Arts & Craft Design

Originally published in 1916 when the Arts & Crafts movement was in its heyday, this is a virtual textbook of materials, color, techniques, and designs. Arts & Crafts Design is a practical guide to the creation of high-quality, high-style furnishings through the industrial arts.

"The publisher of this new edition has added a useful foreword and substitued the title Arts and Crafts Design for the original (1916) Industrial Arts Design, an appropriate modification since the term "industrial" suggests factory production whereas Varnum referred to objects that today we call "Craftsman"--Rookwood pottery, Stickley furniture, Jarvie candlesticks, etc. A delightful touch is that Varnum included pictures of these objects alongside the principles by which he believed they were designed. Varnum's book offers an enlightening, if somewhat technical, insight into thinking about design before World War I. There is no doubt that the Arts and Crafts period during which the principles of simple beauty married so neatly with function can be better understood and appreciated today through Varnum's perceptions."

• Paperback
• Published by Gibbs Smith

Arts & Craft Design by Varnum