Interactive Activity: The Arts and Crafts Movement, Ginger Ale, and 19th Century Love Songs--Detroit Style!
As mentioned in the "Body" part of this website, Vernors was a very cultural drink in Detroit, and Detroiters also drank their Vernors with cream (somewhat like an cream soda today). While Canada Dry and Redi Whip may have some loss in authenticity, it is at least similar. This drink was and is favorite at drug stores and restaurants all over Detroit. Blues and some Jazz also find roots in Detroit around the early 20th century. "The Little Flower You Gave Me," published in 1878 on Woodward St., is an example of some popular Detroit music of the era. The stove, tobacco, steel, cotton, and automobile industries all had branches and factories in Detroit, most of them contributing significantly to Detroit's economy. But as with almost any movement in history, this push toward industrialism had an antithesis movement of artisans and artists who wanted to keep making goods by hand. Founded in 1906, the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts became one of the most active anti-industrial groups in the nation, party because Detroit also had some of the most booming industry in the nation. The Society of Arts and Crafts had 5 principles for making goods: 1) Have a worthy and useful purpose in mind; 2) Let the plan of the design be appropriate and reasonable, pure and simple; 3) Use native materials when possible...but select only the material best adapted for your purpose; 4) Having a worthy purpose, plan and materials both suitable and good, earnestly apply to them good workmanship; and 5) When the question of ornament is considered, keep in mind whether it will add to the beauty or not, as too much will be worse than none at all. This is the basic outline for the antithesis of Detroit's industrialization.