Janet Ashbee: Love, Marriage, and the Arts and Crafts Movement

C.R. Ashbee was, some would say, the key man in the British Arts and Crafts movement during the early decades of the 20th century. Regarded as heir to William Morris in political belief and design reform, Ashbee (and his Guild of Handicraft) gained international fame in his own time and remains a legend today. While much has been written about him, little has been said of his wife. Now Felicity Ashbee breaks the silence in a book about her mother. The book depicts Janet Ashbee as a gifted woman of emotional warmth, strength and unconventionality, all of which enhanced her husband’s work. An accomplished writer and thinker in her own right, Janet Ashbee’s life revolved around great historic issues that still resonate to this day: the socially conscious Arts and Crafts movement, the role of women in contemporary affairs, and embattled ethnic relationships in the Middle East - not to mention marriage and sexual orientation, predicated upon her husband’s vibrant and well-known homosexuality.