The Arts among the Handicrafts

the Arts and Crafts Movement in Victoria 1889-1929

Caroline Miley

• Publisher: St Lawrence Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780648853329
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art

The Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19 th century in England, inspired by William Morris, is well-known, but its presence in Australia has been largely overlooked. In this ground-breaking and scholarly study of the Australian Arts and Crafts Movement Dr Miley reveals a network of influences and practitioners in Victoria who were well-versed in the British and American movements, and who created a distinctively Australian expression of its principles. This included an emphasis on the use of native materials and flora and fauna, and building design adapted to Australian conditions, producing works of great charm and utility. It was dedicated to improving the quality and status of craft work and, as the architect Alan Walker urged, "the world at large should be taught that art may be looked for outside the space circumscribed by a gilt frame."

The book outlines the theory of the movement, its formation and leaders, its societies and publications, and examines the work produced by craftspeople in every medium, much described here for the first time. A chapter is devoted to the role of women, who were to the fore here as in Britain, and includes extensive analysis of the First Australian Exhibition Women's Work of 1907, regarded at the time as the first great national endeavour since Federation. Biographies of the leading exponents and a series of Appendices complete this valuable resource.

1
Introduction

In an open space in Royal Parade, Parkville stands the chapel of Trinity College, a small, plain, red brick building, with a beautiful spire and massive west window. Entering, one is struck by the profuse but restrained ornament — iron altar rails with stylised gilded leaves, carved wooden possums and bandicoots, wooden friezes of native plants, and stained glass images of early English saints. In the chancel, a portrait in copper repoussé adorns the wall.¹

Such buildings and decorations, Arts and Crafts in influence, are not common in Victoria, but are numerous enough to raise questions about their nature and origins. This book is intended to examine the existence and nature of such artefacts, and how they came into being. Trinity College chapel is an example of this body of work. It was designed by Alexander North, a Yorkshire architect who emigrated to Australia in the 1880s. He brought with him knowledge of the Arts and Crafts movement, then growing towards the height of its power in England. He was one of many who helped sow the seeds in Australia of the most influential movement in art and design of the late nineteenth century.

The Arts and Crafts movement originated in Britain in the mid 19th century. Writers such as Thomas Carlyle had drawn attention to what they saw as the lack of spirituality in the Britain of their day compared with its more Christian past of the Middle Ages. In the same mood, and dissatisfied with the eclecticism and poor design of post Industrial Revolution artefacts, the architect Augustus Welby Pugin propagated the virtues of a Gothic revival in an attempt to re-infuse sincerity, taste and appropriateness into British architecture and design. His work influenced a whole generation of architects, and created a design environment in which the ideas of the noted art critic and social reformer, John Ruskin, could be applied to practical ends. Ruskin had turned from art to architectural criticism and then to social comment, and in his seminal work The Stones of Venice,² had identified many of the central concerns of what was to become the Arts and Crafts movement. These were put into practice by William Morris, artist, socialist and poet, who had been trained in the office of the Gothic Revival architect G.E. Street, and was friendly with prominent Pre-Raphaelite painters.

Morris believed that the bulk of furnishings available for the home were objectionable on two grounds. The first was that they were ugly and badly designed, and frequently unsuited to their purpose. The second was that their methods of manufacture gave no pleasure to the workers who made them. He considered these points to be of equal significance. A practical craftsman as well as a visionary, in 1861 he set up a firm of his own to produce applied art which would fulfil his criteria. Although the hand-made nature of the pieces tended to make them too expensive for the working classes, thus conflicting with Morris’ vision of filling the homes of ordinary people with well-designed objects, they were successful in the market-place and even more successful in influencing forward-thinking architects and designers of the day. Morris lectured and wrote extensively, which assisted in the propagation of his ideas. In later life he turned to politics, and, with Ruskin, is regarded as a major influence on the course of late nineteenth-century British socialism.

