Craft Revival in Haslemere: she, who weaves …

Abstract

British craft revival workshops enabled privileged women to educate those less fortunate, from the ‘labouring classes’, to undertake professional training or supplement their income through a productive hobby. Such workshops also allowed elite women to further their own responsibilities. The craft activities undertaken at Haslemere, largely driven by two married middle‐class couples, provide a case study for investigating the aims and intentions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century handicraft revival. Maude King and Ethel Blount held key positions in the industries, their mission being to transform the lives of local men, women and children by teaching them the value of handicrafts. Yet despite being activists in the craft revival, neither Blount nor King were involved in the local suffrage agitation. Their position can be read as reactionary, demanding a return to traditional rural life, working the land and self‐sufficiency, but at the time this was seen as a radical stance. Blount and King also eroded gender positions by advocating women’s participation in social progress, by adopting a public role and establishing a mandate for work beyond the home. Craft workshops, like those at Haslemere, sit at the intersection of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’; in the postmodern era the promotion of ‘green’ issues, ‘consumerism with a conscience’ and what we mean by social progress are worthy of reconsideration.