The Arts and Crafts Movement was a reaction to the brutality of working life and the sterility of industrial design in Victorian Britain. Although Arts and Crafts was initially a mediaeval revival, the movement was always about the artist craftsman and the appropriate use of materials, rather than any single design tradition. The movement was inspired and led by William Morris, whose company was founded in 1861 and produced a full range of interior furnishings, including tiles. These were designed by Morris himself, and also by leading artists and architects of the day such as Edward Burne Jones and Philip Webb. The term Arts and Crafts was formalised in the late 1880s, and many designers, artists and craftsmen joined Morris in this new movement, and leading designers including Walter Crane and C. F. A. Voysey produced distinctive and now highly collectable ceramic tiles that were used to decorate the bathrooms and the fireplaces of the wealthy and discerning. This book, with its companion on the work of William de Morgan, is the first complete introduction to British Arts and Crafts tiles from 1860 to 1920.

Rozsika Parker's re-evaluation of the reciprocal relationship between women and embroidery has brought stitchery out from the private world of female domesticity into the fine arts, created a major breakthrough in art history and criticism, and fostered the emergence of today's dynamic and expanding crafts movements. The Subversive Stitch is now available again with a new Introduction that brings the book up to date with exploration of the stitched art of Louise Bourgeois and Tracey Emin, as well as the work of new young female and male embroiderers. Rozsika Parker uses household accounts, women's magazines, letters, novels and the works of art themselves to trace through history how the separation of the craft of embroidery from the fine arts came to be a major force in the marginalisation of women's work. Beautifully illustrated, her book also discusses the contradictory nature of women's experience of embroidery: how it has inculcated female subservience while providing an immensely pleasurable source of creativity, forging links between women.

Discover the history of design with this gorgeous visual celebration of key pieces, movements, and designers, from the Arts and Craft movement to the digital age. Arranged chronologically, Design traces the evolution of design from its roots to the present day, from early chairs, pottery, and homewares to cars, graphic design, and product design. It introduces all the key designers, manufacturers, and objects, illustrating how and why different styles emerged and became popular. It also provides a fascinating insight into design movements, showing how each one began and explaining its philosophy and visual style, from the Arts and Crafts movement to mid-century modern and contemporary. Featuring expert analysis, stunning photography, and a huge range of objects both familiar and extraordinary, Design explains what makes a truly great design and reveals the hidden stories behind the everyday things all around us. With profiles of famous designers and manufacturers, such as William Morris, the Bauhaus, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Vitra, and stunning images of iconic buildings and interiors, it provides a glorious and comprehensive view of classic design across the last two centuries.

35 meditative knitting patterns that use colour, repetition and texture to help you unwind and destress. The relaxing rhythm and hand movements of knitting make it the perfect activity to absorb your attention and distract you from unwanted thoughts. As well as being beautiful makes, these 35 projects are specially designed to be a form of mindfulness practice. Suitable for beginners through to experienced knitters, the patterns will help you stitch away stress by incorporating calming repetition and different textures, as well as mood-boosting bright colours and soothing pastel shades. Many of the projects make ideal gifts, bringing you satisfaction and positivity as you knit them for other people. There are also homewares including a mandala pillow and a meditation garland so that you can create an inspiring environment, as well as cosy accessories and garments to allow you to focus on yourself. All of the techniques and stitches you will need are explained with easy-to-follow instructions and step-by-step artworks. Let the click of the needles and the rhythm of the stitches help you to be in the moment, bringing you calmness and a sense of wellbeing.

One of the difficulties about how our minds work is that we often cannot quite clearly see or know what is inside us. Art therapists have a longstanding tradition of prescribing image-making to prompt expression of feelings, often by asking people to draw, paint, or sculpt "how you feel." It is one of the fundamental approaches in the field that distinguishes art therapy from verbal techniques that ask people to simply talk about their emotions. Author Erica Jong once wrote that imagery is a form of emotional shorthand. This could be interpreted to mean that while we may use paragraphs of prose to describe an emotional experience, images allow us to communicate simply and directly. At its core, art therapy embraces the paradigm that creating images cuts to the chase when it comes to expressing feelings. The point is not to draw well. But to draw with authenticity. This is specifically a book for people who can't draw.

