Our most recent lecture, earlier this month at the Manor Pavilion and attended by over 200 members and guests, was an introduction to one of the most important influences on English arts and crafts our country has known.

Given by Kirsty Hartsiotis, curator of decorative and fine art and researcher into the work of Arts and Crafts designers, her illustrated talk described the ideas and work of a highly idealistic group of artists and craftsmen making their name around the turn of the 19th century.

The group's main mouthpiece was the famous artist and designer William Morris, who believed in a kind of dreamworld where home crafts are favoured over machinery, big business and industrial production. Around him developed a collective of like-minded individuals essentially creating art and crafting with their hands via painting; textile, tapestry and wallpaper design; embroidery;ceramics; stone and woodcarving; metalworking; stained glass and furniture making; marquetry; book illustration and book binding; silversmithing and enamelling. Members of the collective included Pugin, Voysey, Burn Jones and Ernest Gimson.

Their influences were drawn variously from the Gothic, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and all things Japanese, but also from the natural world they saw around them, an inevitable link with Art Nouveau. They set up their own guilds. As far as interiors were concerned, they thought a"total work of art" should be the aim, even down to the doorknobs in rooms."Simplicity" and "splendour" were their watchwords, "Head, heart and hand" their motto. Some, affectionately known as the "Cockneys of Arcadia", left the towns to set up in the country, where handicrafts using local materials were commonplace.

There was a socio-political side to the movement. Politically to the left, it wanted to transform the lives of the working class by bringing art from studios and galleries into open society and into schools where each child would experience the satisfaction of learning about handicrafts. It was art and education for the many, not the few. The movement inspired DIY and in a way IKEA which is now synonymous with good design at prices everyone can afford. Our 1920s suburban houses harp back to the Arts and Crafts movement as do the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright in America.

Come and enjoy our next lecture, The Dazzling Raoul Dufy, at the Manor Pavilion, 1st May, 10 .30.