Greg Jenner is joined in Victorian England by Dr Isabella Rosner and comedian Cariad Lloyd to learn all about the ethos, practitioners and creations of the Arts and Crafts movement.Most people have heard of William Morris, one of the leaders of the Arts and Crafts movement that came to prominence in England in the last decades of the 19th Century. His abstract, nature-inspired designs still adorn everything from wallpaper and curtains to notebooks and even dog beds. And the company he founded, Morris & Co., is still going strong. But the history of this artistic movement, and the other creatives who were involved, is less well known.Arts and Crafts, which advocated a return to traditional handicrafts like needlework, carpentry and ceramics, was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution and included a strong socialist vision: its practitioners wanted everyone to have access to art, and to be able to enjoy homes that were comfortable, functional and beautiful. This episode explores Morris and other creatives both in and outside his circle, including Edward Burne-Jones, May Morris, Gertrude Jekyll and Philip Webb. It looks at the ethos that inspired them, the homes and artworks they created, and asks how radical their political beliefs really were.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Jon Norman-Mason Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Ben Hollands Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: James Cook
Chapter 1: Who are the guests on this episode?
Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today we are packing our William Morris book bags and heading back to the 19th century to learn all about the arts and crafts movement. And to help us spin this story, we have two practitioners of very different arts.
In History Corner, she's curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a research consultant at Whitney Antiques. She's an art historian of the material culture of the 17th to 19th centuries. You might have listened to her podcast, So What? It's a pun. It's Dr. Isabella Rosner. Welcome, Isabella.
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
We're delighted to have you here. And in Comedy Corner, she is a comedian, actor, improviser, writer and podcaster. You may know her from her podcast, Griefcast, an award-winning show. It's spin-off book, You Are Not Alone, her many TV appearances, her Weirdos Book Club podcast with lovely Sarah Pascoe, or her new children's book, The Christmas Wishtastrophe.
And you'll definitely remember her from our episodes about Agrippina the Younger, Georgian Courtship. It's the wonderful Cariad Lloyd. Welcome back, Cariad. Hello.
Hello. I wanted to think of a sewing pun, but I couldn't. So nice to meet you.
You're an expert in the Regency period.
That's your... I'm pretty good on Georgian Regency.
No, you're very good. You're very good. But today we're in the Victorian era.
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Chapter 2: What is the Arts and Crafts movement?
And even into the early 20th century. So what do you know of the arts and crafts movement?
I know the arts and crafts movement. I love the arts and crafts movement. I have been to an exhibition of the arts and crafts movement when I was in Glasgow. Before they had the fire at the Glasgow School of Art, I did a tour and they had an amazing exhibition there. And it was incredible, like amazing chairs and tables and like proper, like the good stuff and just the building itself.
So I'm a fan. I'm a fan of the movement. Although I did, I was saying to Isabella earlier, I had a moment on the way here when I was like, oh yeah, it's William Morris. And I thought, is it? Have I made that up? Is it William Morris or is he like Elizabethan? I googled it and it confirmed it was Elizabeth Morris. He'd love to be Elizabeth Morris. William Morris.
He'd love to be Elizabethan.
Yeah, he would. He would love it.
So, what do you know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener, might know about today's subject. And I imagine most people will have heard of the big dog of the arts and crafts movement, William Morris. His floral designs are still printed on curtains, wallpaper, notebooks, pencil cases, even on football kits.
What's more, modern homeware brands like Cath Kidston owe a huge amount to the arts and crafts movement, and we see the design legacy in TV shows like Grand Designs and Queer Eye. But the wider history of the movement is perhaps more hidden. Beyond the cutesy curtains, what was arts and crafts really about? Why did traditional manufacturing methods have a resurgence in Victorian Britain?
And what is a strawberry thief? Let's find out. Right, Dr Isabella, where do we start our story?
I think we should start with an overview. So the arts and crafts movement is an art movement, as you could guess. That begins sometime in the late 19th century. Nobody can agree on the exact start date. Some people put it at 1861, which is when William Moore starts getting on the scene. Other people say it doesn't really start until the 1870s or 1880.
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Chapter 3: How did William Morris influence the Arts and Crafts movement?
It's his ideas and view of the world that inspires so much of the movement.
There is a quote by Morris in an 1877 lecture.
