Ruskin’s Influence in Arts and Crafts

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As the Industrial Age swung into full gear toward the middle of the 19^th century, artisans of every type began reacting to the machine age with a greater appreciation for and desire to preserve the handcrafted arts of the past. “Not only art but also everyday objects, buildings, décor, everything lacked a face, and it was the realization of its lack in this particular respect which began to make the period so cruelly conscious of its anonymity.”¹ This movement in the artistic fields spanned everything from fine art and handicrafts to architecture and architectural theory. It has come to be known as the Arts and Crafts movement.

Many of the people working and writing during this period idealized the highly created ornamentation of the medieval past. In emphasizing the importance of the human mind in the creation of objects, they re-introduced many of the highly decorative elements of the gothic age in whatever medium they worked. John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a widely acclaimed architectural critic during this period and contributed greatly to the thought and expression of architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

He stated, “all cast and machine work is bad, as work … it is dishonest … the painter should grind his colors; the architect work in the mason’s yard with his men.”² Ruskin’s ideas heavily influenced the architectural designs coming out of this period as can be seen through an analysis of the architectural works of Philip Webb and William Lethaby.

Writing about the architecture of the modern age, Ruskin claimed that Classical architecture, after which much of the new designs were tending, was the architecture of slavery. He said this because this type of architecture was designed based upon strictly defined rules and calculations that could not be varied if it were to remain considered a perfect structure, which was the classical ideal. However, this format established a system in which there was no more room for creativity, serendipity, or innovation. To create architecture in this format required nothing more than dogged effort but no artistry or understanding. To be considered Christian work and therefore humane to human sensibilities, architecture must be imperfect in some way, what Ruskin termed ‘savage.’ Savage was created through a careful combination of the gothic and the concepts of changefulness.

According to Ruskin, the gothic craftsman allowed his imperfections to be represented within his art as well as worked to capture the imperfections of his subject through close observation of its natural forms. Changefulness refers to the idea that things don’t have to always be symmetrical or predictable as in nature, they rarely are either. “It is one of the chief virtues of the Gothic builders, that they never suffered ideas of outside symmetries and consistencies to interfere with the real use and value of what they did … if they wanted a window, they opened one; a room, they added one; a buttress, they built one; utterly regardless of any established conventionalities of external appearance, knowing … that such daring interruptions of the formal plan would rather give additional interest to its symmetry than injure it …

Every successive architect, employed upon a great work, built the pieces he added in his way, utterly regardless of the style adopted by his predecessors.”³ By focusing upon the use of architectural elements rather than only the external appearance, Ruskin suggests this type of architecture is the most versatile and therefore the most rational form of architecture.

The ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement had a profound effect on the architectural designs of the later 1800s. One of the foundational principles of the movement was to “render all branches of art the sphere no longer of the tradesman but the artist. It would restore building, decoration, glass painting, pottery, woodcarving, and metal to their rightful place beside painting and sculpture.”⁴ The movement opened up the boundaries of the classical periods, freeing up the rules and enabling architects such as Voysey, Baillie Scott, and others to adopt new approaches to architectural design that hadn’t been fully explored at any previous time.

These architects developed three main ideas that contributed to the transformation of the architectural work of the period. “First, and the most obvious, the Arts and Crafts emphasized the artistic potential of everyday objects. Second, vastly higher standards of craftsmanship were applied to these objects, and the ideal of craftsmanship was realized much more widely than had been possible before. … Third, new stress was given to the importance of function in the creation of forms.”⁵ This is fully in keeping with Ruskin’s ideas regarding the savage as well as the natural in its insistence that decorative elements not be added for decoration alone but that it should have some point, some reason for being there.

The ideas of the Arts and Crafts movement provided architects with new independence from the classically imposed styles of the past in favor of a naturally growing concept from the architect’s ideas. For many of the architects working in this period, these concepts were generally formed in response to their consideration of the environmental surroundings where the structure was to be built and the needs of the average person to be using this structure. The basic idea for many of these designs was to keep the basic forms simple while also working to incorporate as much of the craftsmanship of the past as integral parts of the finished design.

