Good Work and Aesthetic Education: William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and

Beyond
Author(s): Jeffrey Petts
Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 30-45
Published by: University of Illinois Press
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Good Work and Aesthetic Education: William
Morris, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and
Beyond

JEFFREYPETTS

A notion of "good work," derived from William Morris and the Arts and
Crafts Movement but also of a wider tradition in
part philosophy (associ
ated with pragmatism and Everyday Aesthetics) understanding the global
significance of, and opportunities for, aesthetic experience, grounds both art
and in the of labor
making appreciation organization generally. Only good
work, which can be characterized as "authentic" or as unalienated condi
tions of production and allows the arts to thrive. While Arts and
reception,
Crafts sometimes a limited aesthetic (both theoretically and sty
promotes
around handicraft, a aesthetic a
listically) good-work theory encompasses
broader range of methods and materials without
working compromising
the core Arts and Crafts of control over production
"authenticity" principles
and creative Moreover, it to the
autonomy. gives weight equally important
role of spectators their aesthetic education to good work in their
by linking
lives in turn, to the success of artworks. The
working and, theory delivers
insights into the nature of works as collaborative and the develop
projects
mental courses, and esoteric, to the arts and it
participatory open generally;
is a robust counter to anti-aestheticism and intellectualism in the and
theory
practice of the arts.

William Morris and the artist-craftsmen and -women of the Arts and Crafts
Movement have a art and an
theory of the aesthetic that has
importance be

yond their own artistic work and its achievements. Morris delivered lec
tures on the arts in many British towns and cities in the 1870s, 1880s, and

1890s; these were as and Fears Art and later as a volume

published Hopes for

a
JeffreyPetts is researcher at the University of York. His current projects include the
aesthetic character of "good work" and "works," pragmatism and Everyday Aesthet
ics, and the tradition of "social" and "civil(izing)" in British aesthetics as seen in John
Ruskin, William Morris, William Lethaby, R. G. Collingwood, Herbert Read, and oth
ers. His "Aesthetic Experience and the Revelation of Value" was published in the
Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism in 2000.

Journal ofAesthetic Education, Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2008

?2008 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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 Good Work andAesthetic Education 31

of his collected works.1 The movement codified and its practices

publicized
various societies and like the Arts and Crafts Exhi
through organizations
bition Society and Charles Ashbee's Guild and School of Handicraft, each
its own literature, which from practical handbooks to po
producing ranged
litical exhortations. Later, William lectures, often to
Lethaby's organizations
that were of the movement, were as Form in Civilisation} To
part published
that extent, then, a Morrisian or Arts and Crafts aesthetic has to be
theory
constructed from sources that were rhetorical, as well as
necessarily being
and theoretic. Morris and were to influ
practical Lethaby explicitly aiming
ence current artistic their lectures to audiences
practice through usually
of artists, architects, civic leaders, and so on (and this no doubt
composed
at least partly accounts for theirneglect in philosophical aesthetics). Still, I
will that this reconstructed
argue theory is sufficiently coherent and sophis

ticated to be worth for its relevance to contemporary debates

investigating
in aesthetics, those for art as a nonaes
analytic particularly against arguing
theticactivity (ofwhich the seminal text remains Arthur Danto's "The Art
world"), and for its arguments for art's connections (as an
activity of both
and artworks) with other life experiences. In these
making experiencing
respects, then, in the
history of aesthetics it is a forerunner of, or at least
has intellectual associations unac
with, pragmatist aesthetics (yet it is often
within that so neither Art as Experience nor
knowledged paradigm, Dewey's
the more recent works Shusterman
pragmatist by Richard cite Morris) and
shares associated with the Everyday Aesthetics movement.4
ground
In for the theoretic and historic of a Morrisian aes
arguing significance
thetic, I take and a lead from Paul recent acknowl
encouragement Guyer's
edgement of the neglect of Morris in accounts of the history of
philosophical
aesthetics. names as
Guyer Morris, along with Schiller, Ruskin, and Dewey,

properly understanding the full significance of the distinctive character of

aesthetic As
experience. Guyer writes, they understood

that aesthetic experience is distinctive in its freedom from our most

immediate obsessions with purpose and utility, but that the freedom
it thereby allows us is not a freedom for the of
simple contemplation
no further concerns or
beauty with implications, but rather a freedom
to our and to
develop imaginative cognitive capacities, gain knowl
new
edge of ourselves and others, and to imagine ways of life, a free
dom that is valued not simply for itsown sake but also because of the
benefits the developments of these can to the rest of
capacities bring
our lives.

