Customer Reviews

The Arts and Crafts Lifestyle and Design

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Wendy Hitchmough's "The Arts & Crafts Lifestyle and Design" is a frustrating, yet beautiful-looking book that covers the Arts & Crafts movement by focusing on how it was influenced by changes in popular culture, the advent of scientific "modernity", and anti-Victorian backlash.

The book's layout focuses on each room in the home and why it evolved in the Arts & Crafts style. Taking references from the era's periodicals that covered the style, "The Craftsman" and "The House", Hitchmough provides historical background that seeks to makes sense of the style. Simplicity of design evolved from anti-Victorianism. Cues from nature came from the burgeoning naturalist and conservation movements, along with interest in all things Asian. Older building practices were combined with new advances.

The lifestyle portions of the book point out how radically different from Victorian ideals was the new movement. The roles of the master and mistress of the home showed them as more at tune with the outside world, more aware of personal health and fitness, and far more sexually aware (more about this further on.) How the Arts & Crafts home functioned from day to day is discussed in detail, as well.

The book covers the style as best portrayed in Britain and the United States. Designers from both sides of the pond are detailed. The lush photography of Martin Charles wraps up the pretty package.

But there are distinct problems with the book. It doesn't have a real niche. It's too wordy and historical to be a good coffee table book. The layout of chapters by room, while possibly good for highlighting the lifestyle choices, makes this a hard book to use as a reference manual for the style. There are glaring limitations, too. Far too much focus is given to a few designers and homes that drove the movement - it is not as broad an overview of all designers and practices as one would like. And while the lifestyle portions are interesting, there seems to be an overt focus on sexuality that I found peculiar for a book of this type.

In short, I believe the book tries to accomplish too much and therefore fails to excel in any one aspect. By trying to shoehorn several books into one, the author has given us the average of other works. And that is less than fully satisfying for those of us looking for more in-depth analysis.

Still, for anyone seeking an overview of Arts & Crafts design and concepts as espoused in the lifestyle of the era, this is as good a place to start as any. The quality and design of the book raise it an extra star, saving it from being merely fair.

The Arts and Crafts Lifestyle and Design is a historical perspective on the design principles and the lifestyle (i.e. how the houses were used) by people involved in this design movement. It is very well written with wonderful photographs. It is, however, organized in a manner as to make using this book for research on the artists or the designs difficult. Rather than highlighting individual artists of the movement and their work, it is arranged by the basic rooms of the houses. For example, dining rooms are discussed using various designers and houses. I would have found it more useful had the individual houses or each artist been discussed more and in the same location in the book. The book does bring to light the changes in the structure of Victorian society and houses with that of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

I enjoyed reading this book.

Some of the other reviews complained about the way the book discusses on the lifestyle of the people who lived in Arts & Crafts houses and during the time. But I have an engineering mentality, so I need to know the function before the form makes any sense to me at all. The book describes both the space and the purpose of the space used by these rather-formal people. Hearing about servant's quarters and such is a little strange in this time, but it did drive the design of a house -- so it's an important part the architecture of the time.

My copy is used, but it was well worth the money I paid for it, and we've been able to get a bunch of neat ideas for Arts & Crafts style tweaks to our modest 1950s house.