The Arts and Crafts Movement (Radio Edit)
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Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our William Morris book bags and heading back to the 19th century to learn all about the arts and crafts movement. And to help us spin this story, we have two practitioners of very different arts.

In History Corner, she's curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Whitney Antiques. She's an art historian of the material culture of the 17th to 19th centuries. You might have listened to her podcast, So What? It's a pun. It's Dr. Isabella Rosner. Welcome, Isabella. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. We're delighted to have you here.

And in Comedy Corner, she is a comedian, actor, improviser, writer and podcaster. You may know her from her podcast, Griefcast, an award-winning show. It's spin-off book, You Are Not Alone, her many TV appearances, her Weirdos Book Club podcast with lovely Sarah Pascoe, or her new children's book, The Christmas Wishtastrophe. And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes about Agrippina the Younger, Georgian Courtship. It's the wonderful Cariad Lloyd. Welcome back, Cariad. Hello. I wanted to think of a sewing pun, but I couldn't. So nice to meet you.

meet you. You're an expert in the Regency period. That's your... I'm pretty good on Georgians' Regency. No, you're very good. You're very good. But today we're in the Victorian era and even into the early 20th century. So what do you know of the arts and crafts movement? I know the arts and crafts movement. I love the arts and crafts movement. I have been to an exhibition of the arts and crafts movement. Oh,

When I was in Glasgow. Yeah. Before they had the fire at the Glasgow School of Art, I did a tour and they had an amazing exhibition there and it was incredible, like amazing chairs and tables and like proper, like the good stuff and just the building itself. Yeah. So I'm a fan. I'm a fan of the movement. Although I did, I was saying to Isabella earlier, I had a moment on the way here when I was like, oh yeah, it's William Morris. And I thought, is it?

Have I made that up? Is it William Morris or is he like Elizabethan? I googled it and it confirmed it was Elizabeth Morris. He'd love to be Elizabethan. Yeah, he would. He would love it. So, what do you know?

This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I imagine most people will have heard of the big dog of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris. His floral designs are still printed on curtains, wallpaper, notebooks, pencil cases, even on football kits. What's more, modern homeware brands like Cath Kidston owe a huge amount to the arts and crafts movement and we see the design legacy in TV shows like Grand Designs and Queer Eye. But the wider history of the movement is perhaps more hidden.

Beyond the cutesy curtains, what was arts and crafts really about? Why did traditional manufacturing methods have a resurgence in Victorian Britain? And what is a strawberry thief? Let's find out. Right, Dr Isabella, where do we start our story? I think we should

I think we should start with an overview. So the arts and crafts movement is an art movement, as you could guess, that begins sometime in the late 19th century. Nobody can agree on the exact start date. Some people put it at 1861, which is when William Moore starts getting on the scene. Other people say it doesn't really start until the 1870s or 1880. And it lasts until about the beginning of World War I.

The movement is a style of art. It's primarily domestic furnishings, and it promotes craftsmanship and aesthetic unity between all sorts of objects in the home. And those would range from textiles to furniture to ceramics to metalwork and everything in between. The name itself comes from the arts and crafts

Exhibition Society. That's a very long name for a society, I think, but okay. Not for Victorians. They loved wordiness, didn't they? So that Exhibition Society was founded in 1887 to exhibit decorative arts alongside fine arts. And there was one guy in it in particular, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, speaking of long Victorian names, who first coined the term in 1887.

William Morris is considered the head honcho. He's the daddy. He's the grand poomba in the situation. It's his ideas and view of the world that inspires so much of the movement. There is a quote by Morris in an 1877 lecture. Yeah. Do you want to read the quote for us? Yeah, he says, and he's giving this lecture in December of 1877 to the Trades Guild of Learning. And I think he summarizes. What a great shout out to the Trades Guild of Learning.