Guyer two related and Morrisian issues: an art-life nexus;

recognizes pivotal
and aesthetic understood as a rather than sim
experience "developmental"
one that extends the of
ply "contemplative" experience, beyond experience
fine art. The to these, Iwill argue, is a notion of "art as and
key good work,"
it is this that in the company
places Morris Guyer cites while also
explaining

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 32 Petts

the "full significance" all those identified by Guyer give to aesthetic

experi
ence (although I focus discussion here on theMorrisian
theoryof art and the
aesthetic and the emergent thesis). It is worth too, that
good-work noting,
attention to these themes Morris as a in Aes
places key figure Everyday
thetics, which is on the aesthetic of nonart
similarly premised experience
objects and events and the of "art versus craft" and "fine versus
rejection
popular art" distinctions. Yet Aesthetics
Everyday duly recognizes Dewey
as a father but not Morris.6
founding
In
citing Morris alongside John Ruskin, Guyer of course notes a well
recorded intellectual association. Morris's and the Arts and Crafts Move
ment's indebtedness to Ruskin is and often Mor
variously acknowledged.
ris, in his one brief at notes Ruskin was a
attempt autobiography, reading
kind of "revelation." He read the "On the Nature of Gothic" in The
chapter
Stones ofVenice as "the truestand most eloquent words that can possibly be
said." I take this as a further of Morris's and Arts and Crafts'
explanation
philosophical neglect?in short, it is rather too easy to see Ruskin's
perhaps
aesthetics as the definitive of Arts and Crafts so that
exposition philosophy,
an of Ruskin is sufficient for an intellectual assessment of
understanding
Morris and Arts and Crafts. however, there is more to an
Again, something
Arts and Crafts aesthetics than Ruskin's moral and
philosophical theologi
cal aesthetics. This, I will argue, becomes evident from of the
investigation
historic debate that took place within theArts and Crafts Movement about
the role of machines in artistic Reference to this de
legitimate production.
bate introduces broader social and considerations of artistic
psychological
"control" and essential to authentic work. Still, it is prop
"autonomy" good
er to an of Morris's and Arts and Crafts' aesthetics to
understanding begin
at least with one of Ruskin's of art and that stays at
aspect analysis society
the root of the the division of labor and men.
good-work thesis?namely,

II

Adam Smith observed that "the division of labour . . . occasions, in every

art, a proportionable increase of the

productive powers of labour" and fa

gave the of divided between workers so

mously example pin production
that "one draws out the wire, another it, a third cuts it, a fourth
straightens
points it," and so on.9 He additionally asserted that the division of labor is
"carried furthestin those countrieswhich enjoy thehighest degree of indus
try and improvement,"thus suggesting itsmoral advantage, too.
Ruskin denied
any such moral to the division of labor; indeed,
advantage
"we give it a false name. It is not, the labour that is divided,
truly speaking,
but the men; ?Divided into mere of men ... so that all the little
segments
of intelligence that is left in a man is not to make a . . we
.
piece enough pin.
manufacture there except men." The sentiments are Marx's as
everything

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 Good Work andAesthetic Education 33

well: "the ancient in which man ... as the aim

conception, always appears
of production, seems much more exalted than the modern in
conception,
which is the aim of man and wealth the aim of production."
production
For Ruskin, too, "there is no wealth but life."12 The division of labor gener
ates conditions of production so that, Marx's
alienating following analysis
in Economic and Philosophic 1844, work becomes a mere means to
Manuscripts
existence. In a de-alienated state of affairs, control and creative scope in pro

duction are returned to the worker, and "in of the wealth and
place poverty
of come the rich human and rich human need."
political economy being
Stefan Morawski out that Marx contrasts artistic free
points consistently
dom to alienation (and a similar claim can be made for Ruskin). All non

alienated labor is described as creative, and so the same as artistic labor.14

A for Marx is that the architect, for example, is invoked as a
consequence
human worker, not a called artist. In The German
special category Ideology
Marx writes: "the exclusive concentration of artistic talent in in
particular
dividuals and its related among the mass of is a conse
suppression people
quence of the division of labour"; and "in a communist there are no
society
but at most who among other things also The line
painters, people paint."15
of the argument is clear: the division of labor alienates the worker from his

essential nature as a free creative worker; in de-alienated conditions, the cre

in work associated with a called "artists" is
ativity previously special group
open to all, and there are no longer artists as such but a full
array of creative
workers known the their free work is expressed
by activity through which
at any one time in their life, be it or,
through building, painting, presumably,
pin making.
It is reasonable to doubt a literal take on this scenario of a radically "un
divided labor" (one in which there are no "artists" at all), but it
specialist
expresses an of the nature of all human as
important conception beings po
tential artists. G. A. Cohen these themes: should a man or
develops "why
woman not find fulfilment in his or her work as a . . .
[specialized] painter
what is so bad about a person himself to one or a small number
dedicating
of lines of activity But then Cohen answers his own doubt: "there
only?"
is nothing wrong with a division of labour inwhich each type ofwork has
value." And one would add that such a virtuous division of labor could
not extend to the extremes of Smith's divided as itwould
pin production,
be for the production of Ruskinian "life." For how can someone
employed
solely in "straightening a piece ofwire" fullydevelop their individual abili
ties? How can that work ever have an aesthetic character, either as an activ
or and
be of anything but economic value?
ity product,
Morris's debt to Ruskin has been noted; Marx, who he
acknowledged
read later in life, would have confirmed for him the good-work thesis
only
artistic work to de-alienated conditions of His
directly relating production.
description of the of "real art" is laid out in such terms:
prerequisites

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 34 Petts

the
providing of a handicraftsman who shall his own individual
put
intelligence and enthusiasm into thegoods he fashions. So far fromhis
labour being "divided," which is the technical phrase forhis always
one minute of work . . .; so far from
doing piece that, he must know
all about the ware he is and its relation to similar wares. . . .
making
He must be allowed to thinkofwhat he isdoing, and tovary his work
as the circumstances of it vary, and his own moods.... He must have
a voice. . . . Such a man I should call, not an operative, but a work
man. You may call him an artist if you will, for I have been
describing
the qualities of artists as I know them.

