Critical histories of the Arts and Crafts movement

From indigo dyeing at William Morris’s factory to contemporary Indigenous textile weaving in Cote d’Ivoire, this book examines the complexities and contradictions of the Arts and Crafts movement, offering new critical analyses of familiar and little-known figures, practices, ideologies, objects and sites grounded in innovative methodologies. -- .

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. -- .