Et in Suburbia Ego: A Cultural Geography of Craft in the London Suburbs

Abstract

From the 1860s until the outbreak of World War II, suburbs became an increasingly important part of the British landscape, in both physical and social terms. These new suburbs were key sites for the nascent studio craft movement. In many ways they served as expressions of the same ideals that underpinned the crafts. Like the Garden City movement, suburbia offered the city-dweller an accessible piece of an imagined pre-industrial rural idyll. Several of the most important art schools pioneering teaching in the crafts were located in London suburbs. A typical example is Camberwell, a district of South London which was home to Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1898, and which is examined here as a case study. The suburbs offered various advantages to the maker as a site for craft production, combining a congenial environment with access to urban markets. It can also be argued that even stereotypical country-dwelling craft makers shared some essentially suburban attributes, in their relationship to urban economic structures.