What is Arts and
Crafts Glass - The name Arts and Crafts came from the Arts and Crafts
Exhibition Society, set up in 1887 to show designers' work in a
range of materials.
 The
movement began in the middle of the 19th century, and continued
for some 50 years. It was a reaction against the extravagent, over-decorated
Victorian taste and the worst features of factory mass-production.
The founding members included Walter Crane, William
Morris, and Charles
Robert Ashbee. They advocated good simple design made in basic,
inexpensive materials but to a high standard. A few hoped to form
an alliance between art and industry, to apply artistic design principles
and use mechanised processes to augment hand production methods.
But most of the arts and crafts advocates rejected mechanisation
completely and sought to return to hand crafted work and medieval
philosophies.
They failed to change society in the way they intended, and some
became very disillusioned when they realised that their beautiful
designs were too expensive for the mass market and were only bought
by the rich.
Nevertheless their efforts had a major effect on trends in design,
and led directly to many of the design features of the art nouveau
period.
Effects of Arts and Crafts design on Glass making
In the USA, Louis
Comfort Tiffany established his glass and interior design company
in 1879, influenced, he said, by William Morris and following the
Arts and Crafts tradition.
Tiffany aimed to improve the standard of artistic taste and set
up a studio which was intended to operate like a medieval workshop
with Tiffany as the creative master craftsman and designer.
In England, Harry Powell, the grandson
of James Powell, joined the family glass company in London in 1873
and became manager in 1875. Well educated and affluent, Powell knew
the designers of the Arts and Crafts Movement and understood the
middle class Londoners who bought their products. His company produced
glass between 1880 and 1920 which was held in the highest esteem
in Britain, Europe and the USA.
Powell Glass from the Whitefriars
Glassworks in Central London was England's longest surviving glassworks.
This hand blowing works held to strong design beliefs which were
often at odds with prevailing trends amongst glass manufacturers,
but which nevertheless captured the spirit of the Arts and Crafts
movement.
In Scotland James Couper and Sons
employed Christopher Dresser to design a series of glass vessels
which they called Clutha
Glass.
These had random bubbles and colour streaks, and very unusual shapes
which often combined flowing curves with angular or straight line
features.
John G. Sowerby, manager of the Sowerby Glassworks in the North
East of England during the 1870's and 80's, was a close friend of
William Morris and of Thomas Crane, Walter Crane's brother. Morris
was a frequent visitor to Sowerby's home in Gateshead; and Sowerby
and Thomas Crane collaborated on a successful series of illustrated
children's books.
Sowerby was an artist who exhibited his paintings in the London
exhibitions and then set up an art glass workshop in 1871 and produced
a line of Venetian style glassware in the style of the Arts and
Crafts designs of the period. This was never promoted and was not
widely distributed nor publicised.
Sowerby also used popular Arts and Crafts designs, mostly illustrations
by Walter Crane, as surface patterns for literally millions of small
glass items like posy vases.
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