The Index of American Design is a record made by artists of a chapter in American history which is largely anonymous. It is the story, told in pictures of articles of daily use and adornment in this country from early colonial times to the close of the nineteenth century. In the main it is devoted to the craft traditions which dominated American production for more than two hundred years and left their heritage to the developing mass-production technology, which has impressed its forms on our contemporary culture.

The Index is the result of a conjunction of circumstance during the depression of the 1930s. It was organized in response to several needs: the need of artists for employment, the need of the Government work program to devise projects which would maintain the skills of the unemployed, and a public need for pictorial information on American design and craftsmanship. The appreciation of American Folk and popular art, which forms one of the major categories of the Index, grew more slowly.