Enola Holmes and the Arts and Crafts Movement

 

Enola Holmes (2020)

As trends come and go, William Morris designs dance between on-trend Maximalism to evocative Victorian patterns, used in film and TV to suit whichever narrative. With a keen eye for Morris prints, you too can see them pop up in anything from Stranger Things to Riverdale to Bridgerton, and also in Enola Holmes.

The film is set in the late 1880's, and follows a young Enola Holmes (sister of Sherlock Holmes), on her coming-of-age journey. The ancestral home of the Holmes is Ferndell Hall, a mansion that evokes both boisterous Gothic ornament and old manor home decor, and an Arts & Crafts aesthetic. Dark wood panelling suffuse the home and carved finials on many surfaces with heavy patterns and dark colours are accompanied by floral and wildlife motifs. Bird and Pomegranate is a Morris & Co pattern from 1926, but evokes the heavy ornament of the Victorian period the film is set in, lightened by the birds and fruit of the pattern that draws attention to the study of flora and fauna that Enola and her mother have made as their private language with one another. 

  Bird and Pomegranate, Morris & Co, 1926

Throughout the film Enola dons a series of disguises, she ends the film in a dress that evokes Arts & Crafts paintings, while also looking to the future and the Edwardian silhouette. Rather than the voluminous skirts and bustles of the 1880's, her silk gown is leaning more into the 19-teens. 

 

Enola Holmes (2020)

The dress can be inferred to draw its inspiration from the Aesthetic Dress of the Pre-Raphaelites, whose medieval-inspired clothing called for the drape of a smooth garment that skims the body, usually with voluminous sleeves and embroidered decoration. 

Kate Elizabeth Bunce, The Keepsake (1901)

John William Waterhouse, Ophelia (1894) 

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Salutation of Beatrice (1859)

Enola's dress shows off decorative embroidery (interestingly the making-of which she scorned earlier in the film) without it overwhelming her in decoration. The dress allows for an ease of movement (which she demonstrates by riding a bicycle, an expression of free movement of the period) and sets her apart from the heavily decorated garments in fashion of the day.

Enola Holmes, 2020

Liberty of London/Paris silk gown, c. 1890's

1913 dress, Netherlands

Musings by: Lera Kotsyuba

Lera Kotsyuba is a board member of the WMSC, and is an art and architecture historian and critic. 

Kate Elizabeth Bunce and Women’s Engagement with Arts & Crafts

 

Kate Elizabeth Bunce and Women's Engagement with Arts & Crafts

A lecture by WMSC Member Azadeh Monzavi

October 20, 2022, Time: 7:00 PM EDT

Zoom Lecture

The Keepsake, Kate Elizabeth Bunce

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

This 1901 painting is based on a poem by Rossetti and was first shown with this quotation:

'Then stepped a damsel to her side,

And spoke and needs must weep:

'For his sake, lady, if he died,

He prayed of thee to keep

This staff and scrip'.

    Kate Elizabeth Bunce was a Birmingham-born artist associated with the later phase of Pre-Raphaelitism. Her work and contribution to that movement have been acknowledged by scholars such as Jan Marsh. This paper argues that although her paintings have been discussed in publications focusing on Pre-Raphaelite art and the Arts and Crafts movement, Bunce’s work invites renewed attention for its unique character which bridges stylistic elements of these movements and Aestheticism. In paintings such as The Keepsake (1898–1901), Victorian preoccupations with morality, gender roles and sexuality are artfully cloaked in Medievalist notions of religious piety, feminine fidelity and male chivalry. Her use of historicized allegorical themes and symbols are made modern through her subtle engagement with the growing popularity of hand-crafted techniques as championed in the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Keepsake also illustrates the late nineteenth-century fashion for ‘Aesthetic’ dress even as it references the historical influences of Medievalism on such styles. The figure of the Queen is adorned with a silk dress decorated with hand-embroidered griffins while her attendant wears a similarly quasi-medieval gown fashioned in a bold printed fabric reminiscent of patterns designed by Charles Francis Voysey for Liberty’s. At the turn of the century, viewers of this painting would have recognized its historicism while simultaneously appreciating the artist’s attention to changing notions of contemporary fashion and ornament. Ultimately, this paper highlights Bunce’s cognizance of history and modernity by drawing attention to the nuanced way The Keepsake straddles closely connected, yet distinct artistic movements.