It's one of the best trades guilds. My favorite trades guild. He summarizes his feelings about kind of everything really well when he says, I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few or freedom for a few. He and the other arts and crafts people are really invested in handicraft.

and utilising really learned skills to create beautiful, pleasant, pleasing, comfortable, useful objects. So is it kind of reaction to industrialisation? Have you read the script? No! I was just thinking like that, is that where it's got like, you know, you've lost

You know, you have, oh God, my brain. What's it called? Encroachment? What's the thing they do when they get all the land off everybody? Enclosure. So you have enclosure and then you get industrialisation and you've lost all these skills, right? These amazing weaving skills and sewing skills. So is William Morris like harking back to that?

Good times. Oh boy, you should have been in the Arts and Crafts movement. I would have loved it. Yes. I love the vibe. It's all vibes. It's all vibes for me. But yeah, exactly. Like Victorian London, Victorian Britain saw a huge amount of change when it came to industrialization in good and bad ways. So in terms of the population, by 1851, the census tells us that more people live in cities than in the countryside. That's a big change. You have huge numbers of people flocking to industrial city centers, buildings,

But the conditions are bad oftentimes. People are living in slum conditions, in slum housing with overcrowding and a lack of sanitation and generally just bad living situations, lots of disease. And industrialization is good for some people, for a lot of people, in that it means that there are more affordable items available to more people.

But the actual manufacture is gnarly. We have then a movement that comes along that's reacting to the trauma of the Industrial Revolution. It is a trauma, right? Absolutely, yeah. These artists are responding in a way that feels like they're looking for escapism. And they go hunting for escapism in the past. They're interested in Elizabethan, but it's the medieval world that they're particularly drawn to. Obsessed. Nice hats. Good hats. Pointy hats.

It has hoes, good old pointy shoes as well. Sure. So they are idealizing and dreaming about this system where objects were produced in small-scale workshops rather than these large, anonymous, brutal factories. Right.

They're looking for artisan sourdough bread. They literally are the cottagecore folks of the late Victorian era. They would be happy in East London now. We should probably mention Ruskin. Do you know Ruskin? I've heard of William Ruskin. No. It's all William's to you now. Try another man's name from the period. George Ruskin? John Ruskin. John Ruskin, well done. There you go. You get there in the end. I've heard of him. He's an extraordinary figure in the 19th century. He's slightly debated these days. Philosopher?

Amongst everything else. Absolutely everything. Architect, critic, painter, writer, philosopher, poet. Oh, multi-hyphenate. And he's kind of an inspiration for the arts and crafts movement. Definitely. He's an intellectual kind of figurehead. Yes. And he thought that society would be morally better...

which is a bold move already, if art, design, and industry were reimagined along pre-industrial lines. He was like, let's just get rid of mechanization. We'd actually all be emotionally and morally better people. And he saw that the best, the most good period was the medieval period. And he said for art and design to be successful and morally uplifting, an artist needed to be involved in every single step of the artistic process. Right.

He's like a nightmare director. Yeah. Let's move on to William Morris. We've name-checked him already. I think many people would recognise a William Morris print. Yeah. Who was William Morris? Where was he educated? How did he get his start? Okay, so he was basically, as we've already discussed, the guy when it comes to the arts and crafts movement. And he's born in 1834 in Walthamstow. Oh.

to a wealthy middle-class family. His dad is a broker in the city of London. His mom comes from a bourgeois family in Worcester. He's comfortably fancy. He was an architect, a designer, a practitioner of several self-taught crafts. He taught himself how to paint, how to make furniture, how to make tapestries. He was also a really acclaimed and talented writer, a poet, a translator. He was actually offered a largely honorary but still very impressive award

Professorship of Poetry at Oxford but he turned it down. Sure we've all been there. We've all been there. You've just got too much to do. I understand. Too busy. William Morris is an interesting fella and much like the Bloomsbury group that we spoke about in our 100th episode the arts and crafts movement again is a bunch of university pals going hey I'm a bit posh and fancy like you and we are all friends and let's be arts. It's footlights. It's footlights guys. It's

Pretty wholesome because he just kind of lucked into being friends with all these people, kind of. So in 1852, he goes to Oxford. He's at Exeter College. And he really soon meets Edward Burne-Jones, who is another... You've heard of this guy, right? Big arts and crafts figure as well. He's a trainee architect after university. And between his time in Oxford and his time as a trainee architect, he is...

