial ambassadors points to another facet of cultural diplomacy. By the 1950s, American diplomacy was “becoming less concerned with relationships among governments and more concerned with relationships among peoples.”54 Cultural diplomacy moved in this direction by fostering appreciation, understanding, and empathy “among peoples” and “among whole populations.”55 The Crossroad exhibition exemplified these strands of cultural diplomacy as Americans interacted with Vietnamese officials to organize the exhibition so everyday Americans could appreciate Vietnamese cultural artifacts and the history they conveyed. At the same time, the exhibition facilitated mutual security by using information about the people of another nation to strengthen American security and economic relations in the world. Thayer explains: Foreign relationships are no longer only relationships between governments, or heads of state, foreign relationships are the relationship between people of all countries—and relationships between peoples are governed by the way people think and live, and eat, and feel and this represents the culture of a people.56

In so far as craft expressed “the way [Vietnamese] people think and live, and eat, and feel,” it helped Crossroad facilitate “foreign relationships” between South Vietnamese and American people. These relationships synced cultural diplomacy with American mutual security interests in expanding the Free World, as expressed by the highest level of American leadership. In 1955, President Eisenhower asked Congress to recommit to the Mutual Security Program to support American partnerships with “free nations” that were “rooted in the facts of economic and defence interdependence” and in “the understanding and respect of each partner for the cultural and national aspirations of the other.”57 Maintaining these relationships could follow from Smithsonian communications with the government of Vietnam, Vietnam’s American ambassador, and the Embassy of Viet Nam in Washington, D.C., along with the “patronage of leaders active in the promotion of learning and the exchange of knowledge with friendly oriental peoples.”58 In addition to knowledge were references to political sovereignty for South Vietnam and the importance of alliances. Carmichael explained, “An exhibition of this kind with the wide participation on the part of the United States should do a great deal to cement friendship for this country not only with Viet Nam, but also with other countries in Southwest Asia [sic].”59

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In Saigon, President Diem visited the display of material Vietnam was loaning to the Smithsonian. His visit signified his support of Vietnamese–American relations and conveyed pride in Vietnamese cultural history (see Figure 6.1). However, in the U.S., the American press ignored this event and played up American connections with Vietnam’s artifacts. Washington, D.C., newspapers, the Times of Viet Nam, and State Department publications all published photographs of Beggs attending the uncrating of Vietnamese artifacts recently arrived in the U.S. for the exhibition. Vietnamese and American officials joined him in modeling appreciative beholding, a behavior the Crossroad exhibition aimed to foster in its American visitors.60 The exhibition forged additional bonds between South Vietnam and the U.S. Its opening on the fifth anniversary of Diem’s presidency underscored Smithsonian and American government recognition of his leadership. Also, the opening brought together Smithsonian and South Vietnamese dignitaries such as Beggs along with Arthur Remington Kellogg, assistant secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and Tran Van Chuong, South Vietnam’s ambassador in Washington, D.C. (Figure 6.4). The ambassador was accompanied by his wife, Than Thi Nam Tran. Tran was a cousin of the former Vietnamese Emperor, Bao Dai, who˙abdicated in 1946. Their

Figure 6.4 Opening of Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures exhibition, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, October 26, 1960, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Image #MNH-530F.

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daughter, popularly known as Madame Nhu, was married to Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of South Vietnamese President Diem. Bringing these actors together within the national eminence of the Smithsonian located in the nation’s capital exemplified what Laura Belmonte describes as “culture harnessed specifically for the purpose of exercising and expanding U.S. military, economic, and political power [that] takes on forms distinct from other cultural transmissions and receptions.”61 What also contributed to harnessing South Vietnam to American interests in mutual security and developing economic trade internationally involved a connection between the nations concerning the ancient world. The exhibition treated artifacts as evidence of Vietnam having an ancient cultural identity networked to world commerce. Maps in the catalog illustrated ancient pathways of trade and migration resulting in the deposit of objects in the region that became South Vietnam. Chiefly, examples of Oc-Eo culture demonstrated exchange between this area and the Mediterranean via India and the Middle East. These objects, some that Janse disinterred during the 1930s and 1940s, situated South Vietnam’s heritage in this far-flung trade stretching to the Mediterranean. Ostensibly, the ancient cross-cultural mobility of artifacts augured what the contemporary nation could revive—a great civilization of commerce, no less a crossroad for the Free World. On top of this, in its status as heritage and tradition, craft indexed “people” who bore witness to the continuity of a way of life in a comprehensive manner—“the things [Vietnamese people] make, the things they do—the culture of a people is the life of a people.”62 A key feature of this account distanced South Vietnam from the communist world. The material results of Vietnam’s ancient connections with the Mediterranean region—coins, cameos, medallions, glassware, statuary, and other artifacts— offered proof that at one time, the area that became South Vietnam was not subservient to the North or wholly dependent on trade with China. Inferentially, present-day South Vietnam was heir to a culture independent of China, shaped in part by its trade with what the English-language press in Vietnam broadcast as the “eastward penetration of Hellenic–Roman civilization.” In the catalog, Beggs describes connections between the Dong-Son civilization and Funan people thriving near the “terminus of the Greco-Roman trade with the Orient”63 where modern-day Cambodia and South Vietnam would develop. In Saigon, working for Beggs, Janse lectured on the Oc-Eo site in South Vietnam that provided proof of these cross-cultural contacts,64 and his excavation work was interpreted as having “brushe[d] aside the idea of Vietnam as a mere Chinese subculture.”65 The Times of Viet Nam and American newspapers publicized these ideas, too. The illustration of imagery on a bronze drum of Dong-Son showing a barque bearing spirits of the dead to the islands of the blessed on the cover of the Crossroad exhibition catalog underscored ties between ancient Vietnam, Asia, and the West via the Black Sea. Reconfiguring some facets of these narratives about ancient Vietnam—from a hierarchy that devalued Vietnam in its dependence on China in the north, to its participation in more equal-footed horizontal exchange with India, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean in the east—associated pre-contemporary Vietnam

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with far-reaching trade. Also, the revision positioned Vietnam to have something in common with nations, such as the United States, that traced their ideological roots to Greek and Roman civilizations.66 In other words, if Vietnamese archaeology and ancient art revealed the southern area of Vietnam to be linked to the Mediterranean region, and the U.S. perceived its ideological roots of nationhood emerging from there, should not contemporary South Vietnam align with the U.S., heir to the Western classical world’s ideas about democracy, in a contemporary Free World?

Marginalizing craft Crossroad’s “art treasures” revealed the region that would become South Vietnam having served as a cultural and economic crossroad. In addition to bearing weighty histories, these treasures demonstrated the movement and influence of artifacts having diverse styles and lineages, and they alluded to the ability of powerful rulers and other patrons to commission them and mobilize their exchange for economic, social, and cultural purposes. During 1960, they performed the connective work of cultural diplomacy. Upon their return to Vietnam, the American ambassador there remarked, “These treasures . . . have created one more powerful bond between our two nations”; “There are few bonds stronger than art and beauty shared and few bridges which more effectively span the distance between continents.”67 Unfortunately, he did not mention craft bonding the nations, or that the South Vietnam government gifted contemporary craft items to the Smithsonian in lieu of ancient art or archaeology. The Crossroad exhibition had developed with an awareness “that internal affairs are also world affairs.”68 By 1955, as planning proceeded, Beggs showed an awareness that art facilitated diplomacy. However, he was likely not thinking about craft. Instead, at one point he linked the exhibition’s political significance to great works of art on the order of “German and Japanese masterpieces.” Beggs recalled that after World War II, these masterpieces “did a great deal to restore good relations with our former enemies.”69 In the interest of friendship, the Crossroad exhibition offered the U.S. an opportunity to use “masterpieces” of ancient Vietnamese art and archaeology to move beyond recent political conflict that could complicate American foreign affairs. Some of that conflict involved France. It had formerly asserted its power by colonizing and administrating much of the region. Now, as the U.S. supported the political sovereignty of South Vietnam, also, it treated France as an ally. None the less, although the Smithsonian acknowledged France as a supporter of Crossroad and the research on which it was organized, it did not reference France’s longstanding imperial presence in Vietnam during the years when Janse’s ties to the École Française d’Extrême-Orient facilitated his field work in Thanh Hoa as director of the scientific mission to Southeast Asia. Instead, Beggs cited France as a champion of scholarship about Vietnam from which the world benefited. “In assembling an exhibition of the art of southeast Asia,” Beggs wrote Janse, “we become conscious of the great debt

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humanity owes to the French for our knowledge of the art of the early civilizations in that area.”70 Beggs treated French–Vietnamese relations as part of the post-Dien Bien Phu era of the Free World, wherein France would enjoy mutually beneficial political relations and support with the U.S. and South Vietnam. Still, France’s colonial history in Vietnam may have resonated in Vietnam’s response to the Smithsonian’s request to receive one or more of its archaeological treasures. As part of “the French ambition to enrich and empower itself through its colonial assets,” Nora Taylor observed, France had collected ancient treasures from archaeological excavations in the region.71 Perhaps in rejecting the Smithsonian’s request for a gift of Vietnamese archaeology, Vietnam was foreclosing the continuation of Western entitlement to its history to instead privilege the construction of its own account of its history. Craft did not feature among the items that could relate this history. Rather, it was the art treasures and masterpieces of “art and beauty” that bore the narrative weight of bonding nations, fostering friendship and trust, and reconciling differences. Similarly, the exhibition and related writing about Southeast Asian craft omitted discussing craft on its own or within cross-cultural exchange in the “crossroad.” Instead, Americans, Europeans, and other Asians hoped Vietnamese craft would maintain its timelessness and forego mechanization if not also modernization. Beggs criticized the mechanization of craft production in South Vietnam and rooted it in a timeless tradition.72 Also, he encouraged manual artisanry and traditional processes and materials: “Much that is pleasantly exotic in Vietnamese craft today can be traced to the persistence of old cultural traits.”73 Beggs promoted contemporary craft associated with the highland ethnic minorities, whom he loosely connected to the Dong-Son civilization trading with the Greco-Roman world.74 Like him, Kathleen McLaughlin was reporting about the vulnerabilities of Asian craft. In Craft Horizons, McLaughlin associated machine mass production in Asia with rapid modernization, and she noticed that this issue caused “speculation in various countries about the dilemma of the crafts workers and the rise of unemployment among them.”75 On the front page of the New York Times McLaughlin also sounded the alarm on plastics: “In practically every country in Asia, time is running out for the traditional handicrafts evolved through the centuries. They are being overwhelmed gradually by competition from the rapidly expanding plastics industries.”76 The next year, Free World promoted an exhibition of rubber and plastics that the Vietnamese Confederation of Industry and Crafts sponsored at the Saigon Chamber of Commerce. Among the items displayed were handbags, belts, mats, and chair seating woven from plastic strips;77 in other words, items that the craft aid program wanted to see being made in natural fibers. UNESCO’s 1958 symposium also addressed the waning of traditional cultures in Southeast Asian nations that adopted democracy after World War II. According to its participants, the “problem” of Southeast Asia consisted of the vulnerabilities of its traditional cultures becoming “enfeebled” by Western technologically driven production.78 If this occurred, the industrialized West would lose a mainstay of

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handmade things from Asia that it needed to offset what it already had lost as the mechanized mass production and distribution of goods became the norm in the material culture of everyday life there. These discussions foreclosed the opportunity for Vietnamese craft to express change through time or convey cross-cultural influence. Additionally, the craft discourse positioned craft at the level of everyday culture, not in the realm of the treasure or masterpiece. In practical terms, the differences in narratives and values for archaeology and fine art versus craft created a fork in the road. After the exhibition closed in Washington, D.C., it divided in two to tour the United States. Items considered ancient archaeology and fine art toured major American art museums for presentation as “treasures.” Those classed as craft were consolidated as a “Contemporary Crafts Exhibition” intended to educate Americans about Vietnam as a present-day, albeit timeless, place, people, and culture. Between February and November 1961, the Contemporary Crafts Exhibition circulated to Ferris Booth Hall, Columbia University, New York; Brandeis University Library, Massachusetts; Michigan State University; and The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego. These venues emphasized education and anthropology as opposed to aesthetic appreciation.

Ethnographic failures The subsequent gift of Vietnamese craft to the Smithsonian fell short of its curator’s standards for their ethnographic collections. As he communicated with the Embassy of Viet Nam about acquiring “certain ethnological objects” from the exhibition, Knez took pains to enumerate the types of artifacts he considered authentically “ethnological”: “I refer to a wide range of objects, costumes, utility ceramics, ritual objects, agricultural tools, folk art, and other objects that have been used by Vietnamese people in their daily life.”79 Knez clarified the meaning of “ethnological collection”: “An ethnological collection, particularly for exhibit purposes, must consist of objects that can be placed together in a culturally meaningful association. The collection should not be a random group of objects but rather be objects to illustrate a facet of life.”80 Through correspondence he guided the embassy in understanding how the artifacts he hoped to acquire from them would cohere thematically, and he offered examples of a Vietnamese ethnological collection, too. “Perhaps one such collection might include those tangible objects used in a typical Vietnamese kitchen, preferably from a lowland village.”81 Knez favored artifacts from rural places rather than towns and cities. Like Beggs, he favored non-industrially manufactured crafts made of materials that were local if not indigenous. On the other hand, Knez indicated interest in “new and foreign influences [that] have appeared to combine, modify, and at times replace the old” features of traditional things made for the home.82 Nevertheless, he insisted that these artifacts express Vietnamese ways of life at home. Thus, a Vietnamese ethnological collection “could depict the Vietnamese medium or religious professional” or it might highlight practices of raising children. Knez

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asserted, “To paraphrase a phrase used by a well-known anthropologist, the theme of an exhibit based on this sort of material could be ‘Coming of Age in VietNam.’ ”83 The Crossroad catalog identifies many items from Thanh Le—a ceramic dish; water bottle, bowl with a hunting scene; flora-and-fauna-decorated candy jar and lid; plaque with a Moon Festival design in relief; vase with floral pattern and portrait of a Vietnamese girl; and several flower pots, including the themes of “going to market,” the Trung Sisters, and “triumphant return”; several lacquer saucers with stands; and a wine table with ceramic tiles depicting a Vietnamese rural scene. Thanh Le’s lacquer photo album also appears in the exhibition registration list84 and catalog,85 and it likely was included among the works of craft the government of Vietnam gifted to the Smithsonian.86 Knez thought items in an ethnological collection increased in value with good documentation about their maker, site of origin and use, material, technique, and so forth. Unfortunately, most of the craft items lacked this information,87 although in the case of the photo album some details were known. However, like much of the other craft, the photo album did not convey narratives that Knez suggested, and its use by Vietnamese people in their everyday lives was unknown.88 The lacquer album failed on another point. When Knez shared the list of artifacts he desired from the Crossroad exhibition with the Embassy of Viet Nam, he explicitly stated, “No item made primarily for export is requested.”89 Knez wanted to collect artifacts made in Vietnam for use by Vietnamese people in their everyday lives in rural settings. However, South Vietnamese government officials had purchased some craft items for the Crossroad exhibition from centers aiming to serve markets beyond their immediate locales. Those that became a part of the Smithsonian gift were likely made for export in towns and cities, perhaps even for trans-oceanic export. An added problem was that the items were not old, nor were they constructed with unusual materials or techniques. This was the case for the lacquer photo album. Its maker had followed a pathway encouraged by the State Department for artisans to pursue international trade and especially American domestic consumption. During October and November, 1958, Thanh Le, together with Au Ngoc Ho, of the export company VIDECO, traveled to the U.S. and Europe to explore marketing his work. “Private producers, exporters and retailers must carry the initiative,” Thanh Le wrote, echoing the State Department’s position on the importance of trade and the notion that “valuable and dependable alliances are rooted in this people-to-people relationship.”90 However, Thanh Le acknowledged the importance of producers and exporters working “in cooperation with the assistance of the government,” too.91 Thanh Le’s trip to the U.S. to explore its market for lacquer goods advanced the circulation of his work that Wright began. Wright included Thanh Le’s lacquerware in the Vietnam exhibition he organized for the U.S. World Trade Fair held at the New York Coliseum during May 1958.92 Later that year, Wright included a sixpanel lacquer screen with birds and leaves by Thanh Le in the Traveling Department Store Exhibition.93 In October 1958, Thanh Le visited Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia. In addition to showing films about arts and crafts,

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Wanamaker’s held a luncheon honoring the Traveling Department Store Exhibition along with Thanh Le.94 On this occasion, Home Furnishings Daily reported that in Thu Dau Mot, Thanh Le “employs 150 skilled craftsmen” and his wife supervises the plant.95 The reference to a plant suggests manufacturing; however, none of the publicity about Thanh Le’s visit to the U.S. actually stated that he was mass manufacturing lacquerware or industrializing its production, although his showroom appears well-stocked with numerous items (see Chapter 5, Figure 5.12). The Department Store Exhibition featured objects selected “because of their adaptability to the American home,”96 including the screen by Thanh Le and additional “lacquer accessories.” Whether or not Thanh Le’s photo album appeared in Wright’s World Trade Fair exposition or Traveling Department Store Exhibition, or accompanied Thanh Le to the U.S., it suited the middle-class American home. There, it offered associations Americans perceived as artistic and luxury-oriented, to a portable, everyday object. Americans desired photo albums to sustain their hobbies of commissioning as well as making and collecting photographs and providing a pleasing, organized way to archive and present them. Displayed on a coffee table or shelf, a lacquer case serving as a photo album offered a beautiful foreign-made object that doubled as storage when storage mattered for upwardly mobile Americans. These Americans were defining themselves by the things and images they accumulated for their homes, and they needed ways to manage their accumulation. Wright had previously designed and written about storage for these homes, and storage featured in his and his wife Mary’s well-regarded Guide to Easier Living (1951).97 However, according to Knez’s criteria, Thanh Le’s interests in export rendered his lacquerware an inauthentic example of Vietnamese craft ethnographically.98 Knez would have rejected it based on its commodity status, which the government of Vietnam promoted for contemporary craft in regard to the craft aid project.99 Even more problematic for other works of Vietnamese craft gifted to the Smithsonian was this qualification appearing in the “History of Collection” attached to the accession papers: “This collection constitutes a selection made and requested by the Division of Ethnology from a large loan exhibition of Vietnamese treasures—largely archaeological—which was sponsored by the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1961. Much of the material is of Chinese design.”100 Paradoxically, the Crossroad exhibition from which the craft items came had aimed to redress notions that Vietnamese culture amounted to a derivation from the Chinese. Yet, the reference to Chinese design meant the craft could not be valued as a reflection of rural Vietnamese life. Nor would it be embraced for its autonomy from Chinese arts. The status of other works of craft in Vietnam’s gift to the Smithsonian also wobbled under an unclear idea of what counted as Vietnamese craft. Would it have mattered to Knez if artisans from the North who recently arrived in the South as refugees made the craft the Smithsonian acquired? What if items came from the North? An invoice associated with accession number 244852 from the Saigon Institute of Historical Research lists candlesticks, a candle-base lion, incense burners, and a pot of slaked lime from Bat-Trang, along with items from Dai-La located near Hanoi, not Saigon.101

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Referencing craft the government of Vietnam gifted to the Smithsonian, Carmichael reassured the Embassy of Viet Nam, “These beautiful and useful objects will be placed in exhibits now being designed for the Museum currently undergoing reconditioning and enlargement.”102 During the 1960s, the NMNH exhibited ethnological artifacts from India, Pakistan, China, Japan, and other Asian nations. Vietnamese craft did not feature in any installations.

