Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain

Mary Greensted tells the story of the birth and development of the arts and craft movement in Britain with the help of numerous illustrations showing the buildings, furniture, metalwork, and the people who influenced it. The movement was concerned with the revival of traditional crafts, and a return to the vernacular, and it had socialist ideals at its heart. This movement which flourished in the early twentieth century has not only bequeathed us with a wealth of fine objects and buildings, but also a way of thinking about life and craft that continues to influence many today.

Mary Greensted BA AMA is a freelance curator, lecturer, and writer who until recently worked at Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum. She was for many years responsible for Cheltenham's nationally important Arts and Crafts Movement collection. She is a trustee of the Court Barn Museum and the Guild of Handicraft Trust, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. She has written a number of publications on the Arts and Crafts Movement including books on Gimson and the Barnsleys; the Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds and three catalogs on Cheltenham's Arts and Crafts collections (as joint author/editor and published by Lund Humphries). Her most recent publication was An Anthology of the Arts and Crafts Movement, published by Lund Humphries in 2005. She has also contributed chapters to Elements of Design, edited by Noel Riley, Mitchell Beazley, 2004 and International Arts & Crafts, edited by Linda Parry and Karen Livingstone, V&A, 2005. She has just completed an exhibition, Craft and Design: Ernest Gimson and the Arts and Crafts Movement which opened at the New Walk Museum, Leicester in November 2008 and is researching for an MPhil at Birmingham University.