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.
Thomas Cooper is HR Woudhuysen Junior Research Fellow in Material Culture at Lincoln College, OxfordImogen Hart is a Lecturer in the History of Art at Oxford Brookes University
Introduction – Thomas Cooper and Imogen Hart1 Morris’s materials: A study in indigo – Sarah Mead Leonard2 The making and meaning of the Morris family albums: A queer intervention in Arts and Crafts scholarship – Thomas Cooper3 Re-mediation and ‘local’ Islamic art in the British Arts and Crafts movement – Sara Choudhrey4 Chinese ceramics and British art pottery – Charlotte Ashby and Naomi Brookes5 ‘Of the racial influence in design’: Race, evolution and (re)production in the English Arts and Crafts movement – Imogen Hart6 Craftivism as a strategy for inclusive development in independence India: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Elizabeth Bayley Willis – Adhitya Dhanapal7 Carceral craft: Chinese exclusion and the paperwork of the Golden Venture detainees – Marie Lo8 Crafting motif: Indigenous textile design and the contemporary Arts and Crafts industries – Emma C. Wingfield9 Beauty that challenges: The Burne-Jones windows at Birmingham Cathedral – Andy DelmegeBibliographyIndex