Crafts Movement Research Articles

Seeing Red: Entropy, Property, and Resistance in the Summer Riots 2011

This paper explores the thermodynamic property 'entropy' as a metaphor for aesthetics and politics, law and resistance in the case of the Summer Riots 2011. The aim of the paper is to use the framework and structure of entropy to demonstrate a political aesthetics of property. This shall be done by firstly linking entropy with aesthetic concepts of order, disorder, symmetry and equilibrium. Works on complex adaptive systems to account for collective behaviour, combined with Benjaminian and Adornian accounts of the commodity, shall be used alongside the relevance of crowd theory in explaining not the riots themselves but the sentencing of collectivity in the case of R v Blackshaw & Others [2011] EWCA Crim 2312. Following Ranciere and the arts and crafts movement, utility and beauty, the breaking down of the divisions of art, life, philosophy and science are summarized as the lesson of entropy for law. This re-visiting of the Summer Riots 2011 hopes to re-evaluate the sentencing procedures in light of 'Riot-Related Offending' through an aesthetic politics of collectivity, property and commodity.

Seeing Red: Entropy, Property, and Resistance in the Summer Riots 2011

This paper explores the thermodynamic property 'entropy' as a metaphor for aesthetics and politics, law and resistance in the case of the Summer Riots 2011. The aim of the paper is to use the framework and structure of entropy to demonstrate a political aesthetics of property. This shall be done by firstly linking entropy with aesthetic concepts of order, disorder, symmetry and equilibrium. Works on complex adaptive systems to account for collective behaviour, combined with Benjaminian and Adornian accounts of the commodity, shall be used alongside the relevance of crowd theory in explaining not the riots themselves but the sentencing of collectivity in the case of R v Blackshaw & Others [2011] EWCA Crim 2312. Following Ranciere and the arts and crafts movement, utility and beauty, the breaking down of the divisions of art, life, philosophy and science are summarized as the lesson of entropy for law. This re-visiting of the Summer Riots 2011 hopes to re-evaluate the sentencing procedures in light of 'Riot-Related Offending' through an aesthetic politics of collectivity, property and commodity.

The Grassroots Origins of the DCRP

In the spring of 1 929 when I first entered this Old Ark - the original architecture building - never could I have imagined receiving such a tribute on this September day of 1997 for my role in launching the DCRP. I was then a young man of eighteen fresh from Lowell High School in crowded San Francisco. This inviting shingled building, designed by Bernard Maybeck only a few years before, stood as a product of the Arts and Crafts movement. Breaking with the rigid confines of the Parisian Beaux Arts doctrine, it became for me a pivotal point for understanding the campus as a whole and thus shaping my identity as a person. In developing my own thinking about local environmental planning, I learned how relating the built environment to its own unique native landscape served as an invaluable context for nurturing creativity in the minds of young people. The social and physical environment of the Bay Area at the time provided an invaluable context for those of us building the DCRP in those early years.

De l’unité des arts comme résistance : The Claims of Decorative Art de Walter Crane

Though Walter Crane is very famous for his illustrations, his work as a theoretician is sometimes overlooked. Strongly influenced by John Ruskin and William Morris, Walter Crane developed the idea of the unity of art as an essential condition for a rewarding artistic production and a satisfactory social life. In The Claims of Decorative Art, a collection of essays, he successfully mixed a presentation of architecture and the decorative arts influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement with a sharp criticism of an alienating industrial society based on profit and individualism and a description of socialism as the only way to regain harmony. Opposing division in all its manifestations, he consistently encouraged a cooperation between artists and artisans while working with different socialist groups, trying to transcend the political tensions that often tore them and adopting a patient but firm political position. His unflinching artistic, political and educational commitment is obvious in his writings and his career and testifies to his major role in the resistance to what he described as the negative forces of commercialism.

The Folk Crafts Movement and Folklore Studies

A la meme periode que le mingei de Yanagi apparait le mouvement des etudes folkloriques (minzokugaku) de Yanagita Kunio. Souvent associes, les deux entretiennent toutefois nombre de differences.

