Arts & Crafts: Its genesis, Utopia, influence and Some artist-craftsmen
Arts & Crafts
Wallpaper William Morris
The Arts & Crafts movement, literally arts and crafts, art movement is a reformer, born in the 1860s to 1910, glorious era of the English Victorian. It can be regarded as the initiator of modern style, Anglo-Saxon equivalent of the Art Nouveau French and Belgian (Henry van de Velde and Victor Horta).
Its genesis
It follows the movement of pre-Raphaelites whom come from John Ruskin and William Morris. If the first became the chief philosophical, the second who took the lead. This is Volume II of the book of John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853), with his chapter The Nature of Gothic summarizing the profession of faith movement.
His name itself comes from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, founded in 1887, and began to make his first exhibition in 1888 in the New Gallery in Regent's Street in London with the Century Guild, the Morris & Co and the Guild of Handicraft (founded in 1888, it was Charles. R. Ashbee headed in collaboration with Lewis F. Day).
The move echoes the concerns of the time, these artists-artisans to progress: anxiety, need individualized, research real values. At the time the British dominated the world for the extent of its territories by the power of its navy, by its technological and industrial, by the new social organization that was created by the wealth it created but also by poverty and the harshness of life at that time.
The coal plants belching smoke blackened the sky over London and the major industrial cities of the rainy island are flooded with "smog" almost permanent, creating new pollution problems, aggravated by the concentration of factories and working people . Tuberculosis and insecurity are spreading. The "individual" is swallowed up in the factory work.
Some intellectuals are becoming aware and concerned.
John Ruskin was a poet and a writer, fascinated by medieval and Gothic periods. He traveled throughout the Europe to explore the ancient monuments he designed. For him, the artistic ideal is born from the meeting skills and not their competition.
William Morris is a manufacturer of furniture and objets d'art, he draws, but foremost an entrepreneur and an expert on Persian carpets.
Utopia
In the field of decorative arts, the first half of the century is marked by a desert: the poor quality furniture is manufactured in series. However, their common idea is simple: for them the happiness lies in the craft, because a worker can flourish and be proud of his work that he is involved at every stage of its realization and its manufacture.
It was therefore necessary not only to rehabilitate the work done by hand, but save and learn traditional techniques. Soon, they are the initiators of the founding of new schools, to train artisans in the tapestry, the embroidery to the block printing, to the enameling, the brassware in the pottery, with natural dyes , textiles woven with the Jacquard loom, the marquetry and the cabinet.
Another of their ideas was that we cannot do a good job, if we live and work in a safe and enjoyable atmosphere. Communities of craftsmen then leave town and go live closer to nature in the country districts. This migration is facilitated by the development of railways. In this environment, workers, craftsmen, interested in culture, attending concerts and pieces of theater. They find vegetarian cooking. The ladies dressed in peasant and abandon the rigid corset Victorian.
But their big idea was that art should intervene everywhere, first in the first house to rework the everyday objects: dishes, silverware, bookbinding, carpets, light fixtures ... founding idea of the design. The creations were made either on order single piece or small series, broadcast in the catalog of stores in London. The Arts & Crafts was the first to bring the Beaux-Arts in Applied Arts.
The artist-craftsmen highlight the material, the furniture are made of solid wood, hammering silverware and brassware are handmade. In response to the supercharged atmosphere of the Victorian bourgeoisie, they highlight the simplicity or the counting, estimating that beautiful furniture can stand on its own. In their works, emerging plants and animals, symbols of nature, but more or less stylized.
His influence
Utopia he has generated has spread around the world:
In Europe, many art movements were inspired by his ideas on the relationship between arts and crafts, on simplicity and use of natural materials. It has inspired designers like Henry van de Velde and movements such as the Art Nouveau, the Netherlands group De Stijl, the movement Viennese Secession and its continued movement Bauhaus. It can also be seen as a prelude to Modernism, where pure forms, stripped of historical associations, have been applied to new industrial production.
In the United States, there is also an important quest for roots, but the term "Arts & Crafts" itself is often used for talking about the design movement that has developed between the dominant eras of the Art Nouveau and the Art Deco, specifically the period between 1910 and 1925.:
In Chicago, the Prairie School was founded and led by architect Frank Lloyd Wright, its purpose, the interior design affordable for the middle class.
At Syracuse (NY), Gustav STICKEY idealism coupled with a shrewd businessman, was a fervent supporter of the movement and developed the furniture "Mission".
The brothers Henry and Charles Greene popularized the style bungalow for homes.
The studio pottery, whose best example is the pottery of Rookwood and Pewabic Pottery in Detroit.
The idiosyncratic furniture of Charles Rohlfs also demonstrate the clear influence of the movement "Arts & Crafts.
In Japan the movement arose Mingei, a style also in response to the growing urban planning, advocating the revival of traditions and the beauty in objects of everyday.
Some artist-craftsmen
Charles Robert Ashbee
Edward Burne-Jones
Lindsay P. Butterfield
Walter Crane
Lewis F. Day
William De Morgan
John Henry Dearle
The brothers Henry and Charles Greene (USA)
Josef Hoffmann (Austria)
George W. Jack
Gertrude Jekyll
Keisuke Serizawa (Japan)
Archibald Knox
Bernard Leach
Charles Rennie Mackintosh (Scotland)
Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh (Scotland)
Frances MacDonald (Scotland)
Herbert MacNair (Scotland)
Koloman Moser (Austria)
William Morris
Frederick William Pomeroy
William Robinson
Charles Rohlfs
Thomas James Cobden Sanderson
Baillie Scott
Hamada Shoji (Japan)
Gustav Stickley (U.S.)
CFA Voysey
Henry van de Velde
Philip Webb
Frank Lloyd Wright (USA)
Like it on Facebook, Tweet it or share this article on other bookmarking websites.