Customer Reviews

The Arts and Crafts Movement

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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.

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.