Topic spans: 1970 - 1997
Handmade in Canada: The Art of Craft
When they're created by an artist's vision and crafted by human hands, the objects of everyday life take on a beauty all their own. The 1960s saw a revolution for craft in Canada, as artisans expressed themselves through functional works and collectors came to value the human touch. From quilting, pottery and blown glass to children's toys and folk art, CBC Archives surveys some of the things Canadians make by hand.
13 television clips
The Arts and Crafts Movement
Broadcast Date: July 5, 1993
Before the age of machines in the 18th and 19th centuries, everything was handmade. But mass production changed all that – something English poet William Morris found dehumanizing. Morris was founder of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the Victorian age. He was best known for the natural themes of his wallpaper, tapestries and vases, which he believed should be handmade by skilled craftspeople. As this CBC documentary explains, Morris brought a socialist philosophy to design.The Arts and Crafts Movement
• Born in England in 1834, William Morris attended the University of Oxford and began his working life at an architect's office.• Morris became deeply interested in medieval art and became friends with painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
• In 1858, Morris published his first book of poems and in 1861 started a design firm, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Company, with a group of friends. Their earliest work included stained glass, furniture, and wallpaper designs.
• The Arts and Crafts Movement, of which Morris was a leading proponent, deplored the mass production of cheap, poor-quality goods made possible by the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the movement emphasized a return to craftsmanship in which everything was made by hand.
• The movement also sought to erase the difference between fine art, such as painting and sculpture, and decorative arts such as textiles, furniture, and metalwork.
• Morris's socialist beliefs flourished in the 1880s, when he founded the Socialist League. Its journal, The Commonweal, published works extolling Morris' vision of a socialist utopia.
• Morris himself acknowledged that his firm's goods were largely "toys of rich folk." The cost of producing them was such that they were unattainable for poor people.
• In 1896, having reached fame in his own time as a designer and poet, Morris died. His wallpaper patterns are still commercially available.
• "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." – William Morris
The Arts and Crafts Movement
Medium: Television
Program: Prime Time News
Broadcast Date: July 5, 1993
Guest(s): Joseph Dunlop, Janice McDuffy, David Rago, Douglas Shanner, Carol Silver, Kitty Turgeon
Host: Wendy Mesley
Reporter: Susan Harada
Duration: 19:14
Last updated:
Oct. 5, 2006
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13 clips in this topic . page
Radio
10:22
CBC's Peter Gzowski makes a valiant attempt to learn how to knit over the radio.
Topic
Around 1912 a loosely knit group of artists began to paint Canada as they saw it. Sketch boxes in tow, they journeyed all over the country to paint the wilderness with bold colours and a broad, decorative...
Lovely to see exposure on the arts & crafts movement on the CBC. Doing their part to promote artisans and creators are a variety of websites (including Toronto-based www.iCraft.ca) who allow home-based crafters and artists an outlet to promote and sell their work. In the new digital age, it becomes easier for creators who have no actual store to promote themselves online to an unlimited audience.
Submitted by: Avid Artist, Toronto, ON