Craft: an introduction

The birth of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain in the late 19th century marked the offset of a change in the value society placed on how things were fabricated. This was a reaction to non but the damaging effects of industrialisation but also the relatively depression status of the decorative arts. Arts and Crafts reformed the pattern and manufacture of everything from buildings to jewellery.

Fine art is that in which the manus, the head, and the heart of homo go together.

John Ruskin, 'The Cestus of Aglaia, the Queen of the Air', 1870

In Great britain the damaging effects of machine-dominated product on both social weather and the quality of manufactured appurtenances had been recognised since around 1840. Merely it was not until the 1860s and '70s that new approaches in compages and design were championed in an attempt to correct the problem. The Arts and Crafts movement in Britain was built-in out of an increasing agreement that society needed to prefer a different set of priorities in relation to the industry of objects. Its leaders wanted to develop products that not just had more than integrity but which were also made in a less dehumanising fashion.

Structured more by a gear up of ideals than a prescriptive mode, the Movement took its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Social club, a group founded in London in 1887 that had as its first president the artist and book illustrator Walter Crane. The Society'due south chief aim was to assert a new public relevance for the work of decorative artists (historically they had been given far less exposure than the work of painters and sculptors). The Great Exhibition of 1851 and a few spaces such every bit the Refreshment Rooms of the South Kensington Museum (after known as the V&A) in the 1860s had given decorative artists the chance to show their work publicly, simply without a regular showcase they were struggling to exert influence and to reach potential customers.

The Baby's Bouquet, designs, Walter Crane, about 1870, England. Museum no. East.1449-1931. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

The Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society mounted its start annual exhibition in 1888, showing examples of piece of work it hoped would help heighten both the social and intellectual status of crafts including ceramics, textiles, metalwork and furniture. Its members publicly rejected the excessive ornamentation and ignorance of materials, which many objects in the Great Exhibition of 1851 had been criticised for. For many years in Britain exhibitions mounted by the Society were the only public platform for the decorative arts, and were disquisitional in changing the style people looked at manufactured objects.

Altar table, deigned past Phillip Webb, fabricated past John Garrett and Son, 1897, England. Museum no. W.4-2003. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Although it was known by a single name (one that wasn't in fact used widely until the early 20th century), the Craft motility was in fact comprised of a number of unlike artistic societies, such as the Exhibition Order, the Arts Workers Guild (set up in 1884), and other craftspeople in both pocket-sized workshops and large manufacturing companies.

Many of the people who became involved in the Movement were influenced by the piece of work of the designer William Morris, who past the 1880s had become an internationally renowned and commercially successful designer and manufacturer.

Wall hanging, designed by William Morris, fabricated by Ada Phoebe Godman, 1877, England. Museum no. T.166-1978. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Morris only became actively involved with the Craft Exhibition Order a number of years after it was set upward (betwixt 1891 and his death in 1896), but his ideas were hugely influential to the generation of decorative artists whose piece of work information technology helped publicise. Morris believed passionately in the importance of creating cute, well-made objects that could be used in everyday life, and that were produced in a manner that allowed their makers to remain continued both with their product and with other people. Looking to the past, particularly the medieval period, for simpler and amend models for both living and production, Morris argued for the return to a system of industry based on pocket-sized-scale workshops.

Printed season ticket, Walter Crane, 1890, England. Museum no. E.4164-1915. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Morris was not entirely against the apply of machines, only felt that the partitioning of labour – a system designed to increase efficiency, in which the manufacture of an object was broken into modest, separate tasks, meaning individuals had a very weak relationship with the results of their labour – was a move in the wrong management.

Similar many idealistic, educated men of his era, he was shocked past the social and environmental impact of the factory-based system of product that Victorian Britain had and so energetically embraced. He wanted to gratuitous the working classes from the frustration of a working 24-hour interval focused solely on repetitive tasks, and allow them the pleasance of craft-based production in which they would engage directly with the creative procedure from beginning to terminate.

