The Arts & Crafts movement was an artistic movement simply intended to push handicraft in the decorative arts, in an increasingly industrialized society. It took place in the final half of the 19th century, beginning in the United Kingdom but eventually being exported to America, influencing decorative artists like the furniture makers L & JG Stickley, and influencing architecture through the craftsman style, (one which is incredibly popular here in Houston!). But a core part of the Arts & Crafts movement was political. For proponents like Walter Crane or William Morris, the Arts & Crafts movement was not simply a way to increase the overall quality of goods, it was a way to free the worker and dignify labor–through craft, which was integral to their idea of socialist labor reform. This article will explore the socialist thought of William Morris specifically, and what these thoughts mean for the arts & crafts movement, in addition to understanding artistic movements as a whole.
Many of the most prolific textile designs produced through the Arts and Crafts movement belong to William Morris–the cover image Strawberry Thief is one of them. William Morris’ artistic production was incredibly varied, from textile and wallpaper designs like Strawberry Thief, to illuminated novels printed through the Kelmscott Press, all with heavy influence from his environmentalist and socialist ideas. Even Strawberry Thief is influenced by his environmentalism, being inspired, according to his daughter May Morris, (a prominent artist and socialist in her own right), by his protection and affection for the birds which would steal strawberries from his garden. I will discuss one of these works today–Useful Work versus Useless Toil published in the Hammersmith Socialist Society pamphlet, in 1893.
Useful Work is a 20-page essay which is fairly self-explanatory, it outlines what Morris considers to be useful and useless labor, and Morris’ ideal world. In my short study of him, I’ve found his work very interesting from a political and artistic view, so I encourage you to look into him and other Arts and Crafts artists if it interests you.
Useful Work versus Useless Toil provides a very clear framework–useful work is enjoyable, restful, and worthwhile, while useless toil is none of these things, it’s tiring, unending, and either produces nothing, or produces something worthless to the person making it. William Morris goes on to outline his alternative, a society dependent on useful work rather than simply producing whatever could bring profit. In his theoretical society, people would engage in the crafts which suited them best, but also have diversified responsibilities and jobs, spending some of their time in nature (Morris was also quite an environmentalist–which was another objection he had to industrialized society) and studying the arts and sciences.
Useful Work is of course also a fairly scathing review of the upper and middle classes, which form one class that “forces the other [the working class] to work for it and takes from this inferior class everything that it can take from it, and uses the wealth so taken to keep its own members in a superior position, to make them beings of a higher order than the others”.
So, why does this matter? Of course, William Morris’ idealized socialism has the clearest consequence to the Arts & Crafts movement, but it is also an important lesson in understanding any artistic or aesthetic movement–which our current society is absolutely filled with! From cottagecore to maximalism, our trends are also artistic and aesthetic movements with their own inherent politics to understand and reckon with. Because while the Arts & Crafts movement became incredibly popular in America, it didn’t hold the same political ethos as it had in the United Kingdom. For many, it was allowed to be simply aesthetic, and apolitical.
