A Century of Art And Design Education ─ From Arts And Crafts to Conceptual Art

A ground-breaking study of the development of education in art and design in Britain from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present day, providing an extraordinary depth of information about influential crafts teachers who helped cause great advances in national art education. The outstanding artists to whom the Author gives special attention are: Walter Crane, C.R. Ashbee, R. Catterson-Smith, W.R. Lethaby, Fred Burridge and Fra Newbery. These adherents of Morris believed in the unity of the arts and crafts and in one of the central tenets of the Arts and Crafts movement: namely, that work should represent pleasure, rather than a resented duty. Furthermore, the same disciples insisted upon the students working from memory, as well as from life; together these approaches brought impressive gains for visual education. This highly informative work examines each follower of the movement in turn and also looks at the role played by design education in Glasgow. The book concludes by confronting the dilemma faced by teachers of art and design, which has arisen from the contemplation of the ideas of Sir Herbert Read and the promoters of Conceptual Art. Dr. Stuart Macdonald has acquired an international reputation from his book, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (also available from The Lutterworth Press) and the Journal of the National Society of Art and Design Education, of which he was the founding editor. He holds an M.Ed and Ph.D from Manchester University and is a practising painter and book illustrator who has taught pottery, fabric-printing and bookcrafts.