The Arts & Crafts Movement

Dating from the 1850s to the start of World War I, the Arts and Crafts movement was an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence. It encompassed nearly every imaginable medium, including painting, architecture, garden design, town planning, metalwork, and embroidery, in places as diverse as California and Budapest. Born of thinkers and practitioners in Victorian England, its ideological currents reflected the era's most pressing social, political, and artistic concerns.

Early British Arts and Crafts practitioners campaigned for a revival of old craft techniques, yearning for the elevation of the applied arts and for honesty in design. The Arts and Crafts movement originated with a widespread reaction against industrialization, the long-standing division between traditional crafts and Fine Art, and the over-elaborate ornamentation which disguised an object or building's "true function." The movement's aims were quickly picked up and developed across Europe and in the United States, and many national variants soon emerged. Germany, for example, recognized the potential of industrial techniques and experimented with standardization in design; in Finland, then annexed to Russia, Arts and Crafts was allied to the search for self-expression and a national artistic style.

In this fascinating and beautifully illustrated introductory survey, Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to the wide and stylistically varied Arts and Crafts movement. Included are works by William Morris, Charles Robert Ashbee, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Greene & Greene, and Philip Webb, alongside lesser-known examples from emerging spots in Northern and EasternEurope.