Philip Webb was a British architect known as a founder of the Arts and Crafts movement and also a key member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle. He had a long association with William Morris and was responsible for the design of the hugely influential Red House, Morris's first home. Webb's letters will be of interest to art and architecture historians.

From the canonical texts of the Arts and Crafts Movement to the radical thinking of today's "DIY" movement, from theoretical writings on the position of craft in distinction to Art and Design to how-to texts from renowned practitioners, from feminist histories of textiles to descriptions of the innovation born of necessity in Soviet factories and African auto-repair shops...The Craft Reader presents the first comprehensive anthology of writings on modern craft. Covering the period from the Industrial Revolution to today, the Reader draws on craft practice and theory from America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The world of craft is considered in its full breadth -- from pottery and weaving, to couture and chocolate-making, to contemporary art, architecture and curation. The writings are themed into sections and all extracts are individually introduced, placing each in its historical, cultural and artistic context. Bringing together an astonishing range of both classic and contemporary texts, The Craft Reader will be invaluable to any student or practitioner of Craft and also to readers in Art and Design. AUTHORS INCLUDE: Theodor Adorno, Anni Albers, Amadou Hampate Ba, Charles Babbage, Roland Barthes, Andrea Branzi, Alison Britton, Rafael Cardoso, Johanna Drucker, Charles Eames, Salvatore Ferragamo, Kenneth Frampton, Alfred Gell, Walter Gropius, Tanya Harrod, Martin Heidegger, Patrick Heron, Bernard Leach, Esther Leslie, W. R. Lethaby, Lucy Lippard, Adolf Loos, Karl Marx, William Morris, Robert Morris, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Stefan Muthesius, George Nakashima, Octavio Paz, Grayson Perry, M. C. Richards, John Ruskin, Raphael Samuel, Ellen Gates Starr, Debbie Stoller, Alexis de Tocqueville, Lee Ufan, Frank Lloyd Wright

In this groundbreaking reassessment of the conventional understanding of a cohesive 'Arts and Crafts movement' in Britain, Imogen Hart argues that a sophisticated mode of looking at decorative art developed in England during the second half of the nineteenth century. Bringing to light a significant number of little-known visual and textual sources, Arts and Crafts Objects insists that the history of British design between the 1830s and the 1910s is more complex and interwoven than concepts of clearly differentiated 'movements' allow for. Reinvesting the objects with the original importance ascribed to them by their makers and users, this book places furniture, metalwork, tiles, vases, chintzes, carpets, and wallpaper at the centre of a rigorous reassessment of the concept of 'Arts and Crafts'. The book offers radical new interpretations of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society and the homes of William Morris, alongside illuminating analyses of less familiar but equally rich contexts. -- .

Revised edition of the bestselling backlist title. William Morris was an outstanding character of many talents, being an architect, writer, social campaigner, artist and, with his Kelmscott Press, an important figure of the Arts and Crafts movement. Many of us probably know him best, however, from his superb furnishings and textile designs, intricately weaving together natural motifs in a highly stylized two-dimensional fashion influenced by medieval conventions. Following on from the bestselling success of Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Alphonse Mucha, of the same series, this delightful new book offers a survey of his life and work alongside some of his finest decorative work. It is a richly beautiful book.

