The Aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement - Essay Example

The Aims of the Arts and Crafts Movement The start of the Arts and Crafts Movement around 1860 isgenerally attributed to William Morris in response to the ever-encroaching identical sameness of the machine-made objects churned out of the factories that had supplanted the cottage industries of the past. “Not only art but also everyday objects, buildings, décor, everything lacked a face, and it was the realization of its lack in this particular respect which began to make the period so cruelly conscious of its anonymity.”1 In everything they did, crafters working under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement placed value in art created by hand for limited edition prints such as the highly scrolled first page of “The Nature of Gothic,” designed and printed by William Morris. Other influential individuals in this period included Augustus Pugin and John Ruskin. A great many of these artisans were looking back upon the idealized forms of the medieval age, reintroducing the highly decorative forms of the gothic to their contemporaries in their artwork, objects and architecture. The underlying principles of the Arts and Crafts Movement have an interesting parallel in the modern times as more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with the products of the overtly technological age and are instead seeking meaning through the crafts and craftsmanship of the past. Inspired by their ideals of truth to tradition, to materials and to function, artisans of the Arts and Crafts movement strove to re-introduce a sense of artistry to their architecture. With an understanding of the development and aims of the movement, examination into the work of representative designers, such as Philip Webb and William Lethaby, will illustrate both how the movement was realized as well as how the inherent contradictions of the movement remained unresolved. Because of the name and the overall focus of the movement, it might at first be imagined that this artistic vision could only barely touch the architectural styles of the day; however, the Arts and Crafts movement had a profound effect upon the architecture of the latter 1800s. One of its primary aims was to “render all branches of art the sphere no longer of the tradesman but of the artist. It would restore building, decoration, glass painting, pottery, woodcarving and metal to their right place beside painting and sculpture.”2 Working within the rather loose boundaries of the Arts and Crafts, Voysey, Baillie Scott and their contemporaries began developing new means of approaching design that hadn’t been considered previously, generating three results that almost immediately impacted the architecture of the time. “First, and the most obvious, the Arts and Crafts emphasized the artistic potential of everyday objects. Second, vastly higher standards of craftsmanship were applied to these objects, and the ideal of craftsmanship was realized much more widely than had been possible before. … Third, new stress was given to the importance of function in the creation of forms.”3 Morris’ ideas in promoting this movement included an architectural independence from imposed style in favour of a naturally growing concept. This natural concept emerged from consideration of the surroundings and the needs of the average person. The idea was to keep the form simple and to incorporate and preserve as much as possible the works and craftsmanship of old while also maintaining a sense of modest individuality. According to Augustus Pugin, there are “two great rules for design … that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety [and] that all ornament should consist of the essential construction of the building.”4 Materials and design elements were expected to be reflections of what they actually were while working to beautify the necessary irregularities.5 “Arts and Crafts people were a highly individualistic lot but all shared Morris’ affection for simplicity, truth-to-materials, and the unity of handicraft and design.”6 This concept of the imperfect and natural was also echoed in John Ruskin’s work in which “a truly Christian and humane architecture … must be imperfect – what he called ‘savage’.”7 In Ruskin’s view, this concept included the avoidance of machine-prepared materials of any kind although others such as Pugin recognized that machines could be helpful if utilized in the appropriate manner. Although the ideas and designs of the English architects spread quickly to America and throughout Europe, each society struggled to deal with the inherent contradictions of the movement. In rejecting the tools and processes of the machines that enabled products to be mass produced and thus decrease the cost of materials and craftsmanship, the products of the Arts and Crafts movement ended up being available only to the wealthy elite. “The Arts and Crafts movement was of and for the Victorian upper middle class. … The upper classes were the only people who could enjoy individual freedom in Victorian England; it was for them that Arts and Crafts architects worked, evolving a new easy style which was most often seen in the small country houses of a free, proud, individualistic breed