The result was to provide a sense of fully integrated harmony between past and present, new materials and old techniques, repeatable processes, and modest individuality of finished form. An influential architect of the period, Augustus Pugin, proclaimed that there are “two great rules for design … that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety [and] that all ornament should consist of the essential construction of the building.”⁶ In all projects, the materials and other elements to be used in its production were expected to both reflect what they were created out of at the same time that they provided ornament and decoration to any design irregularities.⁷

“Arts and Craftspeople were a highly individualistic lot but all shared Morris’ affection for simplicity, truth-to-materials, and the unity of handicraft and design.”⁸ This included Ruskin. In Ruskin’s view, an important concept of these ideas was the general avoidance of machine-prepared materials of any kind although other theorists of the time recognized the several advantages that machines offered if they were utilized correctly as tools rather than as creative replacements.

Although the ideas of the Arts and Crafts architecture were quick to spread throughout Europe and into America, there were some inherent problems with the theories as they existed. Ruskin’s emphasis on the hand-crafted items was highly desired and contributed to the support and preservation of traditional techniques and talents, but it also prevented these items from being mass-produced and thus made available to the more general public to increase their popularity. This also had the side effect of making a movement intended to be available to the emerging middle-class price too high above their reach, making it only available to the upper class.

“The Arts and Crafts movement was off and for the Victorian upper-middle class. … The upper classes were the only people who could enjoy individual freedom in Victorian England; it was for them that Arts and Crafts architects worked, evolving a new easy style which was most often seen in the small country houses of a free, proud, individualistic breed who … were the patrons of some of the finest and most original architecture and artifacts ever produced in Britain.”⁹ These ideas and contradictions can be discovered in some of the architectural work that came out of theories such as those pronounced by Ruskin.

One such design, the All Saints Church located in Brookhaven and designed by Lethaby, is a strong example of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The church seems to grow naturally out of the ground on which it built without any apparent imposition of form or shape. The designed structure seems to be in constant flux but yet still manages to incorporate its shape as well as the hill it stands on and the surrounding countryside into its existence.

Despite this masterful achievement, the church also incorporates the expected elements of good church design for the period, including the provision of appropriate interior space and adequate, even inspirational, lighting. The church features several Gothic elements within it including artful, handcrafted stained glass windows and dramatically pitched roofs that plunge from apex to ground at acute angles. Elements of the medieval can also be found in the structure of the church’s towers and flat-roofed central section. Materials used in the construction of the church are also complimentary of the past such as in the artfully thatched roof that inspires reminiscence of the middle ages and earlier.

Because the church features one of the few thatched roofs in the country, it also functions as a means of preserving this quickly dying art by ensuring someone is always trained on how to properly construct and maintain this form of shelter. An in-depth examination of the church reveals its ‘savage’ elements such as the imperfect and imprecise hand-placement of the building materials used to construct the walls. This gives the impression that the church was simply constructed at the same time that the cohesiveness of the design inspires profound consideration of the talent and symbolism of its constructed form.

This same attention to the hand-crafted appearance of the building is repeated inside the church as well. “The interior is rich, with choir stalls carved in local flowers like bluebells and buttercups, Burne-Jones tapestries and Christopher Whall’s stained glass; east window and tower, a combination of rough local craftsmanship and sophisticated symbolism.”¹⁰ Throughout the church, there is little, if any, an indication of machine used in constructing the final design as it stands.

Lethaby demonstrated through this design and several others the ideas that had been brought forward by Ruskin, deepened and expanded by the architect’s interpretations. Lethaby felt that one could always discover the hand of nature if one were patient enough to trace through the various art forms that could be created, or had been created, by man down to their ultimate inspirational origins.¹¹ This concept, as has been discussed, was a fundamental building block of the Arts and Crafts movement and is thus not surprising to discover.

The purpose of the movement was intended to be a rediscovery of the beauty inherent in the messiness of nature and a basic refutation of the uniformity and utilitarianism of machine production. Although Lethaby, as well as many others, recognized this value and praised it for its idealistic aims, he continuously ran up against the issue of how to keep designs focused on the simplistic and natural world while reconciling this with the exclusive and therefore elitist element of the movement.

The only way he could see to preserve his ideals was to betray one of its elemental policies and begin encouraging the limited use of machine-produced parts and technological processes that would mass-produce elements to be used in his designs. While this defeated the purpose of providing necessary work and recognition to the craftsmen, it was successful in bringing the concepts and ideals of the movement back down to the middle class it was supposed to address, to begin with.