The unsuitability of Vietnamese craft for SITES Yet, Asian craft entered the U.S. for circulation. Annemarie Pope, the first director of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), distributed Asian craft by way of exhibitions she and her staff organized to travel throughout the nation. SITES began in 1951 as a cultural diplomacy initiative of the State Department having the purpose of creating and circulating exhibitions in Western Germany.103 In 1956, Annemarie Pope wrote to Beggs asking for permission to travel with her husband, John Alexander Pope, to Asia where he would conduct research for the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery. She intended to shift the emphasis of SITES exhibitions from “the arts and crafts of the important European countries.”104 In her request to travel, she explained that the Far East and Southeast Asia were “untapped.”105 Using the resources of American Foreign Service Officers, Pope arranged to visit Tokyo, Kyoto, Formosa [Taiwan], Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, and Ceylon, where she would meet with “museum officials, art dealers, artists, architects, and craftsmen of various kinds with a view to arranging exhibitions of paintings and prints, architecture, crafts such as ceramics, textiles, metal and lacquer work, and such folk arts as may prove to be suitable.”106 Annemarie Pope was embarking on a survey tour not unlike the one Wright and RWA would take. American economic diplomacy in Southeast Asia, plus a related goal of commodifying craft for American consumption, shaped the latter’s itinerary. In regard to similar foreign material, Pope perceived an opportunity to identify what expressed a people and place for American cultural consumption within the framework of a national museum vetting exhibitions to circulate from Washington, D.C., throughout the nation. Interestingly, despite foregrounding Asian craft in her itinerary, Pope slighted some of what she encountered precisely for its associations with American economic diplomacy. In reporting on her trip, she specifically rejected craft made for export through the Wright-directed ICA programs. Although she credited Wright and the ICA with increasing the quality of craft for export from Taipei, Pope declined to organize an exhibition of the material, insinuating that the selection was too limited and underdeveloped.107 She mentioned Hong Kong as “another of the places visited by Mr. Wright on behalf of ICA, and the situation in the handicrafts field is much the same as in Formosa.”108 Pope also declined crafts from Singapore, and from Vietnam, too, for inclusion in SITES exhibitions.

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Instead, she proposed an exhibition called Faces of Vietnam consisting of photographs by Raymond Cauchetier, who had published a book entitled Saigon in 1955.109 Beggs wrote to the Embassy of Viet Nam that this photo exhibition will “circulate among United States Museums” while at the Smithsonian they “resume planning for an exhibition of arts and crafts from Viet-Nam.”110 What SITES did import and circulate as Asian craft in the U.S. mostly came from prestigious collections such as those emphasizing the mastery of Japanese craft and rare items such as Burmese silk embroideries, or from well-organized, government-sponsored craft production in India; “outside Japan, the Indian craftsmen seem to be doing the most original and technically outstanding work.”111

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American Cold War needs for multi-layered diplomatic connections with South Vietnam brought that nation into the Free World on matters of security and economy. In pursuing these interests and needs by engaging with Vietnamese craft and bringing examples home to the U.S. for exhibition and merchandising, Americans were aiming to integrate the craft into a feedback loop. Contemporary postwar American life would serve as the arbiter of what it was about Vietnamese craft that offered Americans comfort and pleasure. At the same time, Americans involved with the craft aid program disregarded features of the craft that might have troubled what appealed to Americans. Chiefly, Americans overlooked at least two cross-cultural dimensions of Vietnamese craft. One involved confluences of extra-Vietnamese influence and tradition that informed the craft, and a second pointed to objects that hailed from beyond present-day Vietnam. Together, these dimensions of craft that Americans presented in the U.S. as Vietnamese brought to the craft items a pan-Asian character, if not a European and pan-Asian character with acknowledgment of French colonial influence. In American eyes, other elements would have diminished what made Vietnamese craft an indigenous cultural form, too, such as the substitution of traditional natural materials for synthetic ones, and the replacement of handwork with some manner of mechanization. Nevertheless, the Americans and their contracted specialists from other nations who were interfacing with artisans and their work embraced Vietnamese craft as concomitant with the Vietnam nation and with pre-industrial technology and a timeless craft tradition, especially in light of overt and implicit comparisons they made to the state of American and Western industrialization and cultural change. All told, Americans needed South Vietnam’s craft more than they desired accuracy in accounting for provenance-based lineages of its forms, imagery, fabrication practices, reproduction status, and locations. It served as an extension of American interests abroad and at home, and at home it would make some Americans’ lives more satisfying. Ironically, their longing for craft that looked and felt antithetical to the material culture of mechanically mass produced housewares and goods generated an adaptation that in some cases was not all that different from what Americans already could purchase at home, such as furnishings sharing the color palette established by Wright’s American Modern line or examples of 155

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craft from the American Studio Craft Movement. For their part, the Smithsonian wanted ethnic purity in Vietnamese craft more than they would accommodate evidence of its cross-cultural trade or production for export. Across the spectrum of American government engagements with the craft, veritably no one was accounting for artisans as individuals or zeroing in on their creativity, interests, anxieties, or aspirations. The designer diplomat, together with his firm and contracted support staff, acted as an authority figure and middleman who facilitated communications about Vietnamese craft and its subtle adaptations for Americans across national and cultural boundaries. Beggs at the Smithsonian fit this profile, too. Their activity occurred during an era when, as Tarbell urged in Culture and Communication, individuals who represent the U.S. to others must “penetrate national and cultural boundaries” internationally as they simultaneously “influence their own ‘home’ audience, varying enemy audiences, and an extremely diverse group of neutral audiences.”1 To Tarbell’s point about enemy audiences, American involvement with craft in Vietnam was happening in and around conflict. Daily media as well as publications taking a longer view, such as the U.S. Army Area Handbook for Vietnam, would attest to the precarious position of the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government as the 1950s came to a close.2 Craft aid personnel lived in this context while they negotiated conflict with government entities controlling the program. In June 1960, USOM threatened to decline contracting any additional staff for the craft project, despite the fact that the government of Vietnam thought the contracts would continue indefinitely.3 RWA pushed back, too. In a memo to Director Arthur Gardiner, RWA advised contracting a merchandiser technician: “But you keep your hand under the child learning to swim until you are pretty sure. Now, the Vietnamese know nothing about merchandising such a shop as this and too little about much that this trainer is scheduled to give them.”4 Wright also detailed why the specialist was necessary for the success of the shop at the Handicraft Development Center following the imminent departure of RWA staff and the Uyemuras. My plan for export products from Vietnam will be completely ruined. We had planned on the development of certain export products which had already been tested in the U.S. market and had potential customers. It is planned that the Merchandiser technician would assist in developing seven categories of handicrafts and train the Vietnamese in proper packing and export procedures.5

Here, Wright revealed the vulnerability of his vision for South Vietnam. He continued by clarifying that its success depended on his team’s efforts to demonstrate Vietnamese need and address it. However, Wright acknowledged that RWA struggled in training Vietnamese artisans and craft managers on matters of export procedures and packing, and he acknowledged that losses occurred.6 Wright closed with a statement typed in capital letters to implore Gardiner to reconsider contracting another staff member by reminding him of the potential loss of craft and American taxpayer money.

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I AM PLEADING FOR WHAT I SINCERELY BELIEVE IN AND KNOW IS NEEDED. I BELIEVE THAT THE CANCELLATION OF THIS PROMISED TECHNICIAN IS AN INJUSTICE TO THE VIETNAMESE AND CONSTITUTES A WITHDRAWAL OF PROTECTION OF AMERICAN MONEY ARLEADY INVESTED. PLEASE, PLEASE RECONSIDER.7

RWA’s contracts continued until February 1961.8 As newspapers tracked the heightened potential for civil war accompanying greater activity by communist forces,9 American diplomacy and aid parted ways with Diem, and the U.S. responded to North Vietnam’s activity, too. In early 1961 President Kennedy increased South Vietnam’s forces10 including the army,11 and by 1962 he tripled the number of American advisors active there.12 The U.S. Army perceived an active threat to not only South Vietnam but the entire region.13 The Kennedy administration offered Diem a limited partnership giving the U.S. opportunity to participate in internal decision-making.14 Diem declined, and he embarked on the Strategic Hamlet Program15 that ultimately dislocated more than four million people from their homes in the countryside by the fall of 1962.16 After the Tet Offensive of 1964, the number of American troops in Vietnam rose, and beginning in 1965, Washington, D.C., witnessed national and international critiques of American military involvement in Southeast Asia take the form of nearly annual protest marches against the war. Training artisans to make lampshades in colors familiar to Americans who owned Wright’s American Modern tableware offered a disproportionate American rejoinder, not a productive response to warfare escalating in Vietnam. In their final report of May 1961, RWA claimed success. Fostering an appreciation of Vietnamese craft on the part of Vietnamese, and ushering it into the twentieth century, featured among the achievements the firm mentioned.17 On the other hand, the report cited a lack of American standards of quality in craft fabrication, the monopoly of the Handicraft Development Center on workshops producing craft for export, and competition for craft markets throughout Southeast Asia and Asia. In addition to enumerating these difficulties, the report recommended sending Vietnamese students to the U.S. to train in design and the applied arts.18 Ultimately, despite the State Department directing its efforts and resources to aiding craft industries in South Vietnam, craft failed to gain and maintain traction as a significant import to the U.S. To be sure, diplomatic themes of mutual security and technological and economic diplomacy created opportunity to link the U.S. and South Vietnam, as did the American art world’s interest in the theme of nation and craft or nation and decorative arts, and craft, design, and retail. Yet, for the U.S., Vietnam remained entrenched in political and economic struggles that proved difficult to control and transcend and, unlike with Japan, an American desire to embrace Vietnamese culture as a conflation of art, craft, and commodity was missing. On ethnographic grounds, the Smithsonian rejected Vietnamese craft for lacking authentic use value and ethnic purity. In South Vietnam, American intervention in matters of craft was likely tolerated at best, and subsequent English-language publications omitted it.

158

Conclusion

Nevertheless, following the parent’s departure “the child learning to swim” swam. In 1970, the Vietnam Council on Foreign Relations published Handicrafts in Viet Nam, which credited “the Handicraft Development Center, also known as the Small Industries Development Center established in 1958” as “the heart of the handicrafts industry in Vietnam, if one so decentralized can be said to have a heart.”19 It claimed that 85 percent of Vietnamese living in South Vietnam made crafts.20 Apparently, after 1961, when RWA departed Vietnam, and at least by 1967, the Ministry of Economy incorporated the center under the deputy minister of Industry and Crafts.21 Handicrafts in Viet Nam mentioned a drop in ceramics production between 1962 and 1967.22 Interestingly, the author credits foreigners with helping to revitalize craft consumption. Following from “the war effort in 1965,” a “flood of foreign customers” pouring into Saigon bought craft23 from the Handicraft Center and from military sales stores and gift shops.24 The years following 1965 saw an increase in American troops in Vietnam, and Handicrafts in Viet Nam credited them with forming friendships with the Vietnamese and facilitating the growth of craft cooperatives.25 Furthermore, Handicrafts in Viet Nam acknowledged that women became more active in craft production with the national mobilization that occurred following the People’s Army of Vietnam and the Viet Cong’s Tet Offensive of 1968, which the publication credits with changing popular American opinion about whether the U.S. would win the Vietnam War.26 As part of their recovery from the Tet Offensive, craft materials were given to the Montagnards.27 Meanwhile, Vietnam had become part of the World Crafts Council,28 founded in 1964 as an offshoot from the American Craftsmen’s Council, and the Handicraft Development Center was planning for more exports and making greater efforts to have Vietnamese artisans observe and become active in merchandising their craft in the region.29 Handicrafts in Viet Nam expressed concern about maintaining the indigeneity and authenticity of the Montagnards’ crafts. Along with items from war,30 it reported that the Montagnards were incorporating “modern materials” they obtained from servicemen located around the Pleiku Air Base, which American forces established by 1962. In their textiles, these artisans recorded war’s munitions on the move. For example, American helicopters and cargo planes dot horizontal bands of color at the edge of a woven cotton skirt attributed to the Jarai Arap community located in Pleiku Province, ca. 1973.31 Americans had hoped their efforts to support Vietnamese craft would discourage conflict from developing and spreading in Southeast Asia. Some fifteen years later, in weaving the presence of battle into their textiles, Vietnamese artisans confirmed that an American war had come home to them.

NOTES Introduction 1 “Bringing the War Home: Martha Rosler in Conversation with Kim Knoppers,” Foam 41 (2015), 145. 2 Karen Moss, “Martha Rosler’s Photomontages and Garage Sales: Private and Public, Discursive and Dialogical,” Feminist Studies 39, no. 3 (2013): 690. See also Elizabeth Richards, “Materializing Blame: Martha Rosler and Mary Kelly,” Women’s Art Journal 33, no. 2 (Fall 2012): 4. 3 Moss, “Martha Rosler’s Photomontages and Garage Sales,” 687. 4 “Bringing the War Home,” 145. 5 Moss, “Martha Rosler’s Photomontages and Garage Sales,” 690–1. 6 Richards, “Materializing Blame,” 4. See also Heather Diack, “Too Close to Home: Rethinking Representation in Martha Rosler’s Photomontages of War,” Prefix Photo 7, no. 2 (2006): 59. 7 Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: A New History (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 310. 8 “Colorful Fabrics of Vietnam,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), front cover. 9 “Private Enterprise,” USOM Annual Report for Fiscal Year 1961 (1961), 71. 10 Goscha, Vietnam, 2. 11 Heonik Kwon, The Other Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 25. 12 Goscha, Vietnam, 2. 13 Ibid., 3. 14 Kwon, The Other Cold War, 19. 15 Museum of Modern Art International Program, The New American Painting (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959), 4. 16 Rene d’Harnoncourt, “Foreword,” in The New American Painting (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959), 5. 17 “As the Critics Saw It,” in The New American Painting (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959), 7–14. 18 Ibid., 10. See also Andrew James Wulf, U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War: Winning Hearts and Minds (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), footnote 87, 153–4. 19 Greg Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front: The Soft Power of Midcentury Design (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), x–xi. 20 See Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998); Michael Krenn, Fall-Out Shelters for the Human Spirit: American Art and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2005); Jack Masey and Conway Lloyd Morgan, Cold War Confrontations: US Exhibitions and Their Role in the Cultural Cold War (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2008); and Wulf, U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War. 21 Jane Pavitt, “Design and the Democratic Ideal,” in Cold War Modern Design, 1945–1970 (London: V&A Publishing, 2008), 83.

159

160 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50 51

Notes

Wulf, U.S. International Exhibitions during the Cold War, 56. Ibid., 59. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 61. Ibid., 80. Greg Castillo, “Domesticating the Cold War: Household Consumption as Propaganda in Marshall Plan Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 268. Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 16–17ff, 65 and 104ff; Richard F. Kuisel, The French Way: How France Embraced and Rejected American Values and Power (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011), xiv, xvi; Irwin M. Wall, The United States and the Making of Postwar France, 1945–1954 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Boitran Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics from 1925 Onwards (PhD diss., Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, 2005), 190. Ibid., 228. Ibid., 196. Ibid., 237. Tony Day, Cultures at War: The Cold War and Cultural Expression in Southeast Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2010), 19. Alison Carroll, The Revolutionary Century; Art in Asia 1900–2000 (South Yarra, Australia: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 101. Ibid., 103. Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front, xv. Ibid. See also David Crowley and Jane Pavitt, eds., Cold War Modern (London: V&A Publishing, 2010). However, this last work does not address the U.S. and Vietnam during the 1950s. Livingston T. Merchant, “The New Environment of American Diplomacy,” The Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 804 (November 22, 1954), 763. Ibid. Andrew Heywood, Politics, 4th ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 23. Merchant, “The New Environment,” 761. Ibid. Ibid. Robert T. Oliver, Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas Publishers, 1962), 9. See also Andrew J. Falk, Upstaging the Cold War: American Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy, 1940–1960 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 153; and Heywood, Politics, 7, 9. Russell Lynes, The Domesticated Americans (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1963), 6–7. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 20. Richard A. Gard, “Ideological Problems in Southeast Asia,” Philosophy East and West 2, no. 4 (January 1953): 293. Ibid. Nicole Sackley, “The Village as Cold War Site: Experts, Development, and the History of Rural Reconstruction,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011): 498–9.