who … were the patrons of some of the finest and most original architecture and artifacts ever produced in Britain.”8 The aims of this movement, as well as its contradictions, can be seen in such works as Webb’s Red House at Bexley Heath, Standen near East Grinstead, Sussex, and Lethaby’s All Saints Church in Brockhaven. The Gothic influence of the soon-to-be arts movement is already seen in the design of the Red House at Bexley Heath, which was built for the newlyweds William and Jane Morris and combined the theories of Morris and Phillippe Speakman Webb. It is described by architectural critic Lawrence Weaver:9 “It stands for a new epoch of new ideals and practices. Though the French strain which touched so much of the work of the gothic Revivalists is not absent, and the Gothic flavour itself is rather marked, every brick in it is a word in the history of modern architecture.” Gothic elements include the stair tower, the pointed arches over some of the main windows and the steep pitch to the roofs. True to the Arts and Crafts style, the windows are placed to provide the owners of the house with the natural light and openness suitable for their daily activities rather than through any imposed styles or expectations. According to Edward Ford, even the placement of the bricks and tiles used in the house were hand-selected and placed according to color differences in order to de-emphasize any indication that they had been machine-made.10 The only ornamentation to appear on the exterior of the house includes the pointed arches over the doors and sash windows. The house announces the Arts and Crafts movement not only in its use of materials as a means of reducing the effect of machine-made, its lack of unnecessary ornamentation and its Gothic-inspired design, but it also takes on the characteristics of a structure that blends with its environment rather than establishing an imposed order on its surroundings. “The most logical layout for an architect wanting to fulfill the ideal of Ruskinian changefulness is a long thin strip of rooms in which the functions of each can be clearly shown on the outside.”11 This was the take-off point for Webb in the design of the Red House, but he included a medieval element, another characteristic of the Arts and Crafts movement, by connecting the rooms with a side corridor that necessitated walking through one room in order to get to another, one aspect of the design that did not necessarily match the average needs of the genteel individuals who would be living there. The L-shape of the small house was revolutionary for its time, wrapping daintily around the necessary well and providing a natural courtyard. In its size and shape, its focus on simply meeting the basic needs of its inhabitants, the Red House epitomizes the concepts idealized for Arts and Crafts architecture: “The Englishman builds his house for himself alone. He feels no urge to impress, has no thought of festive occasions or banquets and the idea of shining in the eyes of the world through lavishness in and of his house simply does not occur to him.”12 So while the house symbolizes much of the Arts and Crafts ideals, it also incorporates some of its failures. This occurs not only in the cost of materials and designers that could only be afforded by a relatively wealthy upper middle class, but also in its expression of form, which was appropriate for the medieval times it imitates, but is unsatisfactory for the more reserved and private Victorians. All Saints Church, located in Brockhaven and designed by Lethaby, is widely recognized as one of the greatest monuments to the Arts and Crafts movement. Not built according to any specific imposed style, the church seems to rise naturally from its surroundings in an often changing yet cohesive whole incorporating the hill upon which it is built as well as managing to blend seamlessly into its country setting. Despite this, it still manages to capture the fundamental elements of good church design, providing ample space and lighting inside to inspire worship and devotion. Like the Red House, All Saint’s Church features several Gothic elements, such as stained glass windows and sharply pitched roofs while also incorporating elements of the medieval in the form of the towers and flat-roofed central area. The thatched roof also harks back to an earlier time, remaining today one of the few thatched roof churches in the country and ensuring the survival of an ancient craft. Viewing the church at close range, it becomes evident as well that Lethaby believed strongly in the concept of the ‘savage’, allowing his craftspeople a great deal of leverage in the creation of the materials with which the church is built. For example, like the bricks of the Red House, the building materials of the All Saints Church have been carefully placed so as to indicate hand-selection and imperfection rather than machine-made uniformity, presenting at once simplicity of form and structure as well as a complexity of symbolism and craftsmanship. This concept is brought forward again to perhaps a greater degree in the interior of the church. “The interior is rich, with choir stalls carved in local flowers like bluebells and buttercups, Burne-Jones tapestries and Christopher Whall’s stained