William Morris: The Founder of Art and Craft Movement

Art and craft movement are to assert the individual craft people who are creativity independent, and to retuned to hand craftsmanship. Take the reaction of against the industrialised society that the boom in Britain during the Victorian period, also the organisation (artistic reform). Nowadays, Art and Craft Movement design has transformed into society, as individual artists are still using and create new art, as the art itself be against industrialisation. Moreover, by transforming on to something completely different, for instance, wearable garments. Art and Craft Movement was coin by William Morris, a socialist late 19th century, who was also a textiles designer. The development in Britain on industrial production, the massive increase in nineteenth- century, and inevitably aroused some opposition. He designed some beautiful patterns of wallpapers, fabrics, and furniture. Thinking logically, he used his inspiration of craftsmanship on a conception of life that art might become flourish again.

John Ruskin and William Morris are the major influence in this movement as they have brought the new themes, for instance, the different civilisations on ancient art like Islamic, Japanese. It cannot be isolated to one specific style as it can be ‘exotic and precious’ or ‘homely and plain’ which could also represent as the hand craftsmanship. The period that the furniture being mass production that they all the same, Ruskin and Morris had hoped that to the regeneration of art could bring a new medieval condition. Ruskin mentioned: “The art of any epoch must of necessity be the expression of its social life, and that the social life of the middle ages allowed the workman freedom of individual expression, which on the other hand our social life forbid him.” The rise in industrialisation had prevented the expression of the worker to be part of the piece created during the process of making.

As an English Art Critic, John Ruskin strongly believes that a necessary Feature of gothic art, it’s different with the mechanical of Neoclassic building and trendy mass production, allowing a faint degree of creative freedom and artistic fulfillment to the individual workman. In this proposition lay the roots both of Ruskin’s quarrel with industrial capitalism and of the art and craft movement of the later 19th century.

“Remember that a pattern is either right or wrong. It cannot be forgiven for blundering, as a picture may be which has otherwise great qualities in it. It is with a pattern as with a fortress; it is no stronger than its weakest point.” (Morris, W. unknown) Art and craft Movement became a profitable design trend as the time passing, William Morris started the company in 1861 with his friend mainly work on a furnishings and decorative arts manufacturer, influenced by the flourishing based on the Art and Craft Movement between the 1880s and 1890s. The company remained in operation in a limited fashion trend from World War I until it closures in 1940.

William Morris’s print works are always detailed and stylised evocations of natural forms as he treated his prints as a “makeshift,” which is a tolerable substitute. Used 30 different blocks were used to print each roll, including “Wreath 1976” as the blocks are used nowadays. Each pattern consists of around 15 colours. Each colour on the print printed individually; a new block is used for the next stage after it dried then the second colour is printed over the first print, the third is printed over the latter, repeating. Around the 1870s, William Morris was entirely forced on the wallpaper design, which requested with sophisticated printing techniques, including a large number of different printing blocks.

“Wreath 1876” was one of his best wallpaper designs. A flourishing pattern of entwined olive leaves and blue flowers attached relies on his well- practiced and close observation. The pattern repeating printed in the natural forms. William Morris mentioned, ‘the more mechanical the process [like paper-staining], the less direct should be an imitation of natural forms.’ Because of the used of materials, complexed techniques, and patterns, his wallpaper design is costly, moreover making is not always about the final look, are the processes on how to create art.

Recognising the Morris chair around the world is effortless. Its reclining back identifies it, high armrests and notches underneath, which can be used to adjust the degree of slant. “In the 17th century a chair of this type would have been in oak, without upholstery or casters, but the Edwardian era required more comfort and more movability.” By Jan Mars, who was the president of William Morris Society. A chair has had a slow evolution, and the best chairs are an essential symbol as well as the place to sit and relax. Whatever new economic or social configurations one many see behind the revolutionary crisis, it is inevitable that this configuration could not express themselves through the old cultural forms, providing at best only a hint as to how they proceed. (Appadurai, A. (1986, p263) The social life of things.

William Morris also satisfaction into the furniture designs, especially the surface design on the chair. Because he is best known as well as structured the form of natural ways, he has transformed the wallpaper designs onto the chair designs as well. He created structure through his designs by building robust, rhythmic and fluid lines from the shapes of leaves, vines, and branches, and he frequently superimposed the main pattern over a smaller, recessive background pattern to fill the design space. This is designed by Philip Webb, who was an English architecture; we also called him the Father of Arts And Crafts in architecture. Philip Webb and William Morris formed a vital part of the Arts and Crafts movement, founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings around 1877. The chair that can be adjusted on a metal ratchet. Simple versions of the same type. The chair cover was combined an ebonised finish, evidence of contemporary interest, in the Japanese way to designed and used of traditional techniques from English furniture, made bobbin turning on the legs. Used ‘Utrecht Velvet,’ it’s very often to see it on the furniture, especially in Morris & Co.