Morris's accounts of art are of this accounts of artists

invariably type:
that are not but rather focus
their general on condi
biographical working
tions and of mind. As a of this on a
qualities consequence emphasis general
mode of Morris's
production, theory of art is marked by inclusiveness
re

garding materials, methods, and made under the

styles. Everything right
de-alienated conditions of is beautiful and artful; moreover, "all
production
works of were once or not"
craftsmanship beautiful, unwittingly (in an age
before the capitalistic division of labor), and so there was no of
category
"Art" as such.18 The act of in de-alienated conditions is to
very "making"
"share in art." It is the case, then, that for Morris this mode of
production
is in what is and is not art, rather than art status marked
telling being by
specified activities (portraitpainting but not furnituremaking, and so on)
or of taste per se. Art's "vehicles" are all human
by judgments provided by
work, but "what the labourer does in an alienated fashion, at the command
of another, neither nor benefit to himself from it, the artist
deriving profit
does in
comparative autonomy."
As Ruskin had Morris, so the Arts and Crafts Movement's debt
inspired
to Morris was for
universally acknowledged. So, example, John Dando
states that "the one man who above all others has
Sedding inspired hope
and brought life and into modern manufactures isWilliam Morris."
light
But theMorrisian theoryhad to be worked out in practice, and this deter
mined the real extent of its inclusivity. Early Arts and Crafts exhibitions
were "broad to show machine-made metalwork ... hand
enough alongside
raised pieces."22 Walter Crane, president of theArts and Crafts Exhibition
Society, in 1888 commented on thepotential breadth ofArts and Crafts style:
"the great advantage of theMorrisian method is that it lends itself to either
or to itmust be conceded that his illustra
simplicity splendour"?although
tion of this breadth Arts and Crafts' from
medievalism,
betrays stretching
"
"oaken trestle tables" to "walls hung with rich arras tapestry." Still, "work,
incessant work, with Beauty for our everlasting aim," urges Thomas Cob

den-Sanderson, and with it "the extension of the conception of art."

Thus, beauty was not

ignored for scope; indeed, the key Arts and Crafts
driver is that good work has aesthetic consequences. to Charles
According
architect and "it is delightful to see skill of hand and eye.
Voysey, designer,

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 Good Work andAesthetic Education 35

All evidence of painstaking is a joy to behold." Walter Crane, the artist

and stated: "Make a man and give him the
designer, similarly responsible,
credit of his own skill in his work: his at once increases, and he
self-respect
is stimulated to do his best; he will take a pride and pleasure in his work;
it becomes and therefore The process or mode of
personal interesting."
is everything because the process determines aesthetic value:
production
in alienating conditions are "less less
products produced visibly interesting,
human and less alive," to this at least.27
according theory
It is to this relation of art to work that Cobden-Sanderson alludes:
good
as a manifestation of the artistic its to more
"art, spirit, has origin, or, speak
its opportunity in Craft, and Craft in the needs of life."
correctly perhaps,
One "Its in Craft" as "its accredited vehicles."
might rephrase opportunities
But this Craft does not on artistic vehicles and styles: "as
place proscriptions
the needs of life vary from generation to
generation, and from age to age, so
must vary the objects [aims] of Craft, and with them the modes of manifes
tation of the artistic Accredited vehicles and their in
spirit." styles change,
other words, so thatLethaby could hold "ifwe gathered the children who
now dance at street corners into some better we not
dancing-grounds, might
for a new music, a new drama and a new architecture?"
hope
Cobden-Sanderson and
Lethaby confirm the vehicular and in
stylistic
of a Morrisian aesthetic is to comment on
clusivity theory (which something
other than Morris's as an artist). There are new op
particular style always
portunities for art to emerge from the of life?if activities
ordinary patterns
are carried out in the "Craft" conditions?and the forms this art will
right
take will as humans evolve. But it be claimed that
necessarily change might
an revisionism of Arts and Crafts has occurred?isn't
unacceptable good
work strictlyhandicraftforMorris and his followers? And by this standard,
isn't a reasonable account of aesthetic value (for what
thereby compromised
of the beauty of man-made but not handcrafted work)?

Ill

Herbert Read once asked "can the machine a work of art?"30 The
produce
asked in the 1930s, has an added resonance now that there is in
question,
deed the universal machine, the computer, of any program. Read's
capable
answer was its truth evident from the aesthetic
"yes," supposedly appeal
of machine-made that reject ornament (his Art and Industry is il
products
lustrated with of a mast, coffee
photographs broadcasting amplifier bays,
an iron, a
machines, taps, kettles, metal chairs, washing machine, and the
like meant to illustrate the case). He concluded that the Arts and Crafts ar

gument of Stones Venice was lost: (some) machine art is

of "abstractedly"
beautiful?beautiful, that is, without any dependence on the work of a human
hand. And yet Read ends in some with Ruskin: "the fundamental
agreement

