THE ARTS & CRAFTS MOVEMENT

In 1880 one of the most modern times design movement was formed, this began in the United Kingdom, spread all trough Europe and the United States and even in Japan under the name of Mingei, which means folk crafts.

Detail from a season ticket for The Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, by Walter Crane, England, 1890

The movement formed itself on new ideals based on the various craftsman skills of the ordinary citizens; therefore it presented a new standard on the way of living and that of working. It’s name derived from the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society, which was founded in 1887, several other movements were amalgamated within this society, each with its own requirements, and however they were all sharing the same principles.

Arts & Crafts Movement - Furniture

Design by Alphonse Maria Mucha 1860-1939

The two main protagonists of this movement were John Ruskin who was a theorist and a critic together with William Morris, who was a designer, writer and activist. With their qualities put to practice and combined they managed to set a before un-existing new collaboration between various skills such as sculptors, architects and other craftsman.

William Morris 1834-1896

Tapestry by William Morris

What made this movement so special was the fact that it was totally different from its predecessors; it placed an impressive importance on the quality of its products being from materials used to how the designing process, also their lifestyle in general was a status of this movement. All these assets together have designed the world, as we know it in our modern times.

Victoria and Albert Musuem, 2013. The Arts & Crafts Movement. [online] Available at: 

< http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/t/the-arts-and-crafts-movement/ > 

[Accessed 24 October 2013].

FORMAL ELEMENTS IN ART & DESIGN

Formal Elements are a set of elements that when used together or in various combinations create a specific form of artwork. These consist in the list below:

Piet Mondrian – Line over Form

LINE

Lines can be vertical, horizontal, diagonal or curved these consist in in the forms of various objects in a painting for example, they are the basic drawing produced to show the shape of any object.

SHAPE

These can be either natural and man made shapes like for example squares, hexagons, polygons or other combined variations and they cab also be in the form of organic shape which tend to be more natural rather than man made geometrical shapes.

FORM

Three-dimensional shapes are forms, objects like sculptures, pottery, furniture work and animations fall under the category of form rather than that of shape since they are three-dimensional.

TONE

Every color has a series of lightness and darkness by the way light hits the object, this is referred to as Tone. This is just whenever a specific painting or image is requested to be in a particular mood, increasing or decreasing it adjusts the tone accordingly.

TEXTURE

The surface on an object can have various different kinds of texture; some of them can be sensed just by looking at them, while others must be felt by touch. There are two different categories for texture, these are actual texture which dose real exist and it can be felt, and than there is the visual texture which is created by the artist to give the impression of the desired texture.

PATTERN

A series of lines, shapes of even color which is represented in the same manner is refereed to as a pattern, these are both man made and are also found in nature.

COLOR

The primary colors which are red, yellow and blue cannot be achieved by mixing any of the other colors therefore their name as primary colors, while the secondary colors are all those different variations which are obtain by the mixing of the primary colors.

The Colour Wheel

Hardley Art, 2012. The Formal Elements in Art. [online] Available at: 

< http://hardleyart.wordpress.com/the-formal-elements-in-art/ > [Accessed 22 October 2013].

Buzzle, Intelligent Life on the Web, 2013. Understanding the Formal Elements of Art. [online] Available at: < http://www.buzzle.com/articles/formal-elements-of-art.html > [Accessed 22 October 2013].

THOMAS WEDGEWOOD

Thomas Wedgewood was born in 1771; his father Josiah Wedgewood which was born in Etruria was a potter and an industrialist, while Josiah was a potter and used chemicals to achieve glazes on his ceramics, his son Thomas made the use of chemicals to explore the process to fix an image, he never actually succeeded in that but his research was a big contribution to the further development in photography.

In between 1790 and 1795 was the time, in which Thomas conducted his experiments mainly in his father workshop, 1802 was the year in which Thomas together with Sir Humphrey Davy presented a paper named “An Account of Method of Coping Paintings upon Glass, and making Profiles by the Agency upon Nitrate of Silver” (Photograms, Art and Design, 2004 - 2011) to the Royal Institution of Great Britain. This was the process of making images on paper via the use of silver nitrate, a technique that is not very different from the process used in our days. Thomas also managed to produce patterns on materials such as leather, glass and ceramics, however these where not really permanent images, still they are referred to as photograms.

Wedgewood Ceramics

Thomas’s experiments stated that “understanding the method by which the outlines and shades of painting on glass may be copied, or profiles procured, by the agency of light” (Photograms, Art and Design, 2004 - 2011) unfortunately he failed to find a way to fix the images and rendering them permanent.

Photograms, Art and Design, 2004 - 2011. The Photogram - a History. [online] 

Available at: < http://www.photograms.org/chapter01.html > [Accessed 22 October 2013].

Revolutionary Players.  Thomas Wedgwood: the Godfather of Photography. [online] 

Available at: < http://www.search.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/engine/resource/exhibition/standard/default.asp?resource=5231 > [Accessed 22 October 2013].

JOSEPH NICEPHORE NIEPCE

Joseph Nicephore Niepce was born in 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saone, France. This French man was from a middle class society, he used to both teach and serve under the military before returning home in 1801, where he began his love for science and started to work on many innovations and new experiments together with his brother Claude.

In 1793 the two of them came across the idea of reproducing an image via the use of light, photography was not Joseph’s best field so he progressed at a very slow pace, however his first experimentation began properly in 1816. The brother’s main interest was the improvement of his own creation, the Pyreolophore which was a combustion engine; this was used produced to fit a small model boat, which the brothers used to promote.

Joseph experimented with lithography this resulted with him inventing the heliography most due by his disadvantage in not knowing how to draw images by hand. To produce his heliography Niepes used solutions such as the bitumen of Judea to obtain the best results.

The First Photograph

View from the window at Le Gras by Joseph Nicephore Niepce

 The link below is a demonstration of the process:

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/firstphotograph/process/#top

In 1827 Niepce had managed to gather all the components together to create his first photograph, which took an exposure of 8 hours. This image was taken from a window in the upper floor and it resulted in a positive picture on a pewter showing the view outside of the country, just as seen from the window.

HARRY RANSON CENTER. Joseph Nicephore Niepce. [online] 

Available at: < http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/firstphotograph/look/#top > 

[Accessed 22 October 2013].

ANNA ATKINS

Anna Atkins was the daughter of John George Children who a scientist where he specialized in several science fields such as biology, mineralogy, mechanics and even astronomy. Anna was born in 1799 in Tonbridge, she was brought up by her father John George as her mother died during childbirth, she knew William Fox Talbot and even William Herschel as they were both big friends of her father. Anna Atkins interest in photography came up after Talbot had sent a letter to her father about his achievements and she immediately took much interest, making her one of the first women to be involved in photography although not the first one.

Portrait of Anna Atkins

Since Anna was a botanist she saw photography as a very good and efficient method to produce scientific illustrations. William Harvey produced a manual named (A Manual of the British Marine Alge) in 1841, however this was without any illustrations, so Anna published a manual named (British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions) where she used the Cyanotype method to produce photograms which where directly referred as a guide to identify the marine alge type in Willaim Harvey’s manual, this rendered her the first persons to use illustrations in books. A series of issues were published and a total amount of 400 copies for each issue were produced, some of them are still preserved till this day in a very small amount.

A photo from her botany collection

Thanks to the very stable properties of the Cyanotype prints many of Anna Atkins work in prints is still in top condition to our days. 

Anna Atkins. [online]

Available at: < http://www.halstead-kent.org.uk/Anna_Atkins.pdf > [Accessed 22 October 2013].