Arts & Crafts in Britain and America

Anscombe, Isabelle and Gere, Charlotte

ISBN 10: 0847801845 / ISBN 13: 9780847801848

Published by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, New York, 1978

About this Item

The format is approximately 7.5 inches by 9.75 inches. 232 pages. Illustrations. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. The dust jacket is decorative and price clipped. The front and rear boards weak and reglued where webbing was exposed. William Morris (1834 1896) was the towering figure in late 19th-century design and the main influence on the Arts and Crafts movement. The aesthetic and social vision of the movement grew out of ideas that he developed in the 1850s with the Birmingham Set a group of students at the University of Oxford including Edward Burne-Jones, who combined a love of Romantic literature with a commitment to social reform. The medievalism of Malory's Morte d'Arthur set the standard for their early style. William Morris's Red House in Bexleyheath, designed by Philip Webb and completed in 1860; one of the most significant buildings of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris began experimenting with various crafts and designing furniture and interiors. He was personally involved in manufacture as well as design, which was the hallmark of the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris argued that "without dignified, creative human occupation people became disconnected from life". In 1861, Morris began making furniture and decorative objects commercially, modeling his designs on medieval styles and using bold forms and strong colors. His patterns were based on flora and fauna, and his products were inspired by the vernacular or domestic traditions of the British countryside. Morris strove to unite all the arts within the decoration of the home, emphasizing nature and simplicity of form. The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and America. Initiated in reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts and the conditions in which they were produced, the movement flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920. Some consider that it is the root of the Modern Style, a British expression of what later came to be called the Art Nouveau movement. Others consider that it is the incarnation of Art Nouveau in England. Others consider Art and Crafts to be in opposition to Art Nouveau. Arts and Crafts indeed criticized Art Nouveau for its use of industrial materials such as iron. In Japan, it emerged in the 1920s as the Mingei movement. It stood for traditional craftsmanship, and often used medieval, romantic, or folk styles of decoration. It advocated economic and social reform and was anti-industrial in its orientation. It had a strong influence on the arts in Europe until it was displaced by Modernism in the 1930s, and its influence continued among craft makers, designers, and town planners long afterwards. The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years. It was inspired by the ideas of historian Thomas Carlyle, art critic John Ruskin, and designer William Morris. In Scotland, it is associated with key figures such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Viollet le Duc's books on nature and Gothique art also play an essential part in the esthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Seller Inventory # 89358

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Arts & Crafts in Britain and America
• Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc, New York
• Publication Date: 1978
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0847801845
• ISBN 13: 9780847801848
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: Presumed First Edition, First printing.
• Condition: Fair
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Socialism

About this title

Synopsis

Book by Isabelle Anscombe, Charlotte Gere