Notes

161

52 Allan House, Information Officer, to James P. Hendrick, Special Representative of the Mission Chief, American Embassy, Hanoi, Vietnam, February 13, 1953, Record Group 469, Box 2, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 53 Julie Robards, “Collection Reflections: Supermarket Dinnerware,” Press-Republican, April 1, 2013, https://www.pressrepublican.com/news/lifestyles/collection-reflectionssupermarket-dinnerware/article_3e14d58b-8fa4-55c1-8148-95c08a974508.html 54 Linda Hamer Kennett, “Americana for Your Holiday Table: Currier & Ives,” The Weekly View, Indianapolis, November 24, 2016, http://weeklyview.net/2016/11/24/americanafor-your-holiday-table-currier-ives 55 Linda Kennett, “Scenes of Americana: Currier and Ives,” Daily News, Indiana, November 14, 2017, https://www.greensburgdailynews.com/opinion/columns/ scenes-of-americana-currier-and-ives/article_910f0dee-bc3c-5400-b81444e33b40c680.html 56 Robert Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy: Seeing Is Believing,” Vital Speeches of the Day 25, no. 24 (1959), 740. 57 Heywood, Politics, 7. 58 Andrew Leftwich, What Is Politics? The Activity and Its Study (Oxford: Polity, 2004), 14. 59 Sharon Macdonald, The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 3. 60 Heywood, Politics, 9. 61 Nira Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging (London: Sage, 2012), 10. 62 Patricia M. Pelley, Postcolonial Vietnam (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 2002), 5. 63 Ibid., 1. 64 Ibid., 6. 65 Jodi Kim, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 18. 66 James M. Carter, Inventing Vietnam: The United States and State Building, 1954–1968 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 37. See also page 31. 67 Ibid., 25. 68 Ibid., 26. 69 Ibid., 27–8. 70 Nora Taylor, “Whose Art Are We Studying? Writing Vietnamese Art History from Colonialism to the Present,” in Studies in Southeast Asian Art: Essays in Honor of Stanley J. O’Connor, ed. Nora Taylor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2000), 147. 71 Michal Jan Rozbicki, “Cross-Cultural History: Toward an Interdisciplinary Theory,” in Cross-Cultural History and the Domestication of Otherness, ed. Michal Jan Rozbicki and George O. Ndege (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 2. 72 Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics, 206. 73 Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging, 18. 74 Heywood, Politics, 9. 75 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 76 Kwon, The Other Cold War, 78. 77 Ibid., 19. 78 A Bamboo Bridge: Aid Where It Is Needed Most, Draft, February 16, 1961, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 79 Ibid.

162

Notes

80 C. Hart Schaaf, “The United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East,” International Organization 7, no. 4 (1953): 463–81. 81 Theodore Herman, “The Role of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries in Asian Economic Development,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 4, no. 4 (July 1956): 356–9. 82 Daniel Miller, “Accommodating,” in Contemporary Art and the Home, ed. Colin Painter (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2002), 116. 83 Ibid., 124. 84 Rozbicki, “Cross-Cultural History,” 208. 85 Yuval-Davis, The Politics of Belonging, 10. 86 Nell Irvin Painter, The History of White People (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010), 370. 87 Dianne Suzette Harris, Little White Houses: How the Postwar Home Constructed Race in America (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 23. 88 Ibid., 21. 89 Michael D. Harris, “Constructing and Visualizing Race,” in Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 17. 90 Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review 56, no. 4 (December 1962): 952. 91 Amy Kaplan, “ ‘Left Alone with America’: The Absence of Empire in the Study of American Culture,” in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 11. 92 Viet Thanh Nguyen, “What Is the Political? American Culture and the Example of Viet Nam,” in Asian American Studies after Critical Mass, ed. Ken A. Ono (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publications, 2005), 21. 93 Yuan Shu and Donald E. Pease, eds., American Studies as Transnational Practice (Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, 2015); Rocio Davis, The Transnationalism of American Culture: Literature, Film and Music (London: Routledge, 2013); Winfried Fluck, Donald Pease, and John Carlos Rowe, eds., Re-framing the Transnational Turn in American Studies (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press, University Press of New England, 2011); Shelley Fisher Fishkin, “Crossroads of Cultures: The Transnational Turn in American Studies—Presidential Address to the American Studies Association,” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (March 2005): 17–57. 94 Joy Sperling, “Visual Culture: From National Studies to Transnational Digital Networks,” Journal of American Culture 34, no. 1 (March 2011): 30. 95 Veerle Thielemans, “Looking at American Art from the Outside In,” American Art 22, no. 3 (Fall 2008): 1. 96 Alexandra Monroe, The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2009). 97 David Brody, Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 2010), 50. 98 Claire Wintle, “Diplomacy and the Design School: The Ford Foundation and India’s National Institute of Design,” Design and Culture 9, no. 2 (2017): 207–24. See also Takuya Kida, “Japanese Crafts and Cultural Exchange with the USA in the 1950s: Soft Power and John D. Rockefeller during the Cold War,” Journal of Design History 25, no. 4 (2012): 379–99. 99 Ching Yang, “A Study of the Program for Promoting Handcraft Export to America Conducted by the Russel Wright Associates during 1955–60,” Bulletin of Japanese Society for the Science of Design 57, no. 3 (2010), 97–106.

Notes

163

100 Yuko Kikuchi, “Russel Wright and Japan: Bridging Japonisme and Good Design through Craft,” Journal of Modern Craft (November 2008): 357–82. Yuko Kikuchi, “Transnational Trajectories and Cold War Design under the Russel Wright Project in Asia: The Case of Ken and Michiko Uyemura,” Smithsonian Fellows Lectures, May, 18–20, 2016, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. 101 John Potvin, “Inside Orientalism: Hybrid Spaces, Imaginary Landscapes and Modern Interior Design,” in Oriental Interiors: Design, Identity, Space, ed. John Potvin (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 11.

Chapter 1 1 2 3 4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

International Cooperation Administration, Fact Sheet—Mutual Security in Action (U.S. Department of State, November 1959), n.p. Goscha, Vietnam, 274. Kenneth T. Young, “The United States and Southeast Asia,” The Department of State Bulletin 33, no. 856 (September 21, 1955), 843–4. Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann, “Introduction: Connecting Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia,” in Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 2. Ibid. Mark Atwood Lawrence, “Recasting Vietnam: The Bao Dai Solution and the Outbreak of the Cold War in Southeast Asia,” in Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 30. Ibid., 16. Goscha, Vietnam, 275. Ibid., 284. Lawrence, “Recasting Vietnam,” 17, 29. Goscha, Vietnam, 247. “U.S. Vietnam Pact Signed,” New York Times, September 11, 1951, 5. John M. Allison, “United States Policy in Southeast Asia,” in Southeast Asia in the Coming World, ed. Philip W. Thayer (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1953), 6. Walter Bedell Smith, “America and Asia,” Free World 4, no. 1 (1955), 26. Under Secretary [Walter Bedell] Smith, “America’s Primary Interests in Asia,” The Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 789 (August 9, 1954), 190. Smith, “America and Asia,” 27. Stephen D. Kertesz and M. A. Fitzsimons, Diplomacy in a Changing World (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1959), 3. Smith, “America and Asia,” 27. Goscha, Vietnam, 279. Ibid. Ibid., 285. Ibid., 286. Ibid., 286–87. Ibid., 286.

164 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

Notes

Ibid., 290. See also “The Need in Vietnam,” New York Times, May 26, 1955, 30. Goscha, Vietnam, 290. Ibid. Ibid., 282. Under Secretary [Walter Bedell] Smith, “The Importance of Indochina,” The Department of State Bulletin 30, no. 773 (April 19, 1954), 589. Young, “The United States and Southeast Asia,” 844. Smith, “The Importance of Indochina,” 589. John Foster Dulles, “Collective Defense for Southeast Asia,” The Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 795 (September 1954), 391. John F. Kennedy, “America’s Stake in Vietnam: Cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia,” Vital Speeches of the Day 22, no. 20 (1956), 617–18. International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Office of Public Reports, 1957), 7. Ibid., 3–7. Ibid., 5–6. Merchant, “The New Environment,” 760. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Recommendations for 1956 Mutual Security Program,” The Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 827 (May 2, 1955), 711. Ibid., 715. Michael R. Adamson, “ ‘The Most Important Single Aspect of Our Foreign Policy?’ The Eisenhower Administration, Foreign Aid, and the Third World,” in The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War, ed. Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew L. Johns (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), 51, 52. Clement Johnston, Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Indonesia): Report on United States Foreign Assistance Programs, Prepared at the Request of the Special Committee to Study the Foreign Aid Program, United States Senate (Pursuant to S. Res. 285, 84th Cong., and S. Res. 35, 85th Cong.), U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs, March 1957, 3. Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, General Press Conference, ICA Press Release, June 25, 1956, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Adamson, “The Most Important Single Aspect of Our Foreign Policy?,” 55. William J. Sebald, “Collective Security and the Search for Peace,” The Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 810 (March 7, 1955), 375. Kennedy, “America’s Stake in Vietnam,” 619. International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation, 3. Ibid. Kim, Ends of Empire, 38–9. Ibid., 59. Schaaf, “The United Nations Economic Commission,” 463. Ibid., 464. Bert F. Hoselitz, “Small Industry in Underdeveloped Countries,” The Journal of Economic History 19, no. 4 (December 1959): 600. UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, Committee on Industry and Trade, “Report of the Working Party on Small-Scale Industries and Handicraft Marketing (Third Meeting) to the Committee on Industry and Trade,” 6th Session, January 26–February 5, 1954, Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka.

Notes 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84

85

86

165

Schaaf, “The United Nations Economic Commission,” 470–1. Ibid. Ibid. Herman, “The Role of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries,” 359. Ibid., 356, 357. Ibid., 359. Ibid., 356. Hwei-Fen Cheah, “Promoting Craft in British Malaya, 1900–1940,” Journal of Modern Craft 6, no. 2 (2013): 165–85. Phoebe Scott, “Imagining ‘Asian’ Aesthetics in Colonial Hanoi: The École des BeauxArts de l’Indochine (1925–1945),” in Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation across Borders, ed. Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins, and Olivier Krischer (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 50. Ibid., 45–6. Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics, 83ff. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 120. See also Kerry Nguyen-Long, “Ceramics of Bien Hoa,” Arts of Asia 33, no. 4 (July/August 2003): 67–78. Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics, 86. Ibid., 116–20. Ibid., 83. Ibid., 224. Ibid., 200, 224, 228. UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, “Report of the Working Party,” i. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 65. Ibid., 16. ECAFE, Handicrafts Marketing Survey (UN Economic and Social Council, February 15, 1951), 69. UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, “Report of the Working Party,” 13. Ibid., 9. ECAFE, Handicrafts Marketing Survey, 73. Ibid., 12. UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, “Report of the Working Party,” iii. Ibid., 13. Memo, Director of the Mission, United States Foreign Operations Administration, about the Reorganization of the U.S. Operations Mission, October 16, 1953, Record Group 469, Box 18, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Contract, Russel Wright, Unsigned Letter from Paul Everett Jr., Acting Director of Mission, October 31, 1954, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Contracts, United States Foreign Operations Administration and Russel Wright Doing Business as Russel Wright Associates, June 30, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. United States Operations Mission, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam Activity Report through June 30, 1954, Monograph File, Indochina Archive, University of California, 46, 54.

166

Notes

87 Memo, Director of the Mission, October 16, 1953, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 88 Contracts, United States Foreign Operations Administration and Russel Wright, June 30, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid. 91 “Designs of Contemporary Artists of Sixteen Nations of Near East and Far East Will Be Seen in Exhibit of 56 Pieces of Steuben Crystal Opening March 9 at Metropolitan Museum,” Press Release, Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 6, 1956. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Leslie Judd Porter, “Four More New Exhibitions,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, January 22, 1956, E7. 95 Steuben Glass, Airgram, Gerald F. Winfield, July 30, 1954, Record Group 469, Box 6, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 96 “Designs of Contemporary Artists,” Metropolitan Museum of Art, March 6, 1956. 97 Karl Kup, “Artists in Crystal,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 14, no. 7 (March 1956), 174. 98 Ibid., 178. 99 Porter, “Four More New Exhibitions,” E7.

Chapter 2 1 Avrom Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” Industrial Design 4, no. 4 (April 1957), 47. 2 Ralph Smucker, Walter W. Mode, and Frederic R. Wickert, Research Report, Field Study of Refugee Commission, Field Administration Project, Michigan State University (September 1955), 8. 3 Ibid., 3. 4 Carroll, The Revolutionary Century, 64. 5 Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” 68. 6 Masey and Morgan, Cold War Confrontations, 18. 7 George H. Marcus, Design in the Fifties (Munich and New York: Prestel, 1998), 124. 8 ICA, Saigon, [Leland] Barrows, September 8, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 9 Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Task Force Report on Overseas Economic Operations (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, June 1955), 1. 10 William R. Clabby, “Expansive Uncle: U.S. Sends Designers to Native Huts to Lend a Hand to Handicrafters; Foreign Aid Program Aims to Revise Bowls, Bamboo Items for U.S. Consumers,” Wall Street Journal, Friday July 5, 1957, 1. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Lazette van Houten, “USA: Design for Developing People,” Design 132 (1959): 131. 14 Conrad Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance of U.S. Industrial Designers and U.S. Craftsmen Promises Some Exciting Results in Their Efforts to Aid the Asiatic Craftsman,” Craft Horizons 18, no. 4 (July/August 1958), 31. 15 Ibid.

Notes 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

167

Ibid., 31–3. Ibid., 34–5. Clabby, “Expansive Uncle,” 12. Contracts, Russel Wright, Milton J. Esman, Chief, Program and Requirements Division, USOM Saigon, to ICA , June 19, 1957, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. ICA, Far East, Demonstration Small Industry and Handicraft Development Project, July 29, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Contracts, United States Foreign Operations Administration and Russel Wright, June 30, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. ICA, Far East, Demonstration Small Industry, July 29, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. FOA, Project Proposal and Summary, June 3, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Hoselitz, “Small Industry in Underdeveloped Countries,” 617. Ibid., 617–18. ICA, Saigon, [Leland] Barrows, September 8, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Ibid. Van Houten, “USA: Design for Developing People,” 131. Ibid. Ibid. Russel Wright Associates, Recommendations for Development of Production of Goods for Local Consumption in Viet Nam, March 2, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Russel Wright Contracts, Bi-monthly Progress Report for January and February, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. FOA, Investigation Data Request, Joset Walker, November 14, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. “Americans Study Vietnamese Handcrafts for Export,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 12 (January 28, 1956), 5. FOA, Investigation Data Request, Joset Walker, November 14, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archiver, College Park, Maryland. FOA, Investigation Data Request, Ramy Alexander, November 7, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. “A New Italian Renaissance Follows Liberation,” Handweaver and Craftsman 3, no. 1 (Winter 1951–52): 10–14. Meyric R. Rogers, Italy at Work: Her Renaissance in Design Today (Rome, Italy: The Compagnia Nazionale Artigiana, 1953), 13–18. Ibid., 17. Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations for Advancing the Economic Welfare of Workers in Small Production Shops and Cottage Industries of Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Hong Kong, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Liisa Malkki, “Refugees and Exile: From ‘Refugee Studies’ to the National Order of Things,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 498. “Americans Study Vietnamese Handcrafts for Export,” 5.

168

Notes

45 ICA Folder, Notes on Vietnam, January 20, 1956, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 46 General Press Conferences, Russel Wright, Notes, The Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, June 12, 1956, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 47 Ibid. 48 Russel Wright Contracts, Bi-monthly Progress Report, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 49 Russel Wright Contracts Personnel, James H. Silberman, March 13, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 50 Russel Wright Associates, Recommendations for Development, March 2, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 51 Ibid. 52 FOA, Project Proposal and Summary, June 3, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 53 Russel Wright Associates, Recommendations for Development, March 2, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Contracts, U.S. Department of Commerce Agreement and Russel Wright Associates, April 10, 1957, Box 46, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 60 USOM, Bangkok, Thailand, to Lloyd K. Larson, Director, FOA , June 11, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 61 “Eavesdropping on Russel Wright,” Craft Horizons 2, no. 3 (November 1943), 7. 62 Ibid. 63 William J. Hennessey, Russel Wright: American Designer (Hamilton, NY: Gallery Association of New York State, 1983), 51–5. 64 “Eavesdropping on Russel Wright,” 7. 65 Arthur Drexler, Untitled Essay, Textiles U.S.A. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956), 3–4. 66 Greta Daniels, Untitled Essay, Textiles U.S.A. (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956), 5. 67 Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., “Russel Wright: American Designer,” Magazine of Art 41 (1948), 144. 68 Dianne Pierce, Design, Craft, and American Identity: Russel Wright’s “American Way” Project, 1940–42 (MA diss., History of the Decorative Arts and Design, Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution and Parsons The New School for Design, 2010), 40. 69 “American Way Program Makes Steady Progress,” Home Furnishings Daily, June 3, 1940, 36. 70 “An American Modern Is the Answer,” Retailing 12, no. 46 (November 11, 1940), 12. 71 Announcing American Way, ca. 1941, Oversize Box 21, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 72 Pierce, Design, Craft, and American Identity, 35. 73 “American Way Program Makes Steady Progress,” 36.

