Woodworker's Journal 2009-33-3, страница 28

the best part of a century to establish lasting political, economic and societal changes. The death of the handcrafts was slow and painful. In his book The Wheelwright's Shop George Start writes, "the new wheels of 1884 were made more cheaply than of old, for the countryman was growing so commercial that he would not — perhaps could not — afford to have work done with a single eye to its effectiveness."

What Sturt means by that last phrase — "a single eye to its effectiveness"— is that the old order of judging a product by its workmanship was now changed. Whereas previously there was a singular judgment, "was the wheel right?" (the right design, the right materials, the right workmanship), now the wheel had to be judged by an added standard — was il, as we would say, "commercially viable?" Such profit-motive thinking is so ingrained in our modern psyche that we find il almost impossible, il' not fanciful, to imagine a time when it was not so. But it was.

William Morris (1834-1896) was educated at Oxford University and is the acknowledged guiding light of the Arts and Crafts movement. His life covered a period which saw the growth of industrial capitalism and the challenge to it by socialism. Morris believed that arts and crafts were a single entity of human existence. He supported his theories by working with his hands and inspired a wide range of people working in different crafts, which he himself took up one after another.

The Cotswold School

As it affected furniture design and making, three men came to best exemplify the canons of the Arts and Crafts movement: Ernest Gimson (1864-1919) and

'The false, unnatural, and destructive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum."

— John Ruskin

"Well-designed furniture can make life better and truer by its perfect simplicity."

— Gustav Stickl ey

brothers Sidney (1865-1926) and Ernest Barnsley (1863-1926). All three were trained and practicing architects when, in the early 1890s, they gave up their work in London to move to the Cotswolds, a rural area west of London.

There can be no doubt that their architectural background was responsible for the well-proportioned furniture they made. The proportion of their furniture with its simple lines was exemplified by the absence of classical or Victorian motifs that were "emblems du jouf on contemporary furniture. Such work answered the first of the three propositions, which became the tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement. The design of the piece, as well as fulfilling its function, should be visually simple. In this regard, they were pioneering a design form which became known as the "Cotswold School." Not a school in the four walls sense but rather of common doctrine and common working practices. Their designs were expressed by the use of native hardwoods and exposed joinery with chamfered and chip-carved edges as decorative details.

The second tenet said that the materials used should be "of the best." Their preferred English oak and English walnut was air-dried in their own yards and conditioned in their shops after being rough-cut to size. A yard full of logs facilitated the careful selection of parts — even growth, panels and frames almost always quartersawn and color-matched. Grain aligned with the edge of the workpiece, whether a straight rail or a curved back leg of a dining chair taken from the butt of the tree.

Woodworker's Journal June 2009

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