Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Reality and Imagination [Hardcover]

Judith B. Tankard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

Features the gardens of the key members of the Arts and Crafts movement, such as Jekyll, Voysey and Lutyens. Illustrated with period watercolours and drawings, with additional photographs specially commissioned for this book.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For people who take gardens seriously, Tankard, an award-winning author and a teacher at Harvard University’s Landscape Institute, offers a scholarly examination of how the Arts and Crafts movement influenced landscape design. She focuses primarily on the architects in Britain—such as William Morris, Charles Mackintosh and Ernest Barnsley—who provided the fundamental philosophy for these gardens. Their aim: to make gardens as integral to homes as architecture and furnishings. Their emphasis: "simple structuring... romantic, medieval-inspired imagery," stone walls, ornaments and colorful flower borders. (Tankard also gives some attention to American counterparts, such as Gustav Stickley.) A particularly illuminating chapter introduces readers to "master gardeners" William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll, whose books and works popularized the movement’s ideals. Without them, Tankard writes, the influential gardening style of the Arts and Crafts era "might have been little more than a curious historical episode." Tankard’s well-researched text can read a bit like a dissertation at times, but it is immensely informative, and her selection of beautiful photographs, illustrations and drawings lighten the book and make it a pleasure to browse. The Arts and Crafts movement ended with the first World War, but the recent surge in interest in its bungalow houses and its aesthetic principles make this book timely, and likely to draw in a wide audience.
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From Booklist

Tankard looks at the philosophical underpinnings of the arts and crafts movement as reflected in the landscape design of such influential figures as Edwin Lutyens and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Given the greater context of the period's art and architecture, interior design, and decorative arts, Tankard considers the distinctively harmonious relationship between house and garden, resulting in an enchanting tour of century-old country house gardens led by a most knowledgeable guide. Lyrical watercolors, drawings of garden plans, and beguiling photographs illustrate stylistic highlights from billowy plantings to curious topiary forms and lush greenery adorning gabled country homes smothered in climbing roses. While the study documents the importance of lesser-known contributors such as Voysey and Baillie Scott, Tankard gives followers of garden history a fine analysis of the accomplishments of Jekyll and Robinson. In all, the ideas and ideals of the movement's practitioners are cogently advanced, concluding with significant aspects of arts and crafts elements as displayed in the plantings and layouts of present-day gardens. Alice Joyce
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810949652
• ISBN-13: 978-0810949652
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,246,144 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and informative art book........, June 29, 2005

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Reality and Imagination (Hardcover)

Fanciful topiary, Kate Greenaway children's books where little girls hold tea parties while wearing adorable smocked dresses, trellis hedges captured in wall paper and woven rugs and tapestries, long grass walkways, pollarded trees and stone garden stairways descending into sunken gardens - settings from `Room With A View' and `Maurice'- the colorful Arts and Crafts Movement was a breath of fresh air following the black tones and claustrophobia of the Victorian Age. Although it rains a good deal in England, you would never know it from the photographs in this lovely volume. Judith Tankard has also included a number of items from her own collection of prints and drawings of from the period known by the French as the Belle Epoch or beautiful era .

GARDENS OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT were and are a balm for a war-weary heart, developing as they did during the relatively peaceful period following the turbulent 19th century and the years before WWI. What happens if folks put their money into beauty and eschew the ugly? These gardens may seem ornate given the relative poverty of the working classes, but they were open to the public on certain feast days, and served as a place of refinement before public works became the only respite for the poor.

Many of the houses around which the Arts and Crafts gardens are designed are ancient, but contemporary designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson modernized the grounds. Robinson built his gardens at Gravetye Manor around an Elizabethan structure and Jekyll developed Mustead Wood, a mere fifteen acres surrounding a house designed by Edwin Lutyens. Robinson was interested in the "wild garden" and many of his flowers bloomed among the trees or flopped over wooden structures. A fan of bulbs he developed terraced sweeps of daffodils as well as bluebell woods, but for many folks the most beautiful part of Gravetye's grounds was the West garden where tea and China roses adorned pergolas, arbors and trellises. The book includes prints, designs and color photos of the grounds Robinson owned as well as those he designed for others. Jekyll's interest lay in the design of perennial beds.

Long after these artists were gone their influence was felt in England and other places. The book discusses the origins some of their ideas, as well as the influence of this movement on US gardens. This beautiful book will make a fine addition to your art book collection, and avid gardeners will find a few interesting ideas.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating exploration of landscape design, December 8, 2004

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Reality and Imagination (Hardcover)

Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination by gardening historian and a teacher at Harvard University's Landscape Institute, Judith Tankard (who is also the founding editor of "Journal of the New England Garden History Society) presents a fascinating and informative exploration of landscape design from the late 1800s down to the present. It was this increasingly influential landscaping philosophy that was to redefine the relationship between the garden and the house for upscale property owners. The gardens used as illustrative examples include such legendary designers as William Morris and Gertrude Jekyll. Profusely illustrated in full color and impressively enhanced with an appendix of Arts and Crafts gardens open for visits from the public, Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination will prove a highly prized and seminal addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Gardening, Landscaping, and Horticultural Studies reference and resource collections.