He's kind of surrounded by all these people who share his ideals and his ethos. And so Edward Burne-Jones is there. And then he marries Georgiana MacDonald. Edward does. And then when they get married, Georgiana Burne-Jones joins the social circle. There's also the architect Philip Webb. There's also the pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the embroidery artist and model Jane Burden. Jane Burden is the daughter of a stableman. And she is, quote unquote, discovered.

at the theater in Oxford by Rossetti and Burne-Jones. And she starts modeling for Rossetti, and then she starts modeling for Morris, and they actually end up getting married. They marry in 1859. In 1861, one of the friends, this painter named Ford Maddox Brown, suggests that... Yeah, you've heard of him, right? All these big names. He suggests that he, William Morris...

Burn Jones, Webb, Rossetti and some other folks that they establish a design firm and they do and it's called Morris Marshall Faulkner and Company and then doesn't roll off the tongue does not but then by 1875 it's Morris and Company and that's what we still have today but what I love is that they simply called it the firm oh the

The boys are in the firm. They were doing everything from furniture to embroideries, jewellery, carpets, woven textiles, tapestries, metal and glassware and wall hangings. Like if you wanted it, you could get it from them. They were the Ikea of their day. Except it was four guys who were also socialists. Yes, and they had amazing skills. And the meatballs were delicious. Yeah, maybe they also made great meatballs. I don't know. You know, they were really mindful about

So they actually started hiring and training as apprentices boys from the industrial home for destitute boys on Euston Road in central London. But it wasn't just boys. I mean, women were involved in Morris and Company from the very beginning. Decorative tiles were being painted by Lucy and Kate Faulkner, who were sisters of Charles Faulkner, who was one of the other members of the firm. And then Georgiana Byrne-Jones, she was involved in the tiles as well. And like every woman in Morris's family was involved in the embroidery. Yeah.

So his wife, Jane, embroidering. His sister-in-law, Elizabeth or Bessie Burden, embroidering. His two daughters, May and Jenny, embroidering. It was a whole family affair. Yeah.

They were involved. His daughter's like, Dad, I was thinking about accountancy. No! Get your needle! Your arts and crafts! Okay, sorry. Luckily for him, one of them loved it. Oh, yeah. One of them, yeah. Well, I don't know as much about Jenny because she had epilepsy, so she was just, you know, she was ill a lot of the time, but Mae Morris, she was a keen embroidery bean. Amazing. Carrie, we're used to artists being useless at the basic. Yeah, kind of falling apart.

and some money men having to come in and be like, we'll sort it out, you idiots. No, this goes really well. They expand into bigger premises near Wimbledon. Is that better? Yeah, Merton Abbey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's in 1881. I'm going to be an agent provocateur here, Isabella, because as a historian, I'm going to have to say, one of the reasons the company flourishes is because of the Industrial Revolution. Yeah. Right? Oh, good point. I mean, come on. I mean, they're rejecting it. Put that in your tapestry and weave it for us. Yeah.

I know I'm being annoying, but we have to be true. The Industrial Revolution creates a middle class. It creates wealth that you can have a house that you want a tapestry for. Right. Yeah, they're reacting against it and they're also benefiting from it. Because by the 1860s and 70s, there is a lot more wealth than there was before. So by one estimate, the average income per head of household doubles between 1850 and 1900. Wow.

And the middle class triples in size. So, yeah, more people with more money meant that there was more interest in buying more objects. They have really, I think, very admirable ideas and goals. But their process, this movement is not helping or affecting the people who are most hurt.

by the terrible working conditions of Victorian England. Yeah. And that's always the case, right? You can have grand lofty ambitions, but the economics are always going to underpin does this work or not. There's another artist we should mention, actually, because she's slightly different in that she went outside. Gertrude Jekyll. Gertrude Jekyll. Who did interior, but she also did gardens. Yeah, she's most well known for her garden design. But she also was doing all sorts of interiors, including designing embroidery and doing the embroidery herself. Wow.

