WITH the Initial number of “The Craftsman,” The United Crafts of Eastwood, N. Y., enter upon a work for which they hope to gain the sympathy and the co-operation of a wide public. The new association Is a guild of cabinet makers, metal and leather workers, which has been recently formed for the production of household furnishings. The Guild has had but one parallel in modern times, and this is found in the firm organized in London, in 1860, by the great decorator and socialist, William Morris, together with his not less distinguished friends, Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Ford Madox Brown, all of Pre-Raphaelite fame.
The United Crafts endeavor to promote and to extend the principles established by Morris, in both the artistic and the socialistic sense. In the interests of art, they seek to substitute the luxury of taste for the luxury of costliness; to teach that beauty does not imply elaboration or ornament; to employ only those forms and materials which make for simplicity, Individuality and dignity of effect.
In the interests of the workman, they accept without qualification the proposition formulated by the artist-socialist: “It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome, nor over-anxious.”
Foreword, The Craftsman, October 1901.
