The King Of The Golden River, A Legend Of Stiria

The King Of The Golden River, A Legend Of Stiria

Object NameBook

Publisher Roycroft (American (East Aurora, NY), 1895 - 1938)

Author John Ruskin (English, 1819 - 1900)

Date1900

OriginE. Aurora, N.Y.

MediumBound paper with suade cover

Dimensions8 1/2 × 6 × 1/2 in. (21.6 × 15.2 × 1.3 cm)

ClassificationsBooks, Manuscripts, Documents, Personal Symbol & Correspondence

Credit LineGift of Emelda Kunau. In the Farm House Museum Collection, Farm House Museum, University Museums, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Object number85.22.2

Status

Not on view

Collections

Books, Magazines, & Documents

CultureAmerican

Label TextThe Arts and Crafts Movement began in England in the 1860s as a reform movement. Its primary proponents were John Ruskin (1819–1900) and William Morris (1834–1896). Ruskin, the movement’s philosophical leader and author of this book, was the most influential of all Victorian writers on the arts and a member of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Ruskin's book The Stones of Venice (1853) had a great impact on the intellectuals of Victorian era England. In it, he made a direct connection between art, nature, and morality—good moral art was nature expressed through man. Continuing this connection, Ruskin believed the decorative arts affected the men who produced them. The machine dehumanized and minimized the worker leading to a loss of dignity because it removed the artisan from the artistic process and thus, nature itself. As Ruskin stated, "all cast from the machine is bad, as work it is dishonest." While Ruskin built the philosophical foundation of the Arts and Crafts Movement, it was William Morris who would become its biggest proponent and leader. Morris took Ruskin's ideas about nature, art, morality, and the degradation of human labor and translated them into a unified theory of design. By doing so, Morris successfully linked aesthetics with social reforms into what we now know as the Arts and Crafts Movement. The Arts and Crafts Movement did not sweep America until after Morris's death in 1896. In America, two of its earliest and most successful proponents were Elbert Hubbard and Gustav Stickley. Hubbard traveled to England in 1894 and toured the Kelmscott Press. When he returned to the United States, Hubbard sought to emulate Morris by establishing the Roycroft Printing Shop in East Aurora, New York, in 1895. This book, along with many others, were products of the highly successful Roycoft Press and often incorporated artistic leatherwork into the binding.

PeriodArts and Craft

Locations