Fabric and clothing have the closest relationship and intimate relation to the body, as clothing is a classic fetish item. Moreover, the ubiquity of textiles in most of the major edited collection and journals are focusing on gender and material culture. From the different things or products, themselves have all condense with construct gender elements not just feminised form of labor, for instance, weaving, knitting, and embroidery, etc. William Morris has used Utrecht Velvet for the chair covers; however, the designer Hussein Chalayan borrowed the structure of the chair covers and turned the fabric as wearable and comfortable garments. But some particular materials is automatically used either for the wearable clothing or furniture. Lace could be the perfect example to think about body forms, especially on women. Before the 15th century, lace was symbolled as dark and mysterious used in the gothic clothing. Appear to the late 15th century, the saloon queen of Europe was the first to develop lace into a feminine, gentle, gorgeous and elegant dress symbol. Lace is a quite transparent fabric that can present the structure of the body form well, which is also into a sexy symbol until now. The lace itself is a line to separate the difference of gender from history as Michael Zakim and Joanne Entwistle were arguing that “the great masculine renunciation,” (Auslander, L. 2015) Which is the shift to somber colour, minimal decoration, fabrics without sheen, and body obscuring form in men’s fashion.

The German philosopher, socialistic and critic, Georg Simmel believes that “Fashion represents nothing more than one of many forms of life sphere of activity the tendency toward social equalisation with the desire for individual differentiation and change.” (Simmel, G.133) As to push people to bind themselves to others through imitation, and another push to unbind the social network, through distinction. In economists, fashion is generalised and constitutive of fashion itself, a fast changed of cultural features, more based on the people from the upper class and then pass on to the other stages, middle and lower. In older, they find and looking for new trends. Therefore the fashion creators were all belonged to the upper class. Many fashion ideas came from humblest origins; for example, jeans gained the concept of American Cowboy. Hussein Chalayan is a fashion designer from Turkey. From one the of his collection in 2000, he has transformed the daily furniture’s (Four chair covers and a coffee table became four dresses and a skirt.)To make a combination the philosophical ideas with wearable clothes, the design of that was inspired by refugees during the war, focused on them who were forced to leave their home country.

In the 19th century, there was an individual between political refugee and newly political. The “century of exiles” make the start of a new era in the history of forced migrations. The word “exiles” here presented as men, who pushed to cross the boards of nation-states, which were then in the process of becoming established in Europe. “Do not dare return to their country.” That they have forced to leave their own country.

In Chalayan’s BA womenswear collection, he uses the ground-breaking method of combining unconventional textiles materials. The burned reaction and the processes of the natural silk, that the experimenter in his garden and exhumed for around six weeks, as well as took the prose of oxidation, what I meant by that is loos the electron during a reaction by a molecule, atom, an ion. The collections of these garments seem to be rotten, showing earthy stains during a rusty shade as Chalayan demonstrates, however, the use of a stanning method has made a beautiful the process of decaying and recycling can be, experienced with innovative products, who has explored how technology can bringing into Fashion.

‘I can’t categorise what I do; I am just cross feeding difference disciplines and creating a new categorise in the process.’ (Chalayan, H. 1999) - Hussein Chalayan

He has his straightforward vision to negotiate through the tumultuous ups and downs of the industry while creating designs that transcend fashion. From a cultural perspective, the production of any objects is also a culture and cognitive process, culturally marked as being a certain kind of thing. However, the American author Kopytoff pointed out the question on what sort of object may have and what sort of biography is more deeply to a matter of social contrast and individual taste in modern societies than in smaller scale, nonmonetized, preindustrial ounces. The object does not exhaust it’s biography as it is culturally regulated and its interpretation is open in individual manipulation to some of the degree. In any society, the individual is often symbolically precisely by insisting on it’ right to singularise an object or set the class of object. The individual is often caught between the cultural structure of commodification as an individual mind can contrast many classes and different universes of universal value.

To conclude, even though there is still much mechanisation of production through factories (effected transformed), at the same time, the increased of the original art and craft works is getting higher and higher. More and more people in society preferred higher hopes on the quality of an object. Art and Craft Movement is the best way that they can reuse and bring new ideas toward fashion, art, and culture society. Everything is on the journey of changing and improving as Chalayan wants to bring a new version of the fashion world.