KOUWENHOVEN, John A.

p. 132 :

These new “folk arts” are […] the product of people directly involved with the dynamic forces of contemporary life […]. In order to distinguish them from the more familiar folk arts, I labeled these the vernacular arts – meaning by that the empirical attempts of ordinary people to shape the elements of their everyday environment in a democratic, technological age. Specifically, I meant the books, buildings and artifacts of all sorts whose forms have been shaped as a direct response to the new elements which democracy and technology have introduced into our environment within the past hundred and fifty years.

(The Beer Can by the Highway : Essays on What’s “American” about America, 1961)