Booker Lowe Lecture | The Maker's Mark: Black Craftspeople and American Furniture History
American furniture history has long been told through a narrow lens that defines period and fine furniture in ways that obscure the makers whose skill shaped American material culture from its beginnings.
This conversation brings together Atlanta-based chairmaker and scholar Robell Awake and public historian Tiffany Momon, founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, to examine what changes when we center the work and lives of Black craftspeople in the study of American furniture. Drawing on Awake's book A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects and Momon's Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, this presentation makes the case that to understand American furniture, you must first understand its makers and what their making meant.
Established in 2009 by Nana Booker and David Lowe, the Booker-Lowe Lecture is a cornerstone of the Glassell Lecture Series, bringing students, faculty, and the public into conversation with leading voices in contemporary art. Each year, the Booker-Lowe Lecture highlights one mid-career artist or scholar whose practice emphasizes craft, process, and technique across disciplines from painting and sculpture to ceramics, metals, photography, printmaking, and art history.
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About the Panelists
Robell Awake is a chairmaker, teacher, and researcher based in Atlanta, Georgia. His work aims to center Black aesthetic traditions and histories through scholarship and craft. He is a recipient of the Center for Craft’s Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship and has taught at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Penland School of Craft, and the Woodworking School at Pine Croft. His work is included in important public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the High Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His book, A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects, was published through Princeton Architectural Press in 2025.
Tiffany Momon is Director of the Center for Historic Preservation and an Associate Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University. Her work is dedicated to documenting and preserving African American histories and material culture, with a particular emphasis on community-based projects and the digital humanities. Momon is the founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive, a project that recovers and centers the lives and contributions of Black artisans and craftspeople in American history. Her current exhibition, Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence, traces the lives and experiences of Black craftspeople from the American Revolution through Reconstruction.
