Tradition
Arts and Crafts movement
Overview
The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and North America. Broadly, the beginning of the movement can be dated to the 1880s, with the term itself first used in 1887, and by about 1920 it can be considered as over in the UK, although the term continued in spurious use for various popular elements in design.
Initiated in reaction against the perceived impoverishment of the decorative arts and the conditions in which they were produced, the movement flourished in Europe and North America between about 1880 and 1920. Some consider that it is the root of the Modern Style, a British expression of what later came to be called the Art Nouveau movement. Others regard it as the incarnation of Art Nouveau in England. Others consider Art and Crafts to be in opposition to Art Nouveau. Arts and Crafts indeed criticised Art Nouveau for its use of industrial materials such as iron.
In Japan, it emerged in the 1920s as the Mingei movement, promoting traditional craftsmanship.
The term was first used by T. J. Cobden-Sanderson at a meeting of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887, although the principles and style on which it was based had been developing in England for at least 20 years. It was inspired by the ideas of historian Thomas Carlyle, art critic John Ruskin, and designer William Morris. In Scotland, it is associated with key figures such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Viollet-le-Duc's books on nature and Gothic art also play an essential part in the aesthetics of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
In all European countries, especially in England, one class of Captains and commanders of men, recognizable as the beginning of a new real and not imaginary "Aristocracy," has already in some measure developed itself: the Captains of Industry;--happily the class who above all, or at least first of all, are wanted in this time. In the doing of material work, we have already men among us that can command bodies of men.
Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets
The author is tied to Arts and Crafts movement in the knowledge graph.
Such signs of the progress of art as it is possible to notice at this early stage would seem to bear out the above argument. For instance, an attempt is being made to foster the continuation of peasant embroidery, carving, &c., in the towns. It is done by people who have evidently lost the tradition already.
Bertrand Russell, The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism
Close in meaning to Arts and Crafts movement; the term itself is not named.
For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the…
Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
Close in meaning to Arts and Crafts movement; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Arts and Crafts movement
Related ideas
- George Orwell
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- G. K. Chesterton
- Thomas Carlyle
- Hungary
- Industrial Revolution
- Aestheticism
- Mahatma Gandhi
- Modernism
- Romanticism
- Progressivism
- Socialism
- Stanford University
- Transylvania
- University of Oxford
- William Morris
- Belgium
- Edward Carpenter
- Vernacular
- British Empire
- World War I
- Art Nouveau
- Columbia University
- Detroit
Place in the tradition
Part of Romanticism.