The simple life: The arts and crafts movement in Great Britain

Magazine Antiques, Oct, 1999 by Wendy Kaplan

As stated by the designer William Morris, the fundamental principle of nineteenth-century design reform was that "art is the expression of man's pleasure in labour."(1) What became known as the arts and crafts movement was a rebellion against the ills of the Industrial Revolution, which was seen to have exploited workers, blighted the countryside, and produced poorly made goods. The proponents of the movement were convinced that mechanization had caused the degradation of work, reducing the craftsman to an anonymous laborer mindlessly repeating the same unfulfilling task instead of controlling the creative process from design through execution. These principles are explored in an exhibition at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University in Miami Beach, from which the illustrations in this article are drawn.

The movement's leaders believed in the supremacy of individual expression, which could best be realized through the domestic vernacular. Ideally, each country would establish a national style based on its rural traditions, climate, and geography. The leaders of the movement were passionately convinced that the decorative arts were just as important as painting, sculpture, and architecture. They believed that well-designed products should be made available to a broad clientele, and that handwork had an intrinsically moral value one necessary for achieving satisfaction in work.

The most utopian vision of the movement was "the simple life," which had evolved from the moral aesthetics and social ideals established earlier in the nineteenth century by the architect Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, the art critic and Oxford University professor John Ruskin (1819-1900), and William Morris. It was also informed by the philosophy of the American transcendentalists, particularly Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), and the socialism of the poet, sandal maker, and champion of manual labor Edward Carpenter (1844-1929). Pugin and Ruskin in particular were standard-bearers for the Gothic revival [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE III OMITTED], which was considered Britain's native style and, by the 1880s, had inspired a passion for any vernacular expression. Utopian cooperatives such as Ruskin's Guild of Saint George shaped the turn of the century ideal of forming self-sufficient rural communities in which to lead the simple life. It was thought that the evils of cities, industrialization, and capitalism would be reversed by a reintegration with nature and the creation of a more egalitarian society. The objective was the unity of manual labor and spiritual enlightenment, of work and leisure, of farming and making beautiful crafts from the bounty of the land using time-honored methods.

While the idyll of the simple life was seldom realized, its aspirations permeated the entire movement. If you could not abandon the city and return to the land, you could at least live in a self-consciously understated house evoking regional traditions and peasant arts and filled with handcrafted objects made of natural, local materials [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED]. As the architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) declared: "I shall never begin to be satisfied until my work looks commonplace."(2)

Morris had the most far-reaching influence of the English arts and crafts leaders. While studying theology at Oxford he encountered the ideas of Ruskin and embraced them as his new religion. His books, like Ruskin's, were reprinted many times on both sides of the Atlantic, inspiring clubs, reading groups, and countless acolytes. Most important was the example he set as the consummate designer-craftsman.

The Pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1868) and Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) were among the founding members of the firm Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, which was formed in 1861 (and was reorganized as Morris and Company in 1875). They applied their artistic talents to ornamenting furniture and designing textiles, stained glass, and tries with motifs from medieval legends. Morris's own genius was for flat patterns drawn from nature. His best designs were for wallpapers, textiles, and books. His Roots of the Mountains [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE V OMITTED] demonstrates the arts and crafts passion for unification on many levels. In addition to integrating art and life, the sacred and the secular, the goal was to integrate all mediums as well as all components of a single work of art. Morris not only wrote the book but also selected the paper and typeface, designed the layout, and chose one of his company's printed textiles for the binding. The tale of a Germanic premedieval tribe threatened by the Huns, which is the subject of the book, reflects the idealization of the ancient past, a time when Morris believed communities worked together for a shared purpose.

While all arts and crafts practitioners advocated handwork, Ruskin was unique in his total rejection of the machine. The others opposed only those industrial processes that diminished or replaced human creativity. Morris himself grew disenchanted with the crafts as an effective response to an inhumane society, and in 1883 he formally allied himself to socialism. For several years he dismissed handcrafts, proclaiming that his aim was "to obtain for the whole people, duly organized, the possession and control of all means of production."(3) Among the arts and crafts leaders who shared Morris's political convictions was Walter Crane, who joined the Socialist League with Morris and produced much graphic art in support of the cause [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE IV OMITTED].