William De Morgan was the principal ceramic designer and maker in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Heavily influenced by the art of the Middle East, he was active for nearly thirty years from the 1870s onwards and was never content with an existing technical process if he thought it could be improved. He is famous for his vases and decorative chargers, but it is arguably his tiles - still to be found in homes and museums around Britain and the world - that have made the greatest impact. His tiles portray iconic images of animals, ships and floral designs, blending style influences to produce designs that featured new, stylized interpretations and a whimsical character. He combined a strong design style with rich glaze colours, making blue and green, and a deep orangey red into visual trademarks. There were important commissions from royalty and industry, and his ceramics were marketed to the growing middle classes by William Morris, the founder and leading light of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The tiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement are now highly collectible, and none more so than those made at William De Morgan's Chelsea, Merton Abbey and Fulham potteries. This highly illustrated book, by acknowledged experts on De Morgan, presents the first study of the tiles to be published in over thirty-five years and features an examination of De Morgan's lustre glazes using high sensitivity X-ray analysis.

Although these styles continue to be identifiable, particularly in massed dancing at national festivals, Zulu beadwork is increasingly eclectic and much of it is directed at the fast growing external market which now provides beadworkers with both a welcome source of personal income and a continuing stimulus to personal creativity. Zulu Beadwork tells the fascinating and important story of this transformation, and of the major players who were instrumental in bringing it about. Continuity and change in Zulu beadwork. Important collections of Zulu beadwork. Speaking with beads: Zulu ‘Love Letters’. Bead making, bead messages and meaning. Expanding beadwork frontiers post 1980. Zulu beadwork for the new millennium. Zulu beadwork and Zulu and South African identity.

Barry Parker (1867-1944) was a leading figure in the Arts and Crafts Movement in England. In partnership with Raymond Unwin he planned the world's first 'Garden City', at Letchworth, and London's Hampstead Garden Suburb. They also designed many individual houses and other buildings. In 1910 Parker began publication of a series of essays called 'Modern Country Homes in England' in The Craftsman, an influential American journal. It was his hope that these would be eventually collected together in book form, and would thus stand as a statement of his architectural beliefs. This volume, first published in 1986, is based upon these essays, and offers a critical evaluation of Parker's work. Many of the illustrations are taken from original drawings and photographs.

Edward Schroder Prior designed the cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement (St Andrew's Church, Roker), perfected the popular butterfly plan in his houses, and published what is still the seminal work on medieval gothic art in England in 1900. Highly regarded by critics such as Ian Nairn, Prior is sometimes considered to have narrowly missed out on a place in the architectural pantheon of his age, alongside contemporaries such as Charles Voysey and William Lethaby. The result of extensive archival and field research, Edward Prior - Arts and Crafts Architect sheds new light on Prior's architecture, life and scholarship. Extensively illustrated, it showcases Prior's work in colour, including many of his architectural drawings and photographs of most of his extant buildings. Prior is the missing link of the Arts and Crafts Movement, in both a theoretical and a practical sense, as he was possibly the only practitioner who genuinely translated the artistic theories of Ruskin and Morris into architectural reality. He went on to found the School of Architecture at the University of Cambridge in 1912.

William Morris-the great 19th century craftsman, architect, designer, poet and writer-remains a monumental figure whose influence resonates powerfully today. As an intellectual (and author of the seminal utopian News From Nowhere), his concern with artistic and human values led him to cross what he called the 'river of fire' and become a committed socialist-committed not to some theoretical formula but to the day by day struggle of working women and men in Britain and to the evolution of his ideas about art, about work and about how life should be lived. Many of his ideas accorded none too well with the reforming tendencies dominant in the Labour movement, nor with those of 'orthodox' Marxism, which has looked elsewhere for inspiration. Both sides have been inclined to venerate Morris rather than to pay attention to what he said. Originally written less than a decade before his groundbreaking The Making of the English Working Class, E.P. Thompson brought to this biography his now trademark historical mastery, passion, wit, and essential sympathy. It remains unsurpassed as the definitive work on this remarkable figure, by the major British historian of the 20th century.

