Two exhibitions with winning attitudes at the Society for Contemporary Craft illustrate what can happen when skilled artisans work with their imagination as well as with their hands.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette photos "Seven Wonders" by Kurt Nielsen and Dan Essig, part of the Society for Contemporary Craft's "Cabinets of Curiosities," combines the dignity and symbology of historic periods. Click photo for larger image.

The traveling "Cabinets of Curiosities" was inspired by a tradition of displaying unusual, beautiful and/or precious objects that was especially prevalent in Europe between 1450 and 1700.

With roots in special 15th-century collecting rooms, themselves inspired by medieval armories, cabinets specifically designed to hold personal collections of natural, scientific and aesthetic items made their debut around 1500, reaching an apex in elaborate pieces created in the south of Germany in the early 17th century.

Charles Willson Peale, one of early America's most important artists, is also remembered for the museum of art and natural history that he established in 1786 in Philadelphia. Such institutions, continuing to our own marvel-filled Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, are indebted to the historic tradition of the curiosity cabinet for inspiration.

So, too, it's argued in the exhibition catalog, are such 20th-century artists as Andre Breton and Joseph Cornell. And one of its most lively and inspired manifestations has to be the Museum of Jurassic Technology, near Los Angeles.

"Cabinet" was organized by the Wood Turning Center, Philadelphia, and The Furniture Society, Asheville, N.C. More than 200 artists from around the world submitted 57 proposals from which a panel of five jurors selected 14 works by 50 U.S. and Canadian artists to be completed for the exhibition within a year.

The jurors represent a range of expertise, making for an eclectic exhibition and also for good reading in the accompanying catalog, to which they each contributed essays, as did exhibiting artist and acclaimed wood sculptor Michelle Holzapfel ($35, illustrated and hardcover; a CD-ROM is $5).

The jurors are Diane Douglas, founding executive director of the Center for Liberal Arts, Bellevue Community College, and former director, Bellevue Art Museum, Washington; Brock Jobe, professor of American Decorative Arts, Winterthur Museum, Delaware; Tom Loeser, professor, Department of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Rick Mastelli, editor, photographer, videographer and principal of Image & Word, Montpelier, Vt.; and Ursula Ilse-Neuman, curator, Museum of Arts & Design, New York City.

"Realized Dreams: Works in Wood by Michael Brolly," seven sculptures by the Kutztown University graduate, is also being shown at the Society for Contemporary Craft. Click photo for larger image.

The cabinets were to be collaborative projects that incorporated a collection, were unified by a theme and expanded upon "traditional approaches to safeguarding and displaying personal treasures." In a nod to contemporary interdisciplinary practice, teams were chosen that combined cabinet creators with makers of the items to be shown within them.

The range of interpretation is vast, and size varies from full to miniature.

The work most in keeping with the spirit of the original cabinets is "Ein Kleiner Wunderschrank (micro thaumata)" by Doug Haslam and a crew of 16 contributors who stocked what by outward appearance is a pragmatic, box-like wooden chest with a veritable wonderland of objects -- computer chip, lace, fish hook, glass beads, tarantula molt. Opened, it's revealed to be an interlocking puzzle of containers and chambers, each harboring a surprise.

The dignity and symbology of historic periods informs the alluring "Seven Wonders" by Kurt Nielsen and Dan Essig, the cabinet capped by a globe and mounted on the back of an unflappable tortoise. Ask a Society staff member to rotate the seven chambers so that you may see their fascinating fronts and examine the magnificent "books" within.

Opposite these in sensibility is Gordon Peteran's "Chest in a Bowl," an all-white conceptual piece that embeds a partial chest of drawers within a turned half sphere to reference, among other thoughts, the two traditional means of making sculpture, additive and subtractive. It is the only project with a solo creator, and Peteran said that he was "driven" by two inner voices, those of cabinetmaker and of turner.

"Vargueno," a full-sized, functional and quite fine desk by Miguel Gomez-Ibanez, contains 26 panels, each painted by Joseph Reed with an alphabet letter and a flower with a name that begins with that letter. It isn't apparent that each panel fronts a drawer that opens, a reference to the secretive intent of early cabinets, to conceal valuables from thieves but also to hide knowledge as a means of maintaining control over it.

The most funky piece is the colorful "Cirque de Cabinet" by Michael Brolly and five collaborators, perhaps best described as a Zen alien who maybe tells fortunes, too.

It's our gain that this presence inspired the Society to give Brolly a simultaneous solo exhibition. From a fanciful sheepskin-lined cradle to a bug-eyed standing cabinet titled "Thinking of My Mother-In-Law Marianne and Those Magnificent Mahogany Breasts," the seven works in "Realized Dreams: Works in Wood by Michael Brolly" exist in a zone where craftsmanship, function and humor run and giggle hand in hand. They are unique, and they are a delight.

The exhibitions continue through July 15 at 2100 Smallman St., Strip District. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. Admission is free. Summer workshop subjects include wood turning and Adirondack chair making. For information, call 412-261-7003 or visit www.contemporarycraft. org.

"Arthur Reitmeyer: Contemporary Works in Wood," featuring furniture by the IUP graduate and Sewickley resident, continues at the Society's One Mellon Center Gallery at the Steel Plaza T Station through May 28.