Picturesqueness in Everything:Primitivism, futurism, mysticism and resistance in the art,craft, design and dress of British woodcraft groups 1916-2016

通过对大量未展出和未出版的私人和公共木制品艺术和设计收藏品的分析，以及通过展览、出版物和公共活动，“一切事物中的美丽”将审视艺术、工艺、设计和服装作为抵抗和改革的激进策略的作用。通过绘制在两次世界大战之间成立的木艺组织和其他同时代的文化运动（包括前卫艺术家和神秘主义者、服装改革者和民俗学家）之间以前未被追踪的交集，该项目将建立英国社会和文化史上一个被遗忘的方面的重要性，增加现有的知识，并为一个充满乌托邦野心的时期提供新的解释。这项研究将是第一个将这些组织独特的、大规模的艺术和设计成果置于背景和解释的研究，特别关注Kibbo Kift的亲属（1920-1951），但也包括相关的和持续的团体，1916年成立的Woodcraft骑士秩序，以及1925年成立的更大的Woodcraft Folk。这些进步的户外运动起源于世纪之交的美国艺术家和博物学家欧内斯特·汤普森·西顿（1860-1946）的想法，他提倡户外生活和印第安人的营地技能，作为为男孩创造冒险教育体验的一种手段。这些想法后来被贝登堡采纳，并融入到他的侦察运动中。Woodcraft组织的成立主要是为了反对早期的童子军，特别是反对其被认为的军国主义。作为另类的青年运动，这些男女同校的和平主义团体提倡露营、徒步旅行、仪式和手工业，以此作为激进的社会和经济改革的手段。这些充满活力的组织雄心勃勃的愿景在成立之初就吸引了数千名成员，并得到了著名作家、艺术家、科学家、社会学家和活动家的支持，其中包括H.G.威尔斯、d.h.劳伦斯、朱利安·赫胥黎、艾米琳·佩西克-劳伦斯、玛丽·尼尔、泰戈尔、奥古斯都·约翰和帕特里克·格迪斯。虽然木制品实验并没有导致新世界的建立，但这些组织仍然为设计变革发展了一个全面的愿景。随着木艺团体接近重要的纪念日，反思他们的遗产和影响是及时的。这些不仅体现在它们幸存下来的适应性和21世纪对后石油世界丛林生存技能的兴趣复兴中，而且体现在当前的一系列抗议策略、经济和教育改革议程、新时代实践和民间复兴中。通过考察这些现象的起源和前兆，《万物如画》将为我们提供对现在和过去的全新理解。为了与Seton对“一切事物都具有如画般的美感”的呼吁保持一致，木艺团体认为艺术、设计、工艺、仪式和奇观的生产是他们浪漫、政治和精神使命的核心，尤其是Kibbo Kift，其创始人是一位商业艺术家，其团体吸引了许多创意从业者（包括，例如，著名摄影师安格斯·麦克比恩）。Kibbo Kift引人注目的混合美学将盎格鲁-撒克逊、北欧、埃及和美洲原住民的主题与神秘的象征主义和现代主义图形结合在一起，在帐篷、横幅和图腾、戏剧、仪式和露营服装、印刷文献和运动的插图日志中随处可见。这些有成就的手工艺品在数量上幸存下来，但在很大程度上仍不为人所知，尽管它们使人们看到了这个群体的艺术和智力影响，以及社会和文化复兴的精神和教育议程。通过研究期间发展和传播的成果，这些材料的范围和重要性将首次得到展示。

Picturesqueness in Everything will examine the role of art, craft, design and dress as radical strategies of resistance and reform, through analysis of the substantial, largely unexhibited and unpublished private and public collections of woodcraft art and design, and through exhibition, publications and public events. By mapping previously untraced intersections between woodcraft organisations, founded in the interwar years, and other contemporaneous cultural movements including avant-garde artists and occultists, dress reformers and folklorists, this project will establish the significance of a largely forgotten aspect of British social and cultural history, adding to existing knowledge and offering new interpretations of a period rich with utopian ambitions.This research will be the first to contextualise and interpret the unique, large-scale art and design outputs of such organisations, with a particular focus on the Kindred of the Kibbo Kift (1920-1951) but also including the related and continuing groups, Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, est. 1916, and the larger Woodcraft Folk, est. 1925. These progressive, open-air movements had their origins in the turn-of-the-century ideas of American artist and naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1946), who promoted the outdoor life and Native American camp skills as a means of creating an adventurous educational experience for boys. These ideas were subsequently adapted by Baden-Powell and incorporated into his scouting movement. Woodcraft groups were largely formed in opposition to the Boy Scouts in its early years, particularly to its perceived militarism. As alternative youth movements, these co-educational and pacifist groups promoted camping, hiking, ritual and handicraft as means for radical social and economic reform. The ambitious visions of these dynamic organisations attracted thousands of members in their founding years and the support of significant writers, artists, scientists, sociologists and campaigners, including H.G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Julian Huxley, Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, Mary Neal, Rabindranath Tagore, Augustus John and Patrick Geddes.Although woodcraft experiments did not result in the establishment of new worlds, the organisations nevertheless developed a comprehensive vision for designing change. As woodcraft groups approach significant anniversaries, it is timely to reflect on their legacies and effects. These can be felt not only in their surviving adaptations and in the 21st century renaissance of interest in bushcraft survival skills for a post-oil world, but also in a range of current protest tactics, economic and educational reform agendas, new age practices and folk revivals. By examining the origins and precursors of these phenomena, Picturesqueness in Everything will provide fresh understanding of the present as well as the past.In keeping with Seton's call for 'picturesqueness in everything', woodcraft groups considered the production of art, design, craft, ceremony and spectacle as central to their romantic, political and spiritual mission, not least in the case of Kibbo Kift, whose founder was a commercial artist and whose group attracted many creative practitioners (including, for example, celebrated photographer Angus McBean). Kibbo Kift's striking hybrid aesthetic combined Anglo-Saxon, Nordic, Egyptian and Native American motifs with occult symbolism and modernist graphics, and was visible across the tents, banners and totems, theatrical, ritual and camping costumes, printed literature and illustrated logbooks of the movement. These accomplished artefacts survive in quantity but remain largely unknown, despite the fact that they make visible the group's artistic and intellectual influences, and spiritual and educational agendas for social and cultural regeneration. Through the outcomes developed and disseminated during this fellowship, the extent and importance of these materials will be shown for the first time.