Azadeh Monzavi is a WMSC board member and a Ph.D. student and interdisciplinary maker/researcher in Communication and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan University. She holds an undergraduate degree in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto, and a Masters in Fashion from TMU. Her doctoral research investigates intergenerational and transnational bonds between women, mediated through aesthetic and personal objects of significance drawn from the interconnected fields of textiles, craft, literature and art. Her research explores the decolonizing potential for textile practices as a form of media for communication and connection within broader discourses of intersectional feminism and visual culture.

Members Only: AGM and The Arts & Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest

Annual General Meeting and

The Arts & Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest

Thursday, September 22, 2022
via Zoom at 7:00 pm EDT

An illustrated lecture by Lawrence Kreisman following our A.G.M.

During his 1909 lecture tour to America’s West Coast, British architect and designer C. R. Ashbee wrote in his journals that Seattle was “the only American city I have so far seen in which I would care to live.” His wife, Janet, remarked on the city’s cosmopolitanism, its “well-appointed restaurants decorated with the latest Arts and Crafts distinction of line and colouring.” Their comments reveal that the Pacific Northwest was participating actively in the design reform movement that had roots in nineteenth century Britain and was taken to heart by America.

Encouraged by exposure at two world’s fairs that put the Pacific Northwest on the national and international map, significant contributions were made to a broad range of design arts, influenced by the remarkable setting, climate, local raw materials, crafts of native inhabitants, and exposure to Pacific Rim cultures.

Based upon his award-winning book with co-author Glenn Mason, Lawrence Kreisman examines architecture, interior design, furniture, decorative and applied arts, photography, and fine arts that demonstrate the remarkable variety of progressive, architect-designed residences, bungalows for everyone, and all manner of artistic and practical furnishings and accessories that were the handiwork of anonymous amateurs and significant regional artists alike.

Lawrence Kreisman, Hon. AIA Seattle, was Program Director of Historic Seattle for 20 years, He has been recognized for significant work in bringing public attention to the Pacific Northwest’s architectural heritage and its preservation through courses, tours, exhibits, lectures, articles, and 11 books. In addition to The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Pacific Northwest, publications include Apartments by Anhalt; The Stimson Legacy: Architecture in the Urban West; The Bloedel Reserve: Gardens in the Forest; Made to Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County, Dard Hunter: The Graphic Works, and Tradition and Change on Seattle’s First Hill: Propriety, Profanity, Pills, and Preservation, as well as hundreds of design features in The Seattle Times Pacific Northwest Magazine and national magazines Style 1900, American Bungalow, Arts & Crafts Homes and the Revival, Old House Journal, Old House Interiors, and Preservation. Kreisman and his husband, Dr. Wayne Dodge, have been members of the UK Decorative Arts Society 1850 to the Present since the mid-1980s and collect 1890-1930 furniture, decorative, and applied arts, books and design journals of Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, and the US. 

 

WMSC Lecture: The Dragon and the Smith

It's a beautiful day to hear all about Morris, Tolkien, and Sigurd the Volsung!

The Dragon and the Smith: William Morris, JRR Tolkien and the Legend of Sigurd the Volsung
An illustrated lecture by Dustin Geeraert, U. of Manitoba.

In the 1860s William Morris and the London-based Icelander Eiríkur Magnússon began translating Icelandic sagas into English. They soon published the first ever translation of Völsunga saga, as The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs, with Certain Songs from the Elder Edda, in 1870. This archetypal Norse dragon-slayer dragon-slayer legend inspired a range of later poems, prose tales, and articles by William Morris and by his successor in Norse-inspired medievalism, J. R. R. Tolkien. Both medievalists immersed themselves deeply in the Norse legacy of Eddas and Sagas, and in response cultivated a Romantic philosophy of craftsmanship. In their various versions of the Volsung legend two figures stood in stark contrast in the roles of creator and destroyer: the Dragon and the Smith.

Dustin Geeraert teaches literature in the English and Icelandic departments at the University of Manitoba. He is editor of ‘The Modern Reception of the Medieval Saga of the Sworn Brothers’ (Scandinavian-Canadian Studies 26, 2019) and The Shadow Over Portage and Main: Weird Fictions (2016, with Keith Cadieux), and has published articles in Journal of the William Morris Society (2012), The Lovecraft Annual (2014), Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies (2018), and From Iceland to the Americas: Vinland and Historical Imagination (2020).

