The Arts and Crafts Movement - Hardcover

Blakesley, Rosalind P

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714838497 ISBN 13: 9780714838496

Publisher: Phaidon Press, 2006

Synopsis

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.

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. These aims were quickly picked up and developed across Europe and the United States, with many national variants soon emerging. In this fascinating and beautifully illustrated introduction to the subject, Rosalind Blakesley explores the common ideas that give cohesion to this wide and stylistically varied movement.

About this title

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.

Reviews

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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Edition details

• Publisher: Phaidon Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0714838497
• ISBN 13: 9780714838496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272