Women Entrepreneurs Best of Arts & Crafts
World War One was the main factor in the shift of labour towards women in 1914/1918, With the onset of the Arts & Crafts Movement women became the Entrepreneurs of that era. The textile industry was mainly based in the north of England. A typical rural setting of England, The cottage industries, based in the home, mainly women or disabled ex-war veterans fighting to survive.
Author: Tanya Harrod
Quote ?The spectacular Neo ? primitivism of inter- war hand weaving and printing contrasts sharply with the finest and complexity of the arts and craft equivalent. And the success of their interwar craft textile movement altered the gender balance in the craft world in favour of women as creative inventors.?
? If women ruled the world of philanthropic textile enterprises, sometimes with a rod of iron, the most creative end of the hand spinning, dying, weaving, hand block printing and embroidery world was also dominated by women. Like the aristocratic philanthropists many too tended to rely on cheap labour — employing village girls as well as taking on paying gentle women as pupils. But the atmosphere of creativity in these workshops was a good deal more chaotic, improvisatory and joyful. Many of these creative women had trained as painters in London art schools in the first two decades of the century. In a male dominated Edwardian and Georgian art world few women sustained fall successful careers as painters or sculptures. The crafts offered the possibility of greater artistic equality and at broader definition of artistic practice. There were good male/female artistic partnerships (like Therese Lessore and her first husband Bernard Adeney. Eve and William Simons, or Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant) as well as examples of partial obliteration of female talent, Nevertheless the women who achieved the most tended to move sideways from the fine arts into the crafts, many of them into textiles. These women were responsible for bringing together modernism and the crafts, thus transforming the identity of the arts and crafts movement.
For More Information on how to become an Entrepreneur in the Textile or Arts & Crafts Industries
Dee Hudson Textile Artist Amazon Best of Arts & Crafts
