Desert House: Art, Craft, and Modern Tucson by Sandy Elers and Diane Dittemore

Event Details

Founded in 1947, Desert House Crafts became an important center for modern design, decorative arts, and craft in postwar Tucson. Bringing together furniture, ceramics, textiles, Native arts, and objects for the modern home, Desert House helped shape a distinctly Southwestern expression of midcentury modernism.

In this presentation, Sandy Elers and Diane Dittemore explore the people, objects, and ideas connected to Desert House and its role in Tucson’s emerging design culture. Through the work of artists, craftspeople, designers, and architects associated with the enterprise, the lecture examines how traditional materials, regional influences, and modernist principles came together to create a new visual language for desert living.