September/October 1984 RAIN Page 5 Eight-room cement house, published in The Craftsman in 1911 fFROM. More Craftsman Homes) Stickley advocated built-in furniture, so that once you move into a house you can begin living there. In the introduction to The Craftsman: An Anthology (edited by Barry Sanders, 1978, 328 pp., $9.95 from: Peregrine Smith, PO Box 667, Layton, UT 84041), Barry Sanders writes: “For Stickley, honest work was done with the hands, in the arts and crafts, in education and farming. He tried to integrate the hand, the heart, and the head in his 'peaceful revolution,' the Arts and Crafts Movement. And he tried to educate others with his work and through his monthly magazine. The Craftsman. For a time Stickley was effective. But aesthetics in contemporary America have disintegrated since then: everything from our formica and naugahyde furniture to our cheesebox architecture—in short, most of our throw-away, disposable culture dates from the close of Gustav Stickley's workshops, and the death of his magazine. The Craftsman." The anthology contains a selection of excellent articles from The Craftsman. Ultimately, the Arts and Crafts movement couldn't endure without the revolution that Morris had envisioned in News from Nowhere. The cost of materials and craftsmanship forced its adherents to work mainly for wealthy customers to support themselves. (This paradoxical situation still exists today for many artisans who rely on their craft for a livelihood.) An interesting account of the Arts and Crafts movement is Peter Davey's Architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement (1980, 224 pp., $30 cloth from: Rizzoli International Publications, 712 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10019). Davey argues that "the Arts and Crafts belief in quality and individualness again seems relevant. The Arts and Crafts integration of work and leisure could be a basis for a humane future." The Arts and Crafts practitioners never lost sight of the ideal; William Lethaby stated that "what I mean by art... is not the affair of a few but of everybody." Davey writes, "The Arts and Crafts people knew that quality of life depends on all five senses, and that it is to do with the experience of making and using artifacts. To improve quality, work and leisure, instead of being separated into different compartments as they were by the Industrial Revolution, should be more related to each other. Thinking and making should be brought closer together." Davey's book also includes a useful, semi-annotated bibliography. He gives a more critical view of the Modern Movement, which placed its faith in machines and succeeded the Arts and Crafts movement, than does Gillian Naylor in The Arts and Crafts Movement (1971, 208 pp., $10.95 from: MIT Press, 28 Carleton Street, Cambridge, MA 02142). Naylor focuses on the crafts, but largely ignores architecture, so this book is a fine companion to the Davey book, though its tone is academic. 'There have always been indifferent or poor craftsmen who made inferior objects, but we may be living in the first period in history in which goods that can be well made are not.' For an overview of Arts and Crafts activity (focusing on crafts) in the U.S., see The Arts and Crafts Movement in America 1876-1916, edited by Robert Judson Clark (1972, 190 pp., $14.50 from: Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NJ 08540), an exhibit catalogue with informative captions and commentary. The objects in this book reveal that Americans borrowed from American Indian motifs and were influenced by Japanese design.
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