One need only look at the magazine stand in any bookstore to notice the continuing impact of the Arts and Crafts movement both in the United States, and in Europe where it started. American Bungalow, Style 1900, Arts and Crafts Homes and the Revival, Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, Traditional Home, New Old House, Modernism, Atomic Ranch, American Style, and numerous comparable magazines in Britain, all provide high-quality photo spreads featuring original period architecture or revivals of one or more of the movements we will consider in this class.

It’s rather appropriate, actually, that so many popular publications exist, because it’s been argued that modernism actually began in the magazines [Robert Sholes, Modernism in the Magazines, 2005], and they've done their part over the last century and a half to promulgate the ideas about art and craft that formed many of our present-day sensibilities about literature, art, and design.

The design reform movement that started with William Morris in the 1860s and continued through the Bauhaus era seems to be a particularly appropriate topic in a time when "planned obsolescence" has become the norm, and few objects are really designed to last beyond the end of the fad that spawned them in the first place. The nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reformers wanted good design to be available to everyone, but also thought that the public had to be educated well enough to recognize it when they saw it. Walk through the dollar store or Walmart today and it's easy to notice the thousands of badly crafted knicknacks, clothes, appliances, and other commodoties designed to make a buck for the manufacturer and then to be thrown away (into our growing landfills) when they break easily, wear out quickly, or no longer work at all.

At the same time, however, the resurgence of interest in high-quality craftsmanship and design is evident in the many contemporary books and periodicals that both reflect and influence twenty-first century taste.

In this course, we will go back to the roots of the movements that shaped this taste, and then follow two divergent paths artists and designers took to achieve their goals.

Background: Victorian Medievalism and the Gothic Critique of Modernity

William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain

Offspring: Art Nouveau and Aestheticism (ornament); Bauhaus, Art Moderne, and International Style (functionalism)

This course will ask you to read, think, and respond to essays, images, and questions that should lead to a broader, deeper understanding of the cultural foundations of the design fields in which you are all pursuing careers.