|
notes
for piece on
antimodernsim under construction 1-10-08
The Impact
of the
term Modern,
and its Cognates -- Antimodern,
Modernization, Modernism,
Premodern, and
Modernity -- upon Woodworking --
Overview of
Modern and Its Cognates:
Modern, a
borrowed term, has a meaning can be deceptive or
misleading. In earlier connotations, modern referred to contemporary,
that is,
something that came into existence recently. (More
correctly contemporary is used
to mean ?of the same period?, including
specific past
periods, in the
past, rather than right
now.) Historians
follow
a convention of contrasting
ancient, medieval
(middle), and modern historical periods. Premodern is what lexicographers
call a retronym,
needing its meaning on the later understanding Modern.
|
Retronym
is a term for labels of concepts and other words coined after an
event has occurred.
Nonetheless,
even that term, i.e., retronym,
is under discussion: as a term, is it the most appropriate term
to precisely
describe historical events. Examples of retronyms are ?Renaissance,?
?Scientific Revolution,? ?Holocaust?, and so on. All these
terms were coined by
scholars to describe events that took place long after the events
themselves
took place.
Evidently the term is the coinage of Frank
Mankiewicz, whom old-timers will remember as an aide to Robert Kennedy and campaign manager for George McGovern.
This definition of retronym seems to be the most
accepted:
"retronym (jargon) ? A term invented
to distinguish a subclass of things from new members of the superclass,
where the distinction was previously not necessary, since the old
subclass had been all there was of the superclass. For example, the
retronyms `snail mail' and `paper mail' were coined by those for whom
`mail' was likely to mean electronic mail. While the English language
in general has a few retronyms (whole milk, snow skiing, acoustic
guitar), hacker jargon is necessarily (at points capriciously so) rich
in retronyms, e.g. plaintext, natural language, impact printer and
eyeball search."
Not unexpectedly, William Safire has weighed in on this
issue as well: "That's a retronym, a phrase with a modifier fixing
a meaning to a noun that needed no modifier before: the shift to night
baseball created day baseball, just as the invention of the electric
guitar required us to call the old-fashioned instrument an acoustic
guitar."
Examples of Retronymic Terms:
The Holocaust
-- so labeled in 1954 -- refers to the genocide of European Jews by the
Nazi Germans in World War II, 1939-1945.
Epistemology
was given its label by the philosopher, James
Frederick Ferrier in the 19th century, but the concept traces back
to the ancient world.
Even Concept
itself does not appear as a label until the 18th century, even though
the notion of concepts, like epistemology, traces back to the ancient
world. Naturally, there are many other examples that can be cited.
Note however, that
currently the term employed to designate such usage, i.e., a term is
coined for
human behavior ?after the fact,? is called a ?retronymic? term.
In
an earlier part of my life, I conducted research on Xenophobia and Nativism:
Xenophobia, as a concept, evidently
was coined in ca.
1906, and used in the popular vocablulary ever since. For
example, in
1922,
scholars such as George M. Stephenson, a professor of History at the
University
of Minnesota, were using ?xenophobia? as a
concept to describe human behavior of the past, specifically
behavior associated with the framing of the US Constitution. Likewise,
in 1989,
the constitutional historian Michael Cronin projects ?xenophobic?
behavior on
the framers of the Constitution when he claims that they are motivated
by
?xenophobic? sentiments when they are considering the ?qualifications?
of US
Presidents.
Nativism, in contrast to
Xenophobia, has a much different history. Nativism sprung up in public
discourse as a term describing ?nativisitic? sentiment among the US
population
about the immigration of foreigners to the US.
|
Modernization
created mass production, which meant a slow death of the long-revered
master craftsmen-apprenticeship programs, responsible for the
construction of handmade furniture, collectively a national
treasure.
Modernization
includes electrification, for example, which stimulated the
creation of
fractional horsepower motors and scaled down stationary power tools for
homeworkshops. but it also changed room lighting, in a
significant way, leading to revisions in interior decoration styles,
which inevitably led to new styles of furniture, producing the
conditions the led to changes in architecture and furniture design,
generally identified as Modernism.
Modernism, modernistic
are cover terms for movements or styles that depart from
traditional or classical modes in furniture, art, architecture, etc.
Also these terms can mean something that belongs to the present
time or is especially characteristic of it. Modernism
connotes up-to-dateness and novelty, to contrast with
things long-accepted, still the choice of conservatives.
(Dictionaries that I consulted note that -- in this special sense --
modernistic may be preferred to modernism, but more often modernistic
carries a contemptuous suggestion of the ephemerally novel, say like
"pet rocks".)
Modernity
is the quality or condition of being modern, or in effect, an attitude
of modernness of character or style.
Modernity has
three levels of meaning: the current,
the new, and the transient. In the concept of
modernity, specifically, all three of these
levels of meaning refer to the importance ascribed to the
present.
Modernity, then,
imprints the Present with the
qualities that make it different from the Past.We can also
describe Modernity as a break with tradition,
that is, an attitude that inclines toward rejecting the inheritance of
the past.
Modernity,
Octavio Paz (1914-1998) -- Mexican writer, poet, and
diplomat, and -- won the 1990 Nobel Prize winner, says,
is, culturally, exclusively a Western
concept, one that has no equivalent in other civilizations.
The
reason modernity is exclusive to the West derives from our unique
view of Time. For the West, time is "linear, irreversible, and
progressive".
In other
non-Western cultures and other civilizations
base time on a static concept?the timeless time of primitive
civilizations, for
whom the past was the archetype of time, the model for the present and
the
future ? or a cyclical one ? such as that of classical antiquity by
which the
distant past represented an ideal that would return at some time in the
future.
For medieval
humanity earthly time was no more than a preparation for the time
of eternity, so that the concrete course of history was only of
secondary
importance.
It was during the
Renaissance that the idea began to gain currency
that history contained a course of development that could be influenced
in a
certain direction. The humanists wanted to revive the ideal of
classical
antiquity and to approximate it ever more closely.
This endeavor,
however, was
not devoid of paradoxes. In the famous seventeenth-century Querelle des
Anciens
et des Modernes 3 the question was raised whether the "Moderns" could
not rival or even surpass the "Ancients" in their attempts to achieve
the highest ideal of art.
The main result
of this discussion was that the
cyclical model was definitively replaced by a progressive model that
viewed
every age as unique and unrepeatable and as an advance on the
achievements of
preceding periods.