The Art of Remembrance: The Arts and Crafts Movement and the Commemoration of the British War Dead, 1916–1920

This article examines how members of the Arts and Crafts movement sought to lead the nation in its commemoration of the war dead. They advised the public to patronize architects, designers, and skilled craftsmen for the creation of simple, well-made artistic memorials or to erect socially useful memorials. In the end, localism, the cost of artisanal memorials, and communal grief shaped communities' decisions about memorials more than precepts from the art experts. Despite this outcome, I argue, members of the Arts and Crafts movement did play a key role in initiating and framing the public debate on war memorials.

Gustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement

Gustav Stickley and the American Arts and Crafts Movement

Found! Restoring and Digitizing the Cuala Press Sample Book

In the summer of 2010, a librarian at Wake Forest University undertook a project to restore and digitize a scrapbook from the library collection. The scrapbook was filled with greeting cards with Irish sayings which were beautifully printed and hand-colored. The acidic scrapbook came from the Cuala Press, an Irish Arts and Crafts Movement industry, which was run by the sisters of William Butler Yeats. The book needed restoration to preserve the unique greeting cards and other printed ephemera. An attempt was made to digitize the greeting cards in the scrapbook but copyright limited this part of the venture.

“Rodnik”: A Source of Inspiration

Abstract The article discusses the history of Princess Mariia Tenishevaʼs workshops at Talashkino which, in the early 1900s, played a significant role in Russia’s Arts and Crafts movement. Recently discovered photographs of the interior of “Rodnik,” the store in Moscow that marketed Talashkino wares from 1903 to 1906, were the occasion to shed more light on Tenisheva’s attempt to revive popular craft traditions by creating artist-designed and hand manufactured goods for daily use.

Handmade Identities: Girls, Dolls and DIY

This article examines the connection between two discrete areas of inquiry—the study of dolls as it relates to the identity of young girls, and the contemporary DIY (do-it-yourself) craft movement. I identify how the activity of DIY doll-making might be useful for thinking about what it means to be a girl in relation to its offering a departure from the hyper-commercialized, ready-made dolls of the twenty-first century. The commercial doll has existed alongside its counterpart, the homemade doll, since the beginning of industrialization. In different ways both forms of the doll have played a significant role in the lives of young girls and they continue to shape both collective and individual identities associated with what we think of as being a girl. Tracing the act of doll-making and the residual influence of craft movements in my own childhood, I explore this notion of dynamic identity formation: I examine doll-making as a medium for artistic creation and narrative development with the potential to transform girlhood identities.

Taking the Book Apart

The exposition opens up the artist’s investigations into the historical figure Ellen Gates Starr, co-founder of the Hull House, a settlement house in Chicago, Midwest United States. Reflecting on the life and work of Gates Starr and on the artist’s own works inspired by these, a particular focus of the exposition is the link between artistic mark making and political practice. By way of close reading and research, the artist excavates Starr’s artistic practice and writing, to explore how artistic mark making informed by Starr’s praxis might come to shed some light on our contemporary situation. The exposition also reconsiders some of the politics at stake for the Arts and Craft movement.

Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts (review)

