This morning I was sitting by the fire, watching the snow fall outside my window, and thinking about relevant content for this months newsletter for my arts and crafts guild. Suddenly, I was struck by a random thought, “who coined the phrase Arts and Crafts?”
I suppose you could say my medium is pine cones. I love working with them to create a wreath or an ornament. Debra has a knack for creating beautiful jewelry designs with beads, while Lida turns a piece of denim and a few beads into a stunning handbag or jacket.Others paint, carve, weave, and knit. If there is a material – - i.e., wood, iron, wax, charcoal, or clay – there is an art or a craft waiting to be created.
In pioneer days many of these“arts” and “crafts” were simple necessities. There was no local WalMart. If you needed a plate you found a board and cut it down to size. Clothing? An empty flour sack would make a fine shirt. But I wondered, when was wood carving or painting first referred to as “art” and sewing and bead work labeled “craft”?
In my Arts and Crafts Guild there are are many talented artists and crafters who work with many different mediums. Bob weaves baskets. Marla makes quilts. Ruthellen paints portraits. Some build birdhouses, while others make nativity ornaments from pop sickle sticks and transform tea cups into pin cushions.
For millions of years people have created things with their hands, borne of necessity or enjoyment; cave man formed weapons from rocks, while cave woman strung rocks on a reed to adorn the neck; today known as necklaces. How did these numerous and varied things that we do come to collectively be called “Arts and Crafts”? I went to my computer to investigate.
If you've studied art formally, then I guess you already know that the term was first used in 1861 to name a movement. Somehow this discovery did not surprise me. It seemed only natural that the arts and crafts movement was begun in an effort to improve the tastes of the Victorian public, by an English designer named William Morris. The industrial Age had led way to machines doing the work of man, and quality became lost in mass production. By the mid-19th century factories had almost entirely driven artisans away from their skills. Morris hoped to overcome the inferior quality of industrially produced decorative arts by promoting a return to medieval style craftsmanship.
The movement was started to set the values of nature against the artificiality of modern life, and grew to encompass architecture, furniture design and almost every medium. From this arts and crafts movement sprang the first Arts and Crafts Guilds, such as The Gild and School of Handicraft of London, started in 1888. Although these early Guilds encompassed much more than what we think of in terms of arts and crafts today as they developed into such areas as complete house design, home redecorating, and even bookmaking, yet the aim was not unlike the arts and crafts guilds of today: to seek to set a higher standard of craftsmanship and protect the status of the craftsman.
Arts and Crafts Guilds have evolved greatly since the 1800's to become what they are now. However, in many ways the arts and crafts movement of 1861 still equates to the artisan and craft groups of today, such as the Pine-Strawberry Arts and Crafts Guild, whose members find value in the craftsmanship of a hand-made item over one created in an assembly line.
Although shoppers of the 21stcentury will rush to the discount stores for the factory-made “bargain of the day”, there will always be free-thinkers. Those who like their predecessors who followed in the foot-steps of William Morris, have an appreciation for the quality and originality of hand-made arts and crafts, and a respect for those who make them. These discriminate shoppers will flock to the nations arts and crafts festivals and delight in the wide array of hand-made treasures that await them.
Having completed my research and satisfied my curiosity as to the origin of the term arts and crafts, and content with my findings, I slipped into my factory-made jacket (only$20 atWalMart), and went outside to shovel the snow.
Comments
My wife Peg and I attended the recent Arts & Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville NC. The setting - the inn itself, built at the height of the A&C movement in 1912-13, the quality of the antiques and of the contemporary art on display and for sale, were absolutely stunning! A Newton College 6" vase for $11,000? A Tiffany lamp for $40,000!
The Contemporary Craft section, apart from the Antique section, was comprised of artists and reps who are currently alive and do work in the classic A&C mode. The woodworking, ceramics, textiles, printmaking, metalcrafting were all of the highest caliber (and price!). Few of these artists do art shows on the street, but do the few A&C shows that take place around the country. They also advertise in the high end A&C magazines, such as American Bungalow and Style 1900. The ads in these magazines are works of art in themselves.
Current Arts and Crafts movement history give short shrift to the influence of the Orientalist movement on American arts and crafts after the opening of Japan in the mid-19th cent. and the democratic movement in China under Sun Yat Sen in 1912. Also, the Shaker religion had profound influence on the development of American arts and crafts - the high quality, custom made, superior finishes, ergonomic design that mark Shaker furniture still affect the higher quality of furniture found today in the better stores.