Salon des Refuses
Sources: Octavio Paz, The Children of the
Mire: Modern
Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde Cambridge,MA:
Harvard University
Press, 1974, page 23; Hilde Heynen, Architecture and
Modernity: A Critique Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1998, Chapter 1
Antimodern is
the revolt against
modernization. Led by such people as the architect, William L Price,
and the publisher and furniture manufacturer, Gustav Stickley,
antimodern ?
Defining These Terms Historically
As
catchwords of particular kinds of change, variations on the term modern need
scrutiny.
Modern: Introduced into English
around 1500 AD, originally, modern
meant "existing now", but the meaning later shifted to include
"of the present and recent times".
Used to date anything not medieval nor ancient, modern
is anything the bears the marks of a period nearer in time than another
or -- less clearly -- anything new, fresh, or up-to-date. Modern is sometimes confusing when
we use it to date things or
events which have taken place, come into existence, or developed in
times close to the present.
It comes
directly from Late Latin,
"modernus", by way of Middle
French "moderne". The term, "modern" -- its connotation dates back to
the Renaissance -- itself assumes an opposition, that is,
something older or "used", out of which the modern grew.
Examples from Merriam-Webster
Dictionary of Synonyms: "modern surgical techniques", "the modern novel" , "ancient galleys,
medieval ships
and modern dreadnaughts" or
"the date of the discovery of America, 1492,is often used arbitrarily
as the beginning of modern
history".
Many
times, the dividing line that divides what is modern and what is
too far distant in time to be called modern
is supplied by the
context. Example: "the Victorian era gave way to the modern age of
machinery".
More examples:
|
Tempo
is to be issued by Oliver Jenkins, a gentle
bard of Danvers,
Massachusetts.
It is to be a magazine devoted to modern poetry. Just what
Mr.
Jenkins's definition of "modern"
may be, remains to be seen.
Source: The
Bookman: A Review of Books and Life 53 1921 page 282
The ornate
mansions of a bygone era mingle with more modern concepts of
architecture.
Source: C E Wright, "Seaside
Sight-Seeing in East Florida", New
York Times 1-17-1954, page XX9
The authors [Ruskin, Morris,
Hubbard, Stickley] of nineteenth-century
concepts of
"reform," "beauty," and "goodness" were so
convincing that their ideas are now often conflated with
"progressive," "modern," or
"high quality."
Source: Robert Edwards, "Byrdcliffe
Furniture: Imagination Versus Reality,"
in Nancy Green et al., Byrdcliffe: An American Arts
and Crafts Colony Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, page
75.
|
In
woodworking, modern
can have both positive and negative connotations. For some -- those who
appreciate the modernization of woodworking machinery --
modern means injecting technological advances into
machines, to make them operate more efficiently, more rapidly, more
accurately, more powerfully [under construction]
For example, the
most famous book on woodworking machines is John Richards A Treatise on the Construction and Operation of Wood-working
Machines (London:
Spon, 1872)
has "modern" -- highlighted on the lower left of the image -- on the
title-page:
In
the passage below, Richards employs "modern" in reference to his notes
on the "invention" of the "liquid bearing", implying that it is an
example of a technological advance.
Bramah ... invented
the liquid bearing ... [and] performed the
vertical adjustment of his cutter spindles by the same means, pumping
in the liquid at will, and securing a very precise, as well as
positive, setting of his machine. This mode of adjustment does not seem
to have occurred to the modern
inventor,
and the " hydrostatic adjustment," which has so many parallels in
modern practice, may, for all the author knows, owe its origin to this
device of Bramah's, but whether it does or not, the originality of the
thing with him cannot be questioned.
Another still more
important feature of this invention was what we term conical gearing
for varying motion, now extensively employed in modern engineering practice for
regulating the feeding mechanism of lathes and other metal-cutting
machines, as well as in wood machines. ...
Source: John
Richards A
Treatise on the Construction and Operation of Wood-working Machines London:
Spon, 1872
|
Example
of Modernization: Impacts of the Power Planer and the Band Saw
The
task of dimensioning and finishing huge pieces of rough-cut timber was
revolutionized by the combination of the power-driven planer and the
band saw. Either
a stationary or a portable tool, the ?thickness? or surface planer is
designed
to (1) make the broad surfaces of a workpiece flat and smooth and (2)
an even
thickness throughout it?s length.
Historically,
according to Herman Hjorth (in Machine Woodworking Peoria, IL: Bruce
Publishing, 1937), around 1790, the
Englishman, Sir Samuel Bentham is said to have made the most remarkable
and ingenious series of inventions, which changed woodworking from a
handcraft to an industry. The most important of these was the
principle
of rotary cutting, which is used in all modern planers,
jointers,
shapers, molders, and matchers. He also invented veneer-cutting
machinery, segment circular saws, tenon cutters, boring machines, and
sharpening machines. (For
more on the emergence of rotary cutting see Appendix 6: Evolution of Woodworking's
Cutting Edges".)
These inventions were patented in the
years 1791 to 1793, and manufacture started immediately in
the London residence of Sir Samuel's more famous brother, Jeremy
Bentham. Bentham even suggested tilting
the
table or saw and fences for ripping and
crosscutting. Bentham, claims Hjorth, may rightfully be called
"the father of woodworking
machinery."
Writing in the 1890s, Manfred
Powis Bale rightly singles out the advances in rotary
cutting created by Bentham. "Foremost
among inventors woodworking machinery is Samuel Bentham".
Bentham's patents in 1791 and 1793 "are remarkable
examples of inventive
genius". Bentham's impact, claims Bale, is very "clearly
exhibited in many woodworking machines in use a century
later", in the
1890s. It astonishes us, Bale says, to consider how a patent
could be
drawn in those days -- i.e., the 1790s --, especially since the steel
needed for creating a
rigid machine was not yet available, something not developed for
another half century.
(The frames of the
machines were made of
heavy timbers bolted together and only the cutters and bearings were
made of metal. Not until about sixty years later were woodworking
machines made entirely of metal. )
Rotary
Head for Power Planers
The
rotary head of planers dates from the
William Woodworth pattern of 1828. According to Ernie Conover (American
Woodworker, Dec 1985, page
7 - not online). ?This basic patent was for planing wood by
forcing a plank under a high speed revolving cutterhead with feeding
rollers.?
More details on Woodworth and early planers are given on www.owwm.com and in Herman Hjorth?s first chapter
of Machine Woodworking 1937.
Below, in the
box, is Manfred Powis Bale's assessment of the advances in planers
introduced by Woodworth.
