Zulma Steele

Zulma Steele (1881–1979) was one of the pioneering women of the Arts and Crafts movement and Modernism in New York. American arts journalist for the New York Times Grace Glueck noted that Steele was a "progressive-minded artist and artisan whose work was considered avant-garde." She married a farmer, Nielson Parker, in 1926. After he died in 1928, Steele traveled extensively in Europe, Haiti, and the Bahamas. She returned to upstate New York and died in New Jersey at 98 years of age. A retrospective exhibition, Zulma Steele: Artist/Craftswoman, was held in 2020 at the Kleinert/James Center for the Arts of the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild. The catalogue and accompanying essays constitute the most comprehensive scholarship on Steele's work to date. Early life Born Zulma Ripley Steele, she was the youngest of three children born to Zulma De Lacy Steele, née Dorr, and William Henry Steele. Her siblings were Frederic Dorr Steele and Joseph Dorr Steele. Her maternal grandmother was writer Julia C. R. Dorr. Career In the late 19th century, the Arts and Crafts movement grew in response to, and as rejection of, the rapid urbanization and mechanization of society during the Second Industrial Revolution. In the winter of 1902, construction of the Byrdcliffe Colony began on Mount Guardian outside of Woodstock, New York. The serene 1,500-acre commune was the brainchild of wealthy Englishman Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead. The son of a British textile Baron, Whitehead was attempting “to create a subsistence community of craftsmen,” wrote New York Times journalist Benjamin Genocchio in 2003. During the beginning of art production at Byrdcliffe, activity centered around the production of furniture.