a&c movement

  • Personalization and Arts & Crafts

    London-based researcher Tom Carden (whose work mostly focuses on pedestrian traffic flow in airport terminals) visited the International A & C show at the Victoria and Albert a few months ago and wrote a couple of paragraphs on the inconsistencies in the Arts & Crafts movement and how it could relate to the current trend toward "mass personalization" in manufacturing.

  • Arts and Crafts on Wikipedia

    Wikipedia is a fantastically immense user-edited encyclopedia. Anyone can make additions and changes, and it’s a testament to the principles of anarchism that it does not decay into chaos. Their entry on the Arts & Crafts Movement is excellent, although slanted more than a little toward the UK, the homeland of the movement. I would suggest that some of you add to the page, develop it a bit, and perhaps explore the influence that A&C has had on other parts of the world.

  • Practical Painting: the Pre-Raphaelites

    Theflowerpicker_waterhouse_bigPractical Painting showcases particular artistic techniques and movements in short illustrated essay form. This month, Denise includes a brief history of the Pre-Raphaelites, retrospectively considered part of the UK Craftsman Movement, although in fact they were more an influence upon William Morris and the still-forming Movement than part of it. Artists such as Burne Jones, DeMorgan, Waterhouse, Millais, Alma-Tadema, Rossetti, and Hunt were the central Pre-Raphaelites, and are all represented in the gallery that accompanies the article.

    pictured: Waterhouse’s Spring (The Flower Picker)

  • The Simple Home

    CakeelerBernard Maybeck patron / client Charles Keeler (a poet, playwright, inventor of religions and generally odd duck) wrote The Simple Home in 1906. It has been out of print for many years and was reprinted in 1979 by Peregrine Smith; however, you can read the original text online without the (copyrighted) Peregrine Smith introduction.

    ALL the arts are modes of expressing the One Ideal;
    but the ideal must be rooted in the soil of the real,
    the practical, the utilitarian. Thus it happens
    that architecture, the most utilitarian of the arts,
    underlies all other expressions of the ideal ; and of all
    architecture, the designing of the home brings the artist
    into closest touch with the life of man.

  • Sotheby’s: Greene & Greene

    GreenelightRich Muller notes that "many of the pieces that have been in the Huntington’s Scott gallery are now up for auction (through Sotheby’s). There are a lot of high-resolution images that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Get your checkbooks out, or at least download some of these images!  There is also information on each lot." Catalogs are US$43; the least expensive item up for auction is significantly more expensive.

    Of special note, at least to those interested in the graphic arts: some of the most expensive cuts (of such a small size, at least) ever.