On Display: Arts and Crafts at Exhibitions

Published by the Two Red Roses Foundation, July 9, 2020

On April 4, 1897, The Boston Globe reviewed the city’s First Exhibition of Arts and Crafts, declaring it a “brilliant social affair as well as a pronounced artistic success.” More than 100 artists lent approximately 400 works, including jewelry, decorative book bindings, leaded glass, hand wrought metalwork, embroidery, and pottery. (Fig. 1) This groundbreaking event was the first of many exhibitions hosted by professional societies, companies, and cities to promote the Arts and Crafts movement and its handicraft. Such public displays were of vital significance for the dissemination of Arts and Crafts principles in the United States, as well as providing examples of the highest quality. The Two Red Roses Foundation (TRRF) collection includes a number of works shown at these important exhibitions.

The Boston exhibition cultivated widespread interest in the movement, spurring the organization of Arts and Crafts societies and fairs across the United States. Boston’s next show two years later grew to more than 3,000 works. Included was a plaster sketch of a fireplace front decorated with tiles of scenes from Rudyard Kipling’s novel The Jungle Book by sculptor and potter Russell Crook. The TRRF owns one of Crook’s designs for the fireplace – a green-glazed ceramic tile depicting a mother panther tenderly carrying her kitten – manufactured by Grueby Faience Company of Boston (Fig. 2). Grueby exhibited a complete ceramic Jungle Book fireplace front at the Architectural League of New York’s annual exhibition in 1900. The fireplace’s presence at multiple exhibitions demonstrates not only the popularity of Crook’s design itself, but also the importance of the hearth to an Arts and Crafts interior.

Sometimes companies aligned with the movement hosted exhibitions to promote Arts and Crafts taste and advertise their products. In 1903, the founder of Craftsman Workshops, Gustav Stickley, held an exhibition in Syracuse, NY, where he created model rooms to demonstrate unified Arts and Crafts interiors. In a model dining room, Stickley arranged his furniture with Grueby pottery, European rugs, and imported French porcelain (Fig. 3). Irene Sargent, editor for Stickley’s magazine The Craftsman, judged the large sideboard anchoring the dining room to be “one of the best pieces as yet built in the workshops.” A nearly identical version of this important sideboard, owned by Stickley himself, is in the TRRF collection (Fig. 4).

Attended by millions, international expositions also showcased the works of Arts and Crafts artists and companies, highlighting their technical, industrial, and mechanical achievements. Ohio’s Rookwood Pottery Company received multiple awards for their innovative glazes and imaginative designs at the 1889 and 1900 Paris and 1893 Chicago world’s fairs. At the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Rookwood secured two Grand Prizes. Their display included a remarkable seventeen-inch tall vase, decorated with swimming fish and finished in a tiger eye glaze (Fig. 5). Designed and executed by Rookwood’s Albert Robert Valentien, it is now part of the TRRF collection.

San Francisco’s 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition presented more than 2,200 contemporary and historical woodblock prints. The impressive display inspired many artists to turn to the medium, as well as the formation of numerous societies and exhibitions devoted to the study, practice, and dissemination of woodblock printing. American Bertha Lum exhibited 31 prints and was awarded a silver medal. Her submission included Rain, now in the TRRF collection, a tour-de-force that highlights Lum’s technical skill (Fig. 6). She manipulated the wooden blocks to create a slanted raindrops pattern twice, once with black ink and the second time with the addition of crushed mica to add a sparkly finish.

Arts and Crafts-style works featured prominently in American exhibitions until World War I stifled artistic production. These events functioned as platforms where the movement’s principles and art were made accessible, serving to both inspire artists and cultivate a taste for Arts and Crafts style among the wider public. The significant works discussed here will soon educate visitors again at the Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement in St. Petersburg, FL.