?Planing machines with
rotary cutters, to cut on several angles of the wood at once; veneer
cutting machine, horizontal stone saws, moulding and recessing machine,
bevel sawing machine, saw-sharpening machine, tenon-cutting by means of
circular saws, and many kinds of rotary and boring tools. ... it is my
opinion that several of these patents differ very little indeed except
in matter of detail from Bentham's ideas in 1793.
It will be gathered from this short description that the modern American Woodworth planer,
in the completeness and easy adaptability of its many details, is a
wood-working machine of the most advanced type.
Source: Manfred
Powis Bale, Woodworking
Machinery, Its Rise, Progress, and Construction London:
Crosby, Lockwood and Son, 1894 page 91
|
Source for more information: Michael
J. Ettema, "Technological Innovation and Design Economics in Furniture
Manufacture", Winterthur
Portfolio 16, No. 2/3 (Summer, 1981), pages 197-223
Modern is
employed ?
Look
at some of your great-grandmother's furniture (if you are fortunate
enough to be able to do so) and think how long it has lasted, and compare it with the cheap modern furniture after
the latter has been in use for a few years. How much of the latter
would be in existence now if it had been made when the ancestral
articles were? The durability of the old things is partly due
to the quality of the wood and its seasoning. The use of whole pieces
(instead of scraps of all kinds of stuff glued up with cheap glue), the
way the articles were put together, and the generally honest work put
into them had much to do with it.
Bear in mind in undertaking a
piece of cabinet-work that you must hold yourself to a higher standard
in the matter of accuracy of detail, in order to produce a really
satisfactory result, than is necessary for much of the other work often
done by amateurs. Many slight inaccuracies, which are of little
consequence in the rougher kinds of work, become such gaping and
conspicuous defects in cabinet-work as to detract much from the
satisfaction that should be taken in home-made articles. Remember,
then, that while it is easy to make your furniture strong, it is by no
means easy to produce close, accurate joints, smooth, true surfaces,
square, clean-cut edges, and a good, smooth finish. Choose, therefore,
simple forms, easily put together, for your early attempts; for it is
much better to make a modest and unpretentious article well than to
make an elaborate one badly.
Source: Charles G
Wheeler, Woodworking for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs New
York, G P Putnam's Sons, 1899, page 177
|
Between 1860 and 1880, the
activities -- writings and lectures -- of English designers such as Bruce J Talbert ( 1838-1881)
and Sir Charles Locke Eastlake ( 1793-1865) created
in America an interest in the modern
Gothic
styles.
Talbert's
furniture designs -- typified as "modified Gothic, adapted to modern
requirements" -- created interest, especially dining room and
library furniture: Gothic Forms Applied to Furniture, Metal Work, and
Decoration for Domestic Purposes (1868) and Examples of Ancient and Modern Furniture, Tapestries, Metal
Work, Decoration (1876).
Eastlake's Hints
on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details
(1868) introduced
a style of furniture comprising medieval designs, with
ornamentation adapted from Gothic and Japanese themes, and its
construction dependent upon technology newly available through the
power machines of the woodworking industry -- for examples of
woodworking machinery see John Richards' A Treatise on the Construction and Operation of Wood-working
Machines (London:
Spon, 1872).
For wood, cherry was the principal choice, and the pieces
are embellished with metal
and tile panels and conspicuous hardware.
(See an example of an Eastlake
table, in a Gothic design, and copied by William Price, in the Rose
Valley community shops.)
A
marked feature of this style was the rectangular form of the
structure, as it
followed the tradition of the medieval joiner which required a
framework of verticals
and horizontals (posts and rails) joined with mortise and tenon. Glue
was never
used. Interest in this style was roused by the publication in 1868 of Eastlake's book, HINTS ON HOUSEHOLD TASTE, which
enjoyed
wide popularity both in England
and in America.
Eastlake, who designed some furniture, none of which has apparently
survived,
bitterly attacks in his book the predominance of the curve in
mid-Victorian
furniture: "Our modern sofas and chairs aspire to elegance, not with
gaily
embossed silk or delicate inlay of wood, but simply because there is
not a
straight line in their composition. . . . The tendency of the present
age of
upholstery is to run into curves. Chairs are invariably curved in such
a manner
as to insure the greatest amount of ugliness with the least possible
comfort.
The backs of sideboards are curved in the most senseless and
extravagant manner;
the legs of cabinets are curved, and become in consequence
constructively
weak; drawing room tables are curved in every
direction?perpendicularly and
horizontally?and are therefore inconvenient to sit at, and always
rickety. This
detestable ornamentation is called shaping."
The
furniture illustrated and designed by Eastlake was a vaguely
traditional rural style based on Early English forms, somewhat
Elizabethan and
somewhat early Jacobean, uncomfortable but marked by sound joinery. It
was
simple, rectangular and practically without ornament, with a rough
Gothic
quality which no doubt prompted J. Moyr Smith to write later in 1887:
"perhaps in decoration it was too simple . . . and in construction too
much like a packing case." Regardless, it became fashionable and such
was
the influence of his book, for he was regarded as the chief theorist of
the Art
movement, that furniture produced in this manner is frequently called Eastlake. In America the furniture trade produced a
debased
Gothic which was far different from Eastlake's
illustrations (520, 521) .
It was too eagerly seized upon by the
newly-arisen machine-equipped shops, and such tastefulness as the
style
originally possessed was lost in the subsequent distortions
] The reception of Eastlake's design priciples inspired
American furniture manufacturers to produce
"modern" Gothic-inspired furniture designs. (Between 1872 and
1883, American publishers issued seven editions.) Factory
knockoffs, that is, adaptations of the Eastlake "style" but without the
spirit of his designs, shows that Eastlake's impact [principles of
structural integrity and "honest" construction] continued for decades:
for example, the way Gustav
Stickley's employs such fitments as butterfly joints on the back of a
settle of about 1902 (no.
204) goes back a design in Hints on Household Taste (fig. 1). Likewise,
Eastlake's gothic library
table -- see box below -- was re-created by an craftsman working at the
Rose Valley, PA, shop of William
Price.
|
MODERN
FURNITURE.
Pages 82- 83
? which contains
these and many other curious examples of mediaeval
furniture
was completed in the year 1409, and probably the tables date from
the same period, when it was customary to sit at only one side of
the dining-table,
while
servants waited at the other. For this reason the tables are narrow,
and do not afford accommodation for sitters at each end. With
a little alteration they might, however, be easily
adapted for modern use, and in any case they may serve
as good examples of a design which is not only
picturesque in effect, but practical and workmanlike as far as
construction is concerned.
