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by Stacie Leone
Arts and Crafts era aficionados may
be willing to pay enormous prices for handcrafted furniture
and other objects created around the turn of the century;
and there is no doubt that the artists, crafts people and
architects of the Arts and Crafts movement made a tremendous
and permanent impact on the arts and architecture. But,
often overlooked, is the fact that their real motivation was
a deep commitment to social change.
Beginning in Europe, towards the end
of the 19th century, the Arts and Crafts movement – which included William Morris,
Charles Robert Ashbee, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Gustav Stickley, among others -- was largely a rebellion
against industrialization and mechanization brought about by
the industrial revolution. Its proponents believed in
reverting back to a time when things were handcrafted and in
paying a decent wage to craftsmen. In the United States, the
Arts and Crafts Movement spawned a wide variety of attempts
to reinterpret European Arts and Crafts ideals for Americans,
most notably the "Craftsman"-style architecture, furniture,
and other decorative arts, promoted by Stickley in his magazine The
Craftsman.
“The Arts and Crafts movement was more than just backlash
against mechanization. It was a reaction against industry that
employed child labor; sweatshops, coal dust spewing into the
atmosphere, exploitation, etc. The people who started
the movement saw that what was going on was wrong and set about
changing the course of their respective societies,” says
Robert Jawitz, Director, Rockhouse Mountain Crafts Guild.
Based in Conway, New Hampshire, the Rockhouse Mountain Crafts
Guild (RMCG) is in the process of reviving the ideals upon which
the Arts and Crafts movement was based. RMCG is committed to
making crafts, preserving the knowledge of making crafts, teaching
crafts, and to helping craftsmen succeed in marketing and selling
their products.
“The objective of Rockhouse Mountain Crafts Guild is
to promote free men and women in their own businesses in response
to an economy destined to make an underemployed population,” says
Jawitz.
Though laws against child labor and
labor unions addressed many of the concerns of the industrial
revolution in the United States, we nevertheless find ourselves
in a labor crisis today, according to Jawitz. “You can manufacture in the Philippines
or Mexico or China, where labor unions are useless, and you
can sell in the US in stores with wages slightly above minimum
because that is the standard for retail clerks. Even in
some unionized businesses $10 an hour is considered a good wage. Well,
you can’t support a family on $10 an hour,” says
Jawitz.
He believes the only answer is to
get away from the industrialized model by creating an economy
of small businesses, which can sell a product that is exempt
from the low price freefall, which is promoted by companies
such as Wal-Mart and IKEA. That product, he says, is “high quality custom work.” Jawitz
intends to accomplish this by integrating the philosophy underlying
the Arts and Crafts movement into the RMCG.
The Arts and Crafts movement was inspired
by the philosophy of a man named John Ruskin, an art critic
and socialist, vehemently opposed to competition and self-interest.
His influential essays on art and architecture argued against
mechanization and standardization while promoting a work environment
akin to the medieval style of the worker and his guild. Ruskin's
distaste for oppressive standardization led to his later works
attacking laissez faire capitalism, which influenced many
trade union leaders of the Victorian era.
He revered the Medieval Gothic style
above all for its emphasis on natural forms, while his philosophy
about art was that artists should portray nature through direct
observation. Ruskin’s
own works include collaboration on the design of the Oxford
Museum of Natural History and many careful drawings and detailed
paintings of natural forms, botanical, geological and architectural
in nature.
Ruskin greatly influenced William
Morris, one of the principal founders of the Arts and Crafts
movement. An artist, a
writer, a socialist and activist, Morris’ guiding principal
was also a return to medieval ideals, when the craftsman was
valued for the works he produced. Dismayed by increasing
mechanization and mass-production in the arts and the “fussiness” of
late 19th century Victorian décor, he founded Morris
and Company, which employed skilled craftsmen who produced high
quality stained glass, wallpaper, textiles, and furniture, often
with a floral or foliage motif.
Morris was a pioneer and leader of the socialist movement in
Britain and took an active role in organizing guilds of designers
and workmen.
Morris believed art should be affordable,
hand-made, and that there should be no hierarchy of artistic
mediums. His
famous slogan was "by the people, for the people.” Sadly,
only the wealthy could afford the handcrafted works, which caused
Morris great distress throughout his life.
“At RMCG we believe in raising the standard of living
for everyone, which includes a living wage and quality of life.
To do that, we will initially have to sell to the well-off,
but eventually, we hope to develop products that can be affordable
to the widest spectrum possible,” says Jawitz.
