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RR 99/275
The Crafts In Britain In the 20th Century
Tanya Harrod
Yale University Press
New Haven, Connecticut, and London
1999
496 pp. ISBN 0 300 07780 7
L45.00
Published for the Bard Graduate Center for Studies In the Decorative Arts
Keywords Craft production, Design, Skilled workers, United Kingdom
"...this is not primarily a work of reference. It is, I hope, a book of ideas and arguments." Certainly it is, and all the better for it. If that seems to undermine its appearance among our reviews, let me hasten to add that there are several reasons why the reference librarian should still wish, even need, to take notice of this book. There is a strong craft tradition in this country which dates far back into history, as most antique collectors or museum visitors can testify, but which for the twentieth century has obvious origins for renewal in William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement. So that, inevitably, is where this comprehensive account of twentieth century British crafts begins, in a chapter on "The Legacy of William Morris". This background is perceptively discussed and then leads in turn to a broad chronological division with the craft revival of the early 1900s, the effect of the Great War, Modernism and the inter-war period, the Depression and unemployment,...