Exhibition Guide 5
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Craft and Community The Ministry of the Beautiful Designer-artists willingly shared their ideals. For many people going to church provided their only John Duncan painted Celtic murals in a regular and also closest contact with Arts and Crafts. student residence in the capital and led Stained glass, metalwork and woodwork and more were the Old Edinburgh School of Art. On Iona, seen and used week after week, not all glass was made Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie worked with in Scotland. Londoner Christopher Whall’s work, which the island’s rich medieval legacy to produce explored the authenticity of old work and the full modern modern work in metalwork and leather. potential of the material, had a profound impact on Douglas Strachan, who would become Scotland’s leading In June 1908 artists and craftworkers glass artist in the first half of the twentieth century. brought history to life at the grand Scottish National Pageant of Allegory, Myth and Strachan contributed to the Thistle Chapel, designed by History at Saughton Park. National history Robert Lorimer to serve Scotland’s order of chivalry. It was was also celebrated in epic tapestries woven created in fifteenth-century Gothic style in 1909-11 and by resettled Morris company weavers at is a jewel of the movement. In the bleak years following the Dovecot Studio for the homes of the the First World War, the beauty of Arts and Crafts was fourth Marquess of Bute. The 1900s also needed more than ever. Lorimer assembled a second saw the development of the Scottish Guild team of artists and craftworkers to create the Scottish of Handicraft, started as an association of National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle (1924-27). craftworkers in 1898. Reformed as a labour 4 co-partnership, it moved to Stirling to ‘assume The care and conservation of the built environment a more truly Scottish character’. Henry Taylor overlapped with new Arts and Crafts work. Today Wyse, a key member of the restructured building preservation and the pleasures of making Guild, would soon settle in Edinburgh and studio craft form the legacy of a remarkable time. turn to ceramic decoration, a craft shared by the Bough Studio under Elizabeth Amour. The most famous art community was Cover Image: David Gauld, formed in the town of Kirkcudbright in Music (detail), 1889. Hunterian Museum and and Art Hand, Heart and Soul: south-west Scotland. Jessie M King Gallery, University of Glasgow. The Arts and Crafts Movement and her husband E A Taylor moved in Scotland has been grant 1. Phoebe Anna Traquair, there in 1915, attracting others aided by the Esmée Fairbairn The Red Cross Knight, 1906. Foundation through their to join them. King organised City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries. Regional Museums Initiative. pageants, painted murals in 2. James Cromar Watt, schools and lectured to Portrait of a Girl, c1900. the Scottish Women’s Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum Collection City Art Centre, Edinburgh Rural Industries, a new 3. William Lethaby, 30 June to 23 September 2007 The Arts and Designs for Melsetter House, 1898. post-war organisation Orkney Archives, The Orkney Library and Crafts Movement concerned with the Archive, Macrae & Robertson Collection. Millennium Galleries, Sheffield in Scotland encouragement of 4. Alexander Ritchie, Firescreen, 1900s. 25 October to 20 January 2008 community and craft. Private Collection (on Press CD) Exhibition Guide 5. Elizabeth Amour, (Bough Studio) Dish (detail), c.1925-6. Aberdeen Art Gallery Private Collection. 14 June to 23 August 2008 5 North Britain Raising the Standard Art and Craft Houses for Art L overs Hand, Heart and Soul looks Scotland had contributed to the early Early Arts and Crafts practice throughout Towards 1890 art drew ever closer to at Arts and Crafts practice formulation of the movement’s ideas Britain was often committed to improving craft. Several of the painters known as across Scotland between through the writings of Thomas Carlyle and the lot of society. Scotland was no the ‘Glasgow Boys’, including David Gauld, 1880 and 1939. Arranged John Ruskin. Carlyle had condemned the exception. In the 1880s new philanthropic turned to stained glass design. In addition, through six thematic sections, spiritual emptiness of the new ‘mechanical societies employed local artists and art architects and designers associated with the exhibition provides new age’. Ruskin, a Victorian writer with Scots students to decorate public buildings Glasgow School of Art also practised insight into art and culture ancestry, emphasised the beauty of handcraft such as chapels and churches, hospitals crafts such as metalworking. Mackintosh, a century ago. More than and its pleasure for both maker and user. and orphanages, designers to lead craft a friend of Gauld, was one of these. 