Arts and crafts

Magazine Antiques, March, 2005 by Miriam Kramer

The arts and crafts movement began in Britain in reaction to the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. The idea behind the movement was to teach the common man to design and make his own goods, rather than rely on machine-made mass-produced objects. This theory was first expressed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and John Ruskin, but it was William Morris who became the main translator of these notions into reality. He wrote voluminously on the subject and founded workshops to produce objects for domestic interiors. Ironically, his products were so expensive that the ordinary working man, for whom they were intended, could not come near to being able to afford them.

The movement inspired artists and architects in Germany, the Low Countries, Austria, Scandinavia, and Russia, and each country produced its own indigenous variations. In Austria, for example, the major workshop in Vienna, the Wiener Werkstatte, made objects less naive and more stylized than the British.

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The Victoria and Albert Museum in London is holding another of its exhibitions tracing creative movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--this one devoted to the arts and crafts movement. Entitled International Arts and Crafts, the show is sponsored by Heal's department store, and is on view from March 17 to July 24. It comprises more than three hundred objects, some of them arranged in four room settings--two British, one Japanese, and one American. The curator is Karen Livingstone. The accompanying catalogue, edited by the curator and Linda Parry, is distributed in North America by Harry N. Abrams. It may be obtained by telephoning 800-759-0190.

After its London showing, the exhibition will be seen at the Indianapolis Museum of Art from September 27 to January 22, 2006, and at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from March 18 to June 18, 2006.

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