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36 Petts

factor in all these is a philosophy of life . . . in its

problems [of art] posed
clearest and terms
unescapable by John Ruskin."31
The solution to this contradiction is it is not
apparent straightforward:
only thework of the human hand that is visible in art but of human de
In beautiful machine-made we still can see the work of the "ab
sign. objects
stract artist": such an individual controls his labor and tools as much as the

handicraftsman beloved of Ruskin. But for this tohappen "the factorymust

adapt to the artist,not the artists to the factory."32Read is simply saying that
Ruskin is right in locating the problem of art in the broader context of how
are made but that guild handicraft is not necessary for art, that prop
things
artistic modes of can be around notions like
erly production expounded
"control" (over tools and and (from the demands of
processes) "autonomy"
commercial to change a to meet a demand, for
marketing product perceived

example).
Richard Wollheim notes that a determination of art by such a mode of
the determination cannot be identified with
production "suggests readily
constraint or and I take it that a formulation of de
necessity"33; similarly
alienated labor around notions of control and here as
autonomy, specified
does not determine artistic vehicles and in a way that lim
good work, styles
its art to a range of handicrafts. Indeed, there is underdetermination: there

is no exhaustive list of vehicles, no list of styles, and so on (there

prescribed
is artistry in industrial of many kinds, and new
products entirely products
emerge with technological change, for example).

Still, can this good-work thesis be reasonably as a

development argued
of Morrisian and Arts and Crafts
practices? ideas and it can. The I believe
matter of the nature of art for Arts and Crafts is about the manner
essentially
of making: this is not a blanket rejection of "machines" (although their alien

effects are when allied to the division of labor) in making

ating significant
but of mechanized and narrow labor processes, which reduce the worker to
a machine. It is not even about all dull and tasks from
removing repetitive

making: Morris, forexample, accepts drudgery, if it's the absorbing kind that
one knows will of value: know too that in any work
produce something "you
thatone delights in,even themerest drudgery connected with it isdelightful
too."34 We see that within the Arts and Crafts Movement debate about the
use of machines is far from universally
but So, for
commonplace damning.
John Sedding, architect and states "let us not be too hard
example, designer,
the machine, which, after all, has no volition of its own, but is
upon merely
a dead instrument of mechanism." Francis an ar
passive Similarly, Troup,
chitect, affirms "if machine tools are legitimately used form an excel
they
6
lent servant, but there must be no imitation 'handwork' about them." Note

that the key is "authenticity," not handicraft se.

again per
Arts and Crafts sees a for art in allying machines to
traditionally problem
of tasks; it theorizes the drive to this as com
overspecialization additionally,

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 Good Work and Aesthetic Education 37

mercial which also removes artistic in So,

capitalism, autonomy production.
toMorris,
according

the end commerce is the creation of a market-demand,

proposed by
and the satisfaction of itwhen created for the sake of the production
of individual profits: whereas the end proposed by art applied to
utilities . . .was the satisfaction of genuine needs of the
spontaneous
... To the commercial the actual wares are
public producer nothing;
their adventures in the market are To the artist the wares
everything.
are
everything.37

Read's insistence on artistic control over is also evident

factory processes
inArts and Crafts.Worried that "art" may just be applied at a late stage to
of mass with more than a veneer of artistry,
products production, nothing
stresses that art is "an integral part of all work, of all manufacture
Sedding
whatsoever."38 In fact, Read's "solution" (the preeminence of artistic design
in production) predates him. The following statements are from the 1888
of the Association" of the National Association for the Advance
"Objects
ment ofArt and ItsApplication to Industry: "the adoption of artisticdesign
to modern methods of manufacture," as well as the rehabilitation of craft

and, in a modern sentiment of the leaders of devel

working; recognizably
economies, "it is by excellence of make and of artistic de
oped superiority

sign that the products of manufacture of any country will henceforth attain

prestige and command markets."

There was, it is true, a formal in the Arts and Crafts Movement in

split
the early twentieth centurywith the formation of theDesign and Industries
Association (DIA) by Lethaby and others. The DIA supposedly still operat
ed on Arts and Crafts but was
principles argued against by handicraft pur
ists, notably Earnest
Gimson, architect and designer, who saw that "excel
lence in design" was with mass He was convinced,
compatible production.
therefore, that the producers of art were taken out of the
being equation by
the DIA its on that were, for
through greater emphasis producing products
easy for the consumer to use about the house, easy to clean, and so
example,
forth. But the terms of the debate were still those set
by the Arts and Crafts
demand for good work; so, therefore, remained committed to a
Lethaby

"philosophy of right labour"; to "education for fine forms of production";

and to In any case, such a debate about
"right doing."4 precise production
methods is hardly surprising given the underdetermination of art by the
notion of good work. Furthermore, it should be noted that the capacity to
accommodate such and "new art" is understood to be a
disputes properly
basic desideratum of any true art.
theory of
Yet must show "life," and since that life is not
design entirely captured by
what calls "the nervous tremor which
Virginia Woolf distinguishes the hand
made case for
pot from the machine-made" (Read's early twentieth-century

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38 Petts

industrial as art is now

design pretty much conventional wisdom, and the

"story of craft" includes industrial art), so

it is right to question how it is
for de-alienated labor, or to show its de
possible good work, authenticity,
spite any stipulations that it simply is "more Art is a mode of
interesting."41
then?indeed for Arts and Crafts "the supreme mode in which
production
human activity of all kinds expresses itself at its highest and best"?but
what makes a work?42

