Lecture 11a: Arts and Crafts

The following information comes from the website “The Art Story” and is meant to give you
information on Arts and Crafts. You do not need to study this for the exam. There are however cross
references with the other lectures we saw; so this information may be of use to you when studying
for the exam. I’ve underlined the most important aspects and characteristics.

The founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement were some of the first major critics of the Industrial
Revolution. Disenchanted with the impersonal, mechanized direction of society in the 19 th century,
they sought to return to a simpler, more fulfilling way of living. The movement is admired for its use
of high quality materials and for its emphasis on utility in design. The Arts & Crafts emerged in the
United Kingdom around 1860, at roughly the same time as the closely related Aesthetic Movement.
Arts & Crafts existed in many variations, and inspired similar contemporaneous groups of artists and
reformers in Europe and North America, including Art Nouveau and the Wiener Werkstatte. The
faith in the ability of art to reshape society exerted a powerful influence on its many successor
movements in all branches of the arts.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

The Arts & Crafts movement existed under its specific name in the United Kingdom and the United
States, and these two strands are often distinguished from each other by their respective attitudes
towards industrialization: in Britain, Arts & Crafts artists and designers tended to be either negative
or ambivalent towards the role of the machine in the creative process, while Americans tended to
embrace the machine more readily. The practitioners of the movement strongly believed that the
connection forged between the artist and his work through handcraft was the key to producing both
human fulfillment and beautiful items that would be useful on an everyday basis. The Arts & Crafts
aesthetic was influenced most prominently by both the imagery of nature and the forms of medieval
art, particularly the Gothic style, which enjoyed a revival in Europe and North America during the
mid-19th century.

Beginnings of The Arts & Crafts Movement

The Arts & Crafts movement grew during the mid-19th century. It was first and foremost a response
to social changes initiated by the Industrial Revolution. Industrialization moved large numbers of
working-class laborers into cities that were ill-prepared to deal with an influx of newcomers,
crowding them into miserable ramshackle housing and subjecting them to dangerous, harsh jobs
with long hours and low pay. Cities likewise became doused regularly with pollution from a bevy of
new factories. Critics such as the writer John Ruskin railed against these problems of industrialization.
They contrasted its vices with the Gothic era, which they viewed as an idyllic time period of piety and
high moral standards as well as a healthful, green environment.

William Morris
The spark for the Arts & Crafts movement was the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair, held
in London. The chief criticism of the manufactured objects on display was the unnecessary ornament
with little concern for utility. William Morris wanted to see things changed and advocated for
functional aesthetics. He moved in the same circles as the painter Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-
Raphaelite artists, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, all of whom were fascinated by medieval art and
nature. In 1861, Morris founded the decorative arts firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., along with
Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Philip Webb, Ford Madox Brown, Charles Faulkner, and Peter Paul Marshall,
which specialized in wallpaper designs featuring natural imagery.

In 1859 Morris had commissioned Webb to design a house for his family in London, named
appropriately "Red House" due to the deep color of its brick. Its interior recalls the Gothic style, and
is seen as the first Arts & Crafts building. Morris' firm grew throughout the 1860s and 1870s,
especially as Morris gained important interior design commissions. It also expanded in terms of the
range of items that it manufactured, including furniture, such as the famous "Morris chair," textiles,
and eventually stained glass. In 1875, Morris bought out his partners and reorganized the firm as
Morris & Co.

Morris' firm emphasized the use of handcraft as opposed to machine production, creating works of
very high quality that Morris ultimately hoped would inspire cottage industries among the working
classes and bring pleasure to their labors, thus creating a kind of democratic art. Morris himself
became involved in every step of production of the company's items, thus reviving the idea that the
designer or artist should guide the entire creative process as opposed to the mechanical division of
labor that was increasingly used in most factories. He also revived the use of organic natural dyes.
The use of handcraft and natural sources, however, became extremely labor-intensive, and Morris
was not entirely averse to the use of mechanical production. Morris, who had taught himself
calligraphy in the 1860s, had always been interested in typography and manuscripts. In 1891 he
established the Kelmscott Press to print editions in exquisite carefully-designed tomes that rival the
artistic merits of medieval manuscripts.