And she had a great name, Gertrude Jekyll. It's a great name. Yeah, I mean, there's quite a lot of good names in this episode. But she really encapsulates this arts and crafts interest in blending together outdoor space and indoor space. What's interesting about Morris, he's obviously self-taught, as we've heard, all these things he's picking up. He's also getting other people to teach themselves. He's inspiring others. We know of an artist called William de Morgan. He teaches himself ceramics. He has a minor mishap.

Just a little one. Do you want to guess what happens? Does he blow up a kiln? Yes, he does. It's every Ceramics' nightmare. But not even just the kiln, like his whole workshop. Oh my God. It's like his house is on fire. He lives though. He survives. And then he just moves and...

He's like, see ya. He moves to Cheney Walk. Very fancy. Love that for him. And he then actually has success with his various experimentations and he becomes renowned for his stained glass windows and his tiles with Islamic decoration and his furniture. William Morris...

had created a world where other craftsmen were all working together to furnish big houses and churches and stuff. He's the Beyonce of the arts and crafts movement. If he does a country album, everybody thinks, hey, maybe we can all add this influence to our genre. Yeah. Beautifully said. He is the Beyonce. I think he would love to know that he is the Beyonce. Yeah.

The thing that I find quite interesting is the arts and crafts ethos moves beyond Morris's control. You see that in music, you see that in comedy. You start a cult, you can't keep hold of it. Before you know it, they're starting their own cult. But we get a sense of an arts and crafts movement out of England into Scotland, into Wales, into Ireland, maybe internationally, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, there is...

the movement goes across the Atlantic and hits the U.S. as well via things like journals and lectures from people who are in the movement. It was going to the U.S. after World War I. It was going to Japan. It had implications. It kind of had ripples everywhere. And

It brought up all of this desire to preserve handicrafts generally. So there were all of these movements within Britain that were founded in this period to keep craftsmanship alive. There was the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1887. There was the Art Workers Guild in 1884. And they were a debating society where people just sat and debated about things.

The Principles of Art and Design. Yes, please. Very hardcore. I'm there. Sign me up. I would not be there because the debate makes me stressed. I hate confrontation, but you can go for me. You can tell me about it after. There was the Fine Needlework Association, which was an organization founded around the same time to give employment to... I really hope the Fine Needlework Association and what was the other one you said? The aesthetics met on the street. It was like, duh-duh.

Yeah. With their like needles. The other side's got like knitting needles. There were so many like embroidery societies. There was like the Royal Embroidery Society. There was the Royal School of Needlework. Like it's, there's the Fine Needlework Association, but these people. I mean, I like the Fine Needlework Association, but they're no Royal Needlework Association. Like their work is fine.

Fine. There's also another amazing, we've had some amazing names. We've already had Thomas Cobden Sanderson who gave us the phrase arts and crafts movement. But now I have to present to you Miss Eglantine Jebb. Wow. Seems like a name you got in like a name generator. I think, you know what?

why are there no Eglitines anymore? Bring it back. Bring us, bring back Eggy. So Mrs. Eglintine Jebb is the, Eggy Jebb. Oh, I love Eggy Jebb. Eggy Jebb. She sets up the Home Arts and Industries Association. And they're doing like largely great stuff as well. So they're also set, like with that, the Home Arts and Industries Association, they are setting up handicraft classes in cities and villages. They're supporting local schools. They're,

alleviating seasonal unemployment. Unemployment is a nice word that I just made up. Unemployment. And they're basically trying to keep people out of the pub. Wow. So largely admirable, slightly in-your-face moralistic vibes going on. Well, in the Victorian times, was there anyone not...

No. Having a moral in your face vibe. Yeah. Well, so that's very well said because all of these organizations are basically founded for two reasons. One of them is this Victorian philanthropy. So they're trying to help the poor. They're trying to help the underserved in a moralistic way. And then they're also trying to preserve these handicraft skills that they're scared industrialization will destroy. Yeah. Yeah.