Notes

169

74 Don Wallance, Shaping America’s Products (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1956), 145. 75 Pierce, Design, Craft, and American Identity, 62. 76 Announcing American Way, ca. 1941, Oversize Box 21, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 77 Pierce, Design, Craft, and American Identity, 62. 78 Ibid., 63. 79 Ibid. 80 Hennessey, Russel Wright, 37. 81 Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Consumers, Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 252. 82 Ibid., 252ff. 83 Charles L. Venable, China and Glass in America, 1880–1980 (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, and New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000), 463. 84 Virginia Gardner Troy, “Textiles on Display, 1941–1969,” in Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm, 1930 to the Present, ed. Alla Myzelev (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 29. 85 Mary and Russel Wright, Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide to Easier Living (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1951), 118–19. 86 Ibid., 122–3. 87 Ibid., 118–19. 88 Marcus, Design in the Fifties, 92. 89 Henry Dreyfus, Designing for People (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), 221. 90 Herwin Schaefer, “The Metamorphosis of the Craftsman,” College Art Journal 17, no. 3 (Spring 1958): 266–76. 91 “This College Training United Craft and Industry,” Handweaver and Craftsman 2, no. 2 (Spring 1951): 12–13. 92 Charles Nagel, Meyric R. Rogers, and Aileen O. Webb, “Introduction,” in Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. (New York: The Brooklyn Museum and Blanchard Press, 1953), 2. 93 Dorothy Giles, “The Craftsman in America,” in Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. (New York: The Brooklyn Museum and Blanchard Press, 1953), 7. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid., 9. 96 Ibid., 17. 97 Mrs. Vanderbilt Webb, “Craftsmen Today,” in Asilomar: First Annual Conference of American Craftsmen (New York: American Craftsmen’s Council, 1957), 5. 98 Ibid. 99 Aileen O. Webb, President, American Craftsmen’s Council, “Foreword,” in Craftsmanship in a Changing World (New York: Museum of Contemporary Crafts, 1956). 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” 46. 103 “Industrial Design and Craft,” Industrial Design 6, no. 10 (1959), 91. 104 Walter Dorwin Teague, Society of Industrial Designers, U.S. Industrial Design 1949–1950 (New York: The Studio Publications Incorporated, 1949), 7. 105 Dreyfus, Designing for People, 221.

170

Notes

106 Charles Counts, Encouraging American Handcrafts: What Role in Economic Development? (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, National Collection of Fine Arts, 1966), 12. 107 Don Wallance, “Design and Craftsmanship in Large-Scale Industry, Part One,” Industrial Design 3 (April 1956): 40. 108 Ibid., 81. 109 Ibid., 83. 110 Ibid., 81. 111 Design and Craftsmanship: An Exhibition, Conference Series, Documentary Film, Publication (Minneapolis, MN: Walker Art Center: American Craftsmen’s Educational Council, 1952). 112 Ibid. 113 Don Wallance, “Design and Craftsmanship in Small-Scale Industry, Part Two,” Industrial Design 3 (June 1956): 83. 114 Ibid., 82. 115 Janet Koplos and Bruce Metcalf, Makers: A History of American Studio Craft (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 164. 116 Proposal to Takashimaya, Inc., March 31, 1959, Box 46, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 117 Society of Industrial Designers, U.S. Industrial Design (New York: The Studio Publications Incorporated, 1949/1950), 25. 118 Museum of Modern Art, Useful Objects under Ten Dollars, November 26–December 24, 1940 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1940). 119 Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Good Design 1953 (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1953). 120 Terence Riley and Edward Eigen, “Between the Museum and the Marketplace: Selling Good Design,” in The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-Century: At Home and Abroad (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, 1994), 151. 121 Marcus, Design in the Fifties, 55. 122 Riley and Eigen, “Between the Museum and the Marketplace,” 177. 123 Alvin Lustig and the Society of Industrial Designers, Industrial Design in America, Contemporary Work Selected by the Society of Industrial Designers (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., 1954), 14. 124 Riley and Eigen, “Between the Museum and the Marketplace,” 151. 125 Dreyfus, Designing for People, 82. 126 Wallance, Shaping America’s Products, 2. 127 Castillo, Cold War on the Home Front, x–xi. 128 Don Wallance, “The Craftsman as Designer-Producer, Part Three,” Industrial Design 3 (August 1956): 81. See also Norbert Nelson, “Imports and the Craftsman,” Craft Horizons 23 (July 1963), 27. 129 Ibid., 81–2. 130 Aileen Osborn Webb and David Campbell, “American Craftsmen’s Council: A Look at the Future,” Craft Horizons 16 (March 1956), 13. 131 Ibid. 132 Aileen Osborn Webb, “American Craftsmen’s Council, 1964: The International Era,” Craft Horizons 24 (May 1964), 9. 133 Seonaid Mairi Robertson, Craft and Contemporary Culture (London: George G. Harrap & Co., Ltd., and United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, 1961), 124.

Notes

171

134 Nelson, “Imports and the Craftsman,” 27. 135 Malcolm Vaughn, “Asia House Inaugural Exhibition,” Connoisseur 145 (May 1960): 210. 136 Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India (New York: Museum of Modern Art, April 31–September 21, 1955). 137 Troy, “Textiles on Display, 1941–1969,” 30. 138 Pupul Jayakar, “Indian Fabrics in Indian Life,” in Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India, (New York: Museum of Modern Art, April 31–September 21, 1955), 23. 139 Troy, “Textiles on Display, 1941–1969,” 31. 140 Pat Kirkham, “Humanizing Modernism: The Crafts, ‘Functioning Decoration’ and the Eameses,” Journal of Design History 11, no. 1 (January 1998): 15–29. 141 Kristina Wilson, “Like a ‘Girl in a Bikini Suit’ and Other Stories: The Herman Miller Furniture Company, Gender and Race at Mid-Century,” Journal of Design History 28, no. 2 (2015): 163ff. 142 Ibid., 167–8. 143 Ibid., 175. 144 Ibid., 163ff. 145 Gerald F. Winfield, “The Place and the Problems of Communications in Nation Building,” First Regional Conference of Communications Media Officers, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February–March, 1958, 47. 146 Russel Wright Associates, Recommendations for Development, March 2, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 147 “Wright Shows His New Designs,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, February 12, 1956, Part 3, 15. 148 Ibid. 149 Donald Albrecht and Dianne Pierce, Russel Wright: The Nature of Design (New York: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2012), 16. 150 Minutes of the Conference on Industrial Design: A New Profession. Held by the Museum of Modern Art for the Society of Industrial Designers, November 11 to 14, 1946, 69. 151 Avrom Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat: The Government Applies the Designer’s Approach to Problems of International Trade,” Industrial Design 3, no. 5 (August 1956), 68–73; Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” 44–7. 152 Dorothy Roe, “Designers Tour Far East,” The Washington Post and Times Herald, February 1, 1956, 41. 153 Philip Warden, “U.S. to Teach Chinese How to Make China,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 7, 1955, Part 3, 8. 154 “Beg Your Pardon,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 7, 1956, Part 2, 2. 155 “Handicrafts from Vietnam,” New York Times, September 29, 1958, 53. 156 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 68. 157 Clabby, “Expansive Uncle,” 12. 158 Stephen D. Kertesz, “Diplomacy in the Atomic Age: Part I,” The Review of Politics 21, no. 1 (January 1959): 182. 159 Robert D. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood: Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 6. 160 Ibid., 5. 161 Joseph McBrinn, “Needlepoint for Men: Craft and Masculinity in Postwar America,” Journal of Modern Craft 8, no. 3 (2015): 305. 162 Peter McNeil, “Designing Women: Gender, Sexuality and the Interior Decorator, ca. 1890–1940,” Art History 17, no. 4 (December 1994): 632.

172 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195

196 197 198 199 200

Notes Ibid., 635. Ibid., 637. Ibid., 639. Ibid., 640. Ibid., 649. Ibid., 652. Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 17–18. Ibid., 43. Olga Guef, “The Oriental Mood in Interiors by William Parker McFadden,” Interiors 115 (October 1955), 118–19. Proposal to Takashimaya, Inc., March 31, 1959, Box 46, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., “The Department of Industrial Design.” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 14, no. 1 (Fall 1946), 3. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood, 5. Table of Contents, Interiors 116, no. 1 (1956), 5. Russel Wright, “Goldmine in Southeast Asia,” Interiors 116, no. 1 (August 1956), 95. Dean, Imperial Brotherhood, 5. Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” 45. Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 33. Wright, “Goldmine in Southeast Asia,” 95. Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 33. Clabby, “Expansive Uncle,” 1. Ibid. Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 33. Wright, “Goldmine in Southeast Asia,” 95. Ibid., 94–101. Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 33. “Handicrafts from Vietnam,” New York Times, September 29, 1958, 26. Roe, “Designers Tour Far East,” 41. “Text of Report by Secretary Dulles on Trip,” New York Times, March 24, 1956, 2. Cheryl Buckley, “Made in Patriarchy: Towards a Feminist Analysis of Women and Design,” Design Issues 3, no. 2 (1987): 10. Heather Marie Stur, Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 143ff. Ibid., 148. Ibid., 153ff. Fabian Hilfrich, “Manliness and ‘Realism’: The Use of Gendered Tropes in the Debates on the Philippine-American and Vietnam Wars,” in Culture and International History, ed. Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht and Frank Schumacher (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 62. Chester Morrison, “Babies and Biscuits in the Jungle,” Look, Americans Overseas, no. 4 (1957), 111. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 111. William Attwood, “Are We Making Any Friends,” Look, Americans Overseas 4, no. 21 (1957), 116. Kertesz, “Diplomacy in the Atomic Age: Part I,” 175.

Notes

173

201 Merchant, “The New Environment,” 759. 202 Tillman Durdin, “Divided Vietnam—Comparison after One Year,” New York Times, July 17, 1955, E4. 203 Leland Barrows, Director, USOM Vietnam, to Herman J. Holiday, Chief, Community Development Division, Report on Resettlement of Evacuees South of the Seventeenth Parallel, January 2, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

Chapter 3 1 United States Operations Mission, A Photographic Report on USOM , 1956, unpaginated. 2 Secretariat of State for Information, Cai-San: The Dramatic Story of Resettlement and Land Reform in the ‘Rice-Bowl’ of the Republic of Viet-Nam (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Kim Lai An-Quan, 1956), 17. 3 Ann Muller, “A Spinning Lesson,” Handweaver and Craftsman 2, no. 3 (Summer 1951): 19. 4 Ibid., 18. 5 Carol H. Woodward, “Silks from Siam,” Handweaver and Craftsman 2, no. 3 (Summer 1951): 23. 6 “Rugs and Carpets,” Handweaver and Craftsman 3, no. 4 (Fall 1952): 31. 7 “New Forms from Old Traditions,” Handweaver and Craftsman 3, no. 1 (Winter 1951–2): 28. 8 Elizabeth McDonald, “Weavers of Cyprus,” Handweaver and Craftsman 5, no. 4 (Fall 1954): 24. 9 Edith B. King and Earl L. King, “Handweaving Today in India,” Handweaver and Craftsman 7, no. 4 (Fall 1956): 10. 10 “Bhotiya Woolens from India,” Handweaver and Craftsman 5, no. 2 (Spring 1954): 4–7, 51. 11 “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 30. 12 For example, Bertrand Goy, Jaraï: Arts de guerre et de mort chez les montagnards d’Indochine, mémoires françaises (Paris: Indes savantes, 2006); and Olov R. T. Janse, The Peoples of French Indochina (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, War Background Studies 19, 1944). 13 Robert Bruce Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom: The United States Navy in Vietnam 1954–1955 (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2007), 171. 14 Laura Wexler, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press Books, 2000), 21. 15 RWA, Final Report on Services and Accomplishment by Russel Wright Associates to the Republic of Vietnam under Contract with International Cooperation Administration, May 1961, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 16 Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 94. 17 Memo, Gerald Winfield, Program Coordination Officer, to STEM Division Heads, October 30, 1950, Record Group 469, Box 6, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 18 Memo, U.S. Government to Mr. Hochstetter, Requirements & Supply Officer, October 11, 1951, referenced in Airgram, to STEM, Saigon, Revised Programming Procedure, Far East Program, June 27, 1952, Record Group 469, Box 6, National Archives, College Park, Maryland.

174

Notes

19 Amanda L. Smith, “Providing Access to the Everette Dixie Reese Collection at George Eastman House” (MA diss., Photographic Preservation and Collections Management, Ryerson University and George Eastman House, 2011), 38. 20 Memo, Director of the Mission, October 16, 1953, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 21 Leland Barrows, “United States-Vietnamese Cooperation: The ICA Program since 1955,” The Department of State Bulletin 40, no. 1037 (May 11, 1959), 674. 22 Such as the U.S. Air Attaché Saigon, USOMs throughout Vietnam, USIS [United States Information Service] in Hue, the Michigan State University Vietnam Advisory Group, and the ICA [International Cooperation Administration] in Washington, D.C. See also, Monthly Activities Report for April 1956, USOM Photo Section, May 5, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 23 United States Operations Mission, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Activity Report through June 30, 1954, Monograph File, Indochina Archive, University of California, 60 (page 62 includes a small black-and-white image of the Saigon Photo Lab). 24 Gene Gregory, Nguyen Lau, and Phan Thi Ngoc Quoi, A Glimpse of Vietnam (Saigon, 1957). 25 Said, Orientalism, 40. 26 Malkki, “Refugees and Exile,” 495–523. 27 Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 16. 28 A Bamboo Bridge, February 16, 1961, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 29 Kathleen McLaughlin, “Threat of Extinction for Ancient Crafts in Asia?” Craft Horizons 18, no. 4 (1958), 37. 30 In studies supported by the United Nations Economic Council for Asia and the Far East and in related publications by C. Hart Schaaf (1953) and Theodore Herman (1956). 31 Brody, Visualizing American Empire, 48–50. 32 Wexler, Tender Violence, 35. 33 Ibid., 21. 34 Ibid. 35 On refugee suffering see, for example, “ ‘Pilgrims’ of the East,” Newsweek 45 (January 24, 1955): 42, 44, 46; “Indo-China, Tragic Flight,” Newsweek 44 (November 22, 1954): 56. 36 “Exodus: Report on a Voluntary Mass Flight to Freedom in Viet-Nam, 1954,” The Department of State Bulletin 32, no. 815 (February 7, 1955), 224. 37 “Assistance to Viet-Nam Refugees, White House Press Release, August 22,” The Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 793 (September 6, 1954), 337. 38 “Exodus,” 224. 39 Jessica Elkind, “ ‘The Virgin Mary Is Going South’: Refugee Resettlement in South Vietnam, 1954–1956,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (2014): 994. 40 Gertrude Samuels, “Passage to Freedom in Viet Nam,” National Geographic 107, no. 6 (June 1955), 864. See also Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom. 41 Peter Pham Ngoc Chi, Resettlement of the Refugees of North Viet-Nam (Saigon, 1955), 1. 42 Thomas A. Dooley, Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Viet Nam’s Flight to Freedom (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1956), 96. 43 Elkind, “The Virgin Mary Is Going South,” 996. 44 Gertrude Samuels, “Indochina Flight from Communism,” New York Times, October 10, 1954, SM10-11. 45 “South Vietnam to Aid Refugees,” The Christian Science Monitor, May 10, 1956, 4.

Notes

175

46 Harry B. Ellis, “Retrospect on Korea: 38th Parallel Divides Territory, Not Its People,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 13, 1950, 9. 47 George Barrett, “The Pack Saga: Story of Korean Family,” New York Times, May 6, 1951, SM6. 48 “I.R.O. Head Expects Korean Peace Soon,” New York Times, May 1, 1951, 6. 49 “The Korean War,” New York Times, December 20, 1950, 3. 50 Gertrude Samuels, “Korea’s Refugees—Misery on the March,” New York Times, February 11, 1951, 156. 51 “River of Human Sorrow Flows into U.S. Lines,” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 12, 1950, 3. 52 “The Korean War,” New York Times, December 20, 1950, 3. 53 Montclair Art Museum, “Foreword,” in Chapter of Our Times, An Exhibition in Two Parts (New Jersey: Montclair Art Museum, 1959). 54 “World Refugee Year, 1959–60,” Social Service Review 33, no. 3 (September 1959): 300–1; Peter Gatrell, Free World? The Campaign to Save the World’s Refugees, 1956–1963 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 55 Elfan Rees, We Strangers and Afraid: The Refugee Story Today (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1959), 3. 56 Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 95. 57 Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5. 58 Elkind, “The Virgin Mary Is Going South,” 996. 59 Ralph Smucker, Walter W. Mode, and Frederic R. Wickert, Research Report, Field Study of Refugee Commission, Field Administration Project, Michigan State University (September 1955), 2. 60 Frankum, Operation Passage to Freedom, 171. 61 Caroline Brothers, War and Photography: A Cultural History (London: Routledge, 1997), 159–60. 62 Harris, Little White Houses, 21. 63 Wright and Wright, Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide. 64 Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” Art News 69 (January 1971): 25. 65 Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 5. 66 Malkki, “Refugees and Exile,” 33. 67 Deborah Poole, “An Excess of Description: Ethnography, Race, and Visual Technologies,” Annual Review of Anthropology 34 (2005): 169. 68 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 69 Ibid. 70 International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation, 6. 71 “American Aid Helps Permanent Resettlement of Refugees,” February 11, 1956, 4. 72 “Exodus,” 224. 73 Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 96. 74 Ken Lum, “Unfolding Identities,” in Belonging and Globalisation: Critical Essays in Contemporary Art and Culture, ed. Kamal Boullata (London: Saqi, 2008), 149. 75 Durdin, “Divided Vietnam,” E4. 76 “Assistance to Viet-Nam Refugees,” 337. 77 Pham Ngoc Chi, Resettlement of the Refugees, 4. 78 Samuels, “Passage to Freedom,” 870–4.