The Red House at Bexley Heath, constructed for the newlyweds William and Jane Morris, combined the Arts and Crafts theories of Morris and architect Phillippe Speakman Webb. According to Lawrence Weaver, the house “stands for a new epoch of new ideas and practices. Though the French strain which touched so much of the work of the Gothic Revivalists is not absent, and the Gothic flavor itself is rather marked, every brick in it is a word in the history of modern architecture.”¹² There are several gothic elements evident within the house including a dramatic stair tower, pointed arches featured in some of the main windows of the house, and steeply pitched roofs.

In keeping with the Arts and Crafts ideals, the windows of the house are not placed to be symmetrical or decorative but are instead designed to provide the inhabitants of the house with the necessary light and openness they desired for their everyday living activities. Each brick and tile used in constructing the house was supposedly individually selected and placed to maximize the beauty of their color differences and to reduce any perception that they might have been machine-made.¹³ The only possible unnecessary decoration on the outside of the structure that doesn’t contribute to some important function of the house is the pointed arches over the doors and sash windows.

Like the All Saints Church, the Red House makes a conscious effort to work with its environment rather than against it. “The most logical layout for an architect wanting to fulfill the ideal of Ruskinian changefulness is a long thin strip of rooms in which the functions of each can be clearly shown on the outside.”¹⁴ This concept was the founding concept for Webb in his work to design the Red House. However, Webb varied from Ruskin’s ideas in the way in which he incorporated the medieval element by including a side corridor.

To navigate the house, one was obliged to use this side corridor to pass through each of the rooms of the house that stood between the starting room and one’s destination. This was not necessarily the most ideal design for the type of lifestyle the Morris’ enjoyed but does reflect the individual way of thinking that characterized the movement. Although the L-shaped house is relatively common today, it was revolutionary at the time and illustrated how pleasantly the house could be made to wrap around the required water well to create a natural and pleasant courtyard.

As is illustrated through the designs of the Red House and the All Saints Church, the Arts and Crafts movement as it was envisioned by Ruskin and others was an attempt to preserve the best elements of human achievement to that point in time while introducing a more humanistic and individualistic approach to architectural design. Originally a reaction against allowing all humans to be lumped into a general category of worker drones, the Arts and Crafts movement was an attempt to highlight and celebrate the uniqueness and beauty of handcrafted items. In doing this, the movement attempted to preserve these dying arts by providing the artisans trained in them with the necessary financial support to continue working and training the next generation.

For those attempting to distance themselves from the de-humanizing qualities of the city and the factory, the movement gave them a means of expressing their creativity or their ability to recognize creativity and develop a sense of individuality far removed from the sameness of the new landscape. Unfortunately, the very nature of the movement in its rejection of the machine-made and mass-produced, necessitated that it be available only to those with a great deal of wealth and humanistic interest in preservation. Rather than equalizing the masses, the movement tended to reinforce previous economic divisions. As architects contended with their conflicting desires to celebrate human ingenuity while also making their designs available to the greater public, innovations in design and use of machines were developed.

References

Aslin, Elizabeth. (1962). Nineteenth-Century English Furniture. London.

Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner. (1962). Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Davey, Peter. (1997). Arts and Crafts Architecture. London: Phaidon House.

Ford, Edward R. (1990). Details of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Mass and London: MIT Press.

Lethaby, W.R. (1974). Architecture, Mysticism and Myth. London: The Architectural Press.

Pugin, Augustus Welby. (1841). The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. London.

Ruskin, John. (1849). The Seven Lamps of Architecture. London: Smith Elder.

Weaver, Lawrence. (n.d.). “Small Country Houses of Today” First Series. Country Life. London.

Footnotes

Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner. (1962). Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World. New York: McGraw-Hill: 19.
Ruskin, John. The Seven Lamps of Architecture. London: Smith Elder, 1849: 48.
Ruskin, John. The Stones of Venice. op cit. Vol II: 179.
Cited in Aslin, Elizabeth. (1962). Nineteenth-Century English Furniture. London: 68.
Aslin, (1962), 68.
Pugin, Augustus Welby. (1841). The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture. London.
Pugin, (1841): 72.
Davey, Peter. (1997). Arts and Crafts Architecture. London: Phaidon House, 9.
Davey, (1997), 10.
Lethaby, W.R. (1974). Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth. London: The Architectural Press, 3.
Ibid.
Weaver, Lawrence. (n.d.). “Small Country Houses of Today” First Series. Country Life. London, 180.
Ford, Edward R. (1990). Details of Modern Architecture. Cambridge, Mass, and London: MIT Press, 129.
Ford, (1990), 168.

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Ruskin’s Influence in Arts and Crafts

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