'Women, Craft and the Decorative Arts in Late Victorian Britain'

Chaired by Dr Tom Stammers (Durham University) and Sarah Hardy (Director of the De Morgan Museum).

Speakers and Papers

Zoe Thomas (Associate Professor of Modern History, University of Birmingham)

“I propose no unequal match where you should be merged in my work”: Married life and work in the English Arts and Crafts movement

This paper uses family photograph albums, love letters, and press reports to analyse the marriages of several couples who worked at the heart of the English Arts and Crafts movement. Overturning the traditional scholarly tendency to position Arts and Crafts women as “cloaked in mystery” after marriage it illuminates the diverse ways different couples attempted to recraft dominant late-nineteenth-century marital norms to foster more fulfilling professional and personal lives together. 

Lucy Ella Rose (Lecturer in Victorian Studies, University of Surrey)

Mary Seton Watts and her Community: Crafting Professional Identities  

Though better known as the wife of ‘England’s Michelangelo’ G. F. Watts, symbolist craftswoman Mary Seton Watts (1849-1938) was a pioneer of Liberty’s Celtic style and became a famous name in the field of Arts and Crafts. Believing in the emancipating and moral potential of art and craft, she taught clay-modelling to shoeblacks in London’s East End, and later taught Surrey villagers to produce terracotta bricks for her community masterpiece, the Watts Cemetery Chapel. She was an active member of the Home Arts and Industries Association (HAIA) and established the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild. Among other works, she collaborated with her husband on Postman’s Park, the famous Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice, in London. This talk explores Mary Watts’s more famous designs as well as her lesser-known, more personal creations, demonstrating the development of her unique ‘language of symbols’ and her important contribution to the decorative arts.  

Dr Lucy Ella Rose is Lecturer in Victorian Literature at the University of Surrey. She is the author of Suffragist Artists in Partnership: Gender, Word and Image (2018), focused on Mary and George Watts, and Evelyn and William De Morgan. She works on creative partnerships and feminisms in the long nineteenth century.

Eloise Donnelly (Curator, V&A)

An art which belongs to all people’: Women and the revival of enamelling in Britain 1880-1920

The late nineteenth century saw a revival in the art of enamelling. Sparked by the expansion of museums and design schools, a new wave of independent artists turned their attention to enamelling on metal for the first time. Many of these makers were women, encouraged by the possibilities the craft offered for both artistic expression and profitable employment.

This talk will present recent research of work by women enamellers now in the V&A collections. Through key objects, I will examine makers’ practices and stylistic influences, and will discuss work commissioned and collected by female patrons. In so doing, I seek to underline the role played by women in the enamelling revival and the Arts and Crafts movement, and to consider their legacies for the national collections at the V&A.

Sarah Hardy (Director of the De Morgan Museum)

Understanding Evelyn De Morgan as a craft worker

Evelyn De Morgan is well understood as a brilliant artist of allegorical canvases which communicate her spiritualist, feminist, and pacifist values, but much less is known about her methods for creating art. In this talk, Sarah will present Evelyn De Morgan as a sculptor and craftworker, giving some insight into why she was chosen as a founder member of the 1907 organisation, the Women’s Guild of Arts. Focussing on her craftwork can help us understand how De Morgan created how artworks, and the physical engagement with her process. But this paper will also examine the public display and contemporary critical reception of her craft work in order to ascertain why she engaged with artworks away from the canvas.

Session 1

Chair: Tom Stammers

11.00 Zoe Thomas

11.15 Sarah Hardy

11.30 Discussion

Session 2

Chair: Sarah Hardy

11.45 Eloise Donnelly

12.00 Lucy Ella Rose

12.15 Discussion

The talk will be followed by an in person De Morgan Ceramics handling session at Burt Hall, Northumbria University.

Places are limited please book here if you are interested in attending:

IN PERSON HANDLING SESSION