The rise of Art Nouveau was no less remarkable in other countries. In England, the popularity of venues such as the Liberty & Co. Department Store, the Merton-Abbey Workshops, and the Kelmscott-Press, which was managed by William Morris (1834-1896) and supplied with designs and ideas by the two painters Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) and Walter Crane (1845-1915), rose steadily. This trend even reached London’s “Grand Bazaar”, Maple & Co., where the customers were offered Art Nouveau while the house designs fell more and more out of favour.
The main representatives of this new movement of applied art were, already mentioned, William Morris and John Ruskin (1819-1900). John Ruskin – more of a predecessor to the Arts and Crafts Movement – was well known for being a staunch believer in art and beauty, almost to such a degree that his concept of art began resembling a religion on its own. Similarly, Morris was not simply an artisan but also a true artist and poet. His wallpapers and fabrics revolutionised home décor and their success enabled him to build a factory dedicated to the production of these products. Beside his artistic efforts he was also a politically active member of several socialist movements and parties.
Ruskin and Morris were, of course, not the only leading figures of the movement. There was also the architect Philip Speakman Webb (1831-1915) and the painter Walter Crane, who could rightfully be called the most creative interior decorator of his time, possessed as he was with an impeccable sense of elegance. They were a beacon for a whole generation of outstanding architects, designers, decorators and illustrators who flocked to their banner to realise their dreams of a new art together. Their artistic prowess is beyond comparison: like in a pantheistic dream they composed a fragile melody of ornaments that fused flora and fauna into a transcendent whole. This ornament-based art, with its filigreed patterns and arabesques, was reminiscent of the exuberant ornament-artists of the Renaissance. Not by accident either. The English artists intricately studied the elaborate engraving techniques – which today are rather under-appreciated – from the 15th and 16th centuries. In a similar manner they studied the wood, copper and niello artwork of their contemporaries from the Munich school.
Despite using the art of the past as direct inspiration, the designers of the English Art Nouveau never copied it reverently, afraid of creating something new; quite the opposite, they enriched this art with the pure joy of new creation. One simply has to skim through old editions of The Studio Magazine, The Artist, or The Magazine of Art[1] and marvel at the designs for decorative book covers and various other ornamented media in order to see the immense creativity that animated the movement. It is quite fascinating to see how much young talent – among these talented artists were also quite a few girls and women – was unearthed in the art competitions that were organised by The Studio or South Kensington[2]. The new prints, fabrics and wallpapers which changed the traditional way of home décor, created by Crane, Morris and designer Charles Voysey (1857-1941), might have been inspired by patterns seen in nature itself but it also referenced the traditional Oriental and European principles of ornament taught by authentic decorators of the past.