Promise and Failure of the Arts and Crafts Movement

 

Sometimes the very best and very worst ideas are one and the same. Industrialization began to catch on in the early 19^th century and by mid-century was on its way to becoming dominant in how goods were manufactured in Western society. You didn’t have to be a Luddite to be critical of the factory system. It was dirty, unhealthy, wasteful of natural resources, and exploited wage-earners. It did make goods make goods cheaply, but that was a mixed blessing. Even when they cost less, they were also “cheap” in quality, generic, and reduced consumer choices. In clothing and footwear, for example, “bespoke” goods tailored to fit the wearer were replaced by predetermined sizes. Thus was born the old joke “one size fits none.”

 

In Britain various visionaries–some driven by artistic motives, others by social and political ideals–asked a simple question: Should manufactured goods be rejected in favor of all things artisan-made? Proponents of the arts and crafts movement thought that reviving handcraft work would yield well-made and beautiful objects that could be sold at prices the masses could afford. They were right about the aesthetics of their endeavors, but dead wrong on how affordable they would be, as anyone who has ever attended a high-quality craft studio or show can attest.

 

The arts and craft movement fought the good fight. You name it and it was made: wallpaper, metal work, lamps, pottery, furniture, textiles, painting, houses…. You’ve probably heard of some of the key movers and shakers: Charles Robert Ashbee, William Arthur Smith Benson, Walter Crane, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, William Morris, and John Ruskin. The latter two could be considered movement lynchpins. Much of it was a based upon romanticized notions of medievalism. The paintings of Edward Burne-Jones and Dante Gabriel Rosetti went a step further and evinced Greek and Roman tales that were reworked in the Middle Ages! In many respects those Victorians seeking to rediscover the “folk” in everything ending up producing things no laborer or ploughman could dream of affording. Google some of the “cottages” Philip Speakman Webb built in the name of “art of the common building.

 

 

The Arts and Crafts movement made its way to the United States, where it was just as naïve as its European influencers. Frank Lloyd Wright drew inspiration from Webb. Do you live in a Wright home? Many American designers are also acclaimed figures: William Wallace Denslow (illustrator of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Elbert and Bertha Hubbard, William “Dard” Hunter (handmade paper), architect William Lightfoot Price,  Gustav Stickley. The U.S. movement stumbled over the same contradictions as the Europeans in that most acolytes were designers whose work was made by others–often via the same industrial methods they sought to dethrone.

Nonetheless, those designs and finished products are gorgeous. You can see them in many places, including: Ashcroft in North Carolina, the Arden Community in Delaware, Craftsman Farms in New Jersey, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC. To whet your appetite here are a few gems from the Museum of American Arts and Crafts in St. Petersburg, Florida. No need to concentrate of the design firms; just enjoy the beauty of these objects. It’s the difference between the artistic and the prosaic.