Are We Creating a Second Arts and Crafts Movement?

In college I was lucky enough to take a lot of art history classes.  My favorites were the History of Furniture and History of Products classes.  I loved to learn what was happening in the world to inspire craftsmen to create the products they sold.

The Arts and Crafts movement quickly became my favorite.  First off, because their stuff is beautiful.  (You can check it out on the MET Museum website here)  But as I learned the history behind the movement, I loved them more.

The Arts and Crafts period went from the late 1800s to early 1900s.  The world was caught up in the Victorian Era.  The invention of machines and factories was changing the world.  Just years before, ornate items had to be hand crafted.  They took so long that only the extremely wealthy could afford something as frivolous as a shoe horn engraved with a dancing elephant wearing a lace tutu.

Now, with factories to create items on the cheap, the Average Joe could buy himself his very own dancing elephant shoe horn (ok, so that exact item probably didn’t exist- but hopefully you get the idea.)  Sure, it was lower quality than the ones the rich guys hand, but it made him feel good to have something that looked so fancy.  Soon every Average Joe wanted a taste of frivolity, and the market place was flooded with low quality, tacky versions of what were once beautiful items.

This is the design world where the Arts and Crafts movement began.  (and of course, political and social problems, like the horrible working conditions of these factories, also drove the movement.  But I won’t go into the whole history lesson)

What I love about Arts and Crafts artists is that they don’t fit into a specific style, in fact their art varies quite a bit.  What united them was their desire to stick with quality, even if it was harder to come by.  Having watched what the machine could do to culture, they did their work by hand.  They used high quality materials, and designed their items for specific individuals. I love it.  I love that they stuck with what they loved even though the entire world was running in a completely opposite direction. (a direction that would have been MUCH easier to follow)  As a result, they created a movement that has inspired craftsmen for an entire century, and will surely continue to inspire for centuries to come.

I have often been jealous that they lived during a time of such change that they were able to stand up for what they loved in a way that could make the world a more beautiful place.  The funny thing is, I’m sure if we could talk to them today they’d tell us they had no idea they were part of the ‘Arts and Crafts Movement’.  They were just doing what they loved, and later on the history books took note.

Recently I’ve been thinking that maybe their time wasn’t so different from ours.  And that right now there is, in fact, a movement that is honoring the same principles.  Just think of sites like Etsy and Craftsy- they have exploded with success driven by those of us participating in the current Handmade Movement.   The deeper I get into our current handmade community, the more I see it.  We all have different styles, but as a whole we are choosing to take the harder road to preserve the quality of our culture.  We are not necessarily fighting the technology of the machine, like they did in the late 1800s, but we do fight against our current technology that puts unsafe chemicals on children’s toys.  We prefer to create using natural materials, rather than those created in a lab, and we are willing to take the hard way out to do it.

Our common goals go beyond just beauty.  As a group, we continue to fight horrible working conditions by supporting Fair Trade products (products made by paying fair prices to producers in 3rd world countries).

We are willing to pay more for a high quality, handmade item.   We also love to use our time simply preserving the arts and skills that have been passed down to us by our parents and grandparents.

While our styles are definitely all very different, it seems we are all fighting the same battle.  The longer I look, the more convinced I am that decades from now, we’ll look back at this time in history and realize that what we were doing was forming our own movement.  A second wind of the Arts and Crafts Movement where artists took the hard way out to help preserve the beauty of their culture.

Who knows what it will officially be called.  But it will definitely be there.  And it’s a movement I’ll be proud to have been a part of.