Library of Congress Bicentennial Celebration Presentation - Page 9
carvings are often referred to as mantelpiece decoratives.
Years of modest Festival profits had long since dispatched that garish plastic kiddie pool, and now two substantial steel stock watering tanks held the center of action at every show. A description of a typical Sacramento Wildfowl Festival of this period will serve to illustrate the standard show format used throughout the artform. "Artform", it should be understood, was the fashionable term now in general use, to distinguish a creative exercise, too amateurish, loose, and undisciplined to be a craft; too tightly controlled and rule-ridden to rise among the high arts.
A national contest of any size, must make the inevitable compromise between space needed and space available and affordable. At the Red Lion Hotel (later renamed the Double Tree Hotel) off Arden Way in Sacramento, the convenience of having bed, breakfast, bar, banqueting, and ballroom (show room), all close at hand, is offset by having to hold the Festival on two levels. The happy and expectant show visitor, therefore, will have to use the stairs. With the prospect of the arts (above), and commerce (below), the visitor summons the better angels of his (or her) nature and enters the top ballroom.