On the first weekend in October, Nova Scotia artists and artisans throw open their studio doors, and locals and tourists alike, Studio Rally maps in hand, hit the highways and byways to pay a few calls. In 1992, Adriane Abbott, a Halifax textile artist, and Beverly McClare, a Grand Pré basket-maker, developed the Studio Rally tour to help artists and craftspeople sell their works. Since then, Studio Rally has become an exciting year-round component of Nova Scotia cultural life.

In Studio Rally: Art and Craft of Nova Scotia, Robin Metcalfe takes his own journey through the art and craft landscape of Nova Scotia, introducing fifty-two of the province’s artists and craftspeople and their highly professional yet dramatically different works. He recounts his visits to artists as varied as folk carvers Bradford and Ransford Naugler, painter Joy Laking, and potter Sally Ravindra, and studios as different as John Little’s East Dover forge and silk-weaver Del Zoppo’s cabin in Cape Breton. Portraits of the people and their works by Julian Beveridge, David Livingston, and other expert art photographers create a sumptuous overview of a cultural scene that’s full of beauty and surprise.