Due to its longevity and the number of women employed, historians consider the Milwaukee Handicraft Project to be one of the most successful programs sponsored by the Works Project Administration (WPA). The WPA funded many public works projects during the Great Depression as a way to employ more Americans, however, they had strict guidelines that meant they could only hire certified individuals in need of relief, and because only one member from a household could be certified, it was typically the male breadwinner. That made this program so unique, because in addition to hiring some men, one of its primary missions was to hire women that were certified in need of relief that were the breadwinners for their families. The program received local praise for its employment of hundreds of women, and national attention for the products they crafted. The Milwaukee Handicraft Project’s success, however, should be credited to Elsa Ulbricht, a local visual art instructor who transformed the program to focus on the production of utilitarian goods that would support public institutions as well as teach their workers new, employable skills. The project would likely have been short-lived, and surely would not have achieved the success and recognition it did under Ulbricht’s leadership.
Born in Milwaukee, Elsa attended Wisconsin School of Art before continuing her education at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Returning to her home city, she took a position as an art teacher at the Milwaukee State Teachers College. In addition, she taught summer courses at the Art Institute of Chicago and was a founding member of the Wisconsin Designer-Craftsmen organization, a society of makers aimed at promoting fellowship amongst designers and workers and raising the standards of beauty in objects of common use. In her long career as an educator, Ulbricht has taught her students clay modeling, weaving, drawing, basketry and bookbinding. Her multitude of expertise made her a stand out in the Milwaukee art scene, and her acquaintance, Harriet Clinton, reached out to her to help her realize the Milwaukee Handicraft Project.
Ulbricht was initially uninterested in the program Clinton proposed to her. Originally, Clinton saw the project as a program to create jobs for women by having them produce inexpensive projects, such as crafting scrapbooks from recycled wallpaper samples that could then be sold to schools or other public institutions. However, Ulbricht saw this as fruitless, and viewing the project ideas as a waste of talent or effort. In response, Ulbricht told Clinton, “it would have been inexcusable and futile for me, or anyone, to expend valuable time and effort or to dissipate federal money on work which had no educational significance or did not contribute to the cultural development of the individual and the community.” She was a passionate craftsperson and believed that they could still create inexpensive products that could be used, as opposed to scrapbooks that were more decorative. She envisioned that program as a way to not just an outlet that also hires women, but to also teach their workers valuable craft skills such as sewing or weaving.
While Clinton focused on ensuring that the project followed federal guidelines, such as who they could hire and who they could sell to, Ulbricht was in charge of developing the creative components to the project. She divided the project into different divisions, such as weaving, print making, book-binding and wood-working. Over the next three decades, the program would create a lot of beneficial products, including toys, rugs, draperies, and children’s books that would be sold to other government-funded institutions, such as schools, libraries and hospitals.
Ulbricht’s vision for the project and for the women they employed was to create a way for women to support their homes financially through earning wages, but to also support their families through learning valuable skills. The workers learned new crafts and could then produce items such as blankets, books, and toys for their families that could be used again and again. Ulbricht also envisioned an integrated workforce, an unpopular mission in the 1930s, believing that an individual’s race should not influence where their work space was located, and what work they were assigned. Under Ulbricht and Clinton’s leadership, the program hired 300 women of color, and men and women of different races collaborated together to craft goods.
Ulbricht’s participation in this project led to the longevity of the Milwaukee Handicraft Project. With Ulbricht’s involvement, the project was able to teach women valuable skills and produce items that were in demand and therefore helped the profitability of the program. The program was supported by the WPA for seven years, but the federal funding had to shift to war efforts in response to World War II. Milwaukee County, however, sponsored a smaller version of this program that stayed in production into the 1960s. Through Ulbricht’s efforts, the program became one the largest WPA programs to employ women, where 5,000 women were employed and more importantly, gained a valuable and sustainable skillset.
Written by Ava Schueller, April 2025.
Sources
Leslie Bellais, “No Idle Hands: A Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, Vol. 84, No. 2, Winter 2000-2001, pp. 48-56. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4636902
Peter C. Merrill, “Elsa Ulbricht: A Career in Art.” Milwaukee History, Vol 16, No. 1, Spring 1993, pp 22-28.
Matthew Prigge, “How Milwaukee Women Got to Work During the Great Depression.” Milwaukee Magazine. Accessed November 2024.
Lois M. Quinn and Mary Kellogg Rice, “Milwaukee WPA Handicraft Project Online Exhibit.” University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Digital Commons. 2012. Accessed December 2024. http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1793/90163
Jacqueline M. Schweitzer “Women’s Work: The WPA Milwaukee Handicraft Project.” Milwaukee Public Museum. Accessed October 2024. https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/history/online-collections-research/wpa-milwaukee-handicraft-project
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, “Wisconsin Arts Projects of the WPA, 1935-1943,” Digital Collection. Accessed April 2025. https://uwm.edu/lib-collections/wpa/
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