300 items are on display classes, and volunteers to distribute many - jewellery and metalwork, As part of Great Britain Scotland enjoyed a thousands of plants and seeds to schools. Under Newbery’s headship, classes for furniture, ceramics and cultural dialogue with England. The Ayrshire women increased dramatically in Glasgow glass, textiles, architectural company of Alexander Morton & Co. wove Soon trades halls, Liberal clubs and and gave them the chance to earn an designs, and more. cloth for William Morris in the late 1870s, restaurants from Aberdeen to Glasgow also independent living. A new embroidery and the Morris company made windows received decorative, figurative work. The most department at the School was led by The story of the Arts and for Scottish churches. Morris’s earliest exotic schemes were made for refreshment Newbery’s wife Jessie Crafts movement in Scotland biographer, the classicist J W Mackail, rooms for the leisured middle classes. In and her assistant is one of friendships, families came from Bute, and James Leatham, a Glasgow George Walton and Mackintosh Ann Macbeth. The and networks of art workers, Peterhead printer and a socialist, wrote and created artistic rooms for Miss Catherine subject became architects and designer- published a pocketbook on the great man. Cranston to be complemented later by one of the craftsmen and women all Edinburgh artist Robert Burns’s sophisticated most popular. committed to the restoration In late 1889 the ‘Edinburgh Congress’ interiors for Crawfords tea rooms. of beauty to daily life. At was held at the new Scottish National Each city heart it was a middle-class Portrait Gallery. This important meeting Design reform was also underway, particularly developed its city movement with its base was attended by most of the leading in the country’s industrial Central Belt. own collective in art schools and shared figures of the British Arts and Crafts Glasgow School of Art headmaster Francis identity. exhibitions. Part of the British movement including Morris and Walter Newbery worked closely with artists, Studio movement, Crane. Lasting professional associations architects and manufacturers. Craft ‘technical crafts such Scottish Arts and personal friendships were forged. studios’ were unveiled in 1893, leading as book art 3 and Crafts the way for a new art school building and metalwork 2 embraced Like their English counterparts, Scots designed by Mackintosh from 1896. A in Edinburgh, the modernity architects made careful studies of historic more traditionalist approach to education historic capital, often In the countryside vernacular tradition and In home furnishings colour and craftsmanship and progress British and European buildings. A number was established a decade later at the new reflected medieval or Renaissance work. At skills had often survived and a union of combined with an application of texture. but also trained in London and participated in the Edinburgh College of Art. In addition, a the same time, individual creativity was art with landscape was possible. At this Furniture was applied with handmade encouraged meetings of the Art Workers’ Guild, formed range of publications, notably those by strong, with James Cromar Watt in Aberdeen time architects were schooled in history, metalwork decoration or marquetry panels. the romance there in 1884. As English designers sent the artist-craftsman Henry Taylor Wyse, producing exquisite portraits and jewellery in particularly at Edinburgh’s national School of Appliqué work in textiles also provided a of national dreams. work to Glasgow in 1895 - to the only major widened access to creative workmanship. painted enamel. Phoebe Traquair, perhaps Applied Art under architect Robert Rowand rich layering of materials and ideas, and British Arts and Crafts exhibition mounted the most versatile of all artworkers, produced Anderson. The National Art Survey, a window glass had the magical power to in Scotland - so Charles Rennie Mackintosh, fine book art, enamels and embroideries. reference collection of measured drawings of transform an interior space. Around 1900 Robert Lorimer, Phoebe Traquair and buildings and furnishings, was the work of the garden was also seen as part of the Margaret Macdonald contributed to the Arts School bursars. Such drawings encouraged home, carrying the romance of a house and Crafts Exhibition Society in London. respect for tradition and promoted skills design into the landscape. The crafts made 1 of observation and craftsmanship. for the garden included wrought ironwork, ceramic wares and wooden furniture..