Arts & Crafts Ideals: Wisdom from the Arts & Crafts Movement in America

Rating:
Summary: Arts and Crafts philosophy
Review: The book "Arts and Crafts Ideals" by Bruce Smith, Yoshiko Yamamoto, Gail Ynque is for those who like the arts and crafts style and would like to know how it was started. The book takes a philosophical approach to the movement by having each of its seven chapters follow a philosophy discipline. For example chapter 2 is titled design, which could be esthetics and chapter 5 is education or epistomology.The authers have taken quotes from famous sources about the arts and crafts movement which seem to be representative of the ideals and feelings the craftspeople had toward their work. The movements common thread was anti industrialation and protect the hand craft system. Manufacturing was seen as a grinding down of the individual. The process produced cheap copies of somthing that was original. After reading this book you can judge for yourself if they were right. An arguement could be made for the same thing today. I rate this book a 4 only because of its scope. I am also a shop teacher that likes history.