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The Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement is one of the newest museums in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida – it opened in 2021. It is privately funded by Rudy Ciccarello, who has been collecting works of the Arts & Crafts Movement since the 1990s. The MAACM is the only museum in the world dedicated to such works.

This post is available as a video at https://youtu.be/nmCeUnNb1eA.

The Arts & Crafts movement

What, you might be asking, is the Arts and Crafts movement? Its origins can be traced back to writings on architecture in the 1840s-1850s by John Ruskin, Britain’s most prominent art critic. Ruskin condemned Renaissance and modern (Victorian) architecture. He insisted that art and architecture express the social and moral conditions under which they were produced. Hence Ruskin argued that the perfect style of architecture for Britain, that burgeoning industrial power, was … Venetian Gothic, a medieval style from the 13th-15th centuries (below left).

Influenced by Ruskin and by a love of medieval art, William Morris rejected “the dull squalor of civilization” – by which he meant the low-cost, mass-produced goods of the Industrial Revolution. Morris believed there should be no dividing line between the fine arts and decorative arts. In 1861, he established an association of “fine art workmen” (later Morris & Company) to produce objects that were both beautiful and functional: hand-made stained glass, metalwork, furniture, textiles (above right), wallpaper, and so on. Morris became the leading figure of the Arts & Crafts Movement, which by the 1890s revolutionized Victorian decorative arts.

The Arts & Crafts movement soon spread to the United States, where it lasted from the 1890s through the 1920s. Objects produced during that period are strikingly beautiful for their elegant design, and remarkably durable due to the use of high-quality materials. Artists and artisans represented at the MAACM include Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rohlfs, Gustav Stickley, the Roycrofters, Greene and Greene, Louis Sullivan, and the Rookwood Pottery. Artworks range from furniture, pottery, and tiles to lighting, textiles, photography, woodblocks, metalwork, and period rooms.

MAACM’s building

The MAACM’s five-story building was designed by Alfonso Architects. Its 137,000 square feet includes 40,000 feet of gallery space, a sun-filled atrium, a spiral staircase, a reference library, an event space, and an upscale restaurant and café.

Furniture by Rohlfs

As a young man, Charles Rohlfs (1853-1936) earned several patents for designs of cast-iron stoves. After his 1884 marriage to Anna Katherine Green (one of the first American writers of detective fiction), he began producing furniture as a hobby. Beginning in 1897, Rohlfs sold furniture commercially, but in very small quantities. His unique style shows the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement, the Glasgow School, Art Nouveau, Gothic Revival, East Asian art … and maybe a bit of cast-iron stove-making.

One of my favorite Rohlfs pieces at the MAACM is this music stand. In the 19th century, before the advent of the phonograph, most middle-class Americans owned musical instruments. A few fortunate ones also had this elaborate revolving stand with its assortment of retractable shelving and arms to hold sheet-music.

Below: a Rohlfs cupboard with a safe in its base, guarded by a bulldog.

Fascinating to look at, but who has posture good enough to sit in it comfortably?

Manxman piano

This piano was designed by Robert Ashbee, 1902. By the late 1800s, upright pianos were very popular in middle- and upper-class homes. Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott (1865-1945), a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement, designed a new type of case: one with doors to enclose the keyboard, music stand, and light-holders. When opened, there was much room for elegant decoration. Here, the plain oak case opens to show enameled flowers on the sides and top. The style of piano case was dubbed “Manxman” because Scott lived for some time on the Isle of Man. More on Manxman pianos here.

Frank Lloyd Wright & colleague

George Mann Niedecken and Frank Lloyd Wright designed this desk for the Coonley House, ca. 1908-1910. Niedecken worked on interiors with Wright. The desk fits seamlessly with the Prairie Style of the Coonley House. According to the MAACM’s label, the desk is a contemporary copy, probably produced by the manufacturer of the original. More Frank Lloyd Wright works are coming in the next blog post.

Illustrations

The MAACM’s gallery with illustrations of the Arts and Crafts period has not only original paintings, but copies of the books they appeared in. I like that, because it reminds me that the colors in books are not necessarily the colors of the original works. (That’s especially important when looking at an artist such as Maxfield Parrish.)

Below: Sarah S. Stilwell Weber, Harmony in the Light of the Moon, ca. 1903. This is an illustration for Richard Le Gallienne’s poem “The Pine Lady” – a character who emerges at night to sing to the moon and “play your soul away on a harp.” She’s “high in the boughs of her haunted house,” where “the moon and she are sitting.” (Alas, I can’t find the poem online, except behind a paywall on Harper’s site.)

Jessie Willcox Smith was one of the greatest children’s book illustrators of her time, and was also in demand for magazines (Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazaar, McClure’s, Scribner’s, Women’s Home Companion) and for advertisements (Kodak, Procter and Gamble, Ivory Soap). Here’s her illustration “Then the Epicure (The Third Age)” for Carolyn Wells’s Seven Ages of Childhood, 1909.

Next week: a selection of lamps, windows, and ceramics at the MAACM.

More

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