Page 25 - Constructing Craft

Post-Arts and Crafts

By 1920 the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain had lost much of its sense of social

reform and vision although, even at its height, these characteristics had not been
communicated widely outside the movement. But notions about craft supporting a

more fulfilling life retained currency and ideas about how craft workshops might
meet those needs had not completely disappeared. However, the professional craft

workshop model, with individual craftspeople controlling the making process from

design to completion, appeared to have succumbed to industrialisation. As these
types of workshops declined in number there had been a growth in interest in home-

based hobbies amongst the expanding middle class. In this sense, there was a

boom in handcrafts between the wars. But now the craft ideals that were a key
component of the Arts and Crafts movement could no longer be found in the

workplace environment ‒ craft was no longer associated with ‘work’ – it was now
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mostly ‘leisure’ and home based. Moreover, the objects made in the few
remaining workshops producing Arts and Crafts-inspired designs had not adapted
to changing taste. In urbanised Britain, the public embraced Modernism which, in

addition to radically altering the design of household items, may have replaced the

social goals of the Arts and Crafts Movement with a commitment to ‘harnessing
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industrialisation to the cause of social equality’.

The Movement may have lost its way and energy by the First World War, but its

influence had not completely disappeared in Britain and exhibitions in New Zealand
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helped keep the objects identified with the movement in front of the public. In
Britain the idea lingered as a confused, nostalgic dream rather than a working

movement. For instance, the British potter, Bernard Leach’s association with
Japanese ceramics saw a variation of the Arts and Crafts concept lingering in

Britain as late as 1952 and was evident when Shōji Hamada, a famous Japanese

potter, was introduced to the Arts and Crafts-inspired artistic community at Ditchling
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in Sussex. Hamada, who was working with Leach at his studio in St Ives and had
previously spent a year at Leach’s pottery in 1922-1923, was undoubtedly
comfortable in the Ditchling community because the Arts and Crafts idea had

survived much longer in Japan, becoming merged with the Mingei (Folk Crafts)

Constructing Craft