cover image The Arts and Crafts Movement in California: Living the Good Life

The Arts and Crafts Movement in California: Living the Good Life

. Abbeville Press, $55 (328pp) ISBN 978-1-55859-393-0

Like its counterparts elsewhere in the U.S., California's Arts and Crafts movement, which flourished from 1895 to 1930, emphasized harmony with nature and an art rooted in ``the good life,'' a contemplative existence free from superficialities. Yet the California variant of a school traceable to English designer William Morris produced a distinct regional amalgam of Japanese and Native American symbolism and elements from the state's Spanish-Mexican heritage. Add to this a relentless quest for an American artistic idiom, and the results, ranging from the prosaic to the memorable, comprise a fertile legacy of artistic invention. In this lavish catalogue of a touring exhibit, Trapp, a curator at the Oakland Museum, leads a team of scholars in assessing the movement's achievements in architecture, gardens, pottery, ceramic tiles, metalwork, furniture, stained glass, leather, needlework and bookmaking. (Mar.)