176 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90

91 92 93

94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101

102

103

Notes “Vietnam Settling 100,000 Refugees,” New York Times, December 31, 1955, 2. “Exodus,” 227. “American Aid Helps,” 4. ICA, Saigon, [Leland] Barrows, September 8, 1955, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 100. United States Operations Mission, A Photographic Report, 1956. Ibid. Wallance, “Design and Craftsmanship in Small-Scale Industry, Part Two,” 82. Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 98–9. Wexler, Tender Violence, 33. Louise Edwards and Mina Roces, “Trans-national Flows and the Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas,” in The Politics of Dress in Asia and the Americas, ed. Mina Roces and Louise Edwards (Brighton, UK, and Portland, OR: Sussex Academic, 2007), 7–8. Ibid., 8. Margaret Olin, “Gaze,” in Critical Terms for Art History, 2nd ed., ed. Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff (Chicago, IL, and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 326. Terence Heng, “New Forms of Colonial Gazing in Singaporean Chinese Wedding Photography,” in Women and the Politics of Representation in Southeast Asia: Engendering Discourse in Singapore and Malaysia, ed. Adeline Koh and Yu-Mei Balasingamchow (London: Routledge, 2015), 62. Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 98–9. Schaefer, “The Metamorphosis,” 266. Herman, “The Role of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries,” 359. Richard Pyle and Horst Faas, Lost over Laos: A True Story of Tragedy, Mystery and Friendship (Cambridge, MA: De Capo Press, 2003), 50–1. Ibid., 53. Horst Faas and Helene Gedouin, Henri Huet—J’etais photographe de guerre au Vietnam (Paris: Editions du Chêne, 2006), 12. Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 100. Henri Oger, Introduction générale à l’étude de la technique du peuple annamite: Essai sur la vie materielle, les arts et industries du peuple annamite [General Introduction to the Study of the Mechanics and Crafts of the Annamites] (Paris: Geuthner LibraireEditeur, 1908–1909). See also Huynh, Vietnamese Aesthetics, 80–2. Philippe le Failler and Olivier Tessier, eds., “Preface,” in Technique du Peuple Annamite [Mechanics and Crafts of the Annamites]. Translated by Sheppard Ferguson and Tran Dinh Binh (Hanoi: The Gioi Publishers, 2009). Pierre Huard and Maurice Durand, Connaissance du Viêt-Nam (Paris and Hanoi: École Française d’Extreme-Orient, 1954). See, for example, Figure 45, a tinsmith, and Figure 53, a fan maker.

Chapter 4 1 Wallance, Shaping America’s Products, 2. 2 International Cooperation Administration, Technical Cooperation (Washington, D.C.: Office of Public Reports, 1957), 3.

Notes

177

3 Wallance, Shaping America’s Products, 142. 4 Ibid. 5 Far East Slide Show, Draft, November 27, 1955, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 6 Slide Lecture: Market for Asian Handicrafts in the U.S., January 1960, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 7 Design Derby, Miami, 1958, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 8 Paul Bernat, “Crafts in America,” The Handicrafter 1, no. 1 (October 1928), 2. 9 Scott Graham Williamson, The American Craftsman (New York: Crown Publishers, 1940), 3. 10 Herwin Schaefer, “Metamorphosis of the Craftsman,” Art Journal 17, no. 3 (Spring 1958): 270. 11 Rollin C. Steinmetz and Charles S. Rice, Vanishing Crafts and their Craftsmen (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1959), 8. 12 Ibid., 9. 13 Rose Slivka, “U.S. Crafts in This Industrial Society,” Craft Horizons 9, no. 2 (March/April 1959), 8–21. 14 Ibid., 11. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., 9. 17 Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 29. 18 Clabby, “Expansive Uncle,” 1, 12. 19 Fleishman, “Design as a Political Force, Part 2,” 47. 20 Ibid. 21 Jennifer S. Esperanza, “Outsourcing Otherness: Crafting and Marketing Culture in the Global Handicrafts Market,” in Hidden Hands in the Market: Ethnographies of Fair Trade, Ethical Consumption, and Corporate Social Responsibility (Research in Economic Anthropology, vol. 28), ed. Geert De Neve, Peter Luetchford, Jeffrey Pratt, and Donald C. Wood (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Group, 2008), 91–2. 22 Ibid., 74. 23 Ibid. 24 Clabby, “Expansive Uncle,” 1, 12. 25 Nora Taylor, Painters in Hanoi: An Ethnography of Vietnamese Art (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), chapter 2. 26 “Shell of Beauty,” Free World 7, no. 3 (1957), 38–9; 39. 27 “The Lacquer Art of Vietnam,” Free World 10, no. 1 (1961), 23–4. 28 “Craftsmen in Fascination,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 32. 29 Slide Lecture, January 1960, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 30 Arthur A. Houghton, Jr., “Introduction,” in Industrial Design in America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Young, Inc., 1954), 8–9. 31 George Nelson, Problems of Design (New York: Whitney Publications Incorporated, 1957), 12. 32 Don Wallance, “The Craftsman as Designer-Producer, Part Three,” 81. 33 Henry Varnum Poor, “Design: A Common Language,” Craft Horizons 9, no. 3 (November 1951), 19. 34 Ibid., 21.

178

Notes

35 Far East Slide Show, November 27, 1955, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 36 Herman, “The Role of Cottage and Small-Scale Industries,” 359. 37 A Bamboo Bridge, February 16, 1961, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 38 Manning Nash, “Some Notes on Village Industrialization in South and East Asia,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 3, no. 3 (April 1955): 277. 39 McLaughlin, “Threat of Extinction for Ancient Crafts in Asia,” 37. 40 Brown, “ICA’s Technical Assistance,” 30. 41 Wright, “Goldmine in Southeast Asia,” 96. 42 Ibid. 43 James Clifford, “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm,” in Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 1, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle, WA: Dia Foundation and Bay Press, 1987), 121. 44 Far East Slide Show, November 27, 1955, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 45 Free World 9, no. 2 (1960), back cover. 46 Free World 9, no. 3 (1960), front cover. 47 Vietnamese Handicrafts (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959), 20. 48 “Features of Viet-Nam: The Rural Milieu in Vietnam,” News from Viet Nam 7, no. 3 (March 1961), 23. 49 Vietnamese Handicrafts, 1959, 1. 50 Ibid. 51 Johnston, Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Indonesia): Report on United States Foreign Assistance Programs, 3. 52 Vietnamese Handicrafts, 1959, 2. 53 Ibid., 35. 54 Ibid., 33. 55 Ibid., 36. 56 Ibid., 3. 57 Ibid., 32. 58 Ibid., 14. 59 “Russel Wright Associates,” News from Viet Nam 3, no. 22 (August 30, 1957), 8–9. 60 “New Artisan Center to Be Created in Gia Dinh,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 21 (September 12, 1958), 16. 61 “Noted Designer, Russel Wright,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 8 (March 14, 1958), 9. 62 “New Craft Development Center to Be Established in Saigon,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 25 (November 24, 1958), 9. 63 Vietnamese Handicrafts, 1959, 36, 33. 64 Wright, “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia,” 95, 96. 65 Techniques in Vietnamese Handicraft (Saigon, Vietnam: Review Horizons, 1959), 5. 66 The Economic Renovation of the Republic of Viet Nam (Saigon, Vietnam: Review Horizons, Kim Lai An-Quan, 1957), 4. 67 “The Origins of Certain Aspects of Culture and Traditional Crafts in Viet-Nam,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 18 (August 1, 1958), 13. 68 “Large Basket and Mat Weaving Workshop from North Viet Nam Re-Establishes High Rate of Production in Saigon,” News from Viet Nam 3, no. 34 (September 13, 1957), 6. 69 United Nations Staff Fund for Refugees, The World Refugee Year Postage Stamps: A Complete Reference Book and Colour Guide to the Postage Stamps Issued in Seventy

Notes

70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98

179

Countries on 7 April 1960 to Commemorate World Refugee Year (Geneva, Switzerland: United Nations Staff Fund for Refugees, 1961), 31, 38. “Handicraft Center Inaugurated at Buon Kroa,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 19 (August 15, 1958), 8. Secretariat of State for Information, Cai-San: The Dramatic Story of Resettlement and Land Reform in the ‘Rice-Bowl’ of the Republic of Viet-Nam (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Kim Lai An-Quan, 1956), 31. Ibid., 33. Foster Hailey, “Refugees Thrive in South Vietnam,” New York Times, March 3, 1957, 24. Secretariat of State for Information, “Cai-San,” 17. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 16. Techniques in Vietnamese Handicraft, 1959, 5. H. E. Tran Ngoc Lien, “Cooperation: An Economic and Social Necessity,” as quoted in Times of Viet Nam 2, no. 39 (September 24, 1960), 16. Ibid., 17. Ibid. Ibid. “Premier Ngo Dinh Diem Reviews Viet Nam’s Economic Program in Detail: Pleads for Solidarity in National Reconstruction,” News from Viet Nam 1, no. 27 (October 7, 1955), 6. Ibid. “Feature: Refugee Weavers to Have Own Textile Industry,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 39 (August 4, 1956), 7. “Weavers’ Cooperative Opened,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 32 (June 16, 1956), 10. “Feature: Refugee Weavers to Have Own Textile Industry,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 39 (August 4, 1956), 7. Ibid. “Textiles in Viet-Nam, Plans for the Future,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 17 (July 18, 1958), 11. Le Khoa, “The Economic Situation in Vietnam,” Asian Culture 2, no. 2 (April/June 1960): 24. Ibid. “Feature: Refugee Weavers to Have Own Textile Industry,” News from Viet Nam 2, no. 39 (August 4, 1956), 7. “Textiles in Viet-Nam, Plans for the Future,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 17 (July 18, 1958), 12. Edward Miller, “The Diplomacy of Personalism: Civilization, Culture, and the Cold War in the Foreign Policy of Ngo Dinh Diem,” in Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, 1945–1962, ed. Christopher E. Goscha and Christian F. Ostermann (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 380. Ibid., 379. Ibid., 381. Ibid., 383. “Textiles in Viet-Nam, Plans for the Future,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 17 (July 18, 1958), 12.

180

Notes

99 Truong Van Binh, “Customs of Viet Nam: Handicraftsmen,” Times of Viet Nam Magazine 2, no. 25 (June 18, 1960), 17. 100 Ibid., 19. 101 Ibid., 13. 102 Ibid., 14. 103 Ibid., 16. 104 San Francisco Museum of Art, Art in Asia and the West: An Exhibition to Illustrate Varied Aspects of Asian Traditions and Their Importance for Art in the West (San Francisco Museum of Art, October 28–December 1, 1957). 105 “Art in Asia and the West,” in Art in Asia and the West: An Exhibition to Illustrate Varied Aspects of Asian Traditions and Their Importance for Art in the West (San Francisco Museum of Art, October 28–December 1, 1957), 9. 106 “Vietnamese Handicraft Products Exhibition,” Times of Viet Nam, January 23, 1960, 7. 107 Ibid. 108 Raka Shome, “Asian Modernities: Culture, Politics and Media,” Global Media and Communication 8, no. 3 (November 2012): 203. 109 Elkind, “The Virgin Mary Is Going South,” 1010. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid., 1013.

Chapter 5 1 The American Women’s Association of Saigon, A Booklet of Helpful Information for Americans in Vietnam, rev. ed. (Saigon: USOM, 1958), 5, 6, 29–30. 2 Airgram, Foreign Operations Administration, ICA Lawrence Morrison and Leland Barrows, February 24, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 3 Ibid. 4 Vietnam, USOM 42608, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 5 Airgram, ICA Lawrence Morrison and Leland Barrows, February 24, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 6 Ibid. 7 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 8 Airgram, ICA Lawrence Morrison and Leland Barrows, February 24, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 11 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 12 Ibid. 13 Masey and Morgan, Cold War Confrontations, 60. 14 Ibid., 24. See also, Stephanie M. Amerian, “ ‘Buying European’: The Marshall Plan and American Department Stores,” Diplomatic History 39, no. 1 (2015): 46. 15 Adamson, “The Most Important Single Aspect of Our Foreign Policy?,” 53.

Notes 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26

27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39

40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

181

Ibid., 55. Ibid., 51, 62. Ibid., 58, 65. ICA, Project Proposal and Approval Summary, May 6, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 70. ICA, Project Proposal and Approval Summary, May 6, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Memo, [Leland] Barrows to ICA , March 8, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. “Caution Is Urged in U.N. Aid Role,” New York Times, June 26, 1956, 50. See also Betty Pepis, “Handcrafts Bring Asia Near to U.S.: Hong Kong Furniture,” New York Times, June 6, 1956, 30. Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. “The Crafts of Asia,” Interiors 27, no. 8 (August 1956), 50. FOA, Project Proposal and Approval Summary, Small Industry—Product Development, Improvement, and Marketing (Far East), June 6, 1955, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Marilyn Hoffman, “U.S. Designer Helps Craft Work in Asia,” The Christian Science Monitor, February 21, 1958, 15. “Coliseum Offers Duty-Free Areas,” New York Times, May 4, 1958, WT2. Ibid. Ibid. Application for Extension of Bond Covering Temporary Importation, Bureau of Customs, n.d., Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. John Baker Hollister, Director, ICA, Washington, D.C., May 21, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Wallance, Shaping America’s Products, 81. Wallance, “Design and Craftsmanship in Small-Scale Industry, Part Two,” 82. Ibid. Russel Wright, as quoted in Hoffman, “U.S. Designer,” 15. Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 105. Said, Orientalism, 39–40. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. Muriel Emmanuel, Contemporary Architects (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980), 285–7. Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 68–73. Ibid., 72. Ibid. Ibid., 71. Ibid.

182

Notes

50 James Silberman, Office of Industrial Resources, ICA , June 12, 1956, in Herbert Honig, RWA, to Edward King, Office of Industrial Resources, ICA, Washington, D.C., June 8, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 31, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 51 Ibid. 52 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 The Museum of Modern Art, Good Design, 5th Anniversary: 100 Museum Selections, Trends in Designer Training, Popular Sellers, Selection Committees 1950–1954, Directory of Resources (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1955). 56 Fleishman, “The Designer as Economic Diplomat,” 72. 57 Ibid., 68–73. 58 C. B. Palmer, “Coliseum: Showcase of Showcases,” New York Times Magazine, April 29, 1956, 14. 59 “Coliseum Basket Belle,” New York World-Telegram, June 26, 1956, Section 2, page 1, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 60 “A Temple for Mecca,” Time 67, no. 18 (April 30, 1956), 98. 61 Sandra Alfoldy, “Aileen Osborn Webb and the American Craft Council: Establishing a Professional Craft Ideology,” in Crafting Identity: The Development of Professional Fine Craft in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Press, 2005), 55–82. 62 See the installation photographs online through the Museum of Modern Art Archives https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/3327?#installation-images 63 “Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India on View at the Museum of Modern Art,” MOMA Press Release, April 13, 1955. 64 On this point a press release claims it is the museum’s first foray into a presentation of textiles that is entirely American. “Textiles U.S.A. Opens at the Museum of Modern Art,” MOMA Press Release, August 8, 1956. 65 Said, Orientalism, 109. 66 Ibid., 140. 67 Ali Behdad, “Orientalism Matters,” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 56, no. 4 (Winter 2010): 715. 68 Ibid. 69 “Caution Is Urged in U.N. Aid role,” New York Times, June 26, 1956, 50. 70 Virginia Dominguez, “Of Other Peoples: Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm,” in Discussions in Contemporary Culture, no. 1, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle, WA: Dia Foundation and Bay Press), 131. 71 Design Derby, Miami, 1958, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 72 Ibid. 73 Wallance, “Design and Craftsmanship in Small-Scale Industry, Part Two,” 81. 74 Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, General Press Conference, ICA Press Release, June 25, 1956, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid.

