Arts and crafts

movement

(1880s-1910s)

Outline Definition Birth of arts and crafts movement Influences Social reforms of arts and crafts movement Principles Characteristics Ideals from the art and crafts movement Architecture Features of arts and crafts movement houses John Ruskin William Morris Architects Decline of arts and crafts movement Arts and crafts movement in US Arts and crafts vs. Arts nouveau

Defining the Arts and Crafts Movement

• The movement represents in some sense a revolt against the hard mechanical conventional life and it's insensitivity to beauty.

It is a protest against that so called industrial progress which produces shoddy wares, the cheapness of which is paid for by the lives of their producers and the degradation of their users.It is a protest against the

turning of men into machines against artificial distinctions in art, and against making the immediate market value or possibility of profit the chief test of artistic merit

It also advances the claim of all and each to the common possession of beauty in things common and familiar.

Walter Crane a leading figure in the development of the Arts and Crafts movement defined it as follows:

Birth of Arts and Crafts Movement

Arts & Crafts 1875-1915 The Arts & Crafts movement began in Britain as a reaction to the de-humanizing effects of the late 19th century industrialization.

A rose design for stained glass by E.A Taylor.

It was a social and artistic movement of the second half of the 19th cent. emphasizing a return to handwork, skilled craftsmanship, and attention to design in the decorative arts, from the mechanization and mass production of the Industrial Revolution.

It was inspired by the ideas of architect Augustus Pugin (1812–1852), writer John Ruskin (1819–1900), and artist William Morris (1834–1896).[

Some Key Forces which gave birth to the movement

Rejection of Classical and Italianate architecture, and the revival of the Gothic Style. Rebellion against industrialization and mass production by machines.Leading figures believed in a socialist or utopian society, striving for good quality of life for all, including art for the people, by the people. It was a reaction against a

decline in standards that the reformers associated with machinery and factory production, and was in part a response to items shown in the Great Exhibition of 1851 that were ornate, artificial and ignored the qualities of the materials used.

Nostalgia for the medieval age seen as the golden age of creativity and freedom.Artists and craftsman were viewed as equals, art was no longer a separate or superior activity.The revival of craftsmanship, honesty in construction, and truth to materials.

Influences Socialism - the ideas of John Ruskin and

early Marx, especially the dehumanising effects of industrialization

Linear character and verticality taken from graphic prints of William Blake, Aubrey Beardsley, Jan Toorop -Influence of Gothic revival

Aesthetic ideas were also borrowed from Medieval European and Islamic sources

Japanese ideas were also incorporated early Arts and Crafts forms

• Medieval Guilds provided a model for the ideal craft production system

Social reforms of arts and crafts movement

change in working condition

Believe in restoration power of craftsmanship

Simple life Arts as a way of lifeArtisanal production

improved laborers’ conditions and edified society

PrinciplesDesign unityJoy in laborIndividualismRegionalism

Characteristics Simple form and shape :

Simple forms were one of the hallmarks of the Arts and Crafts style.

There was no extravagant or superfluous decoration and the actual construction of the object was often exposed. Natural motifs : Nature

was an important source of Arts and Crafts motifs. The patterns used were inspired by the flora and fauna of the British countryside.

• Truth to materials : Preserving and emphasizing the natural qualities of the materials used to make objects was one of the most important principles of Arts and Crafts style. The vernacular :The vernacular,

or domestic, traditions of the British countryside provided the main inspiration for the Arts and Crafts Movement. Many of those involved set up workshops in rural areas and revived old techniques

Crafts skill required to manufacture.Manufactured by one skilled person or a small group.Not mass produced on production line

Combination of simplicity, good design and craft work.

Stereo metric, geometric, large “vertical gothic” windows, cubic forms, rationalFlexible layout, influenced the work of Mies Van der Rohe.

fluid, delicate décor of arches, entrance, alcoves, stairs, balustrade, interior or details in wood and metal

Traditional approaches and materials such as stone with it is massive character mixed with modern materials iron, glass.