Reviewed by: Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts Jane Hamlett (bio) Rethinking the Interior, c. 1867-1896: Aestheticism and Arts and Crafts, edited by Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart; pp. xvi + 277. Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010, £70.00, $119.95. While the aesthetic and the Arts and Crafts movements have dominated understandings of interior design in the second half of the nineteenth century, scholars have frequently considered the two separately or in opposition to one another. But this new collection of essays, edited by Jason Edwards and Imogen Hart, demonstrates their close connection in artistic thought and practice. The essays show evidence of both movements in architecture, interior design, sculpture, and painting. Victorianists will welcome this book's repositioning of the late-nineteenth-century interior not as a forerunner to modernism—as it is often portrayed—but as a significant development in its own right. Rather than seeing the cluttered Victorian interior inspiring stripped-down modernist designs, Edwards and Hart suggest that the eclecticism of the Victorian interior is worthy of further study, explanation, and enjoyment. This thesis underwrites a series of fascinating essays that reconsider well-known designs and objects. Sally-Anne Huxtable returns to the iconic Green Dining Room in the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), traditionally associated with William Morris but in fact produced via the collective efforts of Morris, Phillip Webb, and Edward Burne-Jones. As a Morris and Company interior, the room has been aligned with Arts and Crafts. Yet Huxtable makes a convincing case for seeing this 1860s space as a prototype aesthetic interior—with its green colouring; panels depicting fruit, foliage, and blossoms; and themes of arcadia and rural beauty amidst the London bustle. Likewise, art objects previously labelled aesthetic are linked to the Arts and Crafts movement. Morna O'Neill argues that while the paintings of [End Page 749] Walter Crane embody aesthetic eclecticism, they also depict socialist ideals. Jane Hawkes examines the interior decoration of the Church of St. Mary at Studley Royal in North Yorkshire, designed and produced by William Burges in the 1870s. The density of the design—a riot of carving, applied metal work, gargoyles, plant motifs, and stained glass—might well be seen as eclectic, even representing the "superabundance and disorder" that John Ruskin cautioned against (qtd. in Edwards and Hart 42). Yet Hawkes reveals a carefully organised interior constructed with meticulous attention to archaeological detail. The book repositions key artistic figures in relation to both movements. Morris, the grand old man of Arts and Crafts, is linked to the aesthetic movement through the interior of Kelmscott House, his London home. Using Morris's personal papers and photographs taken at the end of his life, Hart offers a sensitive reading of the house. The decoration clearly carried political meaning, yet its eclecticism and furnishings (described by some observers as "sumptuous" [qtd. in Edwards and Hart 79]) might also be viewed as aesthetic. Likewise, Edwards considers Leighton House, finding that its tiled walls and mosaic floors evoked political philosophies of craftsmanship, yet its interior was resplendent with the tokens of aestheticism: sunflower heads picked out in gold in the ebonised woodwork, blue and white china, and walls decorated in green and yellow tones. The essays also show how the movements were adopted across different practices and markets. Paul Holden explores the combination of the two styles in the work of the architectural team Richard Code and James McClaren, focusing on their refurbishment of Lanhydrock House near Bodmin and the building of an extra wing to "The Park" at Ledbury in Hertfordshire. The architects sought to combine "old and new" (132), establishing continuity with the interiors of the new buildings, yet introducing a restrained aesthetic decor. Anne Anderson examines the representation of blue and white china in nineteenth-century culture, demonstrating that aesthetic tokens were not without critics: "Chinamania" was ridiculed in Punch (112). The tea pot in particular served as a symbol of femininity, even emasculation. Reconsidering the market for nineteenth-century domestic sculpture, Martina Droth argues that while statuettes and smaller sculptures produced for the home have often been labelled as domestic, these complex art objects should...

Lott's Bricks, The Arts and Crafts movement and Arnold Mitchell

Perhaps unexpectedly, architects are seldom talked about in terms of the building toys they once played with or what they constructed with them. Exceptions are Witold Rybczynski and Frank Lloyd Wright. The former describes John Ruskin mastering the laws of building for load-bearing towers and arches by the time he was seven or eight (around 1825) because of playing with wooden building blocks (introduced at the end of the 1700s). However, he also describes himself playing with Bayko. This was a Bakelite building set from the 1930s [1], probably modelled on Mobaco, a cardboard and wood Dutch construction toy [2]. Both of these toys are pre-dated by an 1887 English toy for house construction, the walls of which were made from wooden blocks threaded on to vertical wires. Rybczynski also describes watching his father and uncle build a real garden shed using concrete panels slipped between reinforcing bars, like the method used by the plastic toy but life-size.

