Desertcraftsmen

Description

As has been ably expressed by those more interested in the philosophy than its application, the Arts & Crafts movement was perceived as a reaction to the excessively complex and superficial life of the Victorian era. In our context, the reaction was against the fussy over-the-top interior decoration and the machine production that made it possible. Leaders of the movement, including John Ruskin, William Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites, among others, used a spectacularly romanticized version of the English Middle Ages as a starting point from which to set right these excesses. The fact that the era they admired was one of superstition, ignorance, abject poverty, disease, and early death seems to have been ignored. But from this flawed basis they were able to structure an aesthetic system which led to artifacts which are timeless in their appeal, at least from the perspective of more than a century. The essence of their system is profound: Simplicity equals integrity. While that isn't strictly true, simplicity does make it very difficult indeed to counterfeit integrity. It was this simplicity with which Ruskin, Morris, and the rest set out to supplant the cheap, shoddy, mass produced, we-make-it-frilly-because-the-machines- let-us' mentality of the age.

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