Critical histories of the Arts and Crafts movement

Thomas Cooper, Imogen Hart

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781526190420
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526190413
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: History of Modern Art

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Morris’s materials: a study in indigo
• 2 The making and meaning of the Morris family albums: a queer intervention in Arts and Crafts scholarship
• 3 Re-mediation and ‘local’ Islamic art in the British Arts and Crafts movement
• 4 Chinese ceramics and British art pottery
• 5 ‘Of the racial influence in design’: race, evolution and (re)production in the English Arts and Crafts movement
• 6 Craftivism as a strategy for inclusive development in independent India: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Elizabeth Bayley Willis
• 7 Carceral craft: Chinese exclusion and the paperwork of the Golden Venture detainees
• 8 Crafting motif: Indigenous textile design and the contemporary Arts and Crafts industries
• 9 Beauty that challenges: the Burne-Jones windows at Birmingham Cathedral
• Bibliography
• Index