Week Four

Bernard Maybeck, Christian Science Church, Berkeley

I have always been smitten with the Arts and Crafts movement.  Naively, I only attributed this era to beautiful homes and buildings in the Bay Area built by Bernard Maybeck, a California architect and U.C. Berkeley professor who frequently designed in the Arts and Crafts style.  According to Meggs’, this era in art was a reaction to the “social, moral and artistic confusion of the Industrial Revolution.” Mass production during the Victorian era instigated a backlash that called for a return to good materials, beauty and quality workmanship.  Artists of this period not only produced beautiful objects of art as a reaction, but also felt an intrinsic connection and responsibility to the physical welfare of the worker. Its goal was for artistic as well as social reform.  This inspiration sparked a revival in areas such as book design, printing, and typography.

William Morris led this movement and established Kelmscott Press in 1889. This press revived hand-made books, looking back to books produced in the 1500’s for inspiration. In looking to the past, he drew inspiration from Nicolas Jenson’s Venitian roman letterforms.  Morris was ultimately responsible for creating three typefaces: Golden, (based on Nicolas Jensen), Chaucer and Troy.  His faces combined with decorative borders, frames, initials and title pages revived the hand-made book. But his aesthetic treatment of typographic pages had a larger effect on the future of book design. Morris felt that “well-designed pages affect the reader’s perception and comprehension” according Clair, Bustic-Snyder (A Typographic Workbook)  His sense of design and focus on readability profoundly affected the discipline of graphic design for years to come.

Thought leaders of this time, John Ruskin and William Morris saw themselves not only as artists but also as social reformers. I have great admiration for this sentiment. Living in Silicon Valley in particular, I see a disconnect between commerce and the artist. Industrialized zones have squeezed out all but a few communal studio spaces and costs are prohibitive.  Art teachers in lower socio-economic K-12 public schools, continue to vanish.   The irony is that high-tech innovation thrives on the creative thought process. 

Interior, Bernard Maybeck Architect

The Arts and Crafts movement was a powerful reaction that re-sets an aesthetic sensibility. I sense a similar backlash happening now, in the 21^st century, with a perception that ‘cheaper, lower quality’ commodity products are being imported from other nations. As developing nations continue to fill the void of cheap labor for developed nations, future generations will be confronted with their own response. Perhaps future Arts and Crafts type movements will continue to be the echo to this cyclical economic phenomenon.