IV

The argument I am forwarding has thus farbeen that an Arts and Crafts or
Morrisian aesthetic is fundamentally one of
theory good work rather than

handicraft se. Handicraft is best seen, in this as emblem

per perhaps light,
atic of good work for the Arts and Crafts Movement rather than good work's

sole artistic presence. Still, there is a reason to hold to an Arts and Crafts good

work aesthetic because a further claim is made that proper of

appreciation
art a of spectators who, like artist-workers, are them
requires community
selves unalienated workers?this work indeed constitutes their aesthetic

education.
In the Arts and
Crafts Movement the nexus of common of
good work,
workers and a culture in which the arts thrive, so that
things well,"
"doing
there genuinely are works of art appreciated as such, is often left tacit or
one at least states a link between
implicit. However, figure explicitly good
work and Ananda While outside the
culture?namely, Coomaraswamy.
a very case. defines
movement, Roger Fry makes similar Coomaraswamy
culture as "the for immediate and instinctive discrimination be
capacity
tween and bad workmanship, of whatever kind" and argues that the
good
loss of appreciative, skills and destruction of handicraft are
discriminatory
connected: chosen labor stimulates and awakens
closely intelligent, thought
the mind to ideas. These well"? are neces
experiences?of "doing things
sary for art to thrive, since without them there is no possibility of general

of art. This is my understanding

of Fry's speculations
public appreciation
and conclusions on the best social conditions for art:

when art has been purified of its present unreality by a prolonged

a new confidence in its col
contact with the crafts, society would gain
lective artistic and even assume the respon
judgement, might boldly
sibilitywhich at present itknows it is unable to face. Itmight choose
its poets and painters and philosophers and deep investigators, and
make of such men and women a new kind of kings.

The sentiment is
expressed by Morris, too, as might be expected: "you
cannot educate and civilise men without them a share in art," where
giving
"art" is understood as work and filled with its prod
good surroundings
ucts ?and where and common work is "ennobled"?that is, good.
daily

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 Good Work and Aesthetic Education 39

Here, then, for Morris is the "Democracy of Art": a of makers

community
and work,and in good
appreciators present throughout society engaged
with the lesser arts an essential of everyday work and living,
ingredient
through work
the appreciative sensibilities that gives pleasure
sharpening
inmaking and using. So Fry, in something of thisArts and Crafts spirit,
to
sought

find work, not as but as decorators, for the young English

painters
Ex
artists who had been drawn together by the Post-Impressionist
hibition [held at theGrafton Gallery, London in 1910]. Itwas bad for
artists to be forced to who, as the
young depend upon private patrons
exhibition had convinced him, looked upon art "chiefly as a symbol
of social distinction". He wanted to see the walls of railway stations
and restaurants covered with of ordinary life that ordinary
pictures
could
people enjoy.4

So Woolf: "Duncan Grant, Frederic Etchells, Bernard

reports Virginia

Adenay, Albert Rutherston, Max Gill and Roger Fry himself made designs
representing Swimmers and Footballers, Punch and Judy,Paddlers in the
Animals at the Zoo, and other familiar London scenes" for the
Serpertine,
walls of the students' room at "The
dining Borough Polytechnic. greatest
art has been communal, the expression?in individualised
always highly
no doubt?of common and ideals."48
ways aspirations
Morris, I think, a here; he adds
represents deeper understanding prac
tices to and ideals shared a that good
aspirations by community, realizing
work is not "communal" in this latter sense. Without this addition,
simply
can become mere or, worse, an attitude of awe,
aspirations daydreams per
envy, of an other world, that was never a part of Morris's
haps something
Still, Fry is of interest (in the development of a good work
understanding.
aesthetic because his undoubted Morrisian ideas and sentiments
theory)
about making
in
general
were held alongside his critical championing of an
art not in the Arts and Crafts
form?Post-Impressionism?evidently style.
Fry's ideas inspired the Omega Workshops, where "young artists were to
make chairs and tables, carpets and pots that people liked to look at; that
liked to make." for Fry
Moreover, this artistic craft work allowed non
they
commercial finer art to develop were to learn a
freely: "thus they living; thus
be free to paint pictures, as wrote not
they would poets poetry for pleasure,
for money. Thus assert of art 'from all trammels
they would the freedom
and
tyrannies.'"4
Itmight seem, in this division of labor, that craft is indeed less than art,
or at least different in fundamental But, there are ex
respects. empirically,
amples ofOmega craftwork at theCourtauld and theVictoria and Albert in
London; and, so the work this fact represents the com
good argument goes,
mon factor in art, properly the joy in creative mak
making called?namely,
ing and the pleasure this brings to "use," whether that use is practical (chairs
and tables and pots and such like) or (the pleasures of painting,
imaginative

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40 Petts

and music, for instance). Good work can accommodate differences

poetry,
between the work of potters and but these are not craft versus art
painters;
distinctions. encour
Fry gets this: he lauds Cezanne and Matisse, and he

ages young artists to make furniture, textiles, and pottery. He gets, then, the
common thread of creative life in a certain mode of This good-work
making.
mode has many facets: truth to life not to commercialism or
experiences,
fashion; it is against the "dull and serious," but also the modern
stupidly
the arriviste, determined to arrive and attract attention; and it
pseudoartist,
is for the "spirit of fun," for naive art even. In conversation with
peasant
Edward is recorded as "After all, there is only one art; all
Elgar, Fry saying:
the arts are the same."51 But Fry rightly noted the of pure Arts and
dangers
Crafts: he mocked an Arts and Crafts deputation tohis workshop in 1916 for
being sentimental, and full of sham modesty, mixing "moral
genteel, feeling
with everything."52So it is said thatunlike "William Morris and thedesign
ers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was not concerned with social re
Fry
form or protesting against contemporary machine manufacture, but wanted
to remove what he saw as the false division between the fine and decorative

arts."53
If methods" was not an aim of Omega, it is
changing "working explicit
still an oversimplification at best and
misunderstanding
at worst to suggest
no connection with the "social reform" and craft agenda of Arts and Crafts.
on the best social conditions for art have been noted, and
Fry's speculations
I have been suggesting that these dosegue with the fundamental Arts and

