The Arts and Crafts Movement [Hardcover]

Rosalind P. Blakesley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2006

Dating from the 1850s to the First World War, the Arts and Crafts Movement was an international phenomenon of enormous scope and influence. It encompassed everything from architecture to town planning, metalwork and embroidery, in places as diverse as California and Budapest. Born of thinkers and practitioners in Victorian England its ideological currents reflect the era's most pressing social, political and artistic concerns. In this book Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to a movement of otherwise bewildering breadth and stylistic heterogeneity. At the origins of the movement was a reaction against industrialization, the long-standing division between traditional crafts and Fine Art and the over-elaborate ornamentation which disguised an object or building's true 'function'. Early British Arts and Crafts practitioners campaigned for a revival of old craft techniques, for the elevation of the applied arts and for 'honesty' in design, ideas that were picked up and developed across Europe and the United States, with national variants quickly emerging. Germany, for example, recognized the potential of industrial techniques and experimented with standardization in design; in Finland, then annexed to Russia, Arts and Crafts was allied to the search for self-expression and a national style in art. Examining both acknowledged Arts and Crafts centres and lesser-known communities, Rosalind Blakesley concludes her authoritative and accessible survey with an evaluation of the Movement's significance in the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. The late 19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement resonated anywhere artists feared that rising industrialization would result in a loss of individuation and creativity, particularly in the decorative arts. Cultural, socioeconomic and political concerns, as well as indigenous style, gave each country's version of the movement a particular emphasis and flair. Blakesley, a senior lecturer in art history and fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, in this lavish survey of the journey that Arts and Crafts took through Europe, Russia and the United States, shifts the focus from the movement's British and American giants—William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Greene brothers—to the many artists and artistic communities that made the movement a worldwide phenomenon. Such a thorough catalogue is not always easy to manage in text, but it's the 250 color images that communicate the true range of the movement and its regional influences, from the folk embroidery of the Hungarian Laura Nagy to Russian kustar, or handicrafts, the magisterial stained-glass of Ireland's An Túr Gloine (the Tower of Glass) and the rediscovery of fine letterpress printing by Morris's Kelmscott Press. Photographs luxuriate in a glorious open design, beautifully printed on thick, rich paper, creating a feast for the eyes. (Apr.)
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About the Author

Rosalind P Blakesley is Senior Lecturer in the History of Art and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. She has written widely on the Arts and Crafts Movement, and on Russian art.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (October 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714838497
• ISBN-13: 978-0714838496
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,407,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why don't they build houses like this any more?, February 19, 2008

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Arts and Crafts Movement (Hardcover)

Ever since I was first exposed to it in class my first year of college (in the mid-'60s), I've been a fan of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, the Pre-Raphaelites (especially Burne-Jones and Rossetti), and also of Frank Lloyd Wright, who got his start in Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau, which largely grew out of it. A topic like this, of course, needs great visuals and the publisher certainly supplies them in this thick, oversized volume. Beginning with William Morris's upbringing and later career, the author traces both the artistic and the commercial threads of the Movement, following them then to the Continent -- even to places you might not think to look, like Hungary and Poland and Finland. Arts and Crafts in the United States didn't balk at commercialism, as its practioners sometimes did in Britain, and some of the most attractive homes designed and built between the turn of the 20th century and Great War still stand in Chicago and Buffalo and Pasadena. While the architectural emphasis was always on living space, there were also more than a few Arts and Crafts churches and public buildings. (I remember a freshman field trip to the amazing First Church of Christ Scientist in Berkeley.) Besides architecture, though, there was also some beautiful pottery produced in the U.S., such as the Southern-themed vases turned out by women's vocational classes at Sophie Newcomb in New Orleans. (Wish I could afford to own some of those.) The author's text is smooth and informative, but I admit I like to just sit and turn the pages and drink in the illustrations. A thoroughly gorgeous book. Wear a bib so you don't leave drool marks.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, March 14, 2009

By 

Theseus "theseus" (US of A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Arts and Crafts Movement (Hardcover)

Stunning. Stunning. Stunning.

Not just a coffee table book. It is large enough to be weighty but not so huge that it isn't useable.

Smartly-written and scholarly: 272 pp; over 325 color illustations; blind-stamped paper over boards with a sewn binding; extra-heavy dustjacket. 6 pages of chronologies, End Notes, 6 p bibliography, index.