Arts and Crafts Revival

This piece is in homage to the original movement of the later 19th century that sought to raise aesthetic standards as well as improve conditions for workers, believing that beauty was a result best achieved by contented labor.and that beautiful design would improve the whole of society. That they were thinking in wholistic, sophisticated terms well advanced of the capitalist economic sector, deserves respect and remembrance. We should also be reminded that they were eventually undermined by the marketing of the machine made as being the better more modern product.

So here's to the great handmade revival, the crafters uprisings and all that creative independence and here's to you Stickley, Morris, Engels, Ashbee, Wright, the most famous Anonymous and all who followed their art. I thank you for the beauty you gave this world.

Oh and the chair was painted and stenciled. The seat fabric was replaced and machine stitched to mirror the pattern of the chairs back with a little trapunto to punch out the design.