Page 169 - Constructing Craft

Chipping Campden community. Photo: Cambridge University Press.

The community survived until 1908, when it went into liquidation. Ashbee was

initially convinced that the move to the country was responsible for the demise of
the Guild. Later, however, he added competition from machine production and from

amateurs. Both issues became the bêtes noires of the studio craft movement, but
the countryside as the ideal location for craft workshops remained an important

principle for many craftspeople. A trust replaced the Guild. In the trust deed, crafts

and craftsmanship were defined as ‘all such occupations with the hand, with or
without the assistance of machinery, as are not usually carried on in large factories

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in towns’. The inclusion of ‘machinery’ and the exclusion of ‘large factories’ in the
charter recognised Ashbee’s inclusive but controlled approach to technology.

Between the Wars

Nostalgia for life in ‘the ‘traditional’ English countryside was widespread across all

sectors of British society between the wars, based largely on the middle-class fears
that ‘cultural standards’ were being undermined in the industrialised cities. Craft was

thought to be an integral and important part of the rural economy. Those who hoped

to preserve the rural way of life employed craft to a greater or lesser extent
depending on their interest in craft per se. For example, after he returned to Britain

in 1920 from a long period of study in Japan, Bernard Leach set up a studio pottery

in St Ives in Cornwall. The type of village pottery he had seen in Japan inspired him

Constructing Craft