The movementRejected

The eclectic historicism and excessive ornamentation of earlier and concurrent Victorian styles

The cold, impersonal aesthetics brought on by the Industrial Revolution

Embraced A closer relationship

between designer, maker, and object

The integration of art into life

Objects and furniture that were smaller, less ornamented, more hand-crafted

Ideals from the Arts and Crafts Movement

The truth and beauty in these simple ideals can be an inspiration in today's busy and often crazy world. Here are a few Craftsman Style ideals for you to enjoy and use as you see fit:

simple, refined aesthetics (beauty)simple, functional design (utility) living simplysocial reform (individuals more rational;

society more harmonious)the virtue of a well decorated middle class

homehandcrafted objectshigh quality craftsmanship

The joy of working and crafting with one's own hands

Creating objects well designed and affordable to all

Creating harmony with natureUsing and sustaining natural materialsMaintaining a sense of space and

environmentStaying spiritually connected to home

and natureCreating space for inner peace away

from jobs and factories

Architecture In the nineteenth century the taste in design for buildings

moved away from Classical styles. In the place of classical styles the new architectural styles

of, first, Gothic Revival, and then Arts and Crafts emerged Arts and Crafts architecture followed these principles,

allowing the function of the building and the activities within it to determine the outer shape and the construction, leaving out excessive ornamental features.

One departure from Gothic style was that Arts and Crafts buildings tended to have graceful curved arches rather than pointed and many were designed on a modest scale, in styles reminiscent of the manorial halls and half timbered cottages of Tudor or Elizabethan England. The preference for local slate, and red brick, for English Oak and for the cosy Inglenook fireplace rather than ornate lead roofs and carved marble chimney piece defined the Arts and Crafts style

There was also a contrast in values between classical architecture and Arts and Crafts.

Classical architecture was seen as being built by slave labour or, in more recent times, by wage slaves, whereas Arts and Crafts relied on a partnership between designer and craftsman in which the craftsman was highly respected alongside the artist and architect .

There was too a greater concern for equality, and a concern to improve the quality of life which a building could provide for its occupants.

Features of the arts and crafts movement houses

• Porch with thick square or round columns

• Stone porch supports

•Wood ,stone, stucco : sliding low pitched roof, wide eaves with triangular brackets.•Exposed roof rafters

Exterior chimney made with stone

Open floor plans; few hallways

Beamed ceilings

windows with stained or leaded glass

Dark wood wainscoting and moldings

Built-in cabinets ,shelves and seating's

Numerous windows

John Ruskin Inspired by Pugin, Ruskin advocated the design of the past, but was not married to Gothic Style – or any one style.

Writer and artist

• You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them...” John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: Volume II (1853)

• "And the great cry that rises from all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace blast, is all in very deed for this - that we manufacture everything there except men; we blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages." John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice: Volume II (1853)

Ruskin style He is certainly one of the greatest

masters of English prose style. In the earlier writings of Ruskin,

We find an ornamental, gorgeous prose.

Picturesque in his literary expression.

He is rich in the power of illustration.

Ruskin was not the inventor of Pre-Raphaelitism or the Gothic Revival

Ruskin argued for the secularization of the Gothic and for its use in new domestic buildings and churches.

Ruskin believed in the power of art to transform the lives of people oppressed more by visual illiteracy than by poor material conditions.

His creed was: ‘There is no wealth but life

Sketches and watercolor by Ruskin

What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”

The union of art and labour in service to society, would create the largest number of happy human beings.

Socialism Ruskin Believed that machines

and factory work limited human happiness

Advocated finding joy in work through a closer relationship with craft

Principles His thought is based on the

following Beauty and Art are closely

connected. Beauty has a moral function: it

helps us develop a high moral sense;

Art contributes to the spiritual health of man.

All great art derives from deep morality.

Industrial society, lacks spiritual values, so cannot produce great art;

the Middle Ages society is characterized by deep morality.

William Morris (1834-1896)

London, England. Morris was a brilliant two

dimensional pattern designer. In 1861 he founded his first

company which produced a wide range of decorative objects for the home including furniture, fabrics, wallpaper and stained glass.

William Morris was the central figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement and one of the most important and influential designers in British History.William Morris was an artist designer, printer, typographer, bookbinder, craftsman, poet, writer, and champion of socialist ideals.Founder of Morris & company ,The kelmscott pressMorris combined his artistic skills with strong political beliefs. A committed conservationist and Socialist, he dedicated his life to the idea that art should improve the lives of ordinary people.

Inspired by - pre Raphaelite

brotherhood -writings of John Ruskin

He believes that nature was perfect example of God’s creation.

The arts and crafts movement was a reaction against the poor quality of design during the industrial revolution.

The members of the arts and crafts movement believed the growth has destroyed traditional skills and had removed the pride that a craftsman could find in his work.

The members formed themselves into crafts guilds, based on the medieval examples in order to encourage high standards of design and provide a supportive working environment.

Red house

• Phillip webb architect

The Red House The Red House, in

Bexleyheath, was designed in 1858-1860 by Philip Webb for his friend William Morris.