Innovative Design of Wrench Movement Scheme Based on Craft Movement Process

Machinery industry changes with each passing day, asking for the more and more importance of the machinery industry performance. The innovative design needs to be used to tools designing for improving the work more efficiency. Take the wrench product designing as an example, this article analyzes the issue of the mechanical products innovation, applies the theories of the craft movement process to a manual wrench innovative design and puts forward the thought of the wrench innovative design scheme.

Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts movement

With its emphasis on social reform and simplicity in design---bold lines, honest use of materials, and redeeming qualities of handmade goods---the Arts and Crafts movement offered an antidote to the perceived ills of a rapidly changing world and the ornate and artificial Victorian aesthetic of the late 19th century. In the first years of the 20th century, the movement was popularized in the United States through the efforts of Gustav Stickley (1858 - 1942), a businessman who promoted a progressive American style and the ideal of the simple life through the efforts of his furniture factory and publication, The Craftsman. Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement accompanies the first nationally touring exhibition of Stickley's work and explores his dual roles as a visionary business leader and enthusiastic proselytizer of design reform. The full range of Stickley's workshops is illuminated, including more than 100 objects of furniture, metalwork, and textiles, as well as architectural drawings and related designs, many of which are previously unpublished. Essays by distinguished contributors provide diverse viewpoints on the Arts and Crafts movement and Stickley's evolving role as tastemaker, and the often contradictory messages conveyed through the construction and promotion of his designers' works. This handsome volume provides fascinating new insight into the dramatic transformation of a factory owner into one of the leading figures of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

The Indian Craze: Primitivism, Modernism, and Transculturation in American Art, 1890-1915. By Elizabeth Hutchinson

Anyone who has read Museum Anthropology knows a good deal about the topic of Elizabeth Hutchinson’s book, The Indian CrazeFEuro-American passion for collecting native art. Through the years the journal has published articles on the collecting and display of Native American and First Nation peoples’ art, studies of international expositions and museums as sites of public display, and how these venues have affected the way the public sees and understands Native Americans. These studies, as well as a wealth of other articles and books, have provided a richly nuanced picture of the topics discussed in this book. Hutchinson, an art historian, uses a literary and cultural studies approach to attempt to demonstrate that the development of modernism and its aestheticism must be attributed to the Indian craze. Through the commercialization and objectification of native artifacts, the craze proposed handmade primitive objects as models for artists’ exploration of new aesthetic ideas and practices. She does this by discussing a suite of case studies in which intercultural exchange and appropriation of native art and aesthetic were evident: U.S. government schools, mainstream art institutions, and the work of transitional artists Winnebago Angel DeCora and Euro-American Gertrude Kasebier. It is in these areas that Hutchinson provides us with an insightful comparison. The book opens with the chapter ‘‘Unpacking the Indian Corner,’’ which examines the commercialization of native art through the modern aesthetic of Indian corners in eastern urban centers such as New York. The author considers the origin of Indian corners, the politics and techniques of display, and the promotion of native art as a commodity. ‘‘The White Man’s Indian Art’’ follows with a discussion of native art programs in government schools and their pervasive appropriation of the Indian craze for educational purposes. ‘‘Playing Indian’’ discusses how interest in the aesthetic value of Native American art emerged not only within the arts and crafts movement but also in mainstream art institutions. An analysis of selected art journals, schools, and exhibitions shows that the appropriation of the formal and aesthetic qualities of native art, particularly basketry and pottery, was a stepping stone for modernist artists in search of a new American character for their works. Hutchinson then presents two case studies of women artists whose works reflected this trend. In ‘‘The Indian in Kasebier’s Studio’’ Hutchinson focuses on Gertrude Kasebier, a student of Arthur Wesley Dow, and the incorporation of native aestheticism into her works as a stratagem to solve the tensions arising from being a modernist artist and a woman. ‘‘Angel DeCora’s Cultural Politics’’ examines the life and career of Winnebago artist and educator Angel DeCora and considers how DeCora appropriated the Indian craze to argue for ‘‘the economic and cultural survival of Native Americans’’ through their artistic productions (p. 171). Particular attention is paid to DeCora’s ‘‘cultural politics’’ of promoting a pan-Indian aesthetic that was deemed able to contribute to American culture and art. An epilogue focuses on ‘‘the legacy of the Indian craze’’ and its ‘‘influence on Native art’’ in the 1930s and 1970s (p. 222). This book is a good introduction for those unfamiliar with the late–19th and early–20th century American collecting practices of native art. Hutchinson forcefully argues that Americans have seen an essentialized Native American culture as distinct from mainstream culture. Although other scholars have repeatedly made this point, Hutchinson provides information about understudied collecting and display activities from the turn of the 20th century. She explicates the commodification of native objects for the beautification of the home and the appropriation of native aesthetic by Euro-American artists. In addition, she clearly draws the connection between the Indian craze and government education of Native American children, which aimed at transforming them to be producers of goods rather than equal citizens, and adds important contributions to our book reviews

