Critical histories of the Arts and Crafts movement

From indigo dyeing at William Morris’s factory to contemporary Indigenous textile weaving in Cote d’Ivoire, this book examines the complexities and contradictions of the Arts and Crafts movement, offering new critical analyses of familiar and little-known figures, practices, ideologies, objects and sites grounded in innovative methodologies. Critical histories of the Arts and Crafts movement situates the movement within contemporary theoretical and political debates. Critically reassessing the historiography, the book considers the Arts and Crafts movement’s relationship to histories of design reform, Orientalism, religion, racial theory, colonialism, immigration and global trade. Contributors re-evaluate artists and theorists who have acquired canonical status in the scholarship, including William and May Morris, Walter Crane and Edward Burne-Jones, while also bringing to centre stage a diverse range of makers and voices, including Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Mary Frances Vivian Lobb and Vali Coulibaly. Alongside printed and woven textiles, ceramics and stained glass, they examine media and practices that remain underexamined in previous histories of the movement, such as paperwork, drawing, photography and scrapbooking. Chapters provoke reflections on the complex legacies of the Arts and Crafts movement in different contexts, from craftivism and nation-building in post-Independence India, through carceral craft made by Chinese immigrants in the US, to a West African contemporary handweaving craft industry making goods for a global market. Together, these histories broaden the methodological, geographical and chronological scope of the field and offer new analyses of Arts and Crafts practitioners, ideologies, practices, objects and sites. The book welcomes nuanced, complex and contradictory readings of the Arts and Crafts movement, whose importance within the heritage and tourism industries makes it a crucial topic for fresh research and innovative approaches. The Arts and Crafts movement has long been hailed for the radical shifts it generated in artmaking and culture with its critique of the conditions of labour, design reforms, association with socialist politics, provision of new opportunities for women artists, and alignment with early green thought. Yet despite numerous publications on the Arts and Crafts movement, conventional narratives remain celebratory and critically underdeveloped. Examining the complexities and contradictions of the movement, this book offers new critical analyses of Arts and Crafts figures, principles, practices, objects and sites grounded in innovative methodologies. Drawing on recent work in LGBTQ+ studies, critical race studies and eco-art history, the book reconsiders the radicalism and legacies of the movement. Reframing the movement’s contested canonical, chronological and geographical parameters, chapters rewrite the intertwined histories of the Arts and Crafts movement and contexts of cultural identity, ethnography, race, empire, nation building, transnational exchange and globalised markets.

Pagina's: 260, Hardcover, Manchester University Press