John Ruskin, who started the drive back to craftsmanship, restoring historic buildings and using nature as an inspiration for drawing skills, was born 200 years ago, and two exhibitions are on to celebrate this, in Temple II London and in Sheffield, where Ruskin set up a Crafts Guild.
The Garden City movement took many lessons from the Arts & Crafts designs, and we may be ready for another crafts revival, as in the last week a BBC program on a group of craftspeople held a ‘month in the country’ experiment creating objects together.
Ruskin turned to the stones of gothic Venice for inspiration: an interesting location to have chosen, with its mix of Byzantine and Palladian influences in a place that was at the crossroads of international trade at the time when the most significant architecture was created. The message is more about lively cross fertilisation of ideas than of stuck and crumbling heritage, so perhaps we should think again about Ruskin’s actual messages.
And what thoughts we have now to face! Climate Change, sliding away from Europe and with this a loss of even more manufacturing, the challenge to grow more food locally, and still no real answers to how to build both beautiful and affordable homes in healthy, non-polluted environments. In fact, the same messages as the garden cities faced 100 years ago. Welwyn Garden City has its anniversary this year.
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