The Craft of Industrial Patternmaking

Historians, critics, and artists have recently challenged the popular perception that things made in industrial factories and things made by hand exist at opposite ends of the craft spectrum. This article locates the source of that misconception in the mid-nineteenth century, and offers the field of industrial patternmaking as a provocative example. Using period manuals, trade magazines, and the rich collection and archive of an early twentiethcentury industrial pattern shop, this article considers the relationships of patternmakers to their craft, their products, and their co-workers to suggest more continuity with craft traditions than might be expected. Serving as a touchstone figure is Charles Rohlfs, the well-known maker of “Artistic Furniture,” who could only create his new identity as a creative individual artisan in the model of the Arts and Crafts movement by denying his earlier career as an industrial patternmaker and cast-iron stove designer.

Making New Vintage Jeans in Japan: Relocating Authenticity

Japan has become renowned as a site for the production of artisanal-quality denim and jeans, which appeals to increasingly discerning cognoscenti. The usual mass-produced, non-designer “safe” denim has a ubiquitous presence in Japan as it does elsewhere but there are many Japanese for whom a pair of jeans has many more qualities that should be carefully considered before its consumption than the perhaps usual factors of price, brand, cut, wash and color. These include the types of machines the denim was woven on, the presence of certain (sometimes invisible) rivets, the technique of stitching and so on. “Made in Japan” has become the catchphrase for new denim authenticity sought by “denim maniacs” (denimu mania no hito). This paper gives a brief history of jeans in Japan, introduces the area where they are made and examines two jeans companies as well as consumers of these premium jeans. It looks at how expensive Japanese jeans echo the mingei craft movement in their emphasis on method of production over the aesthetics of the final product. It shows that authenticity in Japan can be relocated both geographically and from the “original” to the “copy.”

The direct physical, chemical and biotic impacts on Australian coastal waters due to recreational boating

In economically developed countries it is projected that by around 2015 over 50% of a person’s lifetime will become available for leisure. Demand for leisure needs, already strong, will continue to increase. One segment of the market, outdoor nature-based recreation (including tourism), is growing strongly worldwide. A substantial proportion of these activities are water-based. The associated demand for recreational vessels has increased rapidly in recent years and is projected to continue to trend upwards. Australian trends mirror those internationally. Using Australia as a case study, we review the direct physical, chemical and biotic impacts associated with recreational boating in coastal water environments. Major physical impacts include disturbance due to movement of craft in shallow waters (e.g., turbulence) and the effects of anchoring/drag, noise/interference/collision that impacts on wildlife. The most critical chemical impacts result from pollution due to fuels and oils, defouling treatments (even those not legislated in-country), and human waste (e.g., sewage effluent). Important biotic impacts are the potential continued introduction and secondary spread of non-native species. We conclude that while greater research effort will provide more environmentally benign products, with the increasing popularity of recreation vessels, it will be beyond the resources of Australian governments to police legislation effectively. However, based on Australian’s demonstrated engagement with government in terrestrial environmental management, with their deliberate engagement with the boating fraternity, the impacts of recreational boating would be lessened.