Webb rejected the grand classical style and instead found inspiration in British vernacular architecture.

With its well-proportioned solid forms, deep porches, steep roof, pointed window arches, brick fireplaces and wooden fittings,

The Red House characterizes the early Arts and Crafts style

named because of its red brick and tile

construction

Commissioned by Morris, Philip Web built the Red House at Bexley Heath in Kent.The emphasis on basic form, sound materials and good craftsmanship had great appeal to architects who in turn contributed to a poetic phase of European architecture.

In building the house, every brick and tile was carefully selected and placed to give variation of colour and to avoid the impression of any mechanical uniformity.

The Red House perhaps the best known building associated with the Arts and Crafts movement and appears in virtually every book relating to Arts and Crafts

The interior design included murals by Burne-Jones and Rossetti and massive furniture designed by Webb and by Morris

the use of exposed red brick for the exterior both gave the house its name and reveals the innate beauty of the construction materials. Morris and Webb valued the specific beauty of natural materials, which they saw as far superior to and healthier than industrially produced materials.

Red House is L-shaped, with the rooms laid out for maximum efficiency and clarity. The L-shaped plan also allows the house to embrace the gardens as a part of the domestic sphere, as well as creates an asymmetry that is typical of traditional Gothic structures that were built over long periods of time.

The house was to represent a protest against industrialism through its:InformalityAbsence of decorationSimple vernacular

The concept of an integral whole extended to the interior design as well. Webb, Morris, his wife, Jane, and the painter Edward Burne-Jones all worked together to design everything in the home, from the wallpaper to the stained-glass windows to the built-in cabinets and furniture, so that all celebrated the beauty of nature and the medieval guild ideal

Other original built-in furniture is present in the main living room on the second floor, notably a fireplace painted with Morris’s motto. This room also has paintings by Edward Burne-Jones.

The house is entered through a large wooden door that leads to a rectangular hallway. A settle Morris decorated with illustrations from the medieval German epic Niebelungenlied is to the right. The hallway is filled with light from the stained-glass windows. TThe original rustic dining room table remains, along with the decorative arch in the brickwork around the fireplace

the dining room to the right contains the original hutch designed by Philip Webb, which has Gothic trefoil motifs and is painted in “dragon’s blood” (a deep red-brown favored by Arts and Crafts practitioners).

Stained glass decorated by Morris, his family and their friends is found throughout the house.

Architects• The important contribution

of architects such as Pugin and Voysey stems from their involvement in the design of furnishing and decoration.

• They continued their interest after the building structure was complete, and followed through into interior design and decorative art.

This interest beyond the architectural started early in the history of the movement when architects were unable to find the right kind of furniture to match the new style of buildings which they had designed.Neither the furniture available from manufacturers at the time, nor the antique furniture which could be acquired fitted in with the new styles and so architects designed furniture and fittings to match the buildings and interiors which they had created.

These architect-designers left their personal touch on the smallest detail of the design inside and outside of the building.

As well as including designs for furniture ,they often designed the light fittings, wallpaper, door furniture, and even keys, window latches ,doorbells and clocks.

the design for a clock by Charles Voysey.

The objects made during the arts and crafts movement were smaller, affordable such as textiles, pottery, furniture etc.

Glasgow school of arts

Cr Ashbee (1863-1942) Influenced by socialism of William

Morris (established guild and school of handicraft in 1888 in the slums of white chapel)

Works of John Ruskin

Charles Robert Ashbee was a major figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement. He designed many important pieces of jewelry and silver tableware for the Guild of Handicraft, which he established in 1888 in the East End of London. The Guild's work is characterized by plain surfaces of hammered silver, flowing wirework and colored stones in simple settings.

37 Cheyne Walk, London37 Cheyne Walk was

built by C.R. Ashbee in 1893-1894.

It was the home of his mother and sister and also contained Ashbee's architectural offices.

The house was known as The Ancient Magpie and Stump after a public house which once stood on the site

W.R Lethaby (1857-1931) Influenced by His father and lay

preacher Society of protection

of ancient buildings

Phillip web• Architect of the first arts and crafts building – the Red house

Philip Webb is often called the father of the Arts & Crafts movement. Famous for his comfortable, unpretentious country homes, Philip Webb also designed furniture, wallpaper, tapestries, and stained glass.

C. F. A. Voysey  (1857-1941) Charles Francis Annesley

Voysey was one of the most innovative Arts and Crafts architects.

He was also a very versatile designer and produced designs for wallpaper, fabrics, tiles, ceramics, furniture and metalwork.

