A fresh look at the Arts and Crafts Movement, charting its origins in reformist ideals, its engagement with commercial culture, and its ultimate place in everyday households

In its spread from Britain to the United States, the Arts and Crafts Movement evolved from its roots in individual craftsmanship to a mainstream trend increasingly adapted for mass production by American retailers. Inspired by John Ruskin in Britain in the 1840s in response to what he saw as the corrosive forces of industrialization, the movement was profoundly transformed as its tenets of simple design, honest use of materials, and social value of handmade goods were widely adopted and commodified by companies like Sears, Roebuck and Co.

The movement grew popular in early 20th-century America, where it was stripped of its reformist ideals by large-scale manufacturing and merchandising through department stores and mail-order catalogues. This beautiful book is illustrated with stunning furniture and designs by William Morris, Gustav Stickley, and Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft community, among many others, along with such ephemera as the catalogues, sales brochures, and magazine spreads that generated popular interest. This perspective offers a new understanding of the Arts and Crafts idea, its geographical reach, and its translation into everyday design.

Published in association with the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin

Exhibition Schedule:

Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin
(02/09/19-07/14/19)

About the Author

Monica Penick is associate professor in the Department of Design at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Design and Creative Technologies. Christopher Long is professor and chair of history and theory at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Architecture.

Reviews
"an invaluable catalog."-Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal

"[The book] serves as both an introductory text and, for those well-read on the movement, one offering new dimensions to this vast subject"- Roger Dunn, Art Newspaper

"This book is the catalogue of an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, a great repository, likened to 'an old attic filled with the most wondrous things', at the University of Texas in Austin. It starts with the British origins of the Arts-and-Crafts movement, but the greater part describes its (to British readers) less familiar flourishing in the USA."-CountryLife

"It serves as both an introductory text and, for those well-read on the movement, one offering new dimensions to this vast subject"- Roger Dunn, The Art Newspaper

"It is not a conventional catalogue, but the extended captions form a record of an exhibition and most of the contributions add usefully to discussion of how the Arts & Crafts Movement evolved in the 20th century" -Annette Carruthers, DAS





Book Information
ISBN 9780300234985
Author Monica Penick
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press