MAKING William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement by Prof. Jeff Jones

This image by Jeremy Deller is about the power of art and demonstrates the enduring power of William Morris as an artist as he throws the yacht into the lagoon. Deller has titled it with a quote from William Morris which also shows how this artist from the 1800s is still very much influencing art today.

Furnishing Fabric by William Morris 1873

The Arts and Crafts Movement and the aesthetic movement were in the late 1900s

two very different views of What Art Is

The Arts and Crafts Movement – ‘not possible to dissociate art from morality, politics and religion’ William Morris – artists are caught up in society

The Aesthetic Movement – ‘Art should be independent of all claptrap – should stand alone’ by James McNeill Whistler. Argument moto for this is art for arts sake

William Morris was an early socialist who demonstrated the signs of changes in 1888 when he said ‘aim of art to destroy the curse of labour’. One of Morris’ colleagues was John Ruskin who was an artist but is better known as an art theorist. One of his well known theoretical books is ‘The Stones of Venice’. In this book there is a section named the Nature of Gothic. Often called upon to illustrate and articulate certain ideas of art making and what it is about. Ruskin looks back into the history of work and art. He wrote about the system of work in the division of labour but his point was not the labour itself but the men who were divided.

Morris had noted in his diary when viewing the manufacture of carpets in May 1881 ‘each full waged girl must do 9ft of 4×4 per week to pay’ – this resulted in him setting up many manufacture companies to change this wrong doing of child labour.

Morris and Rossetti moved to Gloucestershire – Morris too much of a dreamer or visionary?

50 families moved from Chipping Campden High Street, London to Gloucestershire in 1902 (year of the Guild of the Handicraft). Twenny Pottery, Bridgend, South Wales

The Legacy of the Arts and Crafts Movement 20th Century studio crafts

Reginald Wells – designed pots to start off with but then wanted to make them himself

Bernard Leach set up the Leach Pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall in late 1940s

‘I spend my life ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich’ attributed to William Morris

 

 

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