During the 1880s and 1890s, as a result of Morris’ work, a number of groups sprang up which carried on the principles of the Arts and Crafts movement. These principles included a reliance on manual and traditional methods of manufacture; a desire to express, rather than conceal the construction of an object; faithfulness to the materials of which an object is made; avoidance of meticulous finish for its own sake, and the use of appropriate motifs drawn from the natural world or from historical styles native to Britain, predominantly mediaeval and Celtic. Precious stones and metals and exotic timbers were avoided, since the value of an object should derive from the effort and delight which had been put into creating it. The arts, crafts and architecture were regarded as complementary, and were to be united wherever possible, and the movement was conspicuous for its involvement of architects and Pre-Raphaelite painters in the applied arts. Craft techniques of the Middle Ages were revived, together with the idea of the craft guilds of the period, including in the Art Workers’ Guild and C.R. Ashbee’s Guild of Handicraft, among many others. The name “Arts and Crafts” was coined by the bookbinder T.J. Cobden-Sanderson when the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society was formed in 1888. The movement affected technical and art education and extended to Scotland, particularly in the work of Baillie Scott and the group around Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It also spread to America, where it was well established by 1900 in the hands of Gustav Stickley, the Roycrofters and numerous regional groups, and subsequently influenced architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright. The movement also reached Australia, where its existence was virtually unknown until recently.³

The British and American Arts and Crafts movements have been the subject of extensive study. The massive writings of Ruskin and Morris were issued in collected editions early this century, while the publication of essays, lectures and biography was a feature of the heyday of the movement. More recently, an upsurge of interest during the 1970s has produced a considerable body of historical and critical writing. These works, taken together, offer a conspectus of approaches to the subject. They range from Gillian Naylor’s pioneering history The Arts and Crafts Movement,⁴ through monographs such as Alan Crawford’s C. R. Ashbee: Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist,⁵ and James D. Kornwolf’s M.H. Baillie Scott and the Arts and Crafts Movement⁶ to the critical perspectives on aspects of the movement given in S.K. Tillyard’s The Impact of Modernism⁷ and essays in A View From the Interior,⁸ while Ruskin and Morris have become major subjects of scholarship.

No such process has occurred in Australia. This study is the first made of the movement in this country.⁹ It has neither the benefit of previous research and opinions, nor is able to adopt one area of study or a specialised point of view. An approach which takes into account as broad a range of aspects as possible therefore seems desirable.

The project of this book is to excavate and document the Arts and Crafts movement in Victoria, and, in doing so, to attempt to make sense of its writings and artefacts and evaluate their significance not only locally, but in the context of the international Arts and Crafts movement. Historical documentation of the people involved, the organizations they established and the artefacts they produced was a necessary first step. Analysis of the theoretical constructs behind the creation of these artefacts and organizations was also required. This entailed investigation of the relationship between the Australian and British movements, and how the ideas of the British movement were transmitted to, and received in, Victoria.

The Arts and Crafts movement took place throughout most of Australia. This book makes a study of the Arts and Crafts movement within one part only, the State of Victoria. One motive for undertaking the project was to make a detailed study of the movement which would as far as possible canvas every element of importance in forming a total picture. The movement in Australia was far too vast a subject to allow the necessary detail to be covered. One State was therefore chosen. Victoria was selected because preliminary research, including that carried out for the writer’s M.A. (Prelim.) on Tasmania, had indicated that Victoria was home to a very extensive local movement worthy of detailed investigation, and probably the most significant manifestation of the movement Australia-wide.

To avoid confusion between the time period and the State, the word “Victorian” is used throughout only to indicate events, persons and so on connected with the State. “Nineteenth-century” or specific dates have been used for the time period.

The following categories have been defined for the purposes of the book as being “Victorian”: persons born in Victoria or elsewhere who spent a significant portion of their working life in the State, and a limited number of Australians whose work may have taken place elsewhere, but whose writings or work were available in the State; writings published by Victorians, whether here or elsewhere, and writings by other Australians which were published or freely available in the State; books and periodicals published or freely available in the State; objects made by persons resident in the State, or, in the case of buildings, which are in the State; and events, exhibitions, organizations and societies which took place in the State.