Crafts tenet of work. And was a reformer in his work with

good Fry Omega
after all, both in inspiring itsmethods (such as anonymity of works) and
its venturing into the potentially wide market available for furniture and
wares (stuffthat could replace the kind of pseudo-art that he so deplored
in railway refreshment rooms and other More
public places). significantly,
the division in the arts between "fine" and "decorative" was to
addressing

effectively address the social issue behind aesthetic appreciation (in Eng
land in 1912, but generalizable across cultures) that this kind of experience
could not be ordinarily This was the case even in the presence of
expected.
new ones like the works of the Post-Impressionists
"great works," especially
in time, when so much of ordinary "work" in society was
Fry's completely
without artistry.No doubt Fry disliked Ruskin's extreme moralism about
art, wondering, for instance, how it could be possible that every stone of

Venice is Yet extreme it is, and not the essence of the good
morally good.
that can consistently an aesthetic
work thesis, argue theory without any
Ruskinian moral reductionism one cannot of course deny the
(although
moral of is in registering a Mor
implications good work). significance Fry's
risian Arts and Crafts aesthetic without recourse to Ruskinian and
theory
Arts and Crafts and in that there is an "art
purist ideologies, recognizing
life" link in both making and appreciating at of
large?in ordinary places

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 Good Work and Aesthetic Education 41

work, in homes, in as well as exhibition Of

everyday public places, spaces.
course, within the Arts and Crafts Movement it remained a basic under

that art proper survives is evidenced a

standing only by?indeed by?such
wide, involvement with the arts. Thus, for it is thematic in
public example,

Lethaby's Form inCivilisation.

Morris the apparent "strangeness" of the claim that life properly

recognizes
lived is essentially artful, in a state of affairs where art is
especially only
"exhibited":

You cannot your life, still less your work, hav

imagine daily daily
ing anything to do with art: somebody else paints a picture which he
hopes a richman will buy, but scarcely dares to hope anybody but a
few artists like himself will understand; you look at it,heed more or
less what the newspapers say about it.

This is further characterized forMorris are

"problem" by the way artworks
for him, even the existence of exhibition
commonly presented; catalogues
that thereis something wrong with the ordinary of
signifies population
that should need this "education"?as if an artwork is be
spectators they
ing translated "from a foreign tongue into our own." Although it seems

strange to demand artful lives, the real state of affairs for Morris
"strange"
is that there are two separate groups: artists with and a mass
"special gifts,"
of people who don't understand works until they are explained to them. It
is because "it seems to me that the sense of in the external
"strange" beauty
world, of interest in the life of man as a drama, and the desire of communi
this sense of beauty and interest to our fellows is or ought to be an es
cating
sential part of the of man, and that any man or set of men
humanity lacking
that sense are less than men."
The proper state of affairs would involve everyone able to exercise
being
this "gift" of sensing in the world both in and
beauty making appreciating,
"sometimes as a worker, sometimes as a looker-on." Instead, ac
actively
to Morris, the condition of the two classes of rich and means
cording poor
the rich "annex" artists, and "what wonder that they [artists] can no
longer
talk a understood the people." Art exhibitions
language by "you just say
can't understand this because you're workers, but they are beautiful."58
At best, exhibitions are said to offer a invitation" and suggest to
"hopeful
the ordinary spectator that theyhave thepotential towork and produce in
a like manner. But the Morrisian runs more and
argument deeply broadly:
a sensitive audience would not need the exhibition to
properly catalogue
understand the artwork, would no be or educated; in
longer patronized
stead, it would be a shared of the
genuinely enjoying experience "beauty
of life" and of a life be no
experienced by all. Indeed, there would exclusive

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42 Petts

exhibition sites of beauty as such because beauty would be in theworkplace

and thehome. All of this concurs with the good work theory.
The Morrisian of aesthetic is thus built on
understanding appreciation
ideas of "collaboration" and which in turn are founded on
"community,"
an aesthetic education achieved authentic work. Morris it
through thought
once the case, before the "divorce between art and common life" that took

hold with industrial that artistic appreciation was not a

capitalism, special
ist activity confined to a few. But it does not matter whether we
privileged
about the real existence of such a of what be called
agree golden age might
easy, unmediated (by exhibition catalogues and the like) appreciation, nor
whether, for that matter, we care about (have a inter
simply sociopolitical
est in) expanding the audience for art. The theory, rather, argues for a no

tion of good work as the basis of appreciation, such that the appreciative
audience could not "have existed but for the constant unconscious educa

tion which was on ... means of the work of

going by ordinary ordinary
handicraftsmen."59 In essence, Morrisian argues that the fine arts
theory
on a of working life amongst the population at
depend significant part large
carried on with "art," and this art must be conceived around a notion
being
of good work that itself draws on of craft work for in
general descriptions
and "The and manliness of life," as Morris
spiration example. beauty daily
calls it, is "the very sustenance of and of all the arts.
wellspring"
This art-work nexus potentially goes beyond a claim about "art and craft"