Morris also founded the Kelmscott
Press in London in 1891 in order to produce books, which were
designed using traditional methods of printing and craftsmanship.
When the Kelmscott Press closed in 1897, its craftsmen and
printers were taken on by Charles Robert Ashbee, the founder
of Essex House Press, which produced more than 70 titles. Ashbee
is also known for founding The Guild of Handicraft, which
operated as a cooperative and specialised in metalworking,
producing jewellery and enamels as well as hand-wrought copper
and wrought ironwork, and furniture. The School attached to
the Guild taught crafts. Ashbee himself designed complete
houses, including interior furniture and decoration, as well
as items such as fireplaces.
Also around the turn of the century,
in Vienna -- a center of radical intellectual vitality at
the time -- another movement was taking place. The Vienna Secession counted among its
members the painter and illustrator Gustav Klimt, the architects
and designers Josef Hoffmann, Joseph Olbrich and Koloman Moser. The
Secessionists, as they became known, believed that art belongs
to all and that the notion of great art vs. minor art needs
to be abolished. They supported Art Nouveau, and Klimt,
especially, was the preeminent exponent.
Out of the Secession evolved Wiener
Werkstätte (en: Vienna
Workshops), founded in 1903 by Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Moser.
The Wiener Werkstätte Style was very distinctive. From
jewelry, to fabrics for clothing, ceramics and pottery, to furniture,
all were characterized by simple shapes, minimal decoration
and geometric patterning. Wiener Werkstätte concentrated
on good design for a more select market and was known for its
slogan “Better to work 10 days on one product than to
manufacture 10 products in one day."
Again, RMCG has a similar philosophy. “Today, the manufacturing
of furniture, furnishings and artifacts, has lost the quality
those things used to have when they were hand made. We don't
cherish them. It's just another loss in the cheapening of our
lives. Coupling that with the loss of proper incomes, with people
working in assembly lines, we have another nail in our quality
of life coffin. Coupling that with the loss of even those jobs
to China and India, the coffin is closing. The way back is to
reinstitute quality in our culture will be via hand made or
at least personally designed artifacts,” says Jawitz.
Hoffman, like his predecessors, realized
that only the wealthy would be able to afford the works turned
out by the Wiener Werkstätte
so they concentrated on a small, select market. In architectural
commissions such as the Purkersdorf Sanatorium and the lavish
Palais Stoclet in Brussels, the Wiener Werkstätte was able
to realize its ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk (total artwork),
a coordinated environment in which everything down to the last
teaspoon was consciously designed.
Scottish architect and designer, Charles
Rennie Mackintosh, was one of the most influential figures
in the development of Art Nouveau and the Modern movement. Greatly
admired by the Viennese Secessionists, he formed the 'Glasgow
Four', which included Herbert MacNair and the Macdonald sisters.
Mackintosh took his inspiration from
Scottish traditions and blended them with the flourish of
Art Nouveau and the simplicity of Japanese forms, which became
known as The Glasgow Style. Known for his masterful handling
of light and space, many of his best-known pieces of furniture
have themselves become icons. Although
he is a celebrated architect, who built buildings in and around
his native Glasgow, for many people, Charles Rennie Mackintosh
is most closely associated with the design and manufacture of
furniture. His earliest designs show a strong affinity to the
arts and crafts movement while his final designs are a clear
precursor to the art deco movement.
Inspired by John Ruskin and William Morris, Gustav Stickley,
through his magazine The Craftsman, became the voice
of the Arts and Crafts movment in America. He believed
architecture should reflect its natural surroundings with special
attention to selecting local materials. Stickley founded
Craftsman Workshops in Eastwood, New York in 1904 where he began
making furniture in the mission oak style, an extremely simple,
functional style which emphasized the natural beauty of the
wood. His furniture was entirely handmade, primarily built
from native American oak, joinery was exposed, upholstery was
carried out with natural materials (canvas and leather), wood
could be varnished but never painted, and there were no unnecessary
lines. Stickley felt that art should be of and by the people,
stemming from their everyday lives.
Stickley’s simple architectural
elements were originally proposed and beautifully expanded
on by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the firm Greene
and Greene in the following decades.
As the proponents of the Arts and
Crafts movement well knew, Crafts have the ability to bestow
the hand-made aura of quality and humanness to an otherwise
mundane, uninteresting, standard, machine-made, machine-like
world. In keeping with the
principles which drove the Arts and Crafts movement, The Rockhouse
Mountain Institute’s objective is to support small business
for reasons of freedom, economy and quality through craft-oriented
small businesses.
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