Notes

183

77 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 78 Hoffman, “U.S. Designer Helps Craft,” 15. 79 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 80 Investing in Viet-Nam, 1955. 81 “The Crafts of Asia,” Interiors 27, no. 8 (August 1956), 50. 82 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1956, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 83 Erika Lee, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and Asian Exclusion in the Americas,” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 4 (2007): 546ff. 84 Marvin D. Schwartz, Curator of Decorative Arts, to Russel Wright, March 12, 1957, Brooklyn Museum Archives, Record of the Department of Decorative Arts, Table Settings: The Old with the New, May 15–June 16, 1957. 85 Shipping Order, Brooklyn Museum, September 12, 1957, Brooklyn Museum Archives, Records of the Department of Decorative Arts, Table Settings: The Old with the New, May 15–June 16, 1957. 86 “The Whole World to Choose From,” House Beautiful 100, no. 10 (1958), 198. See also Bruce Catton, “What Do You Collect,” Holiday (March 1956), 64. 87 Untitled Catalog, Brooklyn Museum Archives, Records of the Department of Decorative Arts, Table Settings: The Old with the New, May 15–June 16, 1957, 8–9. 88 Ibid., 7–8. 89 According to Takuya Kida, after WWII the Japanese exchanged craft for food imported from the U.S. (see Takuya Kida, “Japanese Crafts and Cultural Exchange with the USA in the 1950s: Soft Power and John D. Rockefeller III during the Cold War,” Journal of Design History 25, no. 4 (2012): 380). Kida outlines how the Japanese Ministry of Commerce and Industry presented craft to the General Headquarters, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers at the Mitsukoshi department store during 1945. Through other efforts they explored the potential for products to interest the American market. In 1947, they sent nearly 2,000 items to the U.S. as samples (Kida, “Japanese Crafts and Cultural Exchange,” 381). Americans favored not so much figurative and tourist imagery, rather, what appealed were items for daily life made of natural materials, simply shaped and referencing nature—an aesthetic that Kida attributes to the Japanese anticipating what type of export craft would succeed (ibid., 382). Intersecting these efforts was a program supported by the Japan Ceramics Promotion Association, founded in 1947, to produce craft for domestic use and as a foreign export, which included the work of potters using traditional techniques and forms (ibid., 383). As Japan reconciled how to balance rapid industrial modernization with reconstituting its cultural traditions, and it affirmed traditional craft with exhibitions and the designation of Living National Treasures, the State Department fostered American cultural interest in Japan through the Rockefellers (ibid., 379). In 1951, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles sent John D. Rockefeller III and his wife, Blanchette, to Japan to facilitate cultural exchanges. The following year, Rockefeller began serving as president for the revived Japan Society in the U.S. The Rockefellers’ involvement with Japan led to the exhibition Art Treasures from Japan at the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, organized with the Cultural Properties

184

90

91

92 93 94 95 96 97 98

99 100 101

102 103

Notes Protection Commission of Japan (ibid., 386) followed by Japanese Painting and Sculpture from the Sixth Century A.D. to the Nineteenth Century, which included gilt-bronze, wood, and lacquer artifacts. It opened at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 1953 and then it toured the U.S. During 1954, the Museum of Modern Art presented Abstract Japanese Calligraphy emphasizing modern Japanese abstraction in its correspondences with American Abstract Expressionism (ibid, 391). Between 1956 and 1963, the Japan Society traveled eight exhibitions from Japan to the U.S. on the culture of Japanese life featuring clothing, fabrics, ceramics, dolls, calligraphy, and prints (ibid., 392). This activity was followed by an exhibition of Japanese pottery loaned by the Japan Society to the Museum of Modern Art in 1954 consisting of ceramic plates, dishes, bowls, vases, and a platter, a brazier and a flower container by Kitaoji Rosanjin, who specialized in tableware (Exhibition checklist for Japanese Pottery by Kitaoji Rosanjin, exhibition in penthouse, April 29–May 21, 1954, Museum of Modern Art, New York, https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_ master-checklist_325939.pdf; Kida, “Japanese Crafts and Cultural Exchange,” 388). In the same year, the Japanese Exhibition House designed by Junzo Yoshimura that the Museum of Modern Art commissioned opened. Arthur Drexler had curated its tea house to convey that traditional Japanese architecture shares design elements with international modernism (ibid., 391; see also Arthur Drexler, “Japanese Exhibition House,” The Museum of Modern Art, Summer 1954, https://www.moma.org/ documents/moma_catalogue_2711_300380245.pdf ). To this point, Drexler emphasized the unnecessariness of decoration for a building that reveals its functional structure through superb workmanship. “Japanese Household Objects to Be Exhibited at Museum,” The Museum of Modern Art, Press Release, April 17, 1951. See also Kida, “Japanese Crafts and Cultural Exchange,” 384. Chiaki Ajioka, “Aspects of Twentieth-Century Crafts,” in Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868–2000, ed. J. Thomas Rimor (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press, 2012), 433. Ibid., 419. Yuko Kikuchi, “Russel Wright and Japan: Bridging Japonisme and Good Design through Craft,” Journal of Modern Craft 1, no. 3 (November 2008): 362. Ibid., 363. Ibid., 364–65. Ibid., 365. Ibid., 370. Bruce Altshuler, “ ‘Once an Oriental, Always an Oriental’: The American Display and Reception of Noguchi Ceramics,” in Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics, A Close Embrace of the Earth (Smithsonian Institution and University of California Press, 2003), 202. Douglas De Nicola, “Sculpted Light: Isamu Noguchi’s Akari,” Modernism Magazine 12, no. 3 (2009), 50. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 55. During 1954 and 1955, Noguchi had four exhibitions—one with the Akari lamps at Bonniers during April 1955, and three others emphasizing ceramics including one at the Museum of Modern Art in 1954 featuring fifteen of his sculptures. See Altshuler, “Once an Oriental, Always an Oriental,” 196. De Nicola, “Sculpted Light,” 52. Contracts, Russel Wright, Lawrence Morrison, Chief, Industry and Mining Division,

Notes

104 105 106

107 108 109

110 111 112

113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

122 123 124 125 126

185

Measures to Aid Handicraft Export, July 24, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Contracts, Leland Barrows, Director, USOM Saigon, to Russel Wright, NY, August 17, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Contracts, Russel Wright, [Leland] Barrows, Director, USOM Saigon to Secretary of State, Washington, D.C., August 10, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. FOA, Incoming Telegram, American Embassy, Saigon, September 5, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Airgram, [Leland] Barrows, Handicraft Development, USOM Saigon, October 25, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. [John Foster] Dulles, Department of State, the Impact of the FAC Regulations on the Russell [sic] Wright Contract to Develop Handicraft Industries in Cambodia, Taiwan and Viet-Nam, October 4, 1957, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Ibid. Gloria Emerson, “Trade Fair Will Introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” New York Times, May 2, 1958, 33. Contracts, ICA, U.S. Department of Commerce, Travel Order from U.S. Department of Commerce, May 15, 1957, Box 46, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. “Leading Designers Creating Exhibitions,” New York Times, May 4, 1958, WT6. Official Directory, United States World Trade Fair, Coliseum, New York City, May 7–17, 1958, 130. Jane Fiske Mitarachi, “Design as a Political Force,” Industrial Design 4, no. 2 (February 1957), 38. Ibid., 39. Ibid. Harriet Morrison, “Designs from Southeast Asia Coming Here,” New York Herald Tribune, April 3, 1958. Ibid. “Viet Nam Makes Debut at U.S. World Trade Fair in New York,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 14 (May 16, 1958), 6. Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, Item 29, Project: Vietnamese Traveling Promotion Exhibition in U.S, Vietnam Handicraft Development Program, Minister of National Economy, Saigon, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. “Viet Nam Makes Debut at U.S. World Trade Fair in New York,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 14 (May 16, 1958), 6. “3-Fold Aid Policy for Asia Outlined,” Pacific Stars and Stripes (March 14, 1955): 7. “Envoy Due at Trade Fair,” Seattle Daily Times, March 8, 1955, 28. “Viet Nam at the International Trade Fair,” News from Viet Nam 1, no. 3 (March 25, 1955), 9. James T. Fisher, “ ‘A World Made Safe for Diversity’: The Vietnam Lobby and the Politics of Pluralism, 1945–1963,” in Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–1966, ed. Christian G. Appy (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 219 ff.

186

Notes

127 Appadurai, The Social Life of Things, 16. 128 Brendan M. Jones, “Wares of the World Meeting at the Coliseum,” New York Times, May 4, 1958, WT1. 129 George Nelson, Display (New York: Whitney Publications Incorporated, 1953), 266ff. 130 Ibid., 7. 131 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1990), 165. 132 Gloria Emerson, “Trade Fair Will Introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” New York Times, May 2, 1958, 33. 133 Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 134 “Viet Nam Makes Debut at U.S. World Trade Fair in New York,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 14 (May 16, 1958), 7. 135 Yang, “A Study of the Program for Promoting Handcraft Export,” 97–106. 136 Ibid., 100. 137 Ibid., 102. 138 Ibid., 104. 139 For example, see Acid Casement, 1955.61.2, and Limelight, 1955.61.6, both at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 140 “Bien Hoa Pottery,” advertisement, Times of Viet Nam Magazine 1, no. 31 (December 5, 1959), inside back cover. 141 Contracts, Russel Wright, Lawrence Morrison, July 24, 1956, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 142 Vietnam Folder, RW Visit to Hat Maker’s Village in Vietnam, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 143 As an example, see the Twill Weave, Flannel Tablecloth, Modern Spice, 1949–1955, 2018.22.123, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. 144 ICA, “The Missions Report . . . Vietnam,” Industrial Activities Bulletin April–May 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Industrial Resources, ICA, 1960), 2. 145 Ibid. 146 Morrison, “Designs from Southeast Asia Coming Here,” 2. 147 Ibid. 148 Ibid. 149 Hoffman, “U.S. Designer Helps Craft,” 15. 150 “Vietnamese Handicraft Gaining Favor in Foreign Markets,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 25 (November 24, 1958), 14. 151 Ibid. 152 “Surge in Imports: A Sea Change Has Occurred in U.S. Foreign Trade,” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly, August 25, 1958, 1. 153 Ibid., 1, 34, 38. 154 Castillo, “Domesticating the Cold War.” 155 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 301. 156 “The Whole World to Choose From,” House Beautiful 100, no. 10 (1958), 198–9. 157 Emerson, May 2, 1958, 33. See also Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 158 “Exact in Every Detail,” Free World 7, no. 2 (February 1958), 30–1.

Notes

187

159 “Artistic Legacy,” Free World 7, no. 9 (1958), 22. 160 Ibid., 24. 161 Ingrid Muan, Citing Angkor: The “Cambodian Arts” in the Age of Restoration, 1918– 2000 (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2001), 343. 162 Frank Wilder, “Cambodia: The Mystery Land, Opens Up,” New York Times, March 16, 1958, 19. 163 “From a Handful of Clay,” Free World 8, no. 6 (1959), 20–1. 164 New York Journal American (September 25, 1958), 11. 165 Kathy Dougherty, “Vietnam Exhibit Visits Phila.; Fine Craftsmanship Evident,” Home Furnishings Daily, October 14, 1958, 4. 166 “Detroit (September 22 to October 2, The J. L. Hudson Co.), Boston (October 20, Jordan Marsh), Philadelphia (October 20, Wanamaker’s), Washington, D.C. (January 5, Woodward Lothrop), Atlanta (January 20, Rich’s), Cincinnati (February 10, Pogue’s), Minneapolis (March 1, The Dayton’s), Houston (March 23, Suniland’s), Beverly Hills (April 12–26, W. & J. Sloane), San Francisco (May 3–16, W. & J. Sloane), and Seattle (May 24, Frederick & Nelson).” Also, “Viet Nam Launches Nine-Month Traveling Exhibit of Handicrafts and Artware,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 22 (September 26, 1958), 19. 167 Ibid. 168 Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 169 “Sloane’s Presents . . . Arts and Crafts of Viet Nam,” New York Herald Tribune, September 21, 1958. A similar ceramic dragon is depicted in “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958. Harriet Morrison refers to a “temple dragon” in “Art Objects of Viet Nam,” New York Herald Tribune, September 21, 1958, 2. 170 See Item 62, Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 171 Amerian, “Buying European,” 45–69. 172 “Viet Nam Launches Nine-Month Traveling Exhibit of Handicrafts and Artware,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 22 (September 26, 1958), 19. 173 Exhibit Photos, RWA, Press Release, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 174 “Handicrafts from Vietnam,” New York Times, September 29, 1958, 26. 175 Morrison, “Art Objects of Vietnam,” New York Herald Tribune, September 17, 1958, 2:2. 176 “Sloane’s Presents . . . Arts and Crafts of Viet Nam,” New York Herald Tribune, September 21, 1958, 30. 177 “Vietnamese Handcrafts Begin Nation-Wide Tour,” New York Times, September 25, 1958, 39. 178 “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958, 3. 179 Millicent Adams, “Dragon Hunt Slated,” Washington Post, January 3, 1959, D3. 180 “Field’s Executives to Survey Far East Market’s Potential,” Retailing Daily, April 15, 1955, 8. 181 Marion Gough, “A Meeting of East and West—in Japan,” House Beautiful 102, no. 4 (April 1960), 136–7. 182 “Henredon’s Pan Asian,” House Beautiful 102, no. 4 (April 1960), 2–3. 183 Gough, “A Meeting of East and West,” 58.

188 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191

192

193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201

202

203 204 205 206

207 208 209

Notes Home Furnishings Daily, August 13, 1958, 81. Van Houten, “USA Design for Developing People,” 131. “Some Leading Lights,” Interiors (1954), 94. Betty Pepis, “Furnishings Show Poses Challenge,” New York Times, January 4, 1954. “Art Shows Listed as Season Begins,” New York Times, September 14, 1958, 117. “Vietnamese Handcrafts Begin Nation-Wide Tour,” New York Times, September 25, 1958, 39. Exhibit Photos, RWA, Press Release, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Asia and Far East Industry and Trade Folder, Russel Wright Exhibition Photos, June 26, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Russel Wright to Walter Hoving, President, Tiffany & Co., New York, October 3, 1958, Box 48, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. John Wanamaker Collection, “Viet Nam Exhibition,” Historical Society of Pennsylvania. “Handicrafts from Vietnam,” New York Times, September 29, 1958, 26. Ibid. Hoffman, “U.S. Designer Helps Craft,” 15. “Vietnamese Handcrafts Begin Nation-Wide Tour,” 1958, 39. “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958, 3, 11. Rita Reif, “Art Works from Orient Seek American Market,” New York Times, August 29, 1960, 19. Ibid. Billing Matters, Vietnam Handicraft Development Program, May 1959, Box 47, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Russel Wright to Olga Gordon, John Wanamaker’s Philadelphia, September 29, 1958, Box 48, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. “Coliseum Basket Belle,” New York World-Telegram, June 26, 1956, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Tuyet Nguyet, “Peaceful Vietnam—A School of Lacquer Painting,” Arts of Asia (September/October 1971), 5–10. Vera Berry, “Viet Nam Show in N.Y.,” Home Furnishings Daily, September 17, 1958, 2. Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin, “Preah Vihea: From Object of Colonial Desire to a Contested World Heritage Site,” in World Heritage, Angkor and Beyond: Circumstances and Implications of UNESCO Listings in Cambodia, vol. 2, ed. Brigitta Hauser-Schaublin (Göttingen, Sweden: Göttingen Studies in Cultural Property, University of Göttingen, 2011), 45. Exhibit Photos, RWA, Press Release, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. Sarah Cheang, “Selling China: Class, Gender and Orientalism at the Department Store,” Journal of Design History 20, no. 1 (2007): 2. Subcontracts, Ly, Huynh, Russel Wright to Huynh Thi Ly, November 26, 1958, Box 47, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

Notes

189

210 Lawrence Morrison, Chief, Industry and Mining Division, USOM Saigon, to Le Si Ngac, Director, National Investment Fund, Saigon, December 6, 1956, Record Group 469, Box 27, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 211 RWA, Final Report on Services and Accomplishment, May 1961, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 212 Martha Drexler Lynn, American Studio Ceramics: Innovation and Identity, 1940–1979 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015), 174; “Young Americans 1952,” Craft Horizons 12, no. 5 (September/October 1952), 39; “Decorative Arts at Bertha Shaefer’s,” Craft Horizons 15, no. 6 (November/December 1955), 46. 213 United States Operations Mission, “Vietnam Moves Ahead,” Mutual Security in Action, Pamphlet, 1960, 40. 214 ICA, Industrial Activities Bulletin, Office of Industrial Resources, Washington, D.C., April–May 1960, 1. 215 Design Derby, Miami, 1958, Box 38, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 216 Contracts, ICA, Contract Amendment, July 11, 1957, Box 46, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 217 Margaret Patch, ACC Forum: Craftsman’s Odyssey, Craft Horizons 22, no. 4 (July/ August 1962), 53. 218 Yang, “A Study of the Program for Promoting Handcraft Export,” 101. 219 Telegram, [Arthur Z.] Gardiner, Director, USOM Saigon, to Secretary of State, Washington, D.C., June 5, 1959, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 220 Contracts, Russell [sic] Wright, 1959–1961, Amendment no. 3 to Contract between the United States International Cooperation Administration and Russel Wright Doing Business as Russel Wright Associates, Certified a True Copy by Geneva S. Arnold, December 4, 1959, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 221 Narrative Performance Report, United States Consultants, Inc., April 1959, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 222 [Leland] Barrows, USOM Saigon, Provision of Technical Services under Russel Wright Associates Contract, May 28, 1958, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. See also Van Houten, “USA Design for Developing People,” 133. 223 RWA, Final Report on Services and Accomplishment, May 1961, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 224 Ibid. 225 Russel Wright Associates, Survey and Recommendations, December 20, 1959, Box 44, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 226 “Vietnamese Handicraft Gaining Favor in Foreign markets,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 25 (November 24, 1958), 14. 227 Ibid. 228 Ibid., 15. 229 “Handicraft Center Inaugurated at Buon Kroa,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 19 (August 15, 1958), 8. 230 Ibid., 9. 231 Ibid. 232 Ibid.

