I'm not sure if there's any place where it's actually stated but the American Crafts Council Show is probably numero uno. I don't know if anything else is that prestigious, except maybe the Smithsonian craft show. Both are juried shows -- some people might get in one year but not the next, and the craftspeople come from all over the country to any of the cities where the shows occur (I'm not sure how many cities that it, but it's online). Tickets to ACC are (I think) like $12 or so. We go every year, and it's like visiting an art museum. The crafts are exquisite. And super expensive. I might buy something small, like a wooden spoon, or a vase, or housewares made of pewter, or earrings and my husband likes to get hand-designed silk ties. But for the most part, the prices are very high (hundreds for the clothes, thousands for the furniture).

My friend often used to show her work (etched glass) and when she did, she gave me tickets. An example of something cool I've seen at ACC is clocks -- or should I say time pieces -- made out of highly polished pieces of different kinds of wood, fashioned into sculptural shapes, some maybe 7 or 8 feet tall. Also clothes made out of hand-spun and hand-dyed yarns of incredible textures and colors. There are hundreds of booths at any show of all kinds of crafts.

What going to the ACC show does for me is set a very high bar for how beautiful one's clothes and housewares can actually be. So everything I see anywhere else -- like Target, Macy's etc. --, I compare with the crafts, and generally don't buy very much of anything anywhere. So it actually saves me money in the long run.

Sugarloaf, on the other hand, is affordable. I've bought children's toys, dishes, watch bands, wallets and purses there over the years. Sometimes I don't see anything at all. But these days, my attitude is that I want to spend my money on someone like that, buying directly from a person who's trying to support her or himself and has some kind of artistic vision about it, rather than fill my house with machine-made goods. I once bought a beautiful cup (vertical stripes of shades of green, a unique shape) from a potter who said he thought it was one of the most intimate items one could make -- that there's a real connection between the potter an the person who uses the cup, because you bring it up to your mouth.

I feel like the dishes we have (as well as all my earrings) are all connected to specific individuals, rather than poor overworked teenage girls in a sweat shop somewhere. Though there's a relationship there too, except that the girls in the sweatshop don't get adequately compensated.

you can find ACC and Sugarloaf on line. There are also lots of smaller shows that we chance upon now and then, and more seem to be starting up all the time.