Byrdcliffe was, and remains, a place of haunting beauty. More than a century ago, it was established as an Arts and Crafts colony in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. Craftsmen, writers, and musicians came, lured by the atmosphere of creativity amid like-minded people. Furniture, pottery, paintings, metalwork, and textiles were all made there, and the people themselves became an interwoven part of the fabric of the place. This book is the story of the first years of the colony, the artists who visited, and the artistic community they fostered. Illustrated with 200 images and featuring essays by noted scholars in the fields of American art history and the Arts and Crafts movement, this book traces the origins of Byrdcliffe as nothing less than the cultural nucleus of one of America's most legendary small towns. Edited by curator Nancy E. Green, this catalog accompanied a 2004 exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University.

Although of another place and time, the Bloomsbury group confronted issues that are remarkably current: international crises, war, the value of craft in an industrialized world, women's rights, environmental protection, and the search for the true, the good, and the beautiful in their art and their lives. A Room of Their Own: The Bloomsbury Artists in American Collectionsexamines the group's responses to these issues, providing a valuable mirror on how people can address similar concerns today. A hundred years after the Bloomsbury group was established, their story still resonates and brings together a variety of interests across many artistic and intellectual pursuits.

This catalog, the companion catalog to an acclaimed exhibition organized by the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in 2008, isillustrated with full-color plates of the two hundred exhibited works, as well as numerous color figures of comparative works and documentary photographs. It alsofeatures essays by several leading Bloomsbury scholars. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, author of a major 1995 Carrington biography, provides a personal overview of artistic Bloomsbury. Nancy E. Green, the Johnson Museum curator and organizer of the exhibition, explores the Victorian-era influence on sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Mark Hussey's essay discusses the cultural differences behind how British and American audiences experience Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. Benjamin Harvey offers "An Appreciation of Bloomsbury's Books and Blocks." Christopher Reed presents personal stories behind many of the prominent Bloomsbury collectors in North America."