Comfortable, Honest and Unpretentious: A Cultural History of Canadian Arts and Crafts Movement

The arrival of the Arts and Crafts Movement into Canada at the end of the nineteenth century intersected with several interrelated developments. Art, architecture, education, and the process of professionalization, were all affected. Controlled by a close-knit community of cultural leaders, connected through a web of private and public associations, a Canadian Movement was formed, one which helped shape middle-class notions of domestic space and design. This dissertation examines the influence of three architects: Eden Smith in Toronto; Percy Nobbs in Montreal; and Samuel Maclure in Victoria. Together with other artists, architects, and craftspeople, and connected by organizations such as the Ontario Association of Architects, Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, Group of Seven, Arts and Crafts Society of Canada, and the Canadian Handicrafts Guild, they laid the groundwork for the Canadian Craft Movement. This dissertation also incorporates interviews with owners of Arts and Crafts homes by Smith, Nobbs, and Maclure, as a means of considering the Movements Canadian legacy. This study arrived at three main findings. The first was an affirmation of a Canadian Arts and Crafts Movement, separate from its counterparts in Britain and the United States. The second uncovered the roots of the Movements cultural support network, as it existed primarily (though not exclusively) among Canadas urban, white, male, middle-class, English Canadian, cultural elite. The third, the issue of the Movements legacy, was affirmed through the fieldwork, supported by archival and other research materials. This dissertation demonstrates that the Canadian Arts and Crafts Movement was its own development, largely the product of an urban, Anglo-centric, cultural elite, and has survived the last century as a guiding, cultural force.