Dublin and Edinburgh were ideally placed to become important centres of the Arts and Crafts movement and its National Romantic corollary, the Celtic Revival. This profusely illustrated volume is the first major study of Arts and Crafts design in these two great capital cities. It examines shared literary, formal and ideological links and values (strongly influenced by radical figures like Patrick Geddes, W.B. Yeats and George ëAEí Russell), as well as differences, while exploring the ambivalent relationship each city enjoyed with its native cultural heritage and with England. The text is a totally revised and expanded catalogue of the acclaimed exhibition curated by the authors for the 1985 Edinburgh International Festival. Of interest to design, social and cultural historians, the book begins with a joint introduction and two essays which place the achievements of each city within their social and cultural contexts. These are followed by substantial catalogue sections which give biographical accounts of artists, designers, architects and craftsmen and women whose range of work deserves contextual and critical re-evaluation.

An insightful corrective demonstrating the Arts and Crafts Movement's indelible impact on British and American stained glass Beautifully illustrated and based on more than three decades of research, Arts & Crafts Stained Glass is the first study of how the late-19th-century Arts and Crafts Movement transformed the aesthetics and production of stained glass in Britain and America. A progressive school of artists, committed to direct involvement both in making and designing windows, emerged in the 1880s and 1890s, reinventing stained glass as a modern, expressive art form. Using innovative materials and techniques, they rejected formulaic Gothic Revivalism while seeking authentic, creative inspiration in medieval traditions. This new approach was pioneered by Christopher Whall (1849-1924), whose charismatic teaching educated a generation of talented pupils--both men and women--who produced intensely colorful and inventive stained glass, using dramatic, lyrical, and often powerfully moving design and symbolism. Peter Cormack demonstrates how women made critical contributions to the renewal of stained glass as artists and entrepreneurs, gaining meaningful equality with their male colleagues, more fully than in any other applied art. Cormack restores stained glass to its proper status as an important field of Arts and Crafts activity, with a prominent role in the movement's polemical campaigning, its public exhibitions, and its educational program. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” This quote alone from William Morris could summarise the ideology of the Arts & Crafts movement, which triggered a veritable reform in the applied arts in England. Founded by John Ruskin, then put into practice by William Morris, the Arts & Crafts movement promoted revolutionary ideas in Victorian England. In the middle of the “soulless” Industrial Era, when objects were standardised, the Arts & Crafts movement proposed a return to the aesthetic at the core of production. The work of artisans and meticulous design thus became the heart of this new ideology, which influenced styles throughout the world, translating the essential ideas of Arts & Crafts into design, architecture and painting.

This is the first book to study the revival of cottage crafts that accompanied the growing interest in an arts and crafts movement in Britain and Ireland. It focuses upon three regional craft associations, organised, sponsored, and promoted by British women: the Donegal Industrial Fund (founded 1883 by Londoner Alice Rowland Hart); the Irish Industries Association (founded 1886 by Ishbel, Countess of Aberdeen and supported by a number of Irish and British aristocrats); and Highland Home Industries (revived in 1886 by the Marchioness of Stafford, later Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland). The three examples have been selected because although like many of their counterparts, the patrons endorsed a relationship between work and morality, they also recognised the significance of consumption and market. Their patrons understood the value of spectacle, the usefulness of advertising, and the efficacy of exhibition. The emphasis is upon how and why they adopted these strategies to promote and sell cottage crafts for the benefit of rural workers. The introduction provides an overview of home arts and industries in Britain as part of the late-nineteenth century craft revival and examines the difference between the large English-based Home Arts and Industries Association and other home arts organisations in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

Women Art Workers provides a new social and cultural history of the Arts and Crafts movement which offers unprecedented insight into how women constructed alternative, creative lifestyles and disseminated the ethos of the social importance of the Arts and Crafts across new local, national, and international spheres of influence.