The Arts & Crafts Movement: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Morris' success inspired many others to create collective associations where groups of artists and
artisans collaborated on designs in a wide variety of media. In 1887, the Arts & Crafts Exhibition
Society, which gave the movement its name, was formed in London, with Walter Crane as its first
president. It held its first exhibition there in November 1888 in the New Gallery. The aims were to
"[ignore] the distinction between Fine and Decorative art" and to allow the "worker to earn the title
of artist."

Architecture and the Diversity in Media

The Arts & Crafts scope extended to virtually every aspect of the decorative arts, design, and
architecture. There were very few Arts & Crafts designers, particularly among architects, whose work
did not bridge several different media. In architecture the Arts & Crafts movement did not develop
into one particular building style, but could be seen in a multitude of strains. In both Britain and the
United States, the simplicity, unvarnished, and rough-hewn aesthetic of the Arts & Crafts could be
seen mixed in with a variety of stylistic preferences.

Relationship with Art Nouveau

One style that in particular shared many theoretical and visual qualities with the Arts & Crafts was Art
Nouveau, which emerged in part from the Arts & Crafts in Europe during the late 1880s. Both the
Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau placed an emphasis on nature and claimed the Gothic style as an
inspiration; both spanned the complete breadth of the various branches of the arts, with an
emphasis on the decorative arts and architecture and their power to physically reshape the entire
human environment. It is difficult to fully categorize many designers as belonging to the Arts & Crafts
movement or working in the Art Nouveau style. Henry van de Velde, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and
a host of other artists and architects are just a few of those artists variously described as straddling
this boundary, which remains rather unclear. Many Art Nouveau artists even freely acknowledged
their debt to the writings and philosophy of William Morris. Where the Arts & Crafts emphasized
simplicity and saw the machine as deeply problematic, however, Art Nouveau often embraced
complexity and new technology, sometimes to the point of disguising the truth of materials for visual
effect. Art Nouveau also drew on a much wider stylistic base than the Arts & Crafts, finding
inspiration from the Baroque, Romanesque, and the Rococo and even Islamic and East Asian sources
along with the Gothic. Its very name of "New Art" spoke to the international attempts to invent a
style for the 20th century. As such, Art Nouveau was also less associated than the Arts & Crafts with
the power to completely change attitudes and social mores, but rather was often used to embellish
and enchant the viewer into a dreamy world of pleasure, sometimes tinged with exoticism.
Politics
As a reactionary artistic movement that grew specifically out of social commentary and advocated
reform, the Arts & Crafts Movement was destined to be tied to politics. Morris himself was the most
significant Arts & Crafts figure as a staunch socialist and anti-imperialist, founding the Socialist
League in 1884 and advocating worldwide workers' revolution, giving public lectures around the UK..
Many of Morris' fellow artists, such as Walter Crane, were also prominent socialists. While they
admired and promoted Morris' desire to restore joy to both artistic and manual labor, American Arts
& Crafts adherents largely ignored or rejected Morris' political views. The Movement in the United
States was also equivocal on gender issues: while it counted many women among its practitioners
and advocates, few women Arts & Crafts artists received significant recognition during their lifetimes,
and some were even limited to the type of labor that they were allowed to perform in the creative
process.

Decline and Dissemination

Several factors contributed to the Arts & Crafts movement's demise in the 20th century.
Fundamental to its decline was the inherent problem of handcraft - which is labor-intensive - to be
easily produced in great quantities and cheaply enough to reach a mass audience. Morris was never
able to solve this paradox, since his goal was to create a democratic art for the masses, and as time
went on, he grumbled frequently that his firm catered to wealthy clients almost exclusively. The
problems were not unique to his company, as many other Arts & Crafts practitioners on both sides of
the Atlantic were forced to adopt machine production, often with a decrease in quality in order to
stay afloat. Finally, like many other movements, the Arts & Crafts fell victim to changing tastes: at the
dawn of the new century, a newfound respect for a traditional Neoclassicism emerged.