190

Notes

233 Ibid., 10. 234 “Craftsmen in Fascination: Handicraft Center Preserves Traditional Vietnamese Skills,” Free World 8, no. 4 (1959), 31. 235 Ibid. 236 Taylor, Painters in Hanoi, 81. 237 “New Artisan Center to Be Created in Gia Dinh,” News from Viet Nam 4, no. 21 (September 12, 1958), 16. 238 Ibid., 17. 239 Ken J. Uyemura to Arthur Z. Gardiner, Director, USOM, Saigon, June 16, 1959, Record Group 469, Box 62, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 240 ICA, “The Missions Report . . . Vietnam,” 2. 241 United States Operations Mission, Vietnam Moves Ahead, Annual Report, 1960, 41. 242 “Handicraft Center in Saigon Meets Large Success,” Times of Viet Nam 1, no. 17 (August 1959), 9. 243 Ibid., 8–9. 244 Ibid., 8. 245 “News of the Week,” Times of Viet Nam Magazine 1, no. 16 (August 22, 1959), 5. 246 “Are the Vietnamese Anti-American?” Times of Viet Nam Magazine 1, no. 16 (August 22, 1959), 5. 247 Ibid. 248 “Vietnamese Handicraft Products Exhibition Proving Great Success,” Times of Viet Nam Magazine 2, no. 4 (January 23, 1960), 7. 249 Contracts, Russell [sic] Wright, 1959–1961, The Position of RWA Concerning the ICA Decision to Abandon RWA Projects in Vietnam, March 31, 1960, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 250 Russel Wright to Ken J. Uyemura, Vietnam Handicraft Development Center, 86–96 Rue Tu Do, Saigon, Vietnam, May 6, 1960, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 251 Contracts, Russell [sic] Wright, 1959–1961, Cablegram, James W. Riddleberger, Director of the ICA, to Saigon, May 19, 1960, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 252 Russel Wright to Arthur Z. Gardiner, Director, USOM Vietnam, by way of John Bock, Office of Industrial Resources, ICA, Washington, D.C., April 29, 1960, Record Group 469, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 253 Times of Viet Nam Magazine 1, no. 17 (August 29, 1959), cover. 254 The Vietnamese Handicraft Development Center and Its Products. Source Rack Number FSA 0454, Vietnamese Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Chapter 6 1 Thomas Beggs, Director; Dr. Leonard Carmichael, Secretary, Smithsonian Institution, “Report on the National Collection of Fine Arts,” 99–109, in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Publication 4478. Showing the Operations, Expenditures, and Condition of the Institution for the Year Ended June 30, 1961. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962), 108–9. 2 Thomas M. Beggs to Annemarie H. Pope, September 11, 1958, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.

Notes

191

3 Thomas M. Beggs to Russel Wright, September 13, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 4 Olov R. T. Janse to Thomas M. Beggs, October 24, 1958, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 5 Buu Lam Truong, Liste des objets a envoyer par de Okanagan, June 21, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 6 Smithsonian Institution, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. This item is currently cataloged as E400726-0. 7 Exhibit Photos, RWA, Press Release, 1958, Box 43, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 8 Thomas P. Mack to Thomas M. Beggs, May 11, 1955, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 9 Thomas M. Beggs to Allan R. Priest, September 16, 1954, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 10 Thomas M. Beggs to Thomas P. Mack, USOM Saigon, May 20, 1955, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 11 Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. [Leonard] Carmichael, May 2, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 12 Leonard Carmichael to Thomas M. Beggs, May 9, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 13 Thomas M. Beggs to Perry T. Rathbone, Director, MFA Boston, May 13, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 14 Leonard Carmichael, Memorandum to Thomas M. Beggs, May 9, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 15 Thomas M. Beggs to Perry T. Rathbone, May 13, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 16 Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. [Leonard] Carmichael, May 2, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 17 Ibid. 18 The Arts of Thailand: A Handbook of the Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting of Thailand (Siam) and a Catalogue of the Exhibition in the United States in 1960-61-62, ed. Theodore Bowie (Honolulu, HI: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 1960). 19 Tran Van Tung, Viet-Nam (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1959), 123–6. 20 John Brzostoski, “Art from the Ends of the Earth,” Arts 35 (1961): 26–31. 21 Christine Y. Hahn, “Crafting Koreanness,” in Exhibiting Craft and Design: Transgressing the White Cube Paradigm, 1930 to the Present, ed. Alla Myzelev (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 49.

192

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22 “Brilliant Exhibition of Korean National Art Treasures at Metropolitan Museum,” Press Release, February 4, 1958. 23 Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. [Leonard] Carmichael, June 9, 1958, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 24 Leonard Carmichael to Tran Van Chuong, Ambassador of Viet Nam, September 20, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912– 1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 25 Smithsonian Institution, Press Release, October 1, 1959, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 26 “Vietnamese Art Exhibition to Be Held in U.S.” Times of Viet Nam (March 11, 1960). 27 Thomas M. Beggs to Truong Buu Khanh, Embassy of Viet Nam, Washington, D.C., January 12, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 28 Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. [Leonard] Carmichael, December 29, 1959, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 29 Smithsonian Institution, Press Release, October 1, 1959, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 30 Olov R. T. Janse, “Viet Nam—Crossroad of Peoples and Civilizations,” Times of Viet Nam Magazine (July 11, 1959), 12, 13. 31 “Dr. Olov Janse Completes Archaeological Goodwill Mission,” Times of Viet Nam, February 28, 1959, 7. 32 See Pierre-Yves Manguin, “Funan and the Archaeology of the Mekong River Delta,” in Vietnam: From Myth to Modernity, ed. Heidi Tan (Singapore: Asian Civilisations Museum, 2008), 24–8. 33 “Vietnamese Art Exhibition to Be Held in U.S.” Times of Viet Nam (March 11, 1960). 34 Ibid. 35 Liste : des onjets [sic] ethnographiques des Montagnards du Viêt-Nam à envoyer pour l’Exposition, ca. 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 36 Ethnological Section. National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965. Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 37 Meeting Regarding Viet-Nam Exhibition, January 21, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 38 United States National Museum, Accession Memorandum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 39 Eugene Knez to Nguyen Duy Lien, Counselor, Embassy of Viet Nam, Washington, D.C., June 29, 1960, Box 15, Eugene Knez Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 40 Ibid. 41 Gus Van Beek to Thomas M. Beggs, November 23, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 42 Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. Van Beek, December 20, 1960, National Collection of Fine

Notes

43

44 45 46 47 48

49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

61 62 63

64 65 66

67

193

Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. Eugene Knez to Truong Buu Khanh, Embassy of Viet Nam, Washington, D.C., February 24, 1961, Box 15, Eugene Knez Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). Eugene Knez to Truong Buu Khanh, February 24, 1961, Box 15, Eugene Knez Papers, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). Ibid. Nguyen Phu Duc to Thomas M. Beggs, December 27, 1961, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. Leonard Carmichael to His Excellence, the Ambassador of Viet Nam, February 8, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). Ibid. Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy,” 743. Ibid., 740. Merchant, “The New Environment,” 763. Ibid. Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy,” 740. Eisenhower, “Recommendations for 1956 Mutual Security,” 711. Thomas M. Beggs to Dr. [Leonard] Carmichael, June 9, 1958, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). Leonard Carmichael to Thomas M. Beggs, May 9, 1957, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). “An Eyeful of Vietnamese Art,” Times of Viet Nam (October 31, 1960), 5. See also Patricia A. Sugrue, “Smithsonian to Exhibit Articles of Viet-Nam Life,” Washington Post, August 27, 1960. Laura A. Belmonte, Selling the American Way: U.S. Propaganda and the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 5. Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy,” 740. Thomas M. Beggs, “Introduction,” in Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures, 8–15 (National Collection of Fine Arts, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1961), 10. Tony Gieske, “Hidden City in Viet Nam Yields Pre-Christian East-West Ties.” Times of Viet Nam Magazine (May 21, 1960), B1. Ibid. Bruce Lockhart, “An Approach to Understanding the Vietnamese Past,” In Maritime Porcelain Road: Relics from Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Museums (Hong Kong Museum of Art, 2013). Remarks of the Honorable Frederick E. Nolting, July 17, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C.

194

Notes

68 Thayer, “Cultural Diplomacy,” 743. 69 Thomas M. Beggs to Chief of Naval Operations, March 31, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 70 Thomas M. Beggs to Olov Janse, May 3, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 71 Taylor, “Whose Art Are We Studying?,” 149. 72 Beggs, “Introduction,” 12. 73 Ibid., 14. 74 Ibid., 10, 12. 75 Kathleen McLaughlin, “Old Handicrafts Being Displaced,” New York Times, May 19, 1958, 2. 76 Ibid., 1. 77 “Exhibit on Tu Do Street,” Free World 8, no. 11 (1959), 6–7. 78 Professor H. H. Prince Prem, “Preliminary Remarks,” Traditional Cultures in South East Asia, Prepared by the Institute of Traditional Cultures, Madras, for UNESCO (Orient Longmans Private Ltd., 1958). 79 United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 80 Ibid. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid. 84 Republic of Vietnam, Department of National Education, Directorate of Fine Arts Education, “Itinerant Exhibition of Vietnamese Culture in the United States of America on Independence Day,” October 26, 1960, Box 48, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 85 Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures (Washington, D.C., National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution, 1961), 27. 86 Jennifer Way, “The Liminal Collection: Vietnamese Handicraft at the Smithsonian,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias, Collecting Asias, Special Issue edited by Charlotte Eubanks and Jonathan Abe 1, no. 2 (2015): 115–35. 87 United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid. 90 Merchant, “The New Environment,” 763. 91 “Vietnamese Arts and Crafts Have Interesting Prospects in World Market,” Times of Viet Nam November 29, 1958, Box 48, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.), Office of the Director, Records 1912–1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 92 Gloria Emerson, “Trade Fair Will Introduce Vietnamese to Americans,” New York Times, May 2, 1958, 33. 93 This may be the lacquer screen reproduced in Harriet Morrison, “Art Objects of Viet Nam,” New York Herald Tribune, September 17, 1958, 2. 94 Reeves Wetherill Files, Reeves Wetherill, Director of Public Relations, Viet Nam Exhibition, 10/10/58, John Wanamaker Collection, Publicity Department Correspondence, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Notes

195

95 Dougherty, “Vietnam Exhibit Visits Phila.,” 4. 96 “V.N. Products Tour America,” Times of Viet Nam, November 29, 1958. 97 “Closet Efficiency Can Be Enhanced,” New York Times, April 1954, 17. See also Wright and Wright, Mary and Russel Wright’s Guide. 98 United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 99 Tran H. E. Van Chuong, News Release, October 24, 1960. Embassy of Viet Nam, Washington, D.C., National Anthropological Archives. Olov R. T. Janse, Papers, Box 3, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. 100 United States National Museum, Accession no. 244852, October 31, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 101 Buu Lam Truong, Liste des objets a envoyer par de Okanagan, June 21, 1960, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 102 Leonard Carmichael to His Excellence, February 8, 1962, National Collection of Fine Arts (U.S.). 103 Thomas M. Beggs to Joseph A. Horne, Division of Libraries and Institutes, Department of State, Washington, D.C., March 17, 1952, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 104 J. E. Graf, Acting Secretary for Mr. Thomas M. Beggs, NCFA, to Department of State Passport Division Washington, D.C., June 14, 1956, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 105 Annemarie H. Pope to Dr. Leonard Carmichael, Proposed Trip to the Far East, April 16, 1956, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 106 Ibid. 107 Annemarie Pope to Thomas M. Beggs, Report on Trip to Japan and Southeast Asia, 1956–57, November 27, 1957, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 108 Ibid. 109 Raymond Cauchetier, Saigon (Paris: Editions Albin Michel, 1955). 110 Thomas M. Beggs, Director, NCFA, cc: Mrs. Pope, to Truong Buu Khanh, Embassy of Viet Nam, Washington, D.C., Orient Trip, 1956–60, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. Smithsonian records show the exhibition circulated in the United States from at least 1961 to 1964. See Folder Annual Reports (SITES), 1952–1963, 2 of 2, 10, 11, Box 14, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, D.C. 111 Annemarie Pope to Thomas M. Beggs, November 27, 1957, Box 17, Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service.

Conclusion 1 Robert Tarbell Oliver, Culture and Communication: The Problem of Penetrating National and Cultural Boundaries (Springfield, IL: Thomas, 1962), 9. 2 American University and Foreign Areas Studies Division, Special Operations Research Office, U.S. Army Area Handbook for Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, 1962; reprinted 1964), 204.

196

Notes

3 Contracts, Russel Wright, 1959–1961, Airgram, USOM Saigon to ICA, Russel Wright Marketing Specialist, June 23, 1960, Record Group 469, Box 3, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 4 Contracts, Russel Wright, 1959–1961, Hector Leonardi, Lewis Kravolin, RWA, to Arthur Z. Gardiner, care of William T. Burke, Office of Far Eastern Operations, July 8, 1960, Record Group 469, Box 3, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Contracts, Russel Wright, 1959–1961, Amendment no. 4, Contract between the Government of the United States of America and Russel Wright Doing Business as Russel Wright Associates, November 22, 1960, Record Group 469, Box 3, National Archives, College Park, Maryland. 9 Tillman Durdin, “Southeast Asian Unrest Grows,” New York Times, November 13, 1960, E8; Leo Cherne, “Deepening Red Shadow over Vietnam,” New York Times, April 9, 1961, SM11. 10 Goscha, Vietnam, 309. 11 Ibid., 310. 12 Ibid., 311. 13 American University and Foreign Areas Studies Division, U.S. Army Area Handbook, 296. 14 Goscha, Vietnam, 313. 15 Ibid., 314. 16 Ibid., 315. 17 RWA, Final Report on Services and Accomplishment, May 1961, Box 45, Russel Wright Papers, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries. 18 Ibid. 19 Tran Duc Thanh Phong, Handicrafts in Viet Nam (Saigon, Republic of Vietnam: Vietnam Council on Foreign Relations, 1970), 5. 20 Ibid., 3. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 5. 23 Ibid., 3. 24 Ibid., 4. 25 Ibid., 9. 26 Ibid., 3. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid., 10. 29 Ibid., 11. 30 Ibid., 30–1. 31 See Gerald C. Hickey Papers, accessioned October 12, 1973, Accession number 309097, USNM E415945-0, Anthropology Department, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

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218

INDEX Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Italics are used in headings for names of books, exhibitions, films, etc. following usage in the text. Adamson, Michael 22 adaptation of indigenous products 34, 109–13, 113–14, 115 aesthetics of craft movement 9, 35–6 agenda setting of U.S. 13 aid program for craft in South Vietnam see technical aid program Alexander, Ramy 32–3 Allison, John M. 20 America House, New York City 36 American Modern tableware 12, 12, 37 American National Exhibition, Moscow (1959) 6, 7 American Studio Craft Movement 9 American Way home furnishings 36–7 anti-colonial feeling in South Vietnam 49 Appadurai, Arjun 105 archaeology of Vietnam 141, 142, 146–7 art and craft, study of 16 artisans, refugees as see refugees as artisans Asian Artists in Crystal (touring exhibition, 1956–8) 26–7, 28 Asian styles, adoption of in U.S. 14, 25, 43, 45, 118 Asians, representations of 56 see also basketmaker, photograph of Attwood, William 49 Ban Me Thuot, Buon Kroa Handicraft Center 125 Barrows, Leland 26, 31, 50, 55, 63, 103, 125 basketmaker, photograph of 51–2, 52, 54, 57, 59–60, 62, 64, 67, 68, 74, 80 baskets 54, 55

Beggs, Thomas M. and archaeology of Vietnam 142, 146 and Crossroad exhibition 135, 138–40, 141 cultural diplomacy of 143–4, 147–8 as designer diplomat 156 on Faces of Vietnam exhibition 153 Behdad, Ali 97 Belmonte, Laura 146 Bien Hoa Handicraft Center 24–5, 82, 112, 115, 116, 123 Blaszczyk, Regina Lee 38 Brody, David 15, 16, 57 Brooklyn Museum, New York City Designer Craftsmen U.S.A. (1953) 39 Table Settings: The Old with the New (1957) 99–101, 100, 102 Brothers, Caroline 60 Brown, Conrad 46, 72–3, 75 Buckley, Cheryl 48 Bui, Van Luong 80, 125 Buon Kroa Handicraft Center, Ban Me Thuot 125 Burma 128 Cai-San resettlement village 51, 53, 80–1, 84 Cambodia 95, 95, 115–16, 139 capitalism 8, 22, 38, 77, 103 Carmichael, Leonard 138–9, 144 Carter, James 13 Castillo, Greg 7, 115 Catholic support for refugees 58 Center of Artisan Development, Gia Dinh 78–9, 125 ceramics 37–8, 111, 115 see also tableware

219

220

Index

Chapman, Dave 30 Cheah, Hwei-Fen 24 clothing 65–6, 128, 128–9 Cold War, arts in the context of 5, 6–7, 8, 9–10 Colegrove, Albert M. 126 collectives 77, 81 colonial photography 66 colonialism in Vietnam 13, 24–5, 77, 148 color coordination of craft items 54, 55 communism 13, 19–20, 21, 49–50, 63–4 Condin, Liza 49 conflict and craft 30, 58–9, 75, 147, 156 consumer products, diversity of 115 Contemporary Crafts Exhibition (1961) 149 cooperatives 77, 81, 82 Counts, Charles 40 craft centers in South Vietnam (exhibitions, 1957–61) 121–33, 122–4, 127–32 craft industries 23–4 craft-look, of Wright 35–6 crafts, views on American, views on 9, 38–42, 72 art historical study of 16 desires for handmade things 74 international crafts, views on 9, 42–4, 71, 72–3 cultural diplomacy 11–12, 135, 137, 143–4, 152–3 cultural hybridities 24 Currier & Ives imagery 11

and Crossroad exhibition 135, 136, 145 on economic growth 81–2 and independence of Vietnam 21, 83 at opening of Saigon Handicraft Center 126, 135 Strategic Hamlet Program 157 dinnerware see tableware diplomacy and design 4–5, 9–10, 11, 43–50 diplomacy, cultural 11–12, 137, 142, 143–4, 152–3 displaying and collecting 135–53 introduction to 135–7, 136–8 acquiring of craft 142–3 craft as knowledge 138–42 Crossroad exhibition 135–6, 138, 140–1, 143–7, 145 ethnographic failures 137, 149–52 marginalizing of craft 147–9 SITES and Vietnamese craft 152–3 domestic images 52, 54, 57 domesticity of Americans 10–11 Dominguez, Virginia 97 Dong Quan Pacification Village 11 Dooley, Tom Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Viet Nam’s Flight to Freedom 58 dress as a marker of civilization 65–6 Drexler, Arthur 36 Dreyfus, Henry 40, 42 Dulles, John Foster 21, 48 Dulles, John Foster. 103