(in a Arts and Crafts sense), a broader of

purist suggesting understanding
"craft" than handicraft activities It also presents more than a simple
only.
one-directional "art and life" analysis, which understand the benefits
might
of artistic or good work to other activities as residual, like
solely something
our from a discrete "art to reconsider a related life
turning away experience"
The stronger claim is that good work is needed to create a cul
experience.
ture: that is, it generates the very conditions inwhich the arts thrive, through

both art workers and appreciators, and therefore the conditions

supplying
of production and reception necessary for works. The contention is that the

means of artistic production are means of

paralleled by equally important
and that both share the structures common to work.
reception good Appre
ciations without the qualities of good work are like being told how to get a
work?the orders, what Dewey called "judicial"
spectator merely following
are felt impressions about a work involv
appreciation?or merely personal

ing no critical appraisal. In both instances the critical butfelt component of

is removed?that to truly get a work oneself, which is
appreciation ability
essential to the axiology and phenomenology of true aesthetic experience
and makes an one of felt value. The Morrisian and good-work
experience
claim is that access to such experience is a function of one's own experiential

involvement with materials and methods in one's life and in one's

working
own is, in one's of handling or
"manipulations"?that experience treating
artistic matter, resources, and so on with skill and
questions, intelligence.61

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 Good Work andAesthetic Education 43

A of art therefore demands audiences of (fit

good-work theory capable
for) aesthetic The demand is not democratic; it is on
experience. simply
too, for without such audiences there are no works, only curios,
tological,
museum or at best an esoteric "Art" and its But the ques
pieces, products.
tion is raised: Is a audience of one sufficient for art status (the art
capable
ist herself indeed)? While the fusing of political and ontological that this
is encouraging toMorrisians (and others, some
question suggests probably
ofwhom have been noted), it remains a theoreticflaw within the tradition
of analytic aesthetics, where even the presence of only the smallest of audi
ences is taken to assert no on the real status of an art as a
pressure product
live work so as that audience a defined "artworld" or the
long represents
can be related in an historic narrative to other art.62 To the good
product
work theorist, this represents the reductio ad absurdum of any theory that
the cultural and bases of art in the general
neglects experiential organization
and practice of making, as it does the possibility of the long-term
suggesting
survival of an art that is solely esoteric and does not require an
aesthetically
educated audience at Itmarks a failure to understand, and adhere
large.63
to, the global dimensions of art, something understood Morris and others
by

through pitching art not versus craft (and fine art against popular, gallery
and exhibition art against town home and decoration)
planning, furnishing,
as of, and work
but exemplary dependent on, good throughout any soci

ety. In short, aesthetic lives?people genuinely making

works and the exis
tence of real work as the condition of human
works?require good general
labor.64
These considerations of "art as good work" suggest also the
importance
of Morris and Arts and Crafts in the development of a theory of art and
aesthetic education that can resist the broadly "anti-aesthetic" and "intel
lectualist" that represents the conventional wisdom of so much
standpoint
of philosophical aesthetics; and in this,Morris and those like him must be
properly acknowledged and utilized within the tradition of pragmatist and
aesthetics.
"everyday"

NOTES

1. William Morris, Hopes and Fears for Art (London: Ellis and White, 1883). Volume
22 ofMorris's collected works contains the lectures inHopes and Fears and fifteen
other lectures delivered between 1881 and 1894: William Morris, Collected Works,
Volume 22, ed. May Morris (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966).
2. William
Lethaby, Form in Civilisation (London: Oxford University Press, 1922).
are as "architects and For a
Lethaby and Ashbee usually described designers."
comprehensive list of key figures in theArts and Crafts Movement, with brief bi
see An Anthology of theArts and ed. Mary Greensted
ographies, Crafts Movement,
(Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries, 2005).

