Creating the Artful Home: The Aesthetic Movement

By Karen Zukowski

Book Overview

Creating the Artful Home: the Aesthetic Movement and Its Influence on Home Decor covers the history of a movement that emphasized "art for art's sake"-and the influence it had on home d?cor. The... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1586857665
• ISBN13: 9781586857660
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publishers
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 2.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.4" x 10.3"

Customer Reviews

Taste is Not a Moral Issue

I admit to reading the book cover to cover one lazy winter afternoon. My first creative heroes were William Morris and others who taught themselves how to do so many different things in order to enact their vision in every element of the house-- tiles, fabric, furniture, and so on. The aesthetic movement changed the middle class American house and family life in urban areas, integrating family time and encouraging creative pursuits. It is a positive reading experience marred only the author's failure to catch some really awful misuse of words in the text (e.g. liable for libel and tenant for tenet), her belief that taste is a moral issue, her lack of awareness of the incredible positive impact of television and magazine house porn, and her belief that somehow two workers in a family adversely affects their aesthetic reach. The conclusion left a bad taste after a thoroughly interesting and informative ride through an era of incredible democratization of beauty and a DIY ethic that continues today, and yet, no acknowledgement that the Kenners' lifestyle required phenomenal amounts of cheap labor by people who could only dream of having time, energy, space, and finances to host a pink luncheon.

The Victorian Inspiration

A splendid and very readable book enormously helpful to those wishing to understand Victorian design before 1900. Beyond a mere description of houses and rooms, the authoress places the Ascetic movement in a wider context of social and artistic trends, with a comprehensive overview ranging from crockery to greeting cards. The modern reader, fed up with minimalism, learns why older homes of this period have such enduring appeal. Of particular value, she describes the impression that Ascetic rooms should give, and the stylistic elements that create "... an atmosphere of beauty and an impression of comfort charming alike to the eye and the heart." Those participating in the "Victorian Revival" in interior design, will find her discussion most helpful in creating rooms with the feel of the period, that are not museums. We hope that future editions will enlarge the drawings that accompany the excellent narrative, making it easier for the reader to read the drawings and appreciate the finer points made by the writer.

A pick for some college-level arts collections

Creating the Artful Home: The Aesthetic Movement is, surprisingly, the first close examination of late 19th-century American home design and its culture, offering up details on how the Aesthetic movement left a legacy of houses, developments, and ideas which linger into modern times. Historians, collectors and home and garden readers will learn about the movement and its impact on home furnishing trends, offering many rare color photo views of past interiors and exteriors along with dozens of drawings not seen elsewhere. A scholarly tone is added with an analysis of gender roles and architectural history, but while this scholarly tone allows CREATING THE ARTFUL HOME to be a pick for some college-level arts collections, its more likely audience will be the public or general-interest lending library, which will find it a unique coverage. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch