Handing Down the Ancient Craft of Straw Weaving : Culture: Morgyn Owens-Celli helps establish a museum in Long Beach to preserve woven treasures.

Morgyn Owens-Celli may be a candidate for the endangered species list. He’s one of the few remaining practitioners of the ancient art of straw weaving, and fears the day when there will be none.

Straw weaving was still a thriving industry in the United States and throughout the world in the 1940s. But machines and the development of synthetic materials made handwork obsolete. The art began to wane in the ‘50s.

To ensure that examples of his craft are preserved, Owens-Celli has helped establish the American Museum of Straw Art on the second floor of a storefront building in Long Beach.

“I don’t know if I’d call myself the driving force,” she said recently. “More like driven.”

The collection includes an 18th-Century straw mosaic Italian jewelry box, an 1850 Amish rye-straw coiled storage basket, straw hats dating from 1820, Japanese rice-straw horses from the turn of the century, woven Latvian field charms, and contemporary and traditional Mexican straw appliques from acclaimed artist Jimmy Trujillo.

Some of the pieces are embellished with inlaid straw, known as poor man’s gilding. It is a tribute to the artist that the straw gilding on crosses, furniture and courtship boxes can be easily mistaken for gold, Owens-Celli said.

“They have absolute treasures there that really unlock the secrets of how people lived their daily lives,” said Sandra Gibson, executive director of the Public Corp. for the Arts, a nonprofit organization based in Long Beach.

The organization received a $37,400 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to launch a program to help support and foster traditions such as straw weaving that are handed down from one generation to the next.

“These arts have to be preserved because they’re not being handed down anymore,” Gibson said. “And you can’t go to school to learn them.”

Owens-Celli, 43, is the third generation of his family to make a living from straw arts. His family grew wheat in England. “If you farmed wheat, you wove wheat. It was part of the harvest custom,” he said.

Owens-Celli grew up in the South Bay and has lived in Long Beach for 12 years. He is also on the board of the American Foundation for the Straw Arts, a decade-old organization dedicated to preserving the art form through education and community involvement.

The mainstream art world has been slow to accept straw weaving as readily as Owens-Celli would like, he said. Though folk art museums are beginning to include straw art in shows and collections, the medium has long been overlooked, he added.

An example of straw couture does hang in the Smithsonian Institution--a spun straw dress that President John Adams’ daughter wore to her father’s inaugural ball.

Owens-Celli’s own work--a straw castle and angel--has been displayed at the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery as recently as 1992. Two of his woven wheat angels, he said, have appeared on the Christmas trees of two U.S. Presidents, and one hangs in the California governor’s mansion.

Owens-Celli, who has no children, also passes on the art form by teaching in public schools and conducting workshops.

California has the fourth largest number of people who make straw art as a hobby, Owens-Celli said.

The largest concentration of practitioners is on the East Coast, mostly elderly people in small ethnic European enclaves in Pennsylvania, New York, Maine and Delaware.

Though several hundred people nationwide practice straw art making as a hobby, only a handful are able to make a living from it, he said.

“Supporting yourself in the arts is always a struggle. I don’t have a lot of amenities that some people have, but I chose this as something I wanted over money,” he said.

American Museum of Straw Art, 114 E. 7th St. (second floor), Long Beach. Open from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Special classes and festivals are scheduled throughout the month. Information: (310) 432-3664. Admission is free.