So we get the kind of the broadening out of the movement, the ethos beyond the arts and crafts movement of William Morris's control. It gets into Edinburgh Social Union in 1885. It's in Ireland by the 1890s. You know, it's really gone beyond his control, but in a good way. Right. It's not, you know, he's not trying to hold it. Yeah, it's kind of morphed into its own thing. Yeah, which is amazing. There's one question I suppose we should address is that all

Although there's the sort of democratic element of recruiting the boys from the School for the Destitute and trying to bring women in, all of the artists we've met so far... Amen! Well, no, we've had good, really cool, but I'd say they're of a certain class. Oh, yeah, yeah. We'll get into the women in a second.

They shop at Waitrose, I think. It's very white male middle class. Yeah, a little bit. So I'm just wondering if they walked the walk as well as talking the talk when it came to genuinely changing who could be an artist and who could buy this stuff. Is it middle class people for middle class people? I think they walked the walk as well as they could. And it did end up being middle class people making stuff for middle class people simply because of what was feasible and what was...

what the logistics were, but I think they wanted something bigger. It did have a radical philosophy, philosophy that wanted to change the landscape of industrial production and make art available to the masses. But when it comes down to it, craftsmanship, this really high quality handicraft that they were advocating for, it takes time and therefore it takes money. So not everybody could afford that finely crafted stuff. And yes, you're right. The practitioners, the people involved were usually from the middle class. Right.

But yeah, the movement did not, by and large, change the lives of people who really needed their lives changed in Victorian England. I think the movement had really good ideas, but

But the world of capitalism in which they found themselves meant that they couldn't really free themselves from that system. So a heart in the right place, I think, Cariad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it depends how much you make of your ethos being like, this is for everyone, guys. So I agree with you. They're born and working in a system which will not allow them to be free.

But it's interesting that that's also what they marketed themselves as. It's classic gentrification as well, isn't it? They move into an area that is destitute and has been ignored. They live there cheaply and then they destroy the area for people who've lived there for generations because it becomes a cool area where the artists are and then the house prices go up and then no one can afford to live there anymore. And women in the movement, were they given equal weighting? Were they given equal respect, stature? I mean, we've heard lots of...

of names, but they're often the wives of or daughters of famous men. Yeah, I would say sometimes this was an opportunity for women to be more present than in other art movements, for sure. So if I talked about all of the women, I would be here all day, but I'll give you some quick names. There was the stained glass designer Mary Lowndes. There was the metal worker Charlotte Newman, painter and enameller Edith B. Dawson, Aunt May Morris. She was not only an embroiderer, but she was a textile historian and a designer.

She actually took over the management of Morris & Company's embroidery department when she was 23. Wow. Iconic. But sexism was definitely still present. So the membership to the Art Workers Guild was only open to men. There had not been a female member of the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1922. So that's all of the years of the arts and crafts movement. And Mae Morris and people like her were pretty sick of all of that. So in 1907, she founded the Women's Guild of Arts. I should say that generally...

Yeah, yeah. Sure.

So, like, Thomas James Cobden Sanderson, our boy who comes up with the name, he and his wife actually end up sharing their surname. They, like, do the equal thing of making a joint surname Cobden Sanderson. And it's like these, I don't know, a little rare act glimpse into how some people in this movement viewed the gender divide and how things should actually be. Wow.

Wow. OK, that's positive. They can stay. Yes. How does the arts and crafts movement finish? I mean, do people just go, that's enough. Thank you. Time to tidy up, guys. Look at this mess. Come on.

on I've invented acrylic plastics yeah we need to eat on this table yeah yeah so I mean nothing changes things like war I would say so World War One comes in and the aesthetic changes massively people don't have the need or desire for any of these any of this fine craftsmanship anymore the war comes and all of a sudden it's modernism and deco and

And deco and like what comes after it. So while the arts and crafts movement technically ends at World War I here in Britain, it does have ripples in other places. And even though, yeah, the movement is definitely over, we are still in a world where we are kind of

constantly seeing arts and crafts images. So is it really over? Is it? No, I don't think it is. I think we still, as we've just said, it's very apt for modern life. Yeah. It fits. It's back in fashion. Maybe it never left. Yeah. Maybe I just wasn't paying attention. Maybe it's the friends we made along the way. The nuance window!