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44 Petts

3. Arthur Danto, "The Artworld," in Aesthetics and the

Philosophy of Art: The Ana
lytic Tradition, ed. Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2004), 27-34.
4. The link between Dewey and Everyday Aesthetics is noted, however, by Crispin
Sartwell in "Aesthetics of the Everyday," in The Oxford Handbook ofAesthetics, ed.
Jerrold Levinson (Oxford University Press, 2003), 761-70.
5. Paul Guyer, "History of Modern Aesthetics," in The Oxford Handbook ofAesthet
ics, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 30.
6. For example, a recent anthology, The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, ed. Andrew Light
and Jonathan Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), contains only
one reference toMorris and his like (and there is no mention of the Arts
passing
and Crafts Movement inAmerica). Tom Leddy's overview of Everyday Aesthet
ics in this collection, "The Nature of Everyday Aesthetics," notes "there is not
a in everyday
large tradition of work aesthetics," and like Sartwell he records
as the "classic source of (20).
Dewey inspiration"
7. William Morris, "My Very Uneventful Life," inWilliam Morris byHimself, ed. Gil
lian Naylor (London: Time Warner Books, 2004), 23.
8. William Morris, "The Lesser Arts," inHopes and Fears for Art (London: Ellis and
White, 1883), 5.
9. Adam Smith, The Wealth ofNations (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 4.
10. John Ruskin, The Lamp of Beauty: Writings on Art, ed. Joan Evans (London: Phai
don, 1995), 261.
11. Karl Marx, Marx and Engels on Literature and Art, ed. Lee Baxandall and Stefan
Morawski (New York: International General, 1977), 63.
12. John Ruskin, "Ad Valorem," in Unto This Last (London: George Allen, 1901),
156.
13. Marx, Marx and Engels, 69
14. Stefan Morawski, introduction toMarx and Engels on Literature and Art, ed. Lee
Baxandall and Stefan Morawski (New York: International General, 1977).
15. Quoted in "Aesthetics," inDictionary ofMarxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore (Ox
ford: Blackwell Reference, 1985), 6.
16. G. A. Cohen, Historical Materialism," inMarxist Theory, ed. Alex
"Reconsidering
Callinicos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 159.
17. Morris, "Making the Best of It," in Hopes and Fears for Art (London: Ellis and
White, 1883), 164-65.
18. William Morris, "The Beauty of Life," in Collected Works, Volume 22 (New York:
Russell and Russell, 1966), 56.
19. Ibid., 58.
20. Richard Wollheim, Art and Its Objects (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 151. In the section from which this quote is taken, Wollheim is analyzing
variants of "social determination" in theories of art.
21. John Dando was an architect and important Arts and Crafts figure in
Sedding
the late nineteenth century. Quoted in Greensted, An Anthology of theArts and
Crafts Movement, 2.
22. Ibid., 1.
23. Ibid., 1.
24. Ibid., 41.
25. Ibid., 66.
26. Ibid., 19.
27. Quoted in Greensted, An Anthology of theArts and Crafts Movement, by Arthur
poet and furniture maker in the Arts and Crafts Movement
Romney-Green,
(64).
28. Ibid., 41.
29. Ibid., 42.
30. Herbert Read, Art and Industry (London: Faber and Faber, 1944), 49.
31. Ibid., 170.
32. Ibid., 53.
33. Wollheim, Art and Its Objects, 151.

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 Good Work andAesthetic Education 45

34. William Morris, quoted inNaylor, William Morris byHimself 35.

35. Greensted, An Anthology of theArts and Crafts Movement, 21.
36. Ibid., 63.
37. Ibid., 23.
38. Ibid., 26.
39. Ibid., 17.
40. Lethaby, Form in Civilisation, 167.
41. Virginia Woolf, Roger Fry: A Biography (London: Hogarth Press, 1940), 242.
42. Greensted, An Anthology of the Arts and Crafts Movement, 61. The quote is by
Charles Ashbee. a similar
Lethaby makes stipulation: "right doing and living
will necessarily flow into noble types and beautiful forms" (Form in Civilisation,
167).
43. Ibid.,68.
44. Roger Fry, "Art and Socialism," in Vision and Design (London: Chatto and Win
dus, 1929), 78.
45. Morris, "The Beauty of Life," 63.
46. Woolf, Roger Fry, 172-73.
47. Ibid., 173.
48. Fry, "Art and Socialism," 62.
49. Woolf, Roger Fry, 189.
50. Ibid., 194. Fry made this statement while a around
showing journalist Omega's
London Fitzroy Square workshop.
51. Ibid., 208.
52. Ibid., 205.
53. Tate Archive online, and Aims"
"Omega: Background (www.tate.org.uk).
54. William Morris, "At a Picture Exhibition," in Art and Society: Lectures and Essays
byWilliam Morris, ed. Gary Zabel (Boston: George's Hill, 1993), 103.
55. Ibid., 101.
56. Ibid., 103.
57. Ibid., 103.
58. Ibid., 105,106.
59. Ibid., 110.
60. Ibid., 111.
61. Note also that good work is not simply about doing lots of things; multitasking
and the opportunities to do so are widely as valuable, but forMorris
regarded
the essence of good work is doing something, one identifiable
production, from
beginning to end. This may well involve separate tasks, but theymust be integrat
ed and purposeful. Individuals are not by the ability to multitask
empowered
per se but by being able to control all aspects of a production?in this lies their
real aesthetic education. To think of a production is to reference notion of
Dewey's
an experience: that
identifiably complete experience, in Deweyan terms. This link
between Morris on good work and Dewey on aesthetic is worth ex
experience
ploration; I do not pursue ithere, although it is implicit.
62. Danto's "artworld" theory has been noted above. "Narrativism" is
proposed by
Noel Carroll; see his Beyond Aesthetics Press,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University
2001). Note, too, that a good-work view has other fundamental opponents, on
other grounds, notably Immanuel Kant and R. G. on art's suppos
Collingwood
edly clear distinctions from craft. The focus of this article has been to establish
and position a good-work thesis as a genuine aesthetic theory ready to
challenge
such opposing views.
63. At the risk of
complaints of philistinism, the reductio is evident in theworst cases
of minimalism and conceptualism in the arts.
64. Indeed, Morris was prepared to go so far as to suggest that the
gain of a genu
inely thriving, undivided art would the loss of any existing art that
outweigh
survives only by thework of "genius" and that is incapable of being understood
by the general public. See, for example, The Life ofWilliam Morris, Volume 2, ed.
J.W. Mackail (London: Longmans, Green, 1899), 296.

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