On February 17, the Morse Museum will open a new long-term exhibition from its collection featuring more than 50 decorative objects †including furniture, lamps and metalware †from the Arts and Crafts movement in America.
“The Virtues of Simplicity †American Arts and Crafts from the Morse Collection” will illustrate the origins of the movement in Great Britain and show how the Arts and Crafts movement manifested itself in the United States, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Objects in the exhibition are organized into three geographical sections: Europe, Chicago and other American regions. The Arts and Crafts movement was a late -Nineteenth Century response to the harsh realities of the Industrial Revolution †mass production that debased the individual and yielded cheap, poorly designed products †as well as to the excessive decoration of the Victorian era.
The preservation of human creativity and dignity of work in an economy increasingly dominated by machines is a value and a challenge that resonates even today. The problem for the reformers was how to meet the lofty democratic goal of making handcrafted everyday objects of good design affordable for all. American artists and designers, as it turned out, would succeed with this fundamental aim of the Arts and Crafts movement, even more so than its founders.
Artists who aligned themselves with the movement internationally sought a return to work by hand, the dignity of labor and unity of design. Design unity was the ideal for one’s whole environment †that is, all elements of a home, from its architecture to its furnishings and decoration, should be conceived as a total work of art, each part working in harmony with the other. Despite these common goals, works of great individuality were produced by different regions and countries because the movement’s advocates considered local history, materials and sources highly important.
In America, the movement produced works that were notable for their simple designs and spare ornamentation, often inspired by nature. The clean silhouettes of these objects continue to influence the look of modern design to this very day. Yet for both creators and consumers, Arts and Crafts objects represented more than an aesthetic: their value derived from a production process that honored the individual and a simpler way of life.
Charles Hosmer Morse, the Chicago industrialist for whom the museum is named, renovated and redecorated his Winter Park home, Osceola Lodge, in the Arts and Crafts style around 1905. This exhibition will include Craftsman furnishings purchased for Osceola Lodge from Gustav Stickley, the influential New York designer and publisher whose magazine, The Craftsman , helped popularize the movement’s ideals across the country. The Morse also has particularly fine Arts and Crafts examples from Chicago, a major hub of the movement in America. These include works by Frank Lloyd Wright, the Tobey Furniture Company and Gates Potteries, renowned for its matte green-glazed Teco line. Other show highlights include a rare Stickley appliquéd curtain of Craftsman canvas, circa 1910, which has never been exhibited; a leaded glass reading lamp, circa 1910′8, and metalware from the Roycroft crafts community in East Aurora, N.Y., as well as a variety of other objects from American makers whose work is not often on view.
The Morse Museum is at 445 North Park Avenue. For information, 407-645-5311 or www.morsemuseum.org .