glass; east window and tower, a combination of rough local craftsmanship and sophisticated symbolism.”13 Through this design and others, Lethaby illustrated and expanded Ruskin’s ideas of naturalism as it applied to architecture, feeling that by tracing through the various artistic forms that have been created by man, or that could be created by man, to their ultimate inspirational origin, one would always discover the hand of nature,14 a fundamental building block of the Arts and Crafts movement as it strove to reawaken the sense of the naturally beautiful unique rather than the machine-made utilitarianism of the exact replica. However, he remained bothered by the paradox of the simplistic and natural with the expensive and therefore necessary elitism of the movement. Often viewed as a betrayer of the movement, Lethaby eventually began encouraging the development of machine-made processes that would eliminate the need for the expensive craftsman while achieving relatively similar results, completely defeating the purpose of the movement in the process. Voysey’s design of Broad Leys, at Ghyll Head just south of Bowness-on-Windermere, also incorporates the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement, as well as providing significant inspiration for the experiments with materials and forms that would come in later works. “Voysey’s masterpiece, according to Pevsner, on a terrace overlooking Windermere, has a more formal garden front with three two-storey curved bows breaking into a big hipped roof.”15 While he again illustrates the ideals of the Gothic-influence, he changes even this view slightly in order to begin bringing in his own style. Abandoning the attempt to keep building materials in their natural form, his outer walls take on a stucco appearance, covering their underlying structure. However, in doing this, he is able to retain a certain roughness to the walls that emphasize the unique, more ‘natural’ and more conventional building forms of antiquity, which bolsters the Arts and Crafts ideals. “Voysey’s buildings were never symmetrical, for he was a firm believer in Ruskinian changefulness and praised Gothic architecture because ‘outside appearances are evolved from internal fundamental conditions; staircases and windows come where most convenient for use. All openings are proportioned to the various parts to which they apply.”16 Despite this seeming complexity, the house is known for the simplicity of the design, the originality of the structure and the complete abandonment of historical tradition in his melding of new materials with old and blending of numerous concepts to create new forms. “Voysey believed to his dying day that ‘simplicity, sincerity, repose, directness and frankness are moral qualities as essential to good architecture as to good men’,”17 again emphasizing some of the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement in its creation yet illustrating its contradictions in the execution and use, now used as the headquarters of a motor boat club. As these structures illustrate, the Arts and Crafts movement of the late nineteenth century was an attempt to improve society by creating objects and architecture of a more worthwhile nature. Spawned as a reaction against the tendency for the upper class to view all employees as merely parts of a machine, the movement emphasized the uniqueness and beauty of the skilfully handmade. It provided a means by which the lower classes, through the skill of their hands, could achieve greater incomes by becoming craftsmen rather than factory workers as well as improve their own homes through emphasis on the beautiful natural roughness of their accommodations. For the newly wealthy, no longer confined to the city thanks to new innovations in affordable transportation, the calm, uncluttered and natural forms of the Arts and Crafts movement proved perfectly suited to their tastes and needs. However, the paradox of the movement remained a problem of justifying the expense while still attempting to bring the art form to the masses. In attempting to solve this issue, architects and designers of the Arts and Crafts movement paved the way for new explorations in materials and forms. References Aslin, Elizabeth. (1962). Nineteenth-Century English Furniture. London. Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner. (1962). Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World. New York: McGraw-Hill. “Charles Francis Annesley Voysey.” (2005). Visit Cumbria. Available 4 May 2007 from Davey, Peter. (1997). Arts and Crafts Architecture. London: Phaidon House. Ford, Edward R. (1990). Details of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press. Lethaby, W.R. (1974). Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. London: The Architectural Press. Muthesius, Hermann. (1979). The English House. First English translation Janet Seligman. London: Crosby Lockwood Staples. Pugin, Augustus Welby. (1841). The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. London. Ruskin, John. (1849). The Seven Lamps of Architecture. London: Smith Elder. Voysey, C.F.A. (1911). “The English Home.” The British Architect. Vol. LXXV. Weaver, Lawrence. (n.d.). “Small Country Houses of Today” First Series. Country Life. London. Read More