Do you want to read the quote for us? Yeah, he says, and he's giving this lecture in December of 1877 to the Trades Guild of Learning. And I think he summarizes. One of my shout outs to the Trades Guild of Learning. My favorite Trades Guild.
He summarizes his feelings about kind of everything really well when he says, I do not want art for a few any more than education for a few or freedom for a few. He and the other arts and crafts people are really invested in handicraft and utilizing really learned skills to create beautiful, pleasant, pleasing, comfortable art. useful objects.
So is it kind of reaction to industrialization?
Oh, have you read the script?
No, I was just thinking like that. Is that where it's got like, you know, you've lost, you know, you have, oh God, my brain. What's it called? Encroachment? What's the thing they do when they get all the land of everybody?
Enclosure. So you have enclosure.
Yeah. And then like you get industrialization and you've lost all these skills, right? These amazing weaving skills and sewing skills. So is William Morris like harking back?
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Chapter 4: What role did women play in Morris and Company?
They literally are the cottage core folks of the late Victorian era. They would be happy in East London now.
we should probably mention Ruskin. Do you know Ruskin?
I've heard of William Ruskin. No. It's all Williams to you now.
Try another man's name from the period.
George Ruskin? John Ruskin. John Ruskin. Well done. There you go.
You get there in the end. I've heard of him. He's an extraordinary figure in the 19th century. He's slightly debated these days. Everything.
Amongst everything else.
Absolutely everything. Architect, critic, painter, writer, philosopher, poet.
Oh, multi-hyphenate.
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Chapter 5: How did the Industrial Revolution affect the Arts and Crafts movement?
And he's kind of an inspiration for the arts and crafts movement.
Definitely. Intellectual kind of figurehead. Yes. And he thought that society would be morally better, which is a bold move already, if art, design, and industry were reimagined along pre-industrial lines. He was like, let's just get rid of mechanization. We'd actually all be emotionally and morally better people. And he saw that the best, the most good period was the medieval period.
And he said... For art and design to be successful and morally uplifting, an artist needed to be involved in every single step of the artistic process. He's like a nightmare director.
Let's move on to William Morris. We've name-checked him already. I think many people would recognise a William Morris print. Who was William Morris? Where was he educated? How did he get his start?
Okay, so he was basically, as we've already discussed, the guy when it comes to the arts and crafts movement. And he's born in 1834 in Walthamstow to a wealthy middle-class family. His dad is a broker in the city of London. His mom comes from a bourgeois family in Worcester. He's comfortably fancy. He was an architect, a designer, a practitioner of several self-taught crafts.
He taught himself how to paint, how to make furniture, how to make tapestries. He was also a really acclaimed and talented writer, a poet, a translator. He was actually offered a largely honorary but still very impressive professorship of poetry at Oxford, but he turned it down. Wow.
Sure, we've all been there. We've all been there. You've just got too much to do. I understand.
Too busy. William Morris is an interesting fella. And much like the Bloomsbury group that we spoke about in our 100th episode, the arts and crafts movement, again, is a bunch of university pals going, hey, I'm a bit posh and fancy like you, and we are all friends.
It's footlights. It's footlights, guys. It's... Pretty wholesome, because he just kind of lucked into being friends with all these people, kind of. So in 1852, he goes to Oxford. He's at Exeter College. And he really soon meets Edward Burne-Jones, who is another... You've heard of this guy, right? Big arts and crafts figure as well. He's a trainee architect after university.
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Chapter 6: Who is Gertrude Jekyll and what was her contribution?
His daughter's like, Dad, I was thinking about accountancy. No!
Get your needles!
Your arts and crafts!
Okay, sorry. Luckily for him, one of them loved it. One of them, yeah. I don't know as much about Jenny because she had epilepsy. So she was just, you know, she was ill a lot of the time. But Mae Morris, she was a keen embroidery bean.
Amazing. Cariad, we're used to artists being useless at the basic.
Yeah, kind of falling apart and some money men having to come in and be like, we'll sort it out, you idiots.
No, this goes really well. They expanded to bigger premises near Wimbledon.
Yeah, Merton Abbey. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's in 1881.
I'm going to be an agent provocateur here, Isabella, because as a historian, I'm going to have to say, one of the reasons the company flourishes is because of the Industrial Revolution. Mm.
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