Time now for the nuance window. This is where Cariad and I recline in our drawing room with our embroidery samplers while Dr. Isabella has two minutes to tell us something we need to know about the arts and craft movement that we haven't heard already. So my stopwatch is ready. Take it away. Really? Your stopwatch? I'm scared. Okay. If you ever see a William Morris design, whether it be on wallpaper, an advent calendar or a fridge magnet, chances are it's probably Morris's work called Strawberry Thief.

Not only is it Morris's most beloved pattern, it's also one of the most popular textile designs ever. It's inspired everything from a novel to a video game. You can find Strawberry Thief-covered products on the shelves of John Lewis, Waitrose, M&S, Waterstones, and even Pets at Home, truly fulfilling Morris's desire to make his art accessible.

With Strawberry Thief, Morris captures the thrushes that he caught stealing fruit in his garden at Kelmscott Manor. Amidst multicolored flowers, scrolling vines, and frilly leaves are pairs of birds. Those with yellow and pink wings have their mouths agape. Are they shocked that they've been caught mid-tweet or mid-munch? The birds with blue wings are the thieves in question, looking very satisfied with plump strawberries hanging from their beaks.

Morris felt that everyone should have access to beautiful surroundings, rest, and work that inspires satisfaction and pride. And he was deliberate about what sorts of products should be made from each of his designs. In its original form back in 1883, Strawberry Thief was a printed cotton furnishing textile intended to be used for curtains, walls, or loose covers on furniture. Morris printed it using the indigo discharge method, a many centuries old technique primarily used in Asia that took an especially long time to produce.

Because of this, Strawberry Thief was one of the most expensive printed furnishings available from Morris & Company.

But the price didn't stop those little strawberry-stealing birds from becoming one of Morris' most commercially successful patterns. Clearly, the commercial success of Strawberry Thief lives on. 140-ish years after the textile was produced, some things are different, though. That pattern isn't limited to furnishing fabrics, and it isn't expensive. This is the case for other arts and crafts movement designs, too. William Morris did intend his work to be widely available, but he was also strategic and specific about how and on what objects his designs should be used.

The aesthetics of the arts and crafts movement are more accessible to us now than ever before. And I wonder what those artists and makers would think about the ubiquity of their designs, adorning everything from dog beds to forks. Beautiful. Look at that. Look at that. Two minutes and two seconds. I'm sweaty now. Wow. It is so ubiquitous. Everywhere. That it's almost gone back round to being like a bit

passé, don't I say, in Strawberry Thief? Because it's on notebooks and pens and every gift shop in every National Trust property in the country has all the Strawberry Thief you can desire. That would be my slightly snobby opinion. But ironically, it's back to mass production again, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's the sort of memification of the craft. Yeah, but...

But to be fair to you, Morris, it is a banging pattern. It's so good. And the first time I think you realise what it is, because I think we've all seen it. Do you know what I mean? And then the first time I was like, oh, I see, that's his... Like, he designed that. That's a thing. Like, rather than like, it's just a pattern.

like who you know a pattern you see every day I think you do go oh that is a really good pattern there is a reason it's so successful it's so charming isn't it yeah it's still very charming it's beautiful it is listener if after today's episode you want more Cariad Lloyd in your life you can check our episodes on Mary Wollstonecraft well craft arts and arts and Wollstonecraft

Yeah, baby. Got there in the end. Sorry. And if you want to hear more about British artistic movements, why not listen to our 100th episode on the Bloomsbury Group? And remember, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review, share the show with your friends, subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sound so you never miss an episode. But I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We had the incredible Dr Isabella Rosner from the Royal School of Needlework. Thank you, Isabella. Thank you so much for having me. I've had...

the best time. And in Comedy Corner, we had the cracking Cariad Lloyd. Thank you, Cariad. My arts and crafts are now fulfilled. Thank you. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we reupholster another neglected historical subject. But for now, I'm off to go and teach myself ceramics and maybe blow up my house. Bye!

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