Cultural Record Keepers: Serendipity in Adelphi University Libraries’ Special Collections: The “Emilie” Bookplate

Cultural Record KeepersSerendipity in Adelphi University Libraries’ Special Collections: The “Emilie” Bookplate Elayne Gardstein (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution “Emilie” bookplate by René Lalique. Image courtesy of University Archives and Special Collections, Adelphi University Libraries. In 2007 the Grolier Club in New York held an exhibition titled Illustrating the Good Life: The Pissarros’ Eragny Press, 1894–1914. Professor Alice Beckwith of Providence College curated this first all-inclusive presentation of the Eragny Press in the United States.1 A subsequent search for Eragny Press books within the Adelphi University Libraries’ Donald V. L. Kelly Small Press Collection led to the discovery of a unique bookplate connecting Eragny Press to the story of a singular woman. Lucien Pissarro (1863–1944), son of the French impressionist painter Camille Pissarro, founded Eragny Press. Lucien and his wife, Esther, lived in England but named the press for the Normandy town that was home to the Pissarro family, Eragny-sur-Epte. There was a listing in Adelphi University’s catalog for La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier by Gustave Flaubert, published in 1900 by Hacon & Ricketts and printed at the Eragny Press in London. According to the book’s colophon, “The frontispiece was designed and engraved on wood by Lucien Pissarro. The borders and decorated letters were designed by Lucien Pissarro and [End Page 442] engraved on wood by Esther Pissarro, 1900.” The edition was limited to 226 copies, of which 200 were for sale. The Adelphi copy had a book-plate tipped inside the front cover. The horizontal bookplate measured 2.5 inches high and 5 inches wide and was printed in gray on buff-colored Japan paper with an art nouveau floral design, trailing leaves outside the lower borders of the lithograph. It was signed “R LALIQUE” at the lower right. At the lower left the name “EMILIE” appeared within the image. “R LALIQUE” was the French jeweler and glass artist René Lalique (1860–1945), renowned for his innovations in the decorative arts. “EMILIE” turned out to be an American woman of extraordinary means and circumstances. Emilie Busbey Grigsby (1876–1964) was born in Kentucky, and her life has been documented in newspaper accounts and historical studies of her famous benefactor, Charles Tyson Yerkes (1837–1905), the Chicago and London public transportation tycoon.2 In 1898 Emilie was deeded a Park Avenue mansion by Yerkes, which soon was filled with art and literary collections. Emilie was the inspiration for Theodore Dreiser’s character of Berenice Fleming in his Trilogy of Desire.3 After her death, she was described as a charming hostess who entertained sculptor Auguste Rodin and poet William Butler Yeats.4 Some years after Yerkes passed away, Emilie decided to move to London, and the Anderson Auction Company of New York sold her collections in January 1912.5 A notation appeared in the sales catalog above the listings for books and prints: “Miss Grigsby’s bookplate designed by Lalique of Paris will be found in every volume in her Library.”6 The availability of this documentation, both online and in print, facilitated the search for other titles once owned by Emilie. Listed in the books portion of the catalog were 1,352 lots. Closer examination of Adelphi’s Eragny Press title revealed the faint pencil marks of the sale date “Jan 30 1912” in the gutter of page 2. A second “Emilie” title from England was Vaughan’s Sacred Poems, Being a Selection by the seventeenth-century author Henry Vaughan. Hacon & Ricketts published this edition of 210 copies in 1897. Lucien Pissarro’s friend Charles Ricketts designed the decorative borders, initials, and frontispiece. Both Pissarro and Ricketts continued the Arts and Crafts movement approach to fine book design begun by William Morris. Other titles at Adelphi exemplify Emilie’s interest in American publishing, specifically works produced in Portland, Maine, by Thomas Mosher (1852–1923).7 The History of Over Sea by William Morris, first published in 1894 by Kelmscott Press, was brought out by Mosher in 1899. John Brown’s Marjorie Fleming and Richard Jeffries’s Hours of Spring and [End Page 443] Wild Flowers were also published in 1899, printed at George D. Loring...