The Arts and Crafts Movement espoused values of simplicity, craftsmanship and beauty quite counter to Victorian and Edwardian industrialism. Though most famous for its architecture, furniture and ornamental work, between the 1890s and the 1930s the movement also produced gardens all over Britain whose designs, redolent of a lost golden era, had worldwide influence. These designs, by luminaries such as Gertrude Jekyll and Sir Edwin Lutyens, were engaging and romantic combinations of manor-house garden formalism and the naive charms of the cottage garden - but from formally clipped topiary to rugged wild borders, nothing was left to chance. Sarah Rutherford here explores the winding paths and meticulously shaped hedges, the gazebos and gateways, the formal terraces and the billowing border plantings that characterised the Arts and Crafts garden, and directs readers and gardeners to where they can visit and be inspired by these beautiful works of art.

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize, and described by A.S.Byatt as 'one of the finest biographies ever published', this is Fiona MacCarthy's magisterial biography of William Morris, legendary designer and father of the Victorian Arts and Crafts movement. 'Thrilling, absorbing and majestic.' Independent 'Wonderfully ambitious ... The definitive Morris biography.' Sunday Times 'Delicious and intelligent, full of shining detail and mysteries respected.' Daily Telegraph 'Oh, the careful detail of this marvellous book! . . . A model of scholarly biography'. New Statesman Since his death in 1896, William Morris has been celebrated as a giant of the Victorian era. But his genius was so multifaceted and so profound that its full extent has rarely been grasped. Many people may find it hard to believe that the greatest English designer of his time - possibly of all time - could also be internationally renowned as a founder of the socialist movement, and ranked as a poet with Tennyson and Browning. In her definitive biography - insightful, comprehensive, addictively readable - the award-winning Fiona MacCarthy gives us a richly detailed portrait of Morris's complex character for the first time, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, tapestry, and books; his role as a poet, novelist and translator; on his psychology and his emotional life; his frenetic activities as polemicist and reformer; and his remarkable circle of friends, literary, artistic and political, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. It is a masterpiece of biographical art.

Contemporary Crafts explores craft practices in both North America and Britain, revealing an astonishingly rich and diverse picture of artisanal work today. The book ranges across both urban and rural crafts and analyses how the country/city dichotomy creates differing approaches, practices and objects. Analysed in the context of their environment and its localised history, crafted objects are shown to embody or critique particular urban/rural myths and traditions. Covering both traditional and cutting-edge crafts from the small-scale domestic to large outdoor works, Contemporary Crafts demonstrates how craftspeople today are responding to the changing creative contexts of culture and history.

C.F.A. Voysey (1857-1941) was an architect-designer who advocated honest and thorough design, and championed high standards of craftsmanship applied only to the finest materials. The resulting objects-simple yet elegant, often enhanced by beautiful and symbolic decoration-were considered revolutionary in their time and continue to enchant audiences today. The first substantial monograph to be published in 20 years, this comprehensive book focuses on Voysey as a designer of furniture, metalwork and textiles, providing a new analysis of his characteristic motifs and designs. It draws on the greatest public and private collections of his work to give a complete and fully illustrated account of Voysey's output and his vision for domestic life at the turn of the twentieth century. Original drawings and plans, archive photography and images of a vast selection of surviving objects are brought together here in a fresh examination of the Arts and Crafts pioneer. The authors' extensive new research documents the personal and professional relationships that enabled Voysey to become a great and prolific designer. The book draws together new information on how he ran his business; how he promoted, exhibited and sold his work; who his clients were; who was responsible for manufacturing his designs; and what a Voysey house and interior looked like.

Artisans of Israel is a very special book on crafts. Author Lynn Holstein is in search of a national identity in the artisanry of the still young country - and she finds it in the unifying pursuit for innovation. Forty artists, including Jews, Muslims and Christians, tell their stories and show in five different trades how emancipation can be promoted through creativity. Working with one's hands stands unfailingly at the centre of this reflection. From the hybrid of cultural and religious backgrounds emerges a unique compilation that brings together the fields of metalwork and jewellery, ceramics, textiles, paper and wood. This compilation portrays a sensitive and inspiring portrait of Israel and its inhabitants. This book accompanies an exhibition at The Open Museum, Tefen (IL), in January 2018. Text in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

