Page 17 - A Family Of Artists: 360 Tour Guide to De Morgan Collection at Cannon Hall Museum

The Arts and Crafts Movement
The Arts and Crafts Movement was hugely influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Movement brought together artists, designers, architects and craftspeople who focussed on the hand-crafting of objects as a reaction against the mass production of the Victorian period. Stylistically their influences included botany and the natural world, mediaeval literature and myth, and Gothic design.
William Morris the designer, manufacturer, writer and political activist is the figure most closely associated with this movement. There were many others who were very influential including the potter William De Morgan, the painter and illustrator, Walter Crane and the architect and designer Philip Webb. The famous quote from Morris' 1882 lecture, 'Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or do not believe to be beautiful' sums up the ethos of the movement.
Just like Gertrude Spencer-Stanhope and Evelyn De Morgan many women were involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. May Morris, the daughter of William Morris, was a
very skilled needlewoman. She managed her father's embroidery workshop and in 1907 established the Women's Art Guild.
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