Morris was himself inspired by the ideas of the Victorian era's leading art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900), whose work had suggested a link between a nation'south social wellness and the way in which its appurtenances were produced. Ruskin argued that separating the deed of designing from the act of making was both socially and aesthetically dissentious. The Craft movement was also influenced by the piece of work of Augustus Pugin (1812–1852). An interior designer and architect, Pugin was a Gothic revivalist and a member of the Pattern Reform Movement. He had helped challenge the mid-Victorian way for ornamentation, and, like Morris, focused on the medieval period as an ideal template for both good blueprint and skilful living.

Zermatt, watercolour, John Ruskin, 1844, Switzerland. Museum no. P.15-1921. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In the terminal decade of the 19th century and into the 20th, the Craft movement flourished in large cities throughout the Britain, including London, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. These urban centres had the infrastructure, organisations and wealthy patrons it needed to gather step. Exhibition societies inspired by the original 1 in London helped establish the Movement's public identity and gave it a forum for give-and-take. Members of the Arts and Crafts community felt driven to spread their message, convinced that a better organisation of blueprint of manufacture could actively modify people'southward lives. Between 1895 and 1905 this strong sense of social purpose drove the cosmos of over a hundred organisations and guilds that centred on Craft principles in Britain.

Progressive new art schools and technical colleges in London, Glasgow and Birmingham encouraged the development of both workshops and individual makers, as well equally the revival of techniques, including enamelling, embroidery and calligraphy. Arts and Crafts designers also forged new relationships with manufacturers that enabled them to sell their goods through shops in London such as Morris & Co. (William Morris'due south 'all under one roof' store on Oxford Street), Heal'southward and Liberty. This commercial distribution helped the Movement'due south ideas reach a much wider audience.

The Angel with the Trumpet, furnishing fabric, Herbert Percy Horne, about 1884, England. Museum no. T.85-1953. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

A particular feature of the Arts and Crafts movement was that a large proportion of its leading figures had trained as architects. This common culture helped develop a collective belief in the importance of designing objects for a 'total' interior: a infinite in which compages, furniture, wall decoration, etc. blended in a harmonious whole. Equally a result, most Arts and Crafts designers worked across an unusually wide range of dissimilar disciplines. In a single career someone could apply craft-based principles to the pattern of things equally varied as armchairs and glassware. Arts and crafts as well had a meaning affect on architecture. Figures including Philip Webb, Edwin Lutyens, Charles Voysey and William Lethaby quietly revolutionised domestic space in buildings that referenced both regional and historical traditions.

Design for a jitney firm, Edwin Landseer Lutyens, 1891 – 2. Museum no. East.2-1991. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Although the Arts and crafts motion evolved in the urban center, at its middle was nostalgia for rural traditions and 'the simple life', which meant that living and working in the countryside was the ideal to which many of its artists aspired. Increasingly, many left the urban center to found new ways of living and working, with workshops ready across Britain in locations including the Cotswolds, the Lake District, Sussex and Cornwall. All these places offered picturesque landscapes, an existing culture of craft skills and, importantly, rail links for admission to patrons and the London market.

Arts and crafts makers based in rural communities both revived craft traditions and created employment for local people. This kind of development meant that the Move endured longer in the countryside than in the city, and had a more than significant impact on the rural than the urban economy. Significantly, the Craft community was open to the efforts of non-professionals, encouraging the involvement of amateurs and students through organisations such every bit the Dwelling Arts and Industries Clan. And it also created an environment in which, for the first time, women too as men could begin to have an active role in developing new forms of pattern, both as makers and consumers.

In Europe the honesty of expression in Craft work was a catalyst for the radical forms of Modernism, whereas in Uk the progressive impetus of the Movement began to lose momentum later on the Kickoff Globe State of war. Under the control of older artists it had begun to withdraw from productive relationships with industry and into a purist celebration of the handmade. Some organisations sympathetic to Arts and Crafts ideals did survive, peculiarly in the countryside, and the original Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society mounted regular shows up to and beyond its 50th anniversary in 1938. In 1960, t he Society merged with the Cambridgeshire Guild of Craftsmen to form the Society of Designer Craftsmen, which is yet active today.

Affiche, John Frederick William Charles Farleigh, 1938, England. Museum no. Eastward.598-1980. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Background image: Drawing, William De Morgan, England. Museum no. E.421-1917. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London