#surface patterns

Front Line Assembly

Decorative Sunday

This week we present silkscreened patterns from Catalogue Number 10 of the Milwaukee Handicraft Project (MHP) published in Milwaukee in the late 1930s. MHP was part of the Wisconsin WPA, hiring unemployed art education students to create patterns and supervise the training and production of unskilled women laborers to create a range of products, such as draperies, wall hangings, toys, dolls, and bookbindings. The MHP was highly successful, hiring around 5,000 people in total throughout its seven year existence. 

MHP products could be ordered from catalogs that the Project issued, which included monochrome silkscreened patterns for the items, detailed color descriptions of each product, a price list, and order forms. Today we are showing plates for patterns used in multicolor, block-printed wall hangings which sold from $.90 to $6.50. We also happen to have original block-printed textile samples for two of the patterns shown here, which we also include. The patterns from top to bottom are:

Tyrolean Boy and Girl Workers Industry Mornings at Seven (listed as discontinued) Fruit Square Vertical Persian Children at Playtime (listed as discontinued) Swedish

View more posts about MHP and the Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA.

Milwaukee Handicraft Monday

There’s something creepily COVID about this relief print on paper from the Milwaukee Handicraft Project of the late 30s/early 40s. Luckily, we’re still working from home and keeping our distance, and we can do so by accessing Special Collections’ and the libraries’ digital collections!

This print is from our digital collection “Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA,” digitized from the original in “Surface Patterns,″ volume 5A of Applied Design; Blockprinted Textiles. An Educational Service Prepared by the Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project.

View our other Milwaukee Handicraft Project posts.

The MHP was founded in 1935 by Harriet Clinton, head of the Women’s Division of Wisconsin’s WPA to help unskilled women laborers provide income for their families. Clinton hired Elsa Ulbricht, an art professor at the Milwaukee State Teacher’s College (one of UWM’s predecessor institutions), to direct the project. The MHP hired around 5,000 people in total throughout its highly successful seven-year existence. Read More about the Project.