If ceramics, glass, and metals are inextricably linked to earth and fire, textiles are arguably linked with wind and water. In truth, craft practices are all deeply connected to the elements and to nature. Seven distinguished writers and thinkers living in the Nordic region endeavour to flesh out concepts such as material interaction and material agency, Posthumanism, site-responsiveness, and symbiotic thinking in the field of crafts. How do artists explore the potential of materials and the four natural elements? What does a human-material interaction look like, and how might one approach a material, not from the position of a master but from that of a collaborator? Features essays by Randi Grov Berger, Nicolas Cheng, Camilla Groth, Jessica Hemmings, Jenni Nurmenniemi, AEsa Sigurjonsdottir and Nina Woehlk. Text in English and Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic, and Northern Sami.

Miss Kate Cranston opened four Glasgow Tea Rooms at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th, including the famous Willow Tea Rooms. Ahead of her time, Miss Cranston ensured that her Rea Rooms were designed and furnished by talented young artists like Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Miss Cranston: Patron of Charles Rennie Mackintosh was first published in 1999 and is long out of print. It is being reissued to mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This new edition has some rewriting and updating; it is in a larger format; it now has around 60 colour+black&white photographs and illustrations.

Documents on Contemporary Crafts is a book series published by Norwegian Crafts in collaboration with Arnoldsche Art Publishers. The series provides a critical reflection of contemporary crafts in a wider context and in doing so asks questions about the ties between contemporary craft, fine art and design, thus helping to redefine the concept of crafts as such. The five volumes discuss such topics as skills, materiality, curating, collecting, perception and New Materialism. The more than thirty contributors range from leading craft theorists, such as Jorunn Veiteberg, Glenn Adamson and Liesbeth den Besten, via academics outside the craft tradition, such as Roger L. Kneebone, professor of surgical education, Trevor Marchand, professor of social anthropology, and Margaret Wasz, consultant psychological therapist, to emerging voices like Sarah R. Gilbert, Marianne Zamecznik and Stephen Knott. No. 1: Museum for Skills. Skills are essential to the crafts discourse. Yet in an art world that for the last 50 years has become increasingly focused on conceptual strategies, we have seen the tendencies of deskilling and outsourcing. In Museum for Skills, the contributors analyse the current situation for skills by drawing on experience from the fields of brain research, surgery and anthropology. No. 2: Materiality Matters. If materiality is a quality-related concept in both contemporary crafts and contemporary art, are we talking about the same notion? Or is there a fundamental difference between, on one hand, a maker's confidence in his or her materials, and on the other, a contemporary artist's use and adaption of a given material? No. 3: Crafting Exhibitions. Curatorial discourse has been an increasingly important aspect of contemporary art. The curator took on a new role as the 'author' of the exhibition. Crafting Exhibitions introduces some of the processes that go into making an exhibition, from developing concepts to the physical realisation. The contributors offer different approaches to exhibitions. No. 4: On Collecting. Collections make up an important part of the contemporary arts and crafts infrastructure. Collectors and museums help improve the financial situation of artists. Additionally, to be included in the 'right' collection or museum can give an artist a high level of recognition and preserves the art works for the future. On Collecting offers insights into collecting from different perspectives and sheds light on some of the structures that determine the 'collectability' of works of art. No. 5: Material Perceptions. Contemporary craft objects can be perceived for instance, as works of art in ceramics, glass, textile, metal and wood, or as functional, handmade and everyday objects. Material Perceptions investigates contemporary crafts as representations of reality that do not rely on the concept of autonomy, unravelling the dualism between aesthetic objects and everyday things. Norwegian Crafts is a non-profit organisation founded by the Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts in 2012. Norwegian Crafts initiates and produces exhibitions in collaboration with Norwegian and international institutions, curators and artists. The aim is to strengthen the position of contemporary craft from Norway internationally, contribute to the development of the artists' careers and stimulate further exchange across national borders in the field of crafts.