The arts and crafts movement

The arts and crafts movement

BLAKESLEY, Rosalind
London: Phaidon, 2006.

This elegant volume is a comprehensive survey of all aspects of the popular Arts and Crafts Movement, which was at its height between 1880 and 1910. The movement was ohne of enormous intellectual and artistic ambition and had a worldwide influence on all areas of the decorative arts, architecture, cabinet making and even garden design.

Inspired by critical thinkers in Victorian England who opposed the dehumanizing nature of industrialization, early practitioners campaigned for a revival of craft techniques, for the elevation of the applied arts and for honesty in design. This new study charts the course of the movement in all media, including painting, craft and architecture, and examines the theory and philosophy behind a variety of seminal pieces, including fine examples of work by charles Robert Ashbee, Edward Burne-Jones, Charles and Henry Greene, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, William Morris and Philip Webb, alongside lesser-known examples from Scandinavia, Germany and Russia.