Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement and the concept, organization, work and success of the Deerfield Society of Blue and White Needlework, citizens of Deerfield, Massachusetts began to create, show, and sell their craft and art works.
Success in the 1899 Summer Exhibition in Deerfield, as well as two subsequent exhibitions, encouraged Madeline Yale Wynne, a founding member of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society, to organize the Deerfield Society of Arts and Crafts in 1901, and to serve as its president.
Besides long-time residents of the town, middle and upper-class urban women began to buy and restore homes, some for summer use, along "the Street" in the 1880s and 1890s.
These houses had parlors which they converted into work spaces and salesrooms as they began to embrace the Arts & Crafts movement.
Local women provided much of the labor needed to produce the items to sell, and relied upon the income to support themselves and relatives.
[4] "The colonial and craft revivals provided Deerfield women with an opportunity to seek economic security without jeopardizing their status as elite descendants of New England's first families.