Illuminating arts and crafts interiors: lighting design in the 1890s

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to re-root the study of the Arts and Crafts movement in its Victorian economic and socio-cultural context. It does so by focusing on the design of light fittings, thus introducing an element of history of technology into art historical discourse on the Arts and Crafts movement. This new line of inquiry allows for a reassessment of the relationship the Arts and Crafts has been perceived to have had with the idea of modernity as well as tradition. Firstly this thesis introduces different illumination technologies on the market in the 1890s to showcase the intrinsic connection technology had with the design of the material culture of domestic lighting. Secondly, it argues that Arts and Crafts lighting should be studied as completed schemes that had an active aesthetic and functional role in designed interiors. Thirdly, this thesis highlights how the objects of illumination are mimetic and concrete ways in which these interiors were connected to wider infrastructures of society