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Gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement: Reality and Imagination
Editorial Reviews:
Book Description
The Arts and Crafts Movement, which began in the late 19th century in England and continued into the early 20th century there and in America, brought sweeping changes to the world of art and design. Celebrating simplicity, utility, handcraft, natural materials, and vernacular forms, its advocates produced a wide range of work, including architecture, furniture, ceramics, stained glass, wallpaper, jewelry, and books. Not surprisingly, the gifted architects of the movement also turned their minds to garden design.
This beautiful book features the gardens of Edwin Lutyens, C.F.A. Voysey, Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Shipman, Charles and Henry Greene, and other Arts and Crafts designers, who created some of the loveliest manmade landscapes we have today. Author Judith B. Tankard, a noted garden historian, brings a fresh perspective and a wealth of original research to her subject. Illustrated with period watercolors and drawings, and with new photographs and garden plans made especially for this publication, the book promises to be an important resource for art and design historians, and a delight to all lovers of gardens. AUTHOR BIO: Judith B. Tankard is a noted authority on the history of gardens and a highly regarded teacher at the Landscape Institute, Harvard University. The founding editor of the Journal of the New England Garden History Society and the award-winning author of several books on garden architecture, Tankard lives in Waban, Massachusetts.
Customer Reviews:
Review #1: Beautiful and informative art book........
2005-06-29 
Fanciful topiary, Kate Greenaway children's books where little girls hold tea parties while wearing adorable smocked dresses, trellis hedges captured in wall paper and woven rugs and tapestries, long grass walkways, pollarded trees and stone garden stairways descending into sunken gardens - settings from `Room With A View' and `Maurice'- the colorful Arts and Crafts Movement was a breath of fresh air following the black tones and claustrophobia of the Victorian Age. Although it rains a good deal in England, you would never know it from the photographs in this lovely volume. Judith Tankard has also included a number of items from her own collection of prints and drawings of from the period known by the French as the Belle Epoch or beautiful era .
GARDENS OF THE ARTS AND CRAFTS MOVEMENT were and are a balm for a war-weary heart, developing as they did during the relatively peaceful period following the turbulent 19th century and the years before WWI. What happens if folks put their money into beauty and eschew the ugly? These gardens may seem ornate given the relative poverty of the working classes, but they were open to the public on certain feast days, and served as a place of refinement before public works became the only respite for the poor.
Many of the houses around which the Arts and Crafts gardens are designed are ancient, but contemporary designers like Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson modernized the grounds. Robinson built his gardens at Gravetye Manor around an Elizabethan structure and Jekyll developed Mustead Wood, a mere fifteen acres surrounding a house designed by Edwin Lutyens. Robinson was interested in the "wild garden" and many of his flowers bloomed among the trees or flopped over wooden structures. A fan of bulbs he developed terraced sweeps of daffodils as well as bluebell woods, but for many folks the most beautiful part of Gravetye's grounds was the West garden where tea and China roses adorned pergolas, arbors and trellises. The book includes prints, designs and color photos of the grounds Robinson owned as well as those he designed for others. Jekyll's interest lay in the design of perennial beds.
Long after these artists were gone their influence was felt in England and other places. The book discusses the origins some of their ideas, as well as the influence of this movement on US gardens. This beautiful book will make a fine addition to your art book collection, and avid gardeners will find a few interesting ideas.
Review #2: A fascinating exploration of landscape design
2004-12-09
Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination by gardening historian and a teacher at Harvard University's Landscape Institute, Judith Tankard (who is also the founding editor of "Journal of the New England Garden History Society) presents a fascinating and informative exploration of landscape design from the late 1800s down to the present. It was this increasingly influential landscaping philosophy that was to redefine the relationship between the garden and the house for upscale property owners. The gardens used as illustrative examples include such legendary designers as William Morris and Gertrude Jekyll. Profusely illustrated in full color and impressively enhanced with an appendix of Arts and Crafts gardens open for visits from the public, Gardens Of The Arts And Crafts Movement: Reality And Imagination will prove a highly prized and seminal addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Gardening, Landscaping, and Horticultural Studies reference and resource collections.
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