C.R. Ashbee : Architect, Designer & Romantic Socialist

Yale University Press, New Haven, first edition, 1985. Cloth, 4to, 28 cm,. 499 pp, numerous ills (some in colour). From the blurb: "Charles Robert Ashbee - architect, designer, social reformer, and a major force behind the Arts and Crafts Movement - was one of the most significant figures in British artistic and cultural life at the turn of the century. Inspired by the Romantic antiindustrialism of John Ruskin and William Morris, Ashbee started a small craft workshop in the East End of London in 1888 called the Guild of Handicraft. He not only made it a place where work could be satisfying and creative but, in 1902, in the boldest gesture of his career, he moved the Guild's workshops out to the idyllic Cotswold town of Chipping Campden. Utilizing the often vivid journals kept by Ashbee and his wife Janet, Alan Crawford documents Ashbee's life and work, the story of the Guild, and the part Ashbee played in reform movements that ranged from the conservation of historic buildings to early town planning. We watch Ashbcc on his travels, building in Budapest or Sicily, lecturing in the United States, and repairing the fabric of Jerusalem after the First World War. And we see his prolific designs: his architecture - especially his eloquent riverside houses in Chelsea, his sturdy, four-square furniture, his silver tableware at once traditional and original, his simple, colourful jewellery, and the books he had printed by hand at the Essex House Press. This is the first full-scale biography of an energetic, many-sided man, and the first comprehensive account of his attempt to find a place for traditional craftsmanship and its values in the modern industrial world. " Includes a list of Ashbee's architectural works, a list of public collections containing works designed by him, a list of books, pamphlets, etc. printed at the Essex House Press, and a list of his published writings. Indexed. Bookplate on front pastedown endpaper, otherwise Fine in Fine dustwrapper.