Daniels, Greta 101 Dean, Robert 44 decolonization of Southeast Asia 19–20 democracy and consumer goods 42, 57 department stores exhibitions of Vietnamese craft (1958–9) 116–21, 117, 119, 124–5 promotion of Vietnamese craft in U.S. 41, 92–3, 150–1 designer diplomats 29, 30, 44–50, 156 designers and craft 40, 45–6, 73 Diem, Ngo Dinh cardboard cut out at World Trade Fair 107–8, 107 as channel for American influence 4–5, 77

Eames, Charles and Ray 43 A Communication Primer 7 École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine, Hanoi 24, 25, 73 Economic Council for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) 19, 23, 25–6 economic development 22, 23, 97 Edwards, Louise 65 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 22, 144 Elkind, Jessica 58, 84 Eshkanian, Ruben 109 Esman, Milton J. 31 Esperanza, Jennifer 73 ethnological objects 142–3, 149–52 exhibition structures and displays 105, 105, 107, 107–8

Index see also pavilions at exhibitions and trade fairs exhibitions for American consumers 85–133 Craft centers in South Vietnam (1957–61) 121–33, 122–4, 127–32 Saigon Chamber of Commerce (1956) 85–7, 86 Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit, New York Coliseum (1956) 87–99, 91–2, 94–6 Table Settings: The Old with the New, Brooklyn Museum (1957) 99–101, 100, 102 Traveling Department Store Exhibition (1958–9) 116–21, 117, 119, 150–1 United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum (1958) 102–16, 105–8, 110–11, 113–14 fashion items 110, 111, 126, 127 fashion shows 128, 128–9 females, used in promotions 4, 128–31, 130–2, 133 femininity and design 44–5 femininity of diplomatic relations 49 Fitzsimons, M. A. 20 Fleishman, Avrom 29, 43, 46, 73, 90 foreign diplomacy and domestic consumption 98 Foreign Operations Administration (FOA) 19, 26–7, 30, 55 foreign relations 10, 13–14, 15, 16, 144 France influence of tastes 24, 25, 67, 109, 147 U.S., relations with 7–8, 20, 21 Vietnam, relations with 7–8, 13, 21, 148 Frankum, Ronald Bruce 54 Gard, Richard 11 Gardiner, Arthur Z. 26 Gatrell, Peter 59, 62 gender and design 44–6 gender and diplomatic relations 48–9 Gia Dinh, Saigon 29, 78–9, 125 Giles, Dorothy 39 Girard, Alexander 96 Giurgola, Romaldo 90, 91–2

221

glass exhibits 26–7, 28 Goscha, Christopher 3, 5, 19, 21 Ha Dong, North Vietnam 26 hand crafts in U.S., aesthetic of 35–6 Handicraft Development Center, Saigon Diem at opening of 126, 135 opening and development of 114, 122, 122, 126 presentation of goods in 123, 124, 125, 126 refugee artisans at 125 use of women in promotions 4, 128–31, 130–2, 133 under Vietnamese management 158 handicrafts definition of 17, 73–4 Handicrafts in Viet Nam (1970) 158 Harnden, Peter G. 7 Harris, Dianne Suzette 15 Harris, Michael 15 hats adaptation of 110, 111, 112–13, 113–14, 115 bamboo, of Moi warrior 93, 94, 108 in the Crossroad exhibition 136, 137 Heng, Terence 66 heritage, political dimension of 141 Herman, Theodore 23–4, 67, 74 Heywood, Andrew 10, 13 Hilfrich, Fabian 48 Hoffman, Marilyn 120 Hollister, John 87, 89 horses, ceramic 111 Hoselitz, Bert 31 Houghton, Arthur 74 Huard, Pierre and Maurice Durand Connaissance du Viêt-Nam 68, 69 Huet, Henri Gilles 56, 67 Huynh, Boitran 8, 24–5 hybrid objects 24, 41 imperialism of U.S. 7, 13, 14 Indiana University Art Museum The Arts of Thailand (1960) 139 indigenous culture in art genres 24 industrial designers and craft 40, 45–6, 73 industrialization of crafts 74–5, 81–3 see also mechanization of production

222

Index

Interiors “Gold Mine in Southeast Asia” article basketmaker, photograph of 51–2, 52, 57, 59–60, 62, 68, 74, 80 other artisans 64–7, 65–6 and refugees 54 Wright and 98 International Cooperation Administration (ICA) 10, 30–1, 88–9, 97, 102, 128–9, 152 international crafts, American views on 9, 42–4, 71, 72–3 International Fair, Rangoon, Burma 128 international networks for craftsmen 42 International Style modernism 8, 9 Italy at Work (exhibition, 1951–3) 32–3 Janse, Olov Robert Thure 135, 140, 141, 143, 146 Japanese craft, interest in 85, 101–2 Jayakar, Pupul 43 John Wanamaker, Philadelphia 120, 150–1 Johnston, Frances Benjamin 57 Kaplan, Amy 16 Kaufmann, Edgar, Jr. 7, 36, 41, 45 Kennedy, John F. 21, 157 Kertesz, Stephen D. 20, 49 Khmer culture 115–16 Kida, Takuya 16 Kikuchi, Yuko 16, 101 Kim, Jodi 13 kitchen debate of Nixon and Khrushchev 6 Klein, Christina 56 Knez, Eugene 142–3, 149–50 Korean refugees 59 Kup, Karl 27 Kurafuto 102 Kwon, Heonik 5, 14 lacquer photo album 137, 150, 151 lacquer work 119, 120, 136–7, 138, 150 lamps 102, 118–19, 119 Larsen, Jack Lenor 34, 39–40, 109, 110, 123 Le Failler, Philippe 68 Le Khoa 82 Leftwich, Adrian 13

Lien, H. E. Tran Ngoc 81 Lippincott, J. Gordon 43 locations of craft makers 108–9 Lodge, Henry Cabot, Jr 97, 98 Lum, Ken 63 Lynes, Russell 10–11 Mack, Thomas P. 138 mainland Chinese-type goods, prohibition of 103 Malkki, Liisa 33, 56, 62 market segmentation 115 Marshall Field & Co. 118 Marshall Plan 8, 33, 87, 117 masculinity of artisans 67 masculinity of diplomatic relations 48 masculinized industrial design 44–6 Masey, Jack 29 material culture 7 McBrinn, Joseph 44 McClintock, Anne 57 McDonald, Sharon 13 McLaughlin, Kathleen 74, 148 McNeil, Peter 44–5 mechanization of production 24, 34, 41, 82, 148–9 see also industrialization of crafts merchandising at trade fairs 89, 98–9, 107–8 see also presentation of goods Merchant, Livingston 10, 21 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Korean National Art Treasures (1958) 140 middle class Americans 10–11, 15, 30 migration of refugees 57–9 Miller, Daniel 15 Miller, Edward 83 Mills, C. Wright 107 Mitarachi, Jane 103 Mitarachi, Paul J. 90, 91–2 modernism 8, 9 modernity, views of 75–6, 75 Monroe, Alexandra 16 Montagnards 59, 121, 158 Morgan, Conway Lloyd 29 Morrison, Harriet 112, 118 Morrison, Lawrence 86, 87, 102, 112

Index Museum of Contemporary Craft, New York City 9 Craftsmanship in a Changing World (1956) 39 Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City The Family of Man (1959) 7 Good Design exhibitions (1950s) 41–2 Japanese Household Objects (1951) 101 New American Painting (1958) 6 Textiles and Ornamental Arts of India (1955) 43, 96 Textiles U.S.A. (1956) 36 Twentieth Century Design from the Museum Collection (1958–59) 9 Useful Objects under Ten Dollars (1940) 41 mutual security 21–2 names of craft makers 108–9 narratives of craft 71–84 American perspectives 71–3 North Vietnamese 76–8 otherness of native craft 73–6 South Vietnam, success in 78–84 Nash, Manning 74 National Collection of Fine Arts (NCFA), Washington, D.C. 25, 135, 140 National Fine Arts College of Saigon 8, 125–6 National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Asian Artists in Crystal (touring 1956–8) 26–7, 28 National Museum of Natural History (NMNH), Washington, D.C. Art and Archeology of Viet Nam: Asian Crossroad of Cultures (1960) 135, 137–47, 137, 145, 151 nationalism of Vietnamese arts and crafts 73–4, 76–8 Ndege, George O. 15 Nelson, George 74, 107 New York Coliseum, New York City Southeast Asia Rehabilitation and Trade Development Exhibit (1956) 87–99, 91–2, 94–6 United States World Trade Fair (1958) 103–16, 105–8, 110–11, 113–14, 150

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News from Viet Nam 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83 Ngo Dinh Diem see Diem, Ngo Dinh Nguyen, Dinh Thuan 125 Nguyen, Viet Thanh 16 Nochlin, Linda 61–2 Noguchi, Isamu 102 non-Western crafts, promotion of 43 North Vietnam arts in 8 crafts, views on 17, 76–8, 81, 116 destruction of craft equipment in 31 handicraft center 26 refugees from 56, 58, 63, 80, 82–3 nostalgia and culture 11–12 O’Daniel, John W. 104 Office of International Trade Fairs 7, 103 Oger, Henri Study of the Mechanics and Crafts of the Annamites 68 Olin, Margaret 66 Oliver, Robert T. 10, 156 Operation Exodus 58 Orientalism 14, 16, 24, 45 otherness of native craft 73 Painter, Nell 15 pan-Asian craft items 155–6 Parsons, Frank Alvah 45 pavilions at exhibitions and trade fairs 7, 90, 91–2, 92, 93 see also exhibition structures and displays Pelley, Patricia 13 Petterson, Richard 40 photographs of refugees as artisans 53, 54–8, 60, 61, 64, 65, 66 see also basketmaker, photograph of Pierce, Dianne 37 plastics, use of 148 policies, domestic and foreign 10 politics of belonging 14, 15 politics, the public/private divide 13 Poole, Deborah 62 Poor, Henry Varnum 40, 74 Pope, Annemarie 135, 152–3 Pope, John 142 Porter, C. Leslie Judd 27

224

Index

Potter, David 107 pottery see ceramics; tableware Potvin, John 17 presentation of goods in department store exhibition 116–17, 117, 119 in fashion shows 128, 128–9 on film 130–1, 130–2, 133 in museum exhibitions 99–100, 100, 101 in Saigon Handicraft Development Center 123, 124, 125, 126 at trade fairs 89, 92, 93, 94–6, 95–7, 98–9, 105, 107, 107–8 prohibition of mainland Chinese-type goods 103 racism of middle class Americans 15 Rees, Elfan 59 Reese, Everette Dixie 55, 56 refugee centers and camps 60, 84 refugees in exhibitions 125 integration of 22, 32, 79 migration of 57–9 religion of 58 South Vietnamese views on 80–1 status of 4 study of 33 refugees as artisans 51–68 depoliticization of artisans 65–8, 66 images of 51–2, 52–3, 54, 55 pathos of refugees 57–61, 61 photographic program 54–8 refugee problem and solution 61–3 refugees as citizens 63–5, 65 Reif, Rita 120 relationship of strong and weak partners 97 Resettlement of the Refugees of North Viet Nam 58 Rice, Charles S. 72 Roces, Mina 65 Roe, Dorothy 43–4, 48 Rosler, Martha House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home 1–2, 2 Rozbicki, Michael Jan 15 rugs 103, 110, 110

rural life 81 RWA (Russel Wright Associates) adaptation of indigenous products 109 contracts to oversee crafts for export 102 craft centers in South Vietnam (exhibitions, 1957–61) 4, 121–4, 122–4, 126, 127–32 department store project 116–18, 119–20, 121 end of involvement in Vietnam 157 need for merchandisers 156 promotion of Vietnamese craft in U.S. 88–90, 91–2, 92–3 recommendations of 34 and the refugee problem 62 reports on work of 78–9 responses to questionnaire 98 role of 9, 26, 29, 31 survey by 32, 33, 48, 86–7, 86 United States World Trade Fair (1958) 103 view of international crafts 72–3 Said, Edward 14, 97 Saigon Chamber of Commerce (exhibition, 1956) 85–7, 86 Saigon Fine Arts College 8, 125–6 Saigon Handicraft Development Center see Handicraft Development Center, Saigon San Francisco Museum of Art Art in Asia and the West (1957) 83 Schaaf, C. Hart 23 scorched earth policy, impact of 79 Scott, Phoebe 24 Sears Roebuck 103 servicemen in Vietnam 48 Siamese head lamp bases 118, 119 Silberman, James 30 Silk Screen Workshop 128–9 Slivka, Rose 72 Sloane, W. & J. 116, 117, 119, 120 Smith, Walter Bedell 20, 21 Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) 135, 152–3 South Vietnam American involvement in 19–23 art in 8, 24–5

Index communist threat in 13, 49–50, 63–4 craft after Vietnam war 158 economy and society of 7 independence of 13, 21 modernization of craft, reporting of 78–84 refugees in 58, 59, 60, 62–3 skills in 31–2 trade fairs, dignitaries at 104 U.S. aims in 17 Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) 21 standards of living 23, 30, 31, 46, 81, 87, 89 Steinmetz, Rollin C. 72 Steuben Glass Company Asian Artists in Crystal 26–7, 28 storage in U.S. homes 151 Strategic Hamlet Program 157 studio craft movement 9 Stur, Heather Marie 48 survey of Vietnamese craft by RWA 32, 33, 48, 86–7, 86 tableware 11, 12, 12, 37, 123–4, 123–4 Taiwan 109 Tan Mai Resettlement Center 82 Taylor, Nora 13, 73 Teague, Walter Dorwin 40 technical aid program 19–27 aims of 3–4, 8, 9, 22, 30, 77 apolitical nature of 15–16 cost of 22 countries operating in 30–1 earlier work 23–6 FOA (Foreign Operations Administration) 26–7 humanitarian basis of 22–3 politics of belonging of 14 products, range of 31 recommendations for 34 reporting of 79, 84 views on handicrafts 73–4 Tessier, Olivier 68 textile industries 82–3 textiles, views of 36, 39, 43 Thailand 35, 139 Thanh Le 106, 107, 120, 136–7, 150–1 Thayer, Robert H. 11–12, 143, 144 Thielemans, Veerle 16

225

trade fairs 7, 103–4 United States World Trade Fair, New York Coliseum (1958) 103–16, 105–8, 110–11, 113–14 training courses 125 Tran, Van Chuong 145 United States Consultants Incorporated 123 United States Information Agency (USIA) 7, 8, 55, 56 United States involvement in South Vietnam 19–23 United States Operations Missions (USOM) decline of staff 156 and FOA 26 and handicraft centers 125, 126 photographs 56, 86, 112, 116–17 report on refugees 64 role of 31, 55 silk screen project 128 and textile production 82 Uyemura, Ken 34, 112, 121–2, 123, 126 Uyemura, Michiko 122 Van Beek, Gus [Willard] 142 Vietnamese craft after Vietnam War 158 aid for 19–27 concerns about 56–7 depoliticization of 15 distribution of 61 frameworks for 35–8 protection from Western influences 75 qualities of 31–2, 67, 71, 73, 74 understanding of 12, 14–15 uses of 9, 13, 42, 44 Vietnamese Handicrafts (book, 1959) 76–8 W. & J. Sloane 116, 117, 119, 120 Walker, Joset 32 Wallance, Don 37, 40–1, 42, 71, 74, 89, 98 Design and Craftsmanship (exhibition, 1952) 40 Shaping America’s Products 40 Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia 120, 150–1 Warden, Philip 44 weaving 82–3

226

Index

Webb, Aileen Osborn 39, 42 Western influences, impact on crafts 75 Wexler, Laura 54 white privilege 15, 49 Wilson, Kristina 43 Wintle, Claire 16 Wojan, Herbert D. 39 women and design 44–5 women and diplomatic relations 49 women in promotions 4, 128–31, 130–2, 133 Wright, Russel adaptation of indigenous products 109–10, 112–13, 113, 115, 116 American Modern tableware 12, 12, 37 American Way home furnishings 36–7 Asian styles, adoption of 43 authenticity of crafts, desire for 75 blending of cultural traditions 121 business approach of 89 and craft production 10 department store project 118 design aesthetic of 36, 38, 72 designer diplomacy of 46, 47, 48 examination of crafts 86–7, 86 on hand-produced craft 35–6, 71 and Handicraft Development Center, Saigon 4

hopes for aid program 89, 97–8 Japanese craft, interest in 101–2 masculinity of 44, 45, 46 mechanization of production, worries about 34 need for merchandisers 156–7 nostalgia of 12 photographs of 60, 61, 65–6, 66 proposals for program 33–4 publicity for project 98 on rapid development, impact of 74 and the refugee problem 62 refugees, skills of 63–4 silk screen project 128–9 status as tastemaker 41–2, 45, 60–1 Table Settings: The Old with the New (1957) 99–101, 100, 102 United States World Trade Fair (1958) 103, 106–7, 108 Vietnam, visits to 32, 46, 112, 113, 124 Vietnamese craft, benefits of 42 Wulf, Andrew James 7 Yang, Ching 16 Yoshihara, Mari 45 Young, Kenneth 19 Yuval-Davis, Nira 14, 15

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