For further reading, Dr. Dustin Geeraert's book, 'Cultural Legacies of Old Norse Literature' is now available: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781800106093/cultural-legacies-of-old-norse-literature/

Find more of Dr. Geeraert's writings on Morris in 'Useful & Beautiful', a William Morris Society US publication, available here: https://morrissociety.org/publications/useful-beautiful/

Guild Park Gardens Tour

 

Guild Park and Garden Tour

Sunday June 19, 2022, Time: 2:00 PM EDT

Members only event, Members can bring guests.

The tour takes place outside. All participants are welcome and encouraged to wear a mask. All participants are invited to respect the choices and distance needed by others in the group.

Please do not come to the walk if you are feeling unwell or answer yes to any of the COVID screening questions outlined by Ontario public health. Those COVID screening questions can be found at https://covid-19.ontario.ca/self-assessment.

This event allows members to bring a guest for a $10 fee. 

Arts & Crafts Metalwork

 David Parr House

Arts and Crafts Metalwork

June 2nd - July 30, 2022

Digital exhibition free to access https://exhibitions.davidparrhouse.org/

A copper charger with repoussé central peacock pattern and motto. This design

was illustrated in The House: A Journal of Home Arts and Crafts in July 1900. The motto is

that of the Fordham family who had estates in Cambridge area. This is a variation of a

design by George Tanner, circa 1900. Image Credit – Dave Marshall

In the winter of 1890, the class was begun by a local estate owner, Harold Hurrell, in the

small village of Newton, Cambridgeshire. Like many philanthropic employers at the time,

Harold was keen to improve the education and quality of life for the workers in his

community. The class would evolve into the Newton School of Metal Work and continue to

operate successfully for over half a century.

The School began at the peak of the Arts & Crafts Movement as one of numerous classes

under the umbrella of the Home Arts and Industries Association but it was one of a much

smaller number to become both a thriving metal working school and a successful village

industry.

This exhibition, based on research conducted by Arts and Crafts dealer, Dave Marshall, will

explore the history of the School from beginning to end; the founders, key designers and

workers and the organizations that influenced and shaped its success.

Piecing together the history of a School that was little documented during its lifetime is never

straightforward but it has been made much easier by the foresight of a relative of the former

tutor at the School, Bob Pluck, who thankfully retained an important archive of designs and

photographs.

A copper and tin hot water jug with wooden handle designed by George Tanner in 1901 (Object No.30 Private Collection of Dave Marshall)

Pilgrim Trust Curator at David Parr House, Charlotte Woodley, says:

“We were very excited to have this opportunity to work with Dave Marshall to create this new

exhibition on the Newton School of Metalwork. So much is owed to Bob Pluck, who, like

Elsie Palmer at the David Parr House, was a careful custodian of a relative’s creative output,

this time in the form of the rich design archive. For the first time 47 pieces created by

the School will be displayed in our visitor centre and through our digital exhibition we are

able to connect the pieces with their design history. We hope that by telling the story of this

local Arts and Crafts School we help to cement its place in history, reviving not only the

memory of the school and its founders and designers, but also that of the 70 working class

men associated with it.”

Dave Marshall (Arts and Crafts dealer and Researcher) says:

“In early 2020 the chance find of a piece by the Newton School of Metal Work led

eventually to an introduction to Bob Pluck. Bob was a life long resident of Newton

village in Cambridgeshire and his great uncle had been the full time tutor at the

School for many years. Over the next year or so we became friends and worked

together on piecing together the full history of the School using an incredible archive

of material that Bob had the foresight to salvage from the old workshops.

This exhibition is the culmination of that project, combining historical facts with

original photographs and hand drawn designs alongside a significant number of

pieces of art metalwork produced by the School. Sadly Bob Pluck passed away in

August of 2021 but I know he was both excited about and keen to support this

exhibition which will finally help to show the contribution of this largely forgotten

School to Arts and Crafts metalwork and the local community.”

GIVEAWAY! (now closed)

We’re hosting a giveaway!!!

We’ve partnered with August Berg to gift one follower a stunning William Morris Strawberry Thief watch in silver/green!

Head over to our instagram page for full contest details!
@williammorrissocietyofcanada

Ars Longa, Vita Brevis