The Arts and Crafts movement: exchanges between Greece and Britain (1876-1930)

Abstract

This thesis discusses exchanges between Britain and Greece as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement which took shape in England in the 1880s. It had an impact throughout Europe; its influence was especially significant on newly emergent nation states. Two important elements were the use of the past as inspiration for the creation of new work and the emphasis on handwork. Hellenism was embedded in many aspects of British life in the nineteenth century but a new interest in Byzantine art and architecture developed as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, two young architects, were the first to record Byzantine architecture in Greece. This experience had had a major impact on their subsequent work. The exhibition of a collection of Greek embroideries, the Sandwith collection, also influenced British Arts and Crafts designers. Two British women were leading figures in the Royal Hellenic School of Needlework and Laces at the end of the nineteenth century. This was one of a number of craft workshops set up in Athens to provide training and to revive folk crafts in the spirit of the amateur side of the Arts and Crafts Movement