Edward Schroeder Prior - The Arts and Craft Guilds

The Arts and Craft Guilds

Prior played a crucial role in the establishment of the Guilds that were the intellectual focus of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The St George's Art Society 1883-1886 was founded by a group of architects who had seen service in the Shaw's offices, Ernest Newton, Mervyn Macartney, Reginald Barratt, Edwin Hardy, William Lethaby and Prior, to discuss Art and Architecture. It initially met in Newton's chambers by St George's Church, Bloomsbury. Prior was on the committee. Monthly meetings were held and papers read, Prior speaking on "Terracotta" and "Tombs". Trips were arranged to see buildings.

At the October 1883 meeting it was decided that it would be preferable to found a new organisation that would bring together "craftsmen in Architecture, Painting, Sculpture and the kindred Arts." The proposals stemmed from the members' alarm at the lack of relationship between architects and artists and their dissatisfaction with the Institute of British Architects and the Royal Academy.

After various consultations invitations were sent out to twenty four artists including members of The fifteen, founded by the designer and writer Lewis Day and the illustrator and designer Walter Crane and other such as J. D. Sedding, Ernest George and Basil Champneys. Various names for the group were proposed and Prior's suggestion of the "Art Workers Guild" was accepted at the meeting of 11 March 1884. Prior also wrote the Guild's first prospectus.

The Guild was highly influential on the architecture of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but Prior remained only a minor player for some time, until he was elected to the governing committee in 1889. However the contact with other luminaries of the Society certainly encouraged Prior to rationalise and develop his theories. He was also able to call on the skills of a wide range of craft practitioners from the Guild for the design and construction of furniture for many of his buildings. Prior became Master in 1906.

Prior was also active in various other organisations of the time, including the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society of 1886, set up to combat the exclusiveness of the Royal Academy, and the National Association for the Advancement of Art and its Application to Industry of 1888, at which he gave his inspired lecture on "Texture as a Quality of Art and a Condition for Architecture" that set out the rationale behind his most significant buildings. His involvement with The Clergy and Artists’ Association of 1896, set up to improve the links between patron and producer, led directly to commissions for example for the lych gate at Methley Church.