The Birmingham Municipal School of Art and opportunities for women's paid work in the Art and Crafts Movement

Hoban, Sally (2014). The Birmingham Municipal School of Art and opportunities for women's paid work in the Art and Crafts Movement. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis is the first to examine the lives and careers of professional women who were working within the thriving Arts and Crafts Movement in Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It utilises previously unresearched primary and secondary sources in art galleries, the Birmingham School of Art and local studies collections to present a series of case studies of professional women working in the fields of jewellery and metalware, stained glass, painting, book illustration, textiles and illumination. This thesis demonstrates that women made an important, although currently unacknowledged, professional contribution to the Arts and Crafts Movement in the region. It argues that the Executed Design training that the women received at the Birmingham Municipal School of Art (BMSA) was crucial to their success in obtaining highly-skilled paid employment or setting up and running their own business enterprises. The thesis makes an important new contribution to the historiography of The Arts and Crafts Movement; women's work in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the history of education and the industrial and artistic history of Birmingham.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):