Some of his patterns were used for objects in a wide variety of materials. Voysey had a highly original style which combined simplicity with sophistication. He became particularly famous for his wallpaper and textile designs which feature stylised bird and plant forms with bold outlines and flat colours

The Orchard, Chorleywood C.F.A. Voysey designed The Orchard

in Chorleywood for himself and his wife in 1899.

Like other Arts and Crafts designers, Voysey was interested in vernacular traditions. With its sparse

decoration and plain and simple furnishings, The Orchard was very different from the usual dark and cluttered Victorian interior. This simplicity anticipates 20th-century modern styles.

The Decline of Arts and Crafts Despite its high ideals, the Arts and Crafts Movement was

essentially flawed. Their opposition to modern methods of production and the

tendency to look back to the medieval world, rather than forward to a progressive era of complete mechanization, was what eventually sounded the death knell of the movement.

They could only fail in their socialist ideal of producing affordable quality hand-crafted design for the masses as the production costs of their designs were so high that they could only be purchased by the wealthy.

Also, any movement which continually looks to the past for its inspiration must have a limited life span. There are only so many ways you can reinterpret the past without becoming repetitive.

However,in time the English Arts and Crafts movement came to stress craftsmanship at the expense of mass market pricing.

The result was exquisitely made and decorated pieces that could only be afforded by the very wealthy.

Thus the idea of art for the people was lost, and only relatively few craftsman could be employed making these fine pieces.

This evolved English Arts and Crafts style came to be known as "Aesthetic Style." It shared some characteristics with the French/Belgian Art Nouveau movement.

However, the greatest legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement was their understanding of the relationship between design and our quality of life. This set the example for others who would later attempt to use the power of industrial mass production in the service of good design.

Some designers, such as Christopher Dresser whose work still looks remarkably modern, started to reject the limitations of the Arts and Crafts ideals and positively embrace the techniques of industrial manufacturing. This was the start of a design evolution that would eventually culminate in the foundation of the Bauhaus School of Art and Design which became the prototype for art education in the 20th century.DR. CHRISTOPHER DRESSER (1834-1904)

'Teapot', 1879

Arts and crafts movement in us

However in the United States, the Arts and Crafts ideal of design for the masses was more fully realized, though at the expense of the fine individualized craftsmanship typical of the English style.

In New York, Gustav Stickley was trying to serve a burgeoning market of middle class consumers who wanted affordable, decent looking furniture. By using factory methods to produce basic components, and utilizing craftsmen to finish and assemble, he was able to produce sturdy, serviceable furniture which was sold in vast quantities, and still survives.

The rectilinear, simpler American Arts and Crafts forms came to dominate American architecture, interiors, and furnishings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

The term Mission style was also used to describe Arts and Crafts Furniture and design in the United States. The use of this term reflects the influence of traditional furnishings and interiors from the American Southwest, which had many features in common with the earlier British Arts and Crafts forms

Charles and Henry Greenewere important Mission style architects working in California.

Southwestern style also incorporated Hispanic elements associated with the early Mission and Spanish architecture, and Native American design.

The result was a blending of the arts and crafts rectilinear forms with traditional Spanish colonial architecture and furnishings.

Mission Style interiors were often embellished with Native American patterns, or actual Southwestern Native American artifacts such as rugs, pottery, and baskets.

The collecting of Southwestern artifacts became very popular in the first quarter of the twentieth century.

Arts and Crafts Arts and Crafts developed

in England in the 1860s. Arts and Crafts focuses on

direct, handcrafted creations.

The movement represents in some sense a revolt against the hard mechanical conventional life and it's insensitivity to beauty.

Arts and Crafts designers reacted against these influences of the industrial revolution, insisting on hand techniques rather than assembly lines.

Primarily a decorative arts movement about *how* things are made .

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau arose in the

Belle Epoque of the 1890s inParis, Munich (Jugendstil), and Wiener (Sezession).

Art Nouveau fully embraces mass production with brightly colored posters and décortive style.

Art Nouveau is a rejection of the European Academic Style

Art Nouveau artists began to bend metal and glass into strange, new shapes.

An art movement about *what* is made .

Arts and crafts

William Morris, naturally, was extremely adamant about staying far from industrialized products.

 While Morris’ style was more botanic and decorative.

Morris was customized.

Art Nouveau Henri de Toulouse-

Lautrec, work were almost completely mass-produced, as he was responsible for creating posters for the Moulin Rouge cabaret.

 Lautrec relied on flat, bold colors and strict outlines.

Lautrec was commercial.

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