The Part Taken by Women in American History/Arts and Crafts
Arts and Crafts.
About 1893, Mr. Ralph Radcliffe-Whitehead, a wealthy Englishman, who had been a friend of Ruskin, and intimately associated with English arts and crafts leaders, conceived the idea of founding in America an arts and crafts village, in hope of doing something toward making American life less restless, less self-conscious, and less ugly. With this end in view, he bought about 1,200 acres of land on the southern slope of the Catskills, in the town of Woodstock, New York, and christened this tract "Byrdcliffe," and invited all those who desired to carry on artistic pursuits, and at the same time live simply, to come and live in the simple houses which he had built on this tract. Here was established a library, an assembly, a metal shop, and nearly a score of other buildings to be used as studios, shops, boarding houses, and residences. "Byrdcliffe" has produced a distinct type of hand-made decorative furniture. They have done some good metal work and rug weaving. This colony was repeated in the one established in July, 1901, called the Rose Valley Association, chartered as a stock company, with a capital of $25,000, for the purpose of encouraging the manufacture of such articles involving artistic handicraft, as are used in the finishing, decorating, and furnishing of houses. A property was purchased called Rose Valley, located along Ridley Creek, near the city of Moylan, about a dozen miles southwest of Philadelphia, consisting of about eighty acres, which when purchased, was occupied by ruined stone mills and quaint, deserted houses. The mill was transformed into a shop for the making of furniture, and this shop was opened in the spring of 1902. The Rose Valley Association does not manufacture, but extends an invitation and offers an opportunity to accredited craftsmen to work in its shops, under the patronage of its emblem, the emblem to be systematically stamped upon its products, and would be the association's guarantee that the workman has conformed in every item to competent, mechanical, and artistic standards. The Rose Valley furniture is always honest, and often beautiful. Carving is freely indulged in. The aim of this association is to prove that useful things need not be clumsy, and that beautiful things need not be fragile. Hand-weaving, metal-working, book-binding and pottery-making have been practiced at Rose Valley. At old Marblehead, Massachusetts, there is another community established by Dr. Herbert J. Hall, a nerve specialist of this old New England town, who holds the theory that the surest remedy for nerves and invalidism is the practice of a manual occupation which is both useful and aesthetic. These convictions led him to the equipping along the water front of a group of handicraft buildings in which his patients may work. Here artists in clay and ceramics come and some excellent work in silver, precious, and semi-precious stones and enamel has also been done. Artists in oil have gathered about here. Other associations of a similar character have been established in East Ravenswood, Illinois; Syracuse, New York, and East Aurora, New York, and the number of arts and crafts summer schools is rapidly becoming legion. Among the women who have taken an active part in this work may be mentioned, Mrs. Albee, of Pequaket, New Hampshire, and Crawfordville, Indiana; Mr. and Mrs. Douglass Volk, at Center Lovell, Maine; Susan Chester Lyman, at the log cabin settlement, near Asheville, North Carolina; Mrs. Van Briggle, Miss Laughlin (the two latter being porcelain workers), and Ellen Gates Starr, the noted bookbinder.