Without
both these qualities all furniture is, in an
artistic sense, worthless. And they are precisely the qualities
which have gradually come to be disregarded
in modern manufacture. Examine the framing of a fashionable
sofa, and you will find it has been put together in such a manner
as to conceal as far as possible the principle of its
strength. Ask any artist of taste whether there is a single
object in a
London
upholsterer's shop that be would care to paint as a study of " still
life," and he would
tell you, not one. We must not infer from this that such objects are
unpaintable simply because they are new. A few years' wear will soon
fade silk or damask down to what might be a pleasant gradation of tint
if the material is originally
of a good and noble color. A few years' use would soon invest our
chairs and tables with that sort of interest which age alone can give,
if their designs were originally
artistic.
But, unfortunately,
our modern furniture does not become picturesque with
time,? it only grows shabby.
The ladies like it best when it comes like a new toy from the
shop, fresh with recent varnish and untarnished gilding. And
they are right, for in this transient prettiness rests the
single merit which it possesses.
Some years
ago, when our chairs and tables were " hand-polished," the English
housewife took a certain pride
in their sheen, which was produced by a vast amount of
manual labor on the part of footmen or housemaids. The
present
system of
French-polishing, or literally varnishing, furniture is
destructive of all
artistic effect in its appearance ?.
Source: Charles Locke Eastlake Hints
on Household Taste in Furniture, Upholstery, and Other Details
|
NEO-GOTHIC
REVIVAL PERIOD 1840 - 1860
Constructed
at the Rose Valley community in the early 1900s, and designed by the
driving force of the operation, Philadelphia architect, William
Lightfoot Price (? - 1916) ...
 Said to be the first
truly "Victorian" style in England -- arriving around 1830. The Neo-gothic Revival Period, as the label
suggests, adapted Gothic architectural form and ornament to early 19th
Century furniture forms. Neo-Gothic design -- styles
popular in the medieval era -- features dark woods,
pointed arches, trefoils (a shape similar to three-leaf clover) and
other Gothic cathedral carvings, intentionally an echo of
dedicated medieval craftsman, and said to imply moral
character. (The architects, Augustus Pugin and his father, used
Gothic motifs in designing London?s Houses of Parliament.
English designers looked to the Middle Ages
for inspiration, and these influences found their way to America
. Gothic style was marked by the use of trefoils,
quatrefoils, crockets and pinnacles, cluster columns, and pointed
arches. The wood used are rosewood, walnut and oak.
The
material culture historian, Robert Edwards, an archivist for the
Willcox collection at the Whitehead Estate in Delaware, helps us
capture the anti-modernist spirit held by proponents, such as
William L Price -- founder of the Rose Valley community -- who
advocated a return to handcraftsmanship, away from the ugliness
and poor quality of mass produced furniture of the era:
[Price] thinks the
table embodies many Arts and Crafts
ideas: the Gothic style is supposed to remind one of days when
handcraftsmanship was the only option. The dark stain also alludes to
ancient
oak?not as the tree grew, but as antique furniture would look hundreds
of years
after it was made. You would also have to read to know the table was
made in an
Arts and Crafts community founded by Price and it is held together with
joinery
that Price deemed honest because it
wasn't dependent on modern factory
technology.
Source:
Robert Edwards, "Byrdcliffe Furniture: Imagination Versus Reality,"
in Nancy Green et al., Byrdcliffe: An American Arts
and Crafts Colony Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004, page
75.
|
As
I'll note below, essentially this is an antimodernist -- read,
"antimachine" -- sentiment, and was a driving force in encouraging many
men to engage in making their own furniture.
Below,
for example, is a fragment of statement by Horace Traubel, prominent
figure in the organization of the Rose Valley -- in the first issue
of The
Artsman: the Art That is Life -- about the principles
that underly Rose Valley's purpose. Fired up by the ideals promoted
by the
Arts and Craft movement, it
displays a strong antimachine mentality, an attitude
that prevailed among a strata of society during the peak of
the movement. (Using MSWord to prepare the passage below, I
noticed that the word MACHINE is mentioned 38 times!)
|
Rose Valley is a cross between economic revolution
and the
stock exchange. Rose
Valley
is not shutting
one door and opening another. Rose Valley connects
in the open with industrial fact. It is not a break. It is an
evolution. Rose
Valley
says: Let us go on from where we are. Rose Valley
is not altogether a dream or wholly an achievement. It is an
experiment. It is
also an act of faith. It is not willing to say what it will do. It is
only
willing to say what it is trying to do. Rose Valley
pays a first tribute to labor. Labor is the social base. Our modern
world has
quarreled with this disposition of values. And many who do not share
its
quarrel still shrink from making a concession to labor. Rose Valley
knows and acknowledges the situation.
Rose Valley is not conceived as a tribute to talk.
It is a
tribute to work. Rose
Valley
will endeavor to
prove that even under industrial conditions as they are certain things
may be
done to reestablish labor in the splendid inheritance from which it has
so long
been debarred. Our civilization has produced the MACHINE. It has not
given the MACHINE
to man. It has given man to the MACHINE. Rose Valley
sees that this adjustment has demonstrated its own inefficacy. What can
I do to
make the best use both of man and of the MACHINE? To enslave the man to
the MACHINE
is to make the worst use of both.
|
Modernism: The
use of modernism
-- as a term that designates a movement or style away from
classical or traditional modes in art,
architecture, literature, etc -- is , according to Raymond
Williams (in Keywords)
first recorded in 1929. A search for an appropriate example for the
year 1929 failed to expose an example useful for my context, however;
instead, I will use a 1938 quote from the astute critic of furniture
style history, Joseph Aronson:
|
... In
the ten years following the first imports of European modernism,
America has sampled most of the movements and manners current abroad.
Source: Entry
on "Modern Furniture", Joseph
Aronson, The
Encyclopedia of Furniture Crown Publishers, 1938,
pages 128-135.
The high culture we
have called Modernism has now
been
with us for most of this century and part of the previous one, longer
than any
other culturalism since the French began naming them back in the
eighteenth century.
Source: William R. Everdell, The
First Moderns: Profiles in the Origins of Twentieth-Century Thought
Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 1997, page 1
This beauty and its
relevance to the present were rediscovered only in the
late 1960s,
after the style languished for almost five decades, a
victim of a machine-driven modernism that ignored the contributions
of handcrafted decor.
In
fact, during the 1940s and 1950s, the Arts and Crafts
style endured a devaluation so extreme that major museums in such
important
Arts and Crafts cities as Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and St. Louis sold or gave away
noteworthy objects,
particularly ceramics. Kenneth Trapp, organizer of the Oakland Museum's
1993
California Arts and Crafts exhibition, said that these objects were
considered
oddities of little historical value or aesthetic merit.
