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Life.Culture.Discovery.

Why Portland, Oregon, is to handicrafts what Los Angeles is to movies – think nature and geography

  • The city has had an artisanal heartbeat since its first Arts and Crafts Society was set up in 1907
  • Portland’s weekend market, a showcase for crafters, has been running from March to Christmas Eve since 1974

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Portland Saturday Market, a mecca for handicraft producers, has been running from March to Christmas Eve since 1974. Photo: Alamy

Portland, in the American state of Oregon, tethers its identity to arts and crafts in the same way that Los Angeles claims movies and San Francisco commandeers high technology.

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The artisanal mindset embedded deep in the West Coast city’s grain is the natural by-product of a dramatic urban landscape defined by wood and stone; a skyline of Douglas fir trees and snow-capped mountains represents an open invitation to connect with the natural elements and make something by hand.

For more than a century, local residents have done just that.

In 1907, the Arts and Crafts Society of Portland, which evolved into the Oregon College of Art and Craft, was founded by Julia Christiansen Hoffman, the daughter of Danish immigrants and the wife of a bridge builder.

The Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood, featured in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Photo: Alamy
The Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood, featured in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Photo: Alamy
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The handicraft movement she pioneered was picked up and driven by two other visionary women, also with well turned triple-decker names.

Her daughter Margery Hoffman Smith – aka “the grand dame of arts and crafts” – led a Great Depression project to hand-build the interior of the Timberline Lodge, on Mount Hood, the exterior of which is best known as the hotel from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie The Shining.

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