Acknowledgements

The fieldwork interviews for this project were supported by a 2018-2021 Scholarship in Action grant from Holy Cross and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant was designed to support faculty/undergraduate student teams from Holy Cross to do research of concrete interest and use to local Worcester communities and organizations. Scholarship in Action also gave us a small follow up grant in 2024 to complete our archive. As always, we enjoyed splendid staff support by Paula Hall, academic administrative assistant, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Holy Cross.  Earlier work in summer 2017-summer 2022 was supported by Weiss Summer Student Research Fellowships, from Holy Cross. We also gratefully acknowledge support from Holy Cross’s Ignite program. Quite centrally we also gratefully acknowledge the indispensable support of a 2023 grant from the Worcester Arts Council. That grant allowed us to collaborate with Troy B. Thompson of Daedal Creations, Inc. Worcester MA for the design of the digital archive, photography, and videography work. Thanks are also due to William Wallace, Executive Director, Worcester Historical Museum, who was enthusiastic about our archival endeavors from the very beginning. Student research teams from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Clark University, and Assumption College assisted RAW in working with the artisans over the last decade and we thank them too. Avanell Chang, Multimedia Producer, Marketing and Communications, Holy Cross, also generously took some of our photographs of artisans at work and also produced a wonderful short video about Holy Cross student G. Trznadel's work with some of the artisans. Of course our heartiest thanks go to the artisans who so graciously shared their life stories and love of crafting with us over these many years. Their family members who often served as our English translators for interviews also deserve our deepest gratitude.

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