By the 1960s,
however, the influence of modernism
diminished. The pendulum of style paused for a moment, then began
to swing
in the opposite direction, impelled perhaps by warnings that important
buildings and objects were being destroyed. The first steps of recovery
began.
In the mid-1960s, for
example, the Oakland
Museum
acquired a collection of paintings, furniture, decorative objects, and
picture
frames amassed from the 1890s to the 1940s by Arthur and Lucia
Mathews.
Likewise, the Cincinnati
Art Museum
put some of
its collection of Rookwood pottery on and An exhibition of
nineteenth-century American decorative
arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1970 had a salutary effect on
rehabilitating that century's artistic reputation. Then, in 1972, an
exhibition
titled "The Arts and
Crafts Movement in America:
1876-1916" took place at PrincetonUniversity and traveled to Chicago and Washington, D.C. The show and an accompanying
catalogue
were sparks that ignited an interest that has only grown stronger.
Other
shows followed in the 1970s. The "California
Design 1910" show and catalogue at Pasadena Art
Center
was, for example,
the first assessment of the movement within an
entire state. The 1980s
produced many more exhibits, a flood of information in books and
articles, and
fierce competition for choice objects, as well as record auction
prices and a great deal of publicity. In December of 1988, for example,
at
Christie's auction house in New York City, a successful bid of $363,000
for a
ten-foot-long sideboard announced to the world that there was such
a thing as the Arts and Crafts movement in America
and
that it had produced unique and desirable objects.
Today,
the Craftsman style has resumed its place as part of
a permanent language of decoration. Period furniture and objects are
still
available through a number of dealers and auction houses. Reproductions
of
furniture, lighting, textiles, and wallpaper are now widely offered by
a
variety of companies.
Source: Barbara Mayer In
the Arts and Crafts Style San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993
pages 21-23
Pleasing proportions,
beautiful wood and simple lines have made Arts and Crafts
furniture
a favorite with furniture makers and an informed public. These days,
the rest of the world is also taking an interest. The style that stands
midway between the uncompromising lines of early modernism
and the wild eclecticism of today's art furniture has become popular
enough to be featured in the pages of the L. L. Bean catalog and in the
showrooms of North Carolina-based production factories as well as in
woodworkers' booths at crafts fairs. It goes by several names: Mission,
Stickley, Craftsman, as well as the all-encompassing Arts and Crafts.
With
so many of the turn-of-the-century originals widely available in
antiques shops, today's craftsmen are updating the style by lightening
its scale and hue, broadening its design motifs and introducing needed
new forms such as computer furniture, oversize beds, coffee tables and
electric light fixtures. ...
Source:
Barbara Mayer "Thoroughly Modern Morris" in In the
Craftsman Style: Building Furniture by the Arts and Crafts Tradition Newtown,
CT: Taunton Press, 2001, page 29
|
Ge nerally
"modernism" or, "the modern movement", is
considered the
comprehensive term for a movement -- international in scope -- that
arose in the poetry, fiction, drama, music, painting, architecture, and
other arts of the West, from roughly 1850, with an impact that -- for
some
-- continues.
Modernism is considered to have reached
its
peak just before or soon after World War I, and lasted at an intense
level at least into the 1930s.
[must note impact of modernist exhibition 1925]
Still others say
that some uncertainty exists about whether it still persists,
and
a subsequent age of style has begun; e.g., postmodernism.
The furniture
designs of William Price have been discussed in the
context of the Arts and Crafts movement. This helps greatly to define
the movement in general but adds little to an understanding of Price's
furniture in particular.
A progressive thinker, Price would have been
drawn to the philosophy of the movement but the furniture and woodwork
designs emanating from his Philadelphia office before he established
Rose Valley were exactly the same as those [hand]made during the short
time
the Rose Valley shops were producing (1901-6). Most converts, like
Gustav Stickley, found the Arts and Crafts movement and then made
furniture to fit the philosophy. Price made the philosophy fit his
furniture.
He was already using the best grades of
quartered white oak
for the hand-carved woodwork in his domestic interiors. Oak happened
to be the wood of the medieval era, the greatest flowering of
handcraft. Quartered oak of lesser quality had been, since
the 1890s,
the overwhelming choice of huge factories such as those in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, that spewed out furniture of every style, including
Arts and Crafts or "Mission."
The anti-industrial Arts and Crafts
movement would eventually be remembered by the pejorative Mission oak
simply because other woods were so little used in the machine-made
furniture industry until the oak supply was seriously depleted by 1915.
Price also finished the
oak without varnish so that the wood's texture
would remain evident as Ruskin had recommended.... [H]is
foray into Arts and Crafts philosophy ...
illustrate[s] why he insisted over
and over again on calling the Rose
Valley community, which included the furniture shops
wherever they
physically stood, an
experiment. The old mill provided a laboratory
where Price could try out ideas about how furniture should be
constructed and carved. Meanwhile the architectural office downtown had
to continue to function regardless of the results of the Rose Valley
experiment. Furniture was still being ordered on Rose Valley shops
stationery as late as 1913 although by then the process was fragmented.
Price designed a table for a Mrs. Scott, the design was sent to
Bissegger to be rendered, Bissegger's drawing was sent to Mrs. Scott
for approval, and then Mrs. Scott sent drawings and wood to John Maene
who, at this point, had his shop back in the city. Drawings from the
architectural office dated 1921 (five years after Price's death) show a
Colonial revival dressing table, a
step back from the modern furniture
designs for the Traymore Hotel. Had
Price lived longer he would
have
continued to be interested in modernism. As it happened
the style he
left behind in Rose Valley survived for several decades as "executive
Tudor." Architects like Mellor, Meigs and Howe designed furnishings in
the antique styles of the Arts and Crafts movement's revered medieval.
Handmade for use in country houses built across America, this furniture
often met and sometimes exceeded Price's philosophical requirements
but, if it was intended to express anything, it was only how much such
craftsmanship cost...
Source:
Robert Edwards "When You Next Look at a Chair": The Arts and Crafts
Furniture of William L. Price", in George E Thomas, William
L. Price: Arts and
Crafts to Modern Design Princeton:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2000, pages 319-330.
|
|
As a dissertation for his PhD, Miles David Samson wrote
"German-American
Dialogues and the Modern movement Before the 'Design Migration',
1910-1933.
