The Encyclopedia of Decorative Styles [antikvár]

The Arts and Crafts Movement evolved and developed during the second half of the 19th century. It J incorporated a wide variety of artists, writers, craftsmen and women, so wide that it is difficult to define 'Arts Crafts' with any accuracy. One has only to consider that some of its precursors were deeply conservative and looked wistfully back to a medieval past, while others were socialists and ardent reformers. Some, like John Ruskin (1819-1900), identified the Arts and Crafts aesthetic with Protestantism, while others, such as the architect Augustus Welby Pugin (1812-52), saw clear affinities between the revival of medievalism and the Catholic cause. Moreover, the craftsmen and women connected with the movement were active within a wide cross-secdon of crafts: as architects, printers and bookbinders, potters, jewellers, painters, sculptors, and cabinetmakers. Some members of the movement, such as the designers William Morris (1834-96) and C.R. Ashbee (1863-1942), cherished handicraft and tended to reject the opportunity to produce for a mass market. Others, such as the architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), positively relished the creative and social advantages of machine production. The Arts and Crafts Movement became even more diverse in the 1870s, when the revival of an interest in the Arts and Crafts in Britain was exported and grafted onto indigenous traditions abroad. In the United States, the revival of craft traditions had a resonant appeal for a nation with a strong political affinity with individualism and for things handmade and homespun. It is interesting to note that decades before critics such as Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) or Ruskin were writing about the horror of industrialism and the idyll of rural medieval England, Shaker immunities in the United States were producing simple furniture and buildings that echoed many of the creative and social ideals of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Friedrich Engels (1820-95) dissociated himself from the religious faith of the Shakers but admired the near-socialist conditions under which their work was produced and sold. The revival of Arts and Crafts in the second half of the 19th century embodied a rich and varied tradition of political, religious and aes- thetic ideas that found form in a variety of media, yet there were some principles and articles of faith common to the Arts and Crafts Movement in general. The belief that a well-designed environment - fashioned with beautiful and well-crafted buildings, furniture, tapestries and ceramics - would serve to improve the fabric of society for both producers and consumers is a theme common to the Arts and Crafts Movement in both the 19th and 20th centuries. The idea was expressed by William Morris in the middle of the 19th century and repeated constantly thereafter by kindred spirits in Europe and the United States. Together with the idea that the material and moral fabric of society were connected, there existed an interest in the working conditions under which the artefacts were produced. A building or a piece of furniture true to the aims of the Arts and Crafts tradition had not only to be beautiful but also to be the result of contented labour, in which the craftsman or woman could reject the drudgery and aliena-Uon of factory work and delight in simple handicraft. The movement's precursors, Carlyle, and more particularly Ruskin and Morris, had virtually characterized labour as a sacrament. It was through the medium of work, they maintained, that men and women expressed not only their individual creativity but also the essence of their humanity. In his Lectures on Socialism, Morris wrote that 'Art is Man's expression of his joy in Labour', an expression that the pressure of industrialized factory work had rendered impossible. Morris continues; 'Since all persons . . . must produce in some form or another it follows that under our present system most honest men must lead unhappy lives since their work is devoid of pleasure'. Or, put more succincdy, that in Victorian society, as far as Morris was concerned, 'happiness is only possible to artists and thieves'. It was the desire to improve both aesthetic standards and working conditions that generated a further article of faith shared by many acUve within the Arts and Crafts Movement: the belief that the material and moral fabric of society had been infinitely better some time in the past, be it the England of the Middle Ages or the America of the pioneer age. The ethos of industrial capitalism demanded production for profit rather than need and had generated INTRODUCTION