Creative Cookie Bake

When is A cookie more than something to eat? When it has been made as a work of art, as a sculpture done with dough rather than clay, marble, bronze or what not. The man who first saw cookies (and breads) this way is Paul J. Smith, the immensely original director of New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts. In 1966, he assembled an exhibit cookies and breads, the baker’s art which was a howling success because it showed that cookies and breads are decorative objects, ranging from braided stars to painted dolls to chess sets to a turtle measuring 12 x 30 x 48 inches and a large, three-dimensional castle. It also showed that each baker can invent his or her own design and decoration once he gets away from the idea that a cookie exists solely to be eaten.

From this exhibit sprang one of the most amusing parlor games, the Creative Cookie Bake. Even when the results are not as fascinating and startling as those of the Show, which came from America’s foremost craftsmen, Creative Cookie Bakes enchant the most unlikely people, stockbrokers and dentists, fashion models and bookkeepers. I know, because I’ve run a number of them, after the model set up by Ilse Johnson, the well-known potter, who invented them for Mr. Smith’s Show.

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Nika Hazelton

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When is A cookie more than something to eat? When it has been made as a work of art, as a sculpture done with dough rather than clay, marble, bronze or what not. The man who first saw cookies (and breads) this way is Paul J. Smith, the immensely original director of New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts. In 1966, he assembled an exhibit cookies and breads, the baker’s art which was a howling success because it showed that cookies and breads are decorative objects, ranging from braided stars to painted dolls to chess sets to a turtle measuring 12 x 30 x 48 inches and a large, three-dimensional castle. It also showed that each baker can invent his or her own design and decoration once he gets away from the idea that a cookie exists solely to be eaten.

From this exhibit sprang one of the most amusing parlor games, the Creative Cookie Bake. Even when the results are not as fascinating and startling as those of the Show, which came from America’s foremost craftsmen, Creative Cookie Bakes enchant the most unlikely people, stockbrokers and dentists, fashion models and bookkeepers. I know, because I’ve run a number of them, after the model set up by Ilse Johnson, the well-known potter, who invented them for Mr. Smith’s Show.