Almost all objects and
traditions of high culture in the United
States -- regardless of the
vitality they achieve in
their American context -- have originated in at least their formal
aspects in Europe.
As evidence in support of his
claim, Samson cites architecture and furniture design: From the late
nineteenth
century to the
Depression, Samson says, the story of American architecture and
furniture design is
the
story of the borrowing of styles.
However, we must attach
an irony to any claim of "borrowing of
styles". From the 1880s to the 1930s the most esteemed styles
in
American architecture were post-Renaissance ones which expressed to
affluent Americans the power of their money and/or their
discovery of the refinements of
European culture. [need book on motives for Americans touring europe in
late nineteenth century.]
From the 1880s to the 1930s the most esteemed styles in
American architecture were post-Renaissance ones ? ie, colonial revival
-- which
expressed the power of American money and the American capitalist's
discovery
of the refinements of European culture. [German-American Dialogues
and the Modern Movement Before the "design Migration," 1910-1933 1988 -
Harvard
According to David Miles Samson, [German-American Dialogues
and the Modern Movement Before the "design Migration," 1910-1933, 1988
-- Harvard university] the American architect, Frank
Lloyd Wright,
was the most original and
important architect in the world between 1895 and 1920, but his most
appreciative audiences were not in America but in Holland and Germany.
Thus when Walter
Gropius and
his fellow German modernists migrated
to America
in 1937-39,
American nativists complained that
these
German émigré designers merely advanced the revolutionary
ideas of Wright, his master
Louis
Sullivan, and innovative
American engineering, which ?
according to Samson (pages 32-33) -- were, until, overlooked
in America.
Although American architects
always had the resources to
learn about radical European architecture, a self-congratulatory mood
within
the profession kept most practitioners and critics from feeling the
need to
similate them.
As evidence, Samson argues that
foreign design/architectural
periodicals featured photographs of American industrial buildings,
which in America
were publicized
in engineering, business or scientific magazines, but
rarely in journals dedicated to architecture.
Here, too, some questions are
raised: What kind of relation
to modernity did Wright, Sullivan and industrial builders suggest that
made
them avant-garde, and why did this modernity, if it did not change
American
architecture in 1900, become such a force for modernism by 1930?
It is also the story of the
rise of American architecture to
a profession, with consequences for the self-definition of architects
that
lessened their ability to profit from their own innovations, while
making them
sensitive about their failure to do so.
It is also the story of
provincials who wanted to be world-class
artists while remaining loyal Americans, at a time when both world
currents of
art and the national mood went against the cultural role architects had
taken
upon themselves.
German modernist achievements
became more relevant when
American architects saw that the possibilities suggested by the
progressives in
the late nineteenth century remained as problems.
The crisis of modernity finally
struck American designers
where they had reason to feel most secure, their mastery of technical
processes
and their facility with the representational elements of traditional
architecture .
Joseph
Aronson and Paul Frankl (scroll down) , each a
critic contemporary to the modern
period, offer definitions of modernism.
How
Popular Homecraft Defined Modernism
for Amateur Woodworkers in the 1930s:
John
Gerald Shea exhibits his "take" on modernism in this Popular
Homecraft article, December, 1937, pages 443-445.
The box below includes the image of the coffee table and the first
three paragraphs of Shea's article. Look especially at the highlighted
portions of Shea's text, because -- for me at least -- they reveal some
insight into the "politics" of modernistic design in woodworker's
magazines.
In
describing his "Modern Nursery Suite", Popular
Homecraft May-June, 1938, author I W Streng echoes
some of Shea's claims -- but does not elaborate on the finer points --
Streng's text is included in second box below.
Likewise,
in the opening paragraph for his project, "Modern Bedside Stand", , L
Kumerov, Popular Homecraft,
November, 1937, also shows economy of description, simply limiting his
characterization of this style to "very much in vogue today",
and that it possesses "simplicity of line and form".
(More text by Kumerov reprinted as part of image, below.)
F
G Knowles the "Lazy-Rest Porch Furniture", reminiscent of the Art Deco
style, popular in the 1920s and 1930s decades. The editors at
Popular Homecraft claim
Knowles is a "designer", a label not even accorded one of the
magazine's regular contributors,
John Gerald Shea -- a nationally-recognized author of
woodworker's manuals.
The
present popularity of modern furniture comes as a
decided boon to the home craftsman, for in most
cases modern articles, constructed as they are along simple utility
lines, are easy to make. While it is generally felt
that this style is still in its infancy and will, as time
advances, obtain greater refinement and maturity, still, if
the craftsman is discriminating in this selection, he will be able to
find a variety of modern designs which are really quite graceful as
well as serviceable.
Among
such designs may be found the Modern Coffee Table;
and, while this article is identified with the new furniture,
still it possesses a number of refinements which make it eligible for
use even with the older and more dignified furniture styles.
It is an excellent utility piece, and if not used in front of a sofa as
prescribed, it may serve well as an end table beside a living room
chair.
The
theory of modern design emphasizes the necessity of complete utility
and space saving qualities to the exclusion of elaborateness of
decorative treatment. The modern
furniture designer is constantly faced with the problem of making
things practical yet simple. There must be a
purpose for every piece of wood or metal which is used. The
craftsman will then be interested in observing these principles as they
are applied in the construction of this coffee table; for, with the
exception of the feet — which are not purely modern, there is very
little waste space to be found elsewhere in its construction.
|
|
The
designer, I W Streng, characterizes the modernistic look as "straight
lines and smooth curves"
<
<
Modernist:
To
be a modernist
? which dates to 1588 ? first meant ?a person of
modern times?,
later, person who held holding modern views (for example, Jonathon
Swift's 1704 Tale
of a Tub). ?Modernistic?, as an adjective,
first recorded in 1909, is formed from
English ?modernist?. The
example
below is
out of context, but nonetheless shows that "modernist" enterd the
English vocabulary in 1909:
|
...
Is it not all
... just too "modernistic", too aggressively "vital", and
"practical", and not too merely illuminating from a
pedagogical standpoint?
Source: W.
Caldwell review of Ethics
by John Dewey; J. H. Tufts The Philosophical Review
18, No. 2 (Mar., 1909), pp. 221-229
|
Modernize, Modernizing, Modernization:
It is
often possible to distinguish modernizing and modernization from modern,
if only because (as in many such actual
programs) the former terms imply some local alteration or improvement
of what is still, basically, an old institution or system. Thus
a modernized democracy would not necessarily be
the same as
a modern democracy. Two
words with the roots in the "modern" family, modernize and modernization are
used frequently in twentieth century
discourse, come
from uses popular in eighteenth
century England.
For the English scholar,
Raymond Williams (in Keywords),
in
relation to ?institutions? (e.g., United Nations, World Health
Organization)
or? industry?,
(e.g, General Motors, Toyota),
?modernize? normally
indicates something unquestionably favorable or
desirable. Other examples along the lines of favorability are: Horace Walpole, Letters,
1748: "the rest of the house is all modernized"); spelling; Henry
Fielding, Works,
1752, 1903: "I have taken the liberty to modernize the language");
and
fashions in dress and behavior: Samuel Richardson, The History of Sir Charles Grandison 1753: "He
scruples not to modernize a little"'). From these examples we sense
a connotation that some alteration of, say, a house's
layout, justifies the use of modernize.
Modernism,
Modernist: Modernism and modernist have
become more specialized, to
particular tendencies, notably
to
the burgeoning of new designs, painting and other art, furniture, art
nouveau,
arts and crafts, Bauhaus, and writing ? too complicated to touch on ?
from the
1850s and still continues. The latter connotations, Williams claims, allow
distinctions between the modernist and the (newly) modern.
peter watson the modern mind: an intellectual history of the 20th century
2001 pages 59-60
Modernity:
As a cognate form of modern,
but often
misleading,
?modernity?
-- which dates from 1627-- is the quality or
condition of being modern, or in effect, an attitude
of modernness of character or style.
For
some thinkers as early as John
Locke (1632-1704), confronting modernity
meant more than approving or
disapproving of modernity,
either as a condition or
as a concept; instead, the onslaught of modernity, as an evolving
condition in English society in the latter half of the 17th
century, was
something that you needed to cope with.
The dates
of the
appearance in
public discourse of
the word, modernity, and John Locke's birth, are ironically
juxtaposed. Locke's birth, 1632, preceded by three years the first
record in the Oxford
English Dictionary of the use of modernity in the text of a
book,
Little doubt
exists about John Locke being one of the most influential thinkers in
the Western World. Since 1690, Locke has been the foundation of the
study of linguistics, of political and constitutional practice, of
political philosophy, of religion, of educational theory, in short, we
can argue that, today, several scholarly ?industries? are sustained by
Locke?s ideas.
While
the content of modernity is often contested, the timing of modernity
rarely is. There is a general consensus that it began in or after the
17th century. Within this broad framework, the exact point in time
varies depending on what is taken to constitute the phenomenon, or at
least most essential elements thereof. A few such variations can be
identified. To the politically-oriented, the birth of nation-state in
1648 marked the point of departure. To the scientifically-oriented, it
is the Newtonian revolution in the 1680s which heralded the beginning
of modernity. Furthermore, there are those who link the commencement of
modernity to the French Revolution in the 18th century or the
Industrial revolution between the 17th and 19th centuries. I focus in
this essay on the first two chronological marks of modernity?s
initiation by organizing the discussion primarily around a cursory
reading of the ideas of some of the most well-know European political
theorists in the ?post-enlightenment? period, starting from those with
whom the birth of the scientific method is associated.
One
relevant theme in the discourse on modernity is the
intellectually-focused attention which had been paid to human
understanding and related philosophical issues.
John Locke, a
17th century English thinker, who also wrote extensively on human
understanding, explained the process involved in ways very similar to
Ibn-Khaldun. The way ibn-Khaldun saw it: ?By thinking about ? things,
man achieves perfection in his reality and becomes pure intellect and
perceptive soul. This is the meaning of human reality.? (p. 334)
Putting
it slightly differently, he also argued thus in the language of
empiricists: ?Man is distinguished from the animals by his ability to
perceive universals, which are things abstracted from the sensibilia.
Man is enabled to do this by virtue of the fact that his imagination
obtains, from individual objects perceived by the senses and which
agree with each other, a picture conforming to all these individual
objects.? (p. 382)
Ibn-Khaldun (p. 334) divided human intellect
into three types: discerning intellect, experimental intellect and
speculative intellect, respectively giving us sensory knowledge,
experimental knowledge (which resembles the type of knowledge which is
acquired through the inductive method) and speculative or philosophical
knowledge, ?which provides the knowledge, of an object beyond sense
perception, without any practical activity (going with it).? The latter
one can be easily related to what John Locke (1997: 120-122) had later
called reflection, a form of knowledge acquired through the inner
senses. In general, based on the foregoing argument and on further
points to be made later in the essay, this author shares Schmidt?s
(1967: 24) conclusion: ?If there is a positive philosophy, based on the
ascertainable facts of science, Ibn-Khaldun is, in spite of his Muslim
orthodoxy, a philosopher as much as August Comte, Thomas Buckle, or
Herbert Spencer.? Ibn-Khaldun may, of course, not be the first one to
be fascinated with human understanding and philosophy, but he was
undoubtedly one of the first to systematically elaborate the concept
with a great degree of abstraction. Let us narrow our focus and look
more closely at some of the indications of a clear overlap, or at least
relationship, between the ideas of Ibn-Khaldun and Europe?s modern
political thinkers randomly selected by the author.
|
Intellectual
historians tell us that the meaning of modernity has
been a central question in Western society for over two
centuries. For Louis Menand (The
Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
New York:
Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2001, Chapter 14), modernity
is the condition a society reaches when life is no longer conceived as
cyclical. Moreover, it is a term that injects a defineitely 20th
century idea, the subconscious, into public discourse.
For example, the
year 1905 is destined to play a very specific role in
the history of human consciousness. Several writers lay out how
Einstein, Freud and the Fauves
revolutionized the modern world in the spheres of physics,
psychoanalysis and painting. Thérèse Delpech, Savage Century,
William R Everdell, The First Moderns,
Peter Watson, The
Modern Mind, 2001, Peter Gay, Modernism, 2007
1905 is known
for three revolutionary events.
First, in
physics, Albert
Einstein's paper on the theory of special relativity.This paper
and of
three others, by him, helped launch an intellectual and
scientific revolution comparable to
Newton?s three centuries earlier.
Second, in art, 1905 saw the first exhibition of the ?Fauves? in the Salon
d?automne in Paris, a show art historians point to as the beginning of
20th century art.
It happened this way: In 1905, at
the Salon d'Automne in Paris,
paintings by Matisse, Andre
Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Henri
Manguin, and Charles Camoin were exhibited in one room, a room
that also
featured a statue by Donatello, the fifteenth-century
Florentine sculptor.
The art critic, Louis
Vauxcelles, saw this arrangement -- the calm of the
statue contemplating the frenzied, flat colours and distortions on the
walls -- he wrote, 'Ah,
Donatello Chez les Fauvres.' (In French, fauve
means 'wild
beast'.) Not only did the label stick, it helped promote the
movement. Each in different ways, these artists, primarily Matisse and
Picasso, went on to become premier artists of the 20th century.
Matisse's most notorious works during that early period were other
demoiselles de modernisme ? "Woman with a Hat" and "The Green Stripe",
a
portrait of his wife. Both used colour to do violence to familiar
images, and both created scandals.
Not Picasso. Until then, he had been feeling his
way. He had a recognisable style, but the images he had painted ? of
poor acrobats and circus people ? were hardly avant-garde. They could
even be described as sentimental. His approach to art had not yet
matured; all he knew, looking around him, was that in his art he needed
to do as the other moderns were doing, as Strauss and
Schoenberg and
Matisse were doing: to shock. He saw a way ahead when he observed that
many of his friends, other artists, were visiting the `primitive art'
departments at the Louvre and in the Trocadero's Museum of Ethnography.
This was no accident. Darwin's theories were well known by now, as were
the polemics of the social Darwinists. Another influence was James
Frazer, the anthropologist who, in The Golden Bough, had collected
together in one book many of the myths and customs of different races.
And on top of it all, there was the scramble for Africa and other
empires. All of this produced a fashion for the achievements and
cultures of the remoter regions of `darkness' in the world ? in
particular the South Pacific and Africa. In Paris, friends of Picasso
started buying masks and African and Pacific statuettes from
bric-a-brac dealers. None were more taken by this art than Matisse and
Derain. In fact, as Matisse himself said, `On the Rue de Rennes, I
often passed the shop of Pere Sauvage. There were Negro statuettes in
his window. I was struck by their character, their purity of line. It
was as fine as Egyptian art. So I bought one and showed
Third, in
psychoanlaysis, 1905
witnessed the publication of one of the most important and certainly
the most provocative of the works of Sigmund Freud, whose thought was
to dominate the century to such an extent that it is not an
exaggeration to speak of the century of the unconscious.
One of the
many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the
audience. What Watson states here relates to the notion of
democratization. Ever since Impressionism -- see page on Salon des Refuses
-- finally won the right to exhibit, a democratization of what is
considered "art" had begun. The "refuses"
finally won! (Salon
des Refuses briefly defined.)
In furniture design, a similar effect was
taking place
Music,
painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so
'easy' as they had been. Schoenberg, like Freud, Klimt, Oskar
Kokoschka, Otto Weininger, Hofmannsthal, and Schnitzler, believed in
the instincts, expressionism, subjectivism.49
[fn 49, refers to pp 215-219 in joel davis, alternate realities --
requested 1-3-08; Philip G Nord Impressionists and Politics: Art
and Democracy in the Nineteenth Century London: Routledge,
2000. requested
1-3-08]
For those who
were willing to join the ride, it was exhilarating. For those who
weren't, there was really nowhere to turn and go forward. And like it
or not, Schoenberg had found a way forward after Wagner. The French
composer Claude Debussy once remarked that Wagner's music was 'a
beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.' No one realised that
more than Schoenberg.
If Salome and Elektra and Pierrot's
Columbine are the founding females of modernism, they were soon
followed by five equally sensuous, shadowy, disturbing sisters in a
canvas produced by Picasso in 1907. No less than Strauss's women, Pablo
Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was an attack on all previous ideas
of art, self-consciously shocking, crude but compelling.
Premodern:
In
a premodern society,
where the purpose of life is
understood to be the reproduction of the customs and practices of the
group, and where people are expected to follow the life path their
parents followed, the ends of life are given at the beginning of life.
People know what their life's task is, and they know when it has been
completed.
In modern societies,
the reproduction of custom is no longer
understood to be one of the chief purposes of existence, and the ends
of life are not thought to be given; they are thought to be discovered
or created. Individuals are not expected to follow the life path of
their parents, and the future of the society is not thought to be
dictated entirely by its past.
Modern
societies do not simply repeat
and extend themselves; they change in unforeseeable directions, and the
individual's contribution to these changes is unspecifiable in advance.
To devote yourself to the business of preserving and reproducing the
culture of your group is to risk one of the most terrible fates in
modern societies, obsolescence.
Antimodern:
Note:
antimodernism = anti-machine
|
Should arts
and crafts furniture be made with power
machines?
12-23-07
This is a work in progress, with
what falls below the major outline.
(Adapted from tanya
harrod
the
crafts in britain
in the 20th century 1999, pages 15 ff.)
This
was a debate in Britain
around
1916, and relates to the legacy of William Morris. Morris died in 1896. It
was a debate,
too, that surfaced in America.
Theme is
set by Ruskin
This
anti-machine position for creating
"art" such as furniture was, in truth, more the legacy of John
Ruskin. Ruskin ? idealistic promoter of an arts and
crafts movement -- blustered
in the 1849 Seven Lamps of
Architecture
"machine work is bad, it is dishonest." His great sweeping attack on
nineteenth-century taste and modes of
production in The Nature of Gothic,
a chapter in the second
volume of The Stones of Venice
(1853), introduced a Luddism which
was fierce, symbolic and undiscriminating.
Ruskin's identification of the social misery which he saw behind the
production
of the fittings and furnishings of a middle-class drawing room stood
unchallenged, until
the 1960s when,
belatedly ? by a century -- the designer David Pye
doggedly
plowed through Ruskin?s text,
demonstrating its illogicalities and the limitations of Ruskin's
understanding
of manufacturing processes.11[11.
See David Pye, The
Nature and Art of
Workmanship, Cambridge
University
Press 1968,
Chapter 10.]
Ruskin?s
values reiterated by Morris
Morris
is famous for observing about the impact of the machine
:
Art will
die out of civilization, if the system
lasts. That in itself does me to carry with it the condemnation of the
whole system.
|
The
shadow of William Morris upon early 20th
century crafts was, evidently,
imposing. Morris, in the form of Morris & Company,
set up a business that was financially sound, that was supported by the
skills of trade craftsmen,
and which by the time of his death was well known throughout Europe and
the
United States. (Harrod. P ?)
Morris's various houses are well
documented and continued to be important extensions of his
design vision after his death.
But Morris?
own position is hypocritical
Morris also stands
in a problematic relationship
to the Arts and Crafts Movement, especially in its late phase, roughly
the decade and a half before the First World War. This was partly
because the Movement first flourished in the 1880s, when his | | |