Little is known about many of the individuals who contributed to the movement. It is therefore often difficult to categorise them definitely as devotees of Arts and Crafts. What has been done is to identify certain statements, trains of conduct and artefacts which reflect acquaintance with and at least partial adherence to the ideals of the movement, and which justify their inclusion in this study.

Because little work had previously been done on the Arts and Crafts movement in Australia, it was necessary to construct the movement from the beginning; hence the need for a multiplicity of approaches. The task is to resolve these various approaches into a synoptic view of the Victorian movement. This synoptic approach is the only one appropriate to a work which has had to be pioneering, both in that it was excavating and documenting new material, and which has also desired to provide a model for decorative arts research which will enable decorative arts history in this country to move on from largely archival histories to broader critical considerations.

Decorative arts history in Australia is in its infancy. There are few books or even articles on the history of Australian decorative arts, and there is no forum for the publication of scholarly articles on the subject. It is not as a rule taught in Australian university art history departments. As a result, there are few trained historians in this area and decorative arts history is largely left to curators in the context of specific exhibitions, or to antique dealers. The emphasis of this literature has been on historical documentation and description, and has created an enthusiasm for artefacts which has not necessarily been accompanied by a parallel interest in critique.

The bulk of Australian publications are concerned with one craft medium (most commonly ceramics), or, in the case of exhibition catalogues, with one craftworker. This specialisation has had the effect of isolating each craft from its context within the general practice of the period, and from the ebb and flow of influences, styles and theories that may be circulating around the art and craft world in general. It also, however inadvertently, gives a false picture of the influences and working environment of the craftspeople concerned, and creates artificial barriers to understanding the many craftspeople who practised in more than one medium, and the fine artists who made craft. Investigation of a movement, rather than a medium, has avoided these problems.

Bruce Kahler, in his thesis on the Chicago Arts and Crafts movement,¹⁰ refers to T.J. Cobden-Sanderson’s assertion that the British Arts and Crafts movement was “a movement in the main of ideas and not of objets-d’art”.¹¹ Kahler notes that previous American studies have tended to concentrate on the products, rather than the theories of the movement, on the basis that producing craft was “what the movement did”. His own thesis was written “assuming that what the Arts and Crafts ‘did’ was to write and speak, as well as create handcrafted art; and that, therefore, a study of the movement’s verbal documents will significantly enhance our understanding of it.”¹² The neglect of the theoretical and ideological components that Kahler identifies is also marked in Australian decorative arts history. Like Kahler’s, this book breaks away from this narrow and inhibiting approach to analyse not only the artefacts of the movement, but also its writings and the theoretical base its participants worked from. At the same time, archival research has been both necessary and valuable. This study is based on such research, and perception of both the nature and significance of the “writing and speaking” of the participants in the movement have arisen from it.

The book has been arranged so that in the first instance, the way in which the movement arrived in Australia is considered. This has been carried out through investigation of the background and training of the individuals who propagated it; its effects on technical education, especially as a means of disseminating its ideas; and the way in which it was spread to a wider audience through the print media. This gives some idea of varying attitudes to the movement in the community at large, while identifying significant individuals and institutions. The theoretical basis of the local movement is then analysed, first in terms of local knowledge of and attitudes to the leaders of the British movement, and then by looking at the themes which constituted the Arts and Crafts discourse in Victoria. A separate chapter has been set aside at this point to establish the considerable rôle of women in the movement. The organizations set up to advance Arts and Crafts ideals are then discussed, together with the patronage of the movement and analysis of its broader membership and changing aims. Finally, the work produced by the movement is examined on a craft-by-craft basis.

Insofar as the existence of the Arts and Crafts movement in Australia has been acknowledged at all, it has often been thought of as merely a pale imitation of the British movement. Lack of detailed study has led to misattribution of artefacts produced under its influence, as well as to a failure to appreciate its significance in the history of Australian decorative arts. Critical assessment of the Australian movement should also lead to a greater understanding of the ramifications of the Arts and Crafts movement internationally. It will also be argued that the best of the work produced here was fine, and worthy of consideration within a global context.

The book offers an investigation of the origins of what is today called “studio craft” in Australia, a substantial reason in itself for studying the movement. The transfer of the Arts and Crafts movement from Britain to Australia and its reception here is also of interest as an example of a process which has frequently occurred in the art history of this country. The Arts and Crafts movement has often been seen as a reaction to the condition of post-Industrial Revolution England. Today, when the second wave of the Industrial Revolution is in progress, with the automation, rather than the mechanization of the factories, the ideology of Ruskin and Morris seems ever more relevant.

A fundamental practical difficulty in the study of the Arts and Crafts movement is the shortage of contemporary material. The records of the Arts and Crafts Societies and the T-Square Club are all lost, as are the written records — diaries, memoirs, letters — of most participants. The reconstruction of the movement has therefore been carried out largely through publications of the period — newspapers and journals. This has inherent limitations, including the fact that some important periodicals did not exist for the whole of the period under consideration. The cessation of publication of the Building, Engineering and Mining Journal in 1905, for example, removed the most comprehensive source of architect-related material. The late date of establishment of Art and Architecture (1904) is similarly unfortunate.

There are also limitations on collections of relevant artefacts. In Victoria there is no decorative arts museum,¹³ and although the National Gallery and some regional galleries collect decorative arts,¹⁴ little local work was acquired at the time of its production. Again, a degree of reconstruction has been possible through contemporary illustrated journals, combined with the study of artefacts in public collections, and discovery of those in private hands.

Late nineteenth-century and Edwardian architecture in Australia has not been popular with architectural historians,¹⁵ because it falls between what have commonly been perceived in the past to be the two main phases of interest in Australian architecture, colonial building and twentieth-century modernism.¹⁶ As a result, architecture of the period has tended to be badly regarded, both on account of its era and its ornamental tendencies. Architects of the time have either been overlooked completely, or, if too important for that, like Robert Haddon and Harold Desbrowe-Annear, enrolled as proto-modernists of some kind.¹⁷ Detached from their context, they have conventionally been seen as isolated individuals rather than as part of a movement. There are, of course, exceptions to this approach,¹⁸ and the situation is beginning to change, partly as a result of recent public interest in the domestic architecture of the Federation period.¹⁹ At the same time, the immense mass of articles and discussions which the architectural journals contain, and which almost single-handedly constitute the late 19th century discourse on Australian architecture and the decorative arts, has never been documented, let alone analysed.²⁰ This study makes extensive use of such neglected material in its attempt to give a representative view of the ideas and achievements of these architects by viewing them in the environment they worked in, in the context of a broad group of their fellows, with whom they shared certain aims, and indeed within an international stream of thought.

Architectural histories naturally concentrate on buildings. Art and craft work undertaken by architects is allotted a secondary place, if considered at all. In this study, conversely, buildings are not considered in themselves, but only the decorative schemes associated with them. Ideally, the buildings would have been considered together with the craft work, but analysis of Arts and Crafts architecture in Victoria is a task of the same magnitude as examining the craft work, and requires a separate study.

Although of late women’s history has become a major field of study, little work has been done on women in the arts generally, and less specifically on craftswomen. Janine Burke’s volume is the only book devoted to Australian women artists²¹ in general, with Caroline Ambrus’ dictionary of women artists.²² Both of these works display the general art historical lack of interest in the crafts, so that both craftswomen and the craft work of women artists are excluded. This often results in an erroneous impression of the achievement of individual artists, and obscures the overlap between the art and craft spheres. May Vale is a good example. In her day she was regarded highly as a premier enameller, and less importantly as a painter; she is now thought of almost exclusively as a painter. An attempt to straighten this record is one of the reasons for the separate chapter h...