Elizabeth R. Raphael Fund No. 1
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Established March 22, 1999, the Elizabeth R. Raphael Fund No. 1 gives to the Society for Contemporary Craft and provides general operating support. The Society for Contemporary Craft is a Pittsburgh visual arts nonprofit focused on providing vital support for artists, filling critical gaps in public education, sharing cross-cultural perspectives and using art to build community.
Elizabeth Rockwell Raphael, who died in 1998, founded the Society in 1971 as The Store for Arts and Crafts and People-Made Things, which sold locally made artisan craft work. Raphael was passionate about the field of handmade crafts and was a leading figure in the contemporary art world. Raphael also founded the Riverview Children’s Center, western Pennsylvania’s first accredited child care center, in 1970.
“People like the home touch; the look that isn’t as slick as a machine-made piece. The idea of hand-made objects is appealing today, in the same way that machine made objects were appealing after the Industrial Revolution,” Raphael said in a 1984 interview. “Everyone can relate to crafts; if they don’t have a craft hobby themselves, they have a cousin who does. The idea of crafts is very folksy, even though they become as important as any art form when they’re well done and require as much skill…I think people need both kinds of products. We’ll always have things that